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There’s agony in her veins, her blood. Her brain screams at her as her vision fades. She vaguely feels herself being cradled, but she no longer knows who it is.
She sees herself on the plane, and she is no longer scared. Because she knows it’s over. The guilt, the shame, and the sadness. Her life. It’s all over.
And it’s okay again.
The first thing Natalie sees when she comes to is Javi's face. Someone is touching her arm, calling her name.
“Natalie!”
“Travis?” She mumbles. It’s her voice from when she was younger. Lighter. Less rough and heavy with the weight of the crash. She looks up to find Travis’s face, young and rugged from the past. He has that stupid haircut from when they were on the plane. He’s wearing those pajamas she always loved seeing on him. She grasps at Javi, sitting up. He grasps back, feeling solid. Real.
“Natalie, what the fuck did you do?”
She closes her eyes, Misty’s horrified face in front of her. She sees her heartbreak, but can’t seem to care all that much, because she knows who she’s with now.
“Something I should’ve done a long time ago.”
“I don’t–”
“Javi,” She rasps. Her voice feels like it did before, clean and dainty. Not like she smoked a pack a day or something. But it’s different, crushed with the knowledge of not being innocent. She’s not innocent. Not even from before. “I’m sorry.”
He nods, subtly. “I know.” His face looks so round, so baby-ish and young but full of life. His face no longer blue. His face is clean. He has the short hair he had on the plane, from before. He’s wearing cow-print pajamas with a pocket that has his name embroidered.
She traces his face, pressing her fingers into his cheek lightly. Delicately. She pulls the boy close, burying her tears into the boy’s hair. He grasps back, fingers scrunching wrinkles into her shirt. “God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry Javi.”
She can feel the younger boy’s tears wetting the front of her shirt, with Travis’s hand steady on her back. He lets them cry for a while, before Natalie decides to pull away.
“Nat, what does that mean? What did you do?”
She wants to roll her eyes at his concern. She knows he’s smart. “You know what this means, Travis.”
He takes her in for a minute, brushing her cheek when he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. It’s blonde. “Why did you die?”
“Because there was nothing else to live for.” She looks, really looks at the boys. They really do look like they did before the crash– when they were not in pain and agony and peril. If that’s the reason why, she wonders why she’s not a little girl, before she knew the pain of truly knowing her father. Maybe it’s something to do with the crash, before it all devolved from there. She never believed in the Wilderness anyways, so she doesn’t believe in it’s doing.
“Look where I ended up, it’s with you. It’s where Javi is alive.”
Travis sighs, knowing nothing can be done. “I guess it’s time to show you where we stay. You’ll stay with me, since there’s no going back.”
She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. You’re here.”
He leads Natalie by the hand, Javi holding her other one. There’s a stream beside a house, but not the cabin. The house that Natalie recognizes as hers and Travis’.
“Is… is this our California house?”
Javi nods. As if he knew. As if he was watching the whole time. She wonders if he did. She wonders if he saw the husks they became afterwards.
“Wait, if this is because we’re dead, where is everyone else?”
Javi shrugs. He’s so full of life, she almost can’t grasp it.
Travis says, “Only we’re here. I don’t know if there’s anyone else.”
She walks inside, hands in the boys’. The inside looks like she remembers it. Javi lets her go, but stays close where she can see him. Good.
She looks at Travis again, and lets go of his hand to cradle his face. To kiss him. She missed him, missed loving him without the pain and drugs and shame. Missed when they weren’t shells of what they once were.
Now that Javi is here, there is no guilt behind it. Only love. Only what remains from before it all devolved.
Then she remembers Javi is also there, and she sheepishly pulls away before glancing at him. She finds the face of innocence staring back. Not resentment, or betrayal, but pure Javi. Maybe some disgust, but she expects that from seeing his brother kiss a girl.
She pulls the boy into a hug, because that’s all he was– a boy.
And she knows from his face that he doesn’t hold it against her. Because she was just a girl.
She never understood how Travis never did either. God knows she did.
When they head upstairs, she finds a bedroom added next to theirs, one reminiscent of Javi.
“It was from before,” Javi says, answering the question she had. “Travis said it was childish. But he also said it was never the same when he came back.”
She looks over to him, and he shakes his head. She knows he carried that guilt just as much as her. She sees it in his eyes, when he says, “I said a lot of dumb shit back then, Javi. I should have protected you better.”
Javi instantly grabs at his sleeve. “You need to remember that you were a kid too.”
His eyebrows furrow, and he wraps his arm around his shoulders. They’re small compared to him, even as a teenager. “When did you get so wise?”
Javi shrugs. “I grew up here, even if you never got to see it. Even though I wasn’t back with you after the rescue.”
Tears leak from his eyes. Natalie grasps at his hand, to ignore the ones that follow them on her face. “You know, but I’m sorry. For everything. For not protecting you when you needed it.”
He takes them fully into a hug, and feels the kisses pressed against his forehead. “You did what you could from what happened.”
He is held for a while, before he says, “We should sleep. Natalie needs it.”
Once he’s mentioned it, Natalie feels the exhaustion pulling at her bones. She nods, watching Travis give Javi one more forehead kiss before he lets him go.
“Goodnight,” Javi says,timid and reserved once again. Like before. Less like this weird, cosmic being he started to sound like.
“Goodnight, Javi.” Travis says. Natalie follows suit, before the door remains open.
As she follows Travis to their bedroom, he says, “He never closes it anymore. Said I needed it open to see him.”
The corners of her mouth lift up. “I take it he was right.” Not a question.
He smiles back. “You know, now that he’s here it gets easier.”
“You haven’t been here for that long.” She remarks, turning towards the drawers.
“You’ll find it out for yourself soon enough.”
She frowns, thinking out loud. “How long do you think he was waiting here?”
“He wasn’t, not really, until I came and found him.”
She settles under the covers, now in an oversized shirt that was once from Travis. It was always her favorite. “What do you mean?”
“He told me that he wasn’t really conscious, not until I was here. Like he was frozen in time.” He shivers as he follows her to the bed. “He said he woke up in the water.”
She feels like her blood has stopped running. “What?”
He looks at her, dipping his head in a way where he knows she heard him clearly.
“Oh God,” She mutters, tears now leaking from her eyes again. “Oh God, and I left him there–”
He takes her hand, making her snap out of the stupor. “None of that again. He’s okay.”
She exhales a shaky breath, knowing he’s right. “He’s okay,” She repeats.
Travis wipes her tears with his thumb, and leans in to kiss her. She lets him.
There’s no rush for anything anymore. No drowning feelings, or trying to. No longer anything but the love they first felt at the beginning of it all.
His hands trace her waist, and hips. He pulls away from the kiss to say, “You are still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
“Travis,” She whispers, holding back the laugh that forms every time he says something corny that makes her feel loved. She would never admit it to him. It’s also from the way he touches her, so sure of himself loving her, like he always was. Even back then.
He kisses her some more before she feels drunk on him, until all they want to do is hold each other.
Later in the morning, she will ask, “Why didn’t you try to sleep with me last night?”
He will know she’s just curious, but that she knows the real answer.
“We have all the time in the world. And Javi left his door open. He’s still my baby brother.”
And she will laugh, pulling him into another kiss as Javi comes downstairs, groaning about them being gross. They all know he’s happy for them, though. Truly.
That they’re now at peace, for the first time in a while.