Everything was too bright. It was too loud.
Everyone buzzing around just like before.
The flashing of the ambulance lights cluttered too close, blurring in her fogging mind to the clicking snaps of so many cameras as they were hurried out of the "rescue" vans to yet another waiting plane. This one takes them further into actual civilization.
Van with Tai. Ball cap hats pulled low over their downcast eyes and gifted sweatshirts, zipped up hiding dirty clothes, as were all of the others she and her team were wearing as they shoved their way past the wall of clambering reporters.
Shauna hand in hand with Melissa as they stagger like scattering deer under the hungry flashing of the cameras.
Lottie drifts in and out in her own world, still clinging to her splintered connection with their former prison, the Wilderness.
Nat and Travis are already lost in the sea of too many moving bodies.
Everyone had someone or something. To hold on to. Someone to ground them.
Everyone but her.
Because Natalie was gone.
Natalie was dead.
Because Misty stupid Quigley had killed her.
Movement ahead of her as more baby-worthy sobs strangled her throat as they spilled from her trembling lips under the full crushing weight of what she'd done slammed into her with world-crushing clarity as the doors of the ambulance shut, blocking even more of her already taken view of her best friend.
"Misty?"
A voice not from her memories as she sways carried along in the movements of the others in the fog of her own mind as her world spiraled around her just as she had been that day.
Knocked aside by one of the officers, too busy pushing away the camera holding a reporter trying to gain her attention for comments and quotes, for the cop to have noticed how close she'd stumbled towards him.
"Misty."
A hazy shadow of blackness.
Nervous but warm fingers closing in, grounding weight around her wrist.
"I've got you."
Misty chose to stay in the haze of her memories, at the husked out mimicked words, as she let her fingers lace with Lisa's, letting the younger woman guide her beyond the haze of lights and gathered onlookers.
She allows this because safe in her mind Misty was with Natalie again.
"Easy, Misty, I've got you." Natalie was reassuring her.
They were both dirty and clothed in oversized black sweatshirts with sleeves long enough to cover the evidence when Nat's fingers lace with hers.
"You're holding my hand, Scatorccio." Misty stammers in awe.
Hard, reassuring pressure answers her fumbled call, and in her mind, Misty greedily remembers the exact feel of Nat's hand tightening around hers.
"It proves I've got you, Quigley," Nat promises with a sly wink before her smirking expression fades into the shadow of her tossed-up sweatshirt hood as she pulls Misty with her over to the waiting plane.
Her queen keeping her close, keeping her safe, keeping her protected, keeping her grounded.
"Nat wouldn't want you to be alone right now," Lisa says, not understanding the whispered call out as she guides a dazed Misty further away from the lights and the whispering accusers as the ambulance drives away. "And even when you did try to kill me, you are important to her, so you are important to me."
"Are important" not "were important"
The distinction sticks in her mind longer than a glazed-eyed Misty would willingly admit.
Nat was dead. She'd made painfully sure of that with her own hands.
"I don't need looking after I'm not a baby." Misty growls in attempted defense.
Lisa rolls her eyes at the come back but her hand never leaves its tight hold of Misty's wrist. "Humor me then."
Misty stumbles at this. It was such a Natalie response.
"You will never be her."
Lisa pauses looking back over her shoulder at Misty's tearful angry gaze. "I don't want to be." The younger woman says. "but she was my friend and you were hers so now your mine. Even if you had intended to kill me not her."
Misty felt more tears rolling down her cheeks at this. "I kill my friends." She sniffs as their names and faces roll in a trio in her head.
Crystal. Ben. Now Natalie.
"So do I." Lisa whispers as her fingers slip to curl with Misty's. "I mean I've killed thirteen different goldfish."
"Are you really comparing—" Misty lashes out or tries to if she didn't recognize where she was being led.
"No." Lisa hurried on "but get in. I figured you don't want to deal with the others just yet and I saw that weird nerdy guy you came with headed here—"
Misty hated how quickly she dropped the guiding hand to open the passenger side of the car. "Don't hurt Gilly, Nat saved his gills too. The least you can do is hold his bowl." Lisa instructs opening the car's drivers' side as more flashing lights cut thought the tree line.
"Misty?"
Walter's voice.
"Told you so." Lisa giggled closing the door as she digs out the car keys.
"Misty?" Three other voices echoed. Those of her currently searching teammates.
The rumbling of the car reminded Misty all too much of the feeling of being buckled into the 'rescue' plane.
Glancing into the rearview mirror Misty can see the scene playing out in her head.
She sees herself as that dirty teenager plucked from the wilderness but more than that she sees Natalie again.
Her best friend who'd lead her out of the upside-down world of their return to civilization.
Natalie, who even after they'd boarded the too small plane hadn't considered taking any other seat but the one beside Misty's. Nat's hand is still holding hers under the shielded cover off the sweatshirt sleeves as Nat's hood blocked head rests against her shoulder for a stand in pillow.
"We're getting out." Nat says her words slurring from lack of sleep and the dropping adrenaline from dodging the snooping reports still trying to snap pictures of them thought the plane windows.
"Don't worry. We're getting out." Lisa echoes from the driver's seat as the car's wheels spin out in a quick reversal as the warning gleam of a flashlight draws closer.
"I know." Misty agrees.
The eyes of her teen self lift then meeting the elder Misty's in the car's mirror glass.
The anger in them is palpable.
Natalie's young face half hidden now by the fall of the sweatshirt hood, but Misty remembered each breath she'd made as Nat had allowed herself to fall asleep resting against Misty's shoulder.
Hands still held against the arm rest.
Van and Tai were in the seats across from them as the plane reached a more stable flight level.
Shauna and Melissa, having taken seats behind the ones Nat had stopped at.
"How about some music?" Lisa offered, speeding up when it seemed Walter was the first of the flashlight-carrying searchers to notice the attempting-to-flee vehicle.
"No." Misty waves off her eyes drifting to the remembered queen resting so peacefully in the called-up memory haunting the backseat. "Let her sleep."
She could tell her words, puzzled the young woman behind the wheel but Misty wasn't in the mood to explain herself as her eyes stayed trained on the mirror glass.
Only this time it wasn't Natalie, the teenager slumped against her younger self but the Nat she'd only just regained only to lose her all over again.
Gone were the garish purple 'community' clothes, replaced with Nat's more natural leather jacket over her signature ripped-up rocker t-shirt. The leather pants were so worn that it was a wonder they were still wearable as she slumped down even more against the back seat to keep her cheek nuzzled against Misty, the younger, 's shoulder as she drifted even further away from her.
"Let who sleep?" Lisa asked, puzzled, splitting her focus between Misty and the darkened roadway. Lucky for Misty's spiraling mind, Lisa doesn't think to push much more when Misty doesn't acknowledge the question.
"We're nothing but poison." her own voice mocks.
Because Natalie was dead, and Misty had been the one to kill her.
"I know." Misty agrees, dropping her voice lower now so it was lost in the low humming crackle of the car radio being switched on. Talking now, only to that teenaged voice inside her head. The phantom rider in the backseat, glaring daggers at her from the prison of the mirror glass.
Natalie's head pillowed against her shoulder in the reflection.
Her eyes open but vacant just as they had been when Misty had gingerly lowered her dying friend to the ground, sobbing her apologies to unhearing ears.