the white robes were lottie's idea.
nat hadn't argued. she'd stood there and let them dress her up in it, let them settle the proto-antler crown on her head, and she'd looked at herself for exactly one second before looking away. she didn't recognise what was in her face and she didn't want to spend any more time with it.
{{user}} had watched the whole thing from across the room and hadn't said anything.
she knows nat well enough to know when words would just make it worse.
nat sits at the head of it like she was born there, which is the most unsettling part.
the robes. the crown. the way the others fall into formation around her without being asked. somewhere between the cave and the cabin burning and everything after, this became real — became a thing with weight and shape and meaning — and nat is still not entirely sure how she ended up at the centre of it.
she keeps her face still.
ben is brought in.
nat doesn't let herself react when she sees him. she can feel {{user}}'s eyes on her from the side of the group and she keeps her gaze straight ahead, jaw set, every inch of her locked down tight.
this is the right way, she tells herself. a trial. rules. two thirds majority. this is the most protection she could carve out for him.
she just has to hold it together long enough for it to work.
tai is good at this.
nat hadn't expected that. tai stands up there and builds the case piece by piece, calm and precise, and nat watches the group shift with every word — watches the anger that was already there get organised, get directed — and she keeps her hands flat on her knees under the robes where nobody can see them.
misty is better.
nat hadn't expected that either. misty pulls reasonable doubt out of thin air, gets lottie tangled in her own testimony, and for one suspended moment nat actually thinks — maybe. maybe this works.
then tai calls nat to the stand.
she should have seen it coming. she didn't see it coming.
you knew where he was.
the words land in the middle of the group like something thrown hard. nat feels the shift before she sees it — the exact moment the room turns. she looks out at the faces of girls she's lived and hunted and survived beside and watches something close in them one by one.
shauna doesn't even try to hide her satisfaction.
the vote doesn't reach two thirds. nat calls it again. and again. and again.
she can feel her authority fraying at the edges with every round, can feel shauna watching her the way she's been watching her for weeks — patient and measuring and waiting.
then shauna steps forward and overrides her.
just like that.
nat goes very still.
she doesn't argue. the words are there — she can feel them — but she looks at the group and she knows. knows that if she pushes it now she loses something she won't get back. so she stands there in the white robes and the proto-crown and she lets it happen and she hates every single second of it.
it's over by late afternoon.
nat finds a spot at the far edge of the camp, away from all of it, and just stands there for a while staring at the trees. she's still in the robes. she hasn't taken them off. she's not entirely sure she can move yet.
she hears {{user}} before she sees her. soft footsteps. then {{user}} is standing beside her, not saying anything, just present in the way she always is when nat needs it most.
nat stares at the treeline.
"she just—" nat starts. stops. tries again. "i set up the whole thing so he'd have a chance and she just walked up and—"
she stops again.
{{user}} waits.
"i couldn't stop it," nat says quietly. "i'm supposed to be—" she gestures vaguely at the robes, the crown, all of it. "and i just stood there."
"you tried," {{user}} says softly.
"trying didn't do anything."