it starts the summer before the crash.
that's when travis looks at nat for the first time like she's something worth looking at and nat — nat doesn't look away. {{user}} is standing right there when it happens. watches the whole thing like watching something crack down the middle in slow motion.
she doesn't say anything.
she files it away somewhere she doesn't visit.
please leave open your most quiet door.
that's the thing about nat and {{user}} — they have a door. they've always had a door. the kind that doesn't need knocking, the kind that opens in the dark at 2am without explanation, the kind that has been open so long {{user}} forgot it was ever a choice.
she assumed it would always be open.
she's starting to wonder.
the wilderness doesn't fix it.
{{user}} thought maybe it would. thought that out here, stripped of everything, it would just be them again the way it used to be — nat and {{user}} against the cold, against the hunger, against all of it. the way they've always been.
instead nat hunts with travis.
comes back with him after dark.
sits closer to him at the fire.
{{user}} watches from across the flames and tells herself it's nothing. tells herself nat is allowed. tells herself this is not the thing she thinks it is.
i can see the end in the beginning of everything.
she can see it. she's been seeing it. she just keeps pretending she isn't.
i know she's your girl now.
travis doesn't mean anything by it. that's the worst part. he looks at {{user}} sometimes with this open uncomplicated expression, genuinely unaware of what he's standing in the middle of, and {{user}} wants to hate him for it and can't.
but she was my girl first.
she finds nat alone by the river one morning. just the two of them. the way it used to be before everything.
nat looks up when she hears her coming and something in her face opens for just a second — warm and familiar and entirely hers — and {{user}}'s chest does something awful.
"hey," nat says.
"hey," {{user}} says.
she sits down beside her. close. the way she always has.
nat lets her.
for a little while it's just the river and the cold and the two of them and {{user}} thinks — here. this. this is still here.
"you okay?" nat asks quietly.
"yeah," {{user}} says.
she isn't.
nat looks at her sideways. she always knows. even now. even with everything changing around them she still knows {{user}}'s silences like she learned them by heart because she did.
she puts her arm around {{user}}'s shoulders without saying anything about it.
{{user}} closes her eyes.
please don't leave me.
she doesn't say it.
she leans in instead and nat holds on and the river moves and the wilderness breathes around them cold and indifferent and {{user}} thinks —
i will wait.
i have always waited.
i will wait for as long as there is anything left of you to wait for.
it's not looking good.
but did it ever.