He remembers when she told him once before about her life before him. She told him about how Carla died when she was little, and how it had destroyed her father. Her death had destroyed Max, too, of course, that was his mother, but not to the degree it had Alex.
She had been too little to really know what was going on. She understood that her mother wasn't coming back. She understood that her father and her brother were very sad.
And very quickly, she had come to understand that she was all on her own.
Alex drank himself into stupors every morning and every night. He stayed locked in his room and no matter how she tried Natalie could never get the memory of his sobs out of her head.
Max had school. He stayed after for tutoring or sports, anything to keep him from having to come home. He hated hearing Alex cry as much as Natalie did, but that was the difference between him and Natalie — he could escape. Natalie couldn't.
She told him how she had learned to take care of herself before she had even reached kindergarten, how she had learned to take care of Alex, too. She used to help him clean himself up when he found himself by the toilet, she used to get him into bed, she used to make him eat something, and a few times she tried to hide the alcohol (he found it, he always did).
He remembers how Natalie had laughed and pulled her knees up to her chest.
"I don't know," she had said, after the period of silence that had followed. "I guess I just realized that I wasn't important. This one person was gone and suddenly I had no one. They weren't alone, but they acted like they were."
Even with Michael's intervention, that was one thing that had stuck with her. Even after her father's recovery, their betrayal stung.
She had grown up with this burden on her shoulders, knowing how easy it had been for them to abandon her. She had grown up already grown up, because they had given her no choice.
She had scratched at her ear and smiled at him.
"I guess that's why I smiled so much, even when I was sad. I didn't want anyone to think they were alone. If I couldn't do that for my own family, maybe I could do it for someone else, y'know? I pretended I was happy so I could make others happy."
There was another silence, where Natalie just stared at him with that smile.
"What?" he'd asked, and she had shrugged.
"I don't have to pretend to be happy with you. I can't remember the last time I wasn't pretending. Thank you, Lucifer."
He remembers the entire conversation in perfect clarity. He also remembers wondering what sadness felt like.
He had never been sad. He had known anger so hot his blood had boiled until it tinted his vision red when Michael had cast him out of Heaven. He had known bitterness so potent he could taste it on his tongue about the loss of his wings. He had known irritation and resentment so strong they itched beneath his skin. But he had never known sadness.
He should have counted his blessings.
It isn't like anything he's ever felt before, hot and blinding and all at once but cleared from his veins just as quickly as it consumed him. This… This is different. This seeps into every vein, every crevice, every crack, until every last part of him is aching. This suffocates him until he's left gasping for a breath he doesn't need. This washes over him like ice until he's convinced his blood has been replaced with it. This swallows him whole until he's desperately trying to claw his way out of this hole he's found himself in only to find that there is no way out.
He stares at her body, broken and limp and lifeless, and everything hurts in ways he didn't know was possible. He's at war with himself, denial sitting heavy in his gut while the truth of it seared his chest. Part of him is screaming Do something, help her! but all of him is rendered immobile.
He's not in control of his own body anymore and his hatred of himself peaks in that moment, because while he's just standing there staring at the sorry husk that housed her soul she's undoubtedly in Hell fighting for secondary survival.
"No," he breathes, finally, and the illusion of paralysis shatters. He rushes for her, touches her face and immediately pulls his hand back like he's been burned because she's cold, just like the ice in his veins, but she's supposed to be warm. Natalie has always radiated warmth and light and now she's cold.
Everything feels sluggish, slow and muffled, like he's moving through water. It's so unlike the sharp clarity of the emotions he's used to experiencing and he doesn't know how to deal with it, he doesn't know how to fight it, he doesn't know how to overcome it so he's drowning in it.
He remembers when she confessed how sad she was, remembers her smiling through it even then, and he curls his fingers into fists, knuckles going white. How had she done it? How had she gone each and every day with a smile on her face with this ache stifling her?
Suddenly, everything he couldn't feel before when she told him about her depression hits him at once. It claws its way mercilessly up his throat and he tastes the acid of bile on his tongue.
It's funny in the most ironic, horrible way.
Before him, she had only ever known sadness, while he'd spent his life comfortably displaced from it. But now that she was gone, he was certain it was all he would ever know again.