opens mouth to give a serious answer and just starts wailing instead
God!! She loves Xion so much and wanted to protect her more than anything in the entire world and I'm still dying.
From their very first talk, she could tell that Xion was a Good Kid who didn't deserve to be here. That's why when Percy mentioned to her that she'd asked the Sheriff if she could be a victim, she was pretty disturbed - not just by the question itself, but by the fact that someone like Xion was asking, because. No?? And that concern is really all where it started.
The private conversation where she cornered her in the tailor is honestly really important, because it formed the basis for the 'holy shit protect this child' mentality she had towards Xion for most of the game. Even if Xion's circumstances were waaaay out of her range of understanding at first, she could definitely empathize from the start with Xion feeling like she didn't belong, like she didn't deserve things that normal people do. That's why, from the start, she was devoted to helping her, even if she didn't really know how to accomplish that.
That concern went way up when Riku died, and it added a pretty thick layer of guilt to it as well - knowing she had a chance to revive him but didn't made her feel honestly awful, mostly because she could see how much his loss had hurt her. That's why she was a little more open with her from that point on, both in terms of physical affection and emotional honesty; she felt like she owed it to her to be there for her, since she could have helped her before and chose not to.
As time went on, though she was definitely still extremely protective, she started to see that Xion wasn't necessarily someone who needed to be protected. She kicks through floors to save her friends, she withstands having her leg fucked up, and she manages to do it while trying her hardest to support everyone else. Even if she was furious about her breaking into a building with Milla, it mostly came from worry, rather than any lack of belief in Xion's ability to handle something like that. She's honestly so impressed with how far Xion came; the thread where she said she wanted to live now made Natalie so proud. Look at her child wanting things for herself!!
How fond and proud she was of her also means she basically would have done anything to keep Xion safe. She wasn't lying when she said she thought they needed someone like her to make it to the end - if the situation ever arose, she absolutely would have prioritized Xion's life above her own. Half of that is from personal fondness, and the other half is because she honestly thinks Xion deserved to live to the end more than nearly anybody else. The fact that all of them had to die to get onto the train absolutely crushed her for several reasons, but a large one is that Xion should have been able to live through this entire experience without ever having something like that happen to her.
She wanted Xion's safety probably more than anybody else in the entire game, because Xion is Pure and Good and Deserved Better.
AS PROMISED SLAMS BACK INTO THIS DAYS LATER!!!
God okay so like, another Super Important Thing for their CR was absolutely the conversation she had with her and Jason in the saloon after Sei died. Jason had helped her a lot that night, but I think it was Xion who made a bigger impact, just because Natalie had seen her cradling Sei's dying body and she still immediately and openly forgave and accepted her. I mentioned it in bracket text, but she's used to having to fight tooth and nail to earn even a slight bit of acknowledgement or caring, so the fact that Xion made it seem so obvious and easy to not only forgive her for what she considers a horrible mistake, but to point out that she still thinks she's an amazing person in the same conversation, was incredibly meaningful to her.
Up until that point, she was trying really hard to be more of a support for Xion rather than anything else, taking care to put herself out there in case she needed a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to. I think that was the point where she realized how incredibly strong Xion is, and started to realize it was okay to lean on her a little in return. It also helped shift their relationship in that she started to see, even more, what an incredibly good kid she is - so when she started relying on her more, it wasn't just in terms of how comfortable she was with being vulnerable and honest around her. It was also in terms of relying on her to be this kind of guiding presence for her, strong and sweet and accepting and just all around Good. By the end, she definitely put her on a pedestal of some sort, even as she desperately wanted to protect her.
i hate beyond words how much i am FUCKING CRYING about this holy shit i hope this week i will find time to absolutely ruin your shit in return because i can't believe you did this to me
oh my god okay. So to start out with, at the beginning she definitely thought Will was more amusing than anything else! He was kind of an easy target to make fun of, what with the puking and the public drunkenness and tomato assistance. They were never close, but she at least had a mostly positive impression of him, because even if he was really weird, it was the kind of weird that was amusing to witness.
It soured a little bit during their conversation in the saloon; it wasn't so much him doxxing Hannibal that bothered her, since she assumed at the time that was just because he was really hammered. It was more the end, where he told her all her problems were stupid, laughs. She has a Thing about being invalidated, so even if he probably didn't mean it in an awful way, it definitely pushed a button that she doesn't like to be reminded of.
and then the thing happened
So!! To start with, she was absolutely expecting him to kill her, that much is true. What came with that, though, was a sort of confusion and mild hope, like... Maybe she was wrong! He gave her the information that kind of started her down the path to realizing how sketch Hannibal was and said that he would kill him himself if he could, so a small part of her was like, maybe he'll high five me instead of stabbing me in the face. That, of course, was dispelled pretty quickly when she went to meet him on Friday night. There's still a lot about the situation she's confused about, why he felt like he had to do what he did, but that mainly stems from the fact that there were a lot of answers she wasn't sure she wanted to know, so she just didn't ask.
It's also definitely worth noting that while she was expecting him to kill her, she absolutely was not expecting everything that came after. Yikes!! Yikes. While she wasn't really prepared to die (because, I mean, she's a sixteen year old girl), she was even less prepared for his description of what he was going to do with her body afterwards. Her whole thing is that she clings to logic and order because she doesn't know how to deal with the chaotic mess that emotions can be, so his reasoning was basically never going to make sense to her, even if she heard the entire thing and understood the situation in context. She pretty firmly believes that he absolutely didn't have to do what he did, and he's just a complete monster who was making excuses for his actions and pretending not to have a choice.
Even then, there are flickers of doubt on her part; she doesn't understand why he was so relieved to hear she hadn't eaten anything Hannibal had prepared, or why he apologized right before he grabbed for her. It's pretty hard for her to accept that there might have been shades of gray in the situation and that he was a victim of Hannibal's in a lot of ways, too. She isn't really comfortable with that level of nuance, especially when she's just so disgusted and angry and hurt by everything that he did to her. It's easier to just believe he's an irredeemable piece of shit!!
Their final thread in the graveyard was pretty important for cementing her thoughts on him, too. When she looks back on it once she's had time to find a moderate amount of chill, she'll probably understand that the way he acted was for the best. Trying to discourage her from talking to him wasn't a bad thing, but all she really wanted at that point was to let out some of the anger she harbored towards him, which was getting almost unbearable by that point. So, him acting so calm and unaffected by what happened definitely didn't help in that moment. It didn't really fit with the narrative she'd constructed for herself, where he's just this evil figure who wanted badly to hurt her.
It's also much harder to get properly angry when he seemed so collected in comparison to her fury, and the fact that he told herself not to hurt herself by talking to him didn't help. To her, it felt like he had no right to seem concerned about her well being after everything he had done to her, and the fact that he told her to leave, though not his intention, made it seem to her like he was trying to get away from what happened. And that made her angry like nothing else could have! At that point she's spent every waking moment since she got onto the train unable to stop thinking of what he did to her. So, her point of view is basically - what right did he have to seemingly just block it out and move on, when he's the person she'll see in her nightmares for years?
They didn't know each other suuuper well (points to eyes, points to you, whispers next time), but she could definitely tell Barnham was a good person! Based on what she knew about him and what other people told her about him, too.
She had a generally positive impression of him before she died, but perhaps ironically, it was things that she learned once she got to the train that made her admire him more. One of her first threads when she arrived was someone else telling her that everyone needed to die to get on the train, and that because of this, Barnham was planning to basically kill everyone. (I can't believe murder sprees are being talked about in a positive context, THANKS WHOLE ASS!!). Regardless, while she has mixed feelings about whether that would have been the right thing to do, she has to admit that it took a great deal of strength to want to protect people from that truth for as long as he did.
Of course, the other side of that is that she believes he tried to take on waaaay too much by himself. Please take a nap and have some hot cocoa, justice dad, you've earned it. She touched on it in their last thread in the train, but she really is glad that it was him who found out about that rule, because she's pretty sure that all the people he killed as a result were taken out quickly and as painlessly as possible. Which is why she was pretty vocal about how he shouldn't blame himself, even if she definitely gets why he would be feeling pretty horrible about the whole thing. She'll just have to write him constant letters telling him not to be stupid?? Seems legit.
Her first impression of Shinnosuke was basically that they were incredibly similar, except she probably had an annoying & slightly more gooey and emotional core deep inside. That impression didn't really change; her final thoughts were basically "why can't I be more like that guy, feelings are gross". The worst.
So, to start with! She always appreciates people she can banter with, because sarcasm is pretty much her native language. The fact that they started by sassing each other meant that she knew how to communicate with him fairly easily, as opposed to The Pures of the town. Even back then, she was kind of impressed with how calmly he seemed to be taking everything.
She's still pretty sour about him coming to talk to her after she crawled back out of the mines, but admittedly, the frustration stemmed more from herself than anything he really said or did. She really, really did not want to talk about anything that happened down there, but she's also a naturally logical and pragmatic person. The fact that he pretty neatly laid out good reasons for her to go over what had happened was frustrating not necessarily because of the way he presented those reasons; instead, it made her angry at herself for not wanting to go over it despite knowing exactly why she should. In a weird way, she's actually grateful that he kind of pushed her into explaining, because knowing there was logic in explaining what happened means that she probably would have felt even worse if he'd let her shy away from talking about it.
Their dynamic meant that she basically wasn't ever going to say it, but she's pretty worried about his world and his life back at home! Every detail she's heard from either him or another person has been pretty horrifying, from weird labyrinth disease to Alice in Wonderland characters trying to murder him. Yikes. Of course, since she was assuming they were fairly similar, she also assumed that trying to find out more about him, his life, or his worries wouldn't have worked - at least, not if it didn't come up in a natural or authentic way like it did on the train. Basically, she felt like showing concern for him or trying to push him into talking about his problems would have made him even more resistant to doing just that. In a weird way, it was nice to have one person around who she liked, but didn't have to worry about things getting all emotional. She figures it was probably easier for him that way, too.
He definitely got a lot of points in her book for how pragmatic and logical he was the entire way through the game, which is why it actually came as a pretty big shock to her when he died. She definitely realized he was more vulnerable than most because of the lack of eyesight, but regardless, to her he definitely seemed like the type of person who would make it to the very end fueled by spite alone if nothing else. Of course, she found out immediately afterwards that all of them were going to get killed, but she's still a little surprised that he didn't make it further despite knowing exactly how and why.
Noctis wasn't one of the Bounties she was suuuper close to (which means I'm coming for you even harder next murder game, tbh) but she definitely still had a positive impression of him! At one point, another character asked her whether or not she trusted their group as a whole, and her response was basically that she trusted different members of the group to do different things. For Noctis, her comment was basically "I trust him to be way too good for this place", which pretty much sums up her feelings on him overall. But, a play by play!
Their first few weeks in Whole Ass, she saw how he acted in trials and was pretty impressed, but her impression was still ruled by 'Hot Topic poster boy with the weird pretentious name who lives in a town with a weird pretentious name'. He was a really easy target to make fun of, so even while she could tell there was probably more to him, it was easier to tease him for a while. When they did start to get to know each other better, though, she had... mixed feelings! Which turned into mostly positive feelings, but.
Her opinion on him shifted pretty dramatically after she found out he was a Bounty. Once she actually knew what the Bounties were supposed to do (oops), she was struck with what an unfair situation he had found himself in; she couldn't imagine being forced to kill someone innocent solely because they refused to take a life themselves. When he mentioned that he might prefer getting killed to acting as a Bandit, she kind of got the full scale of how difficult being a Bounty must be for him, and that's where the mixed feelings come in!
As of the point he said that, she wasn't certain she would act differently if she were chosen. She was definitely sympathetic to that line of thinking, but while she could understand it, she's not certain if she could condone it. It was a little frustrating to hear, just because she knows that even if she didn't know him well, others in the town did and would be devastated if he got killed. Still, the fact that she didn't know him too well meant that she didn't really feel comfortable calling him out on it, especially since she could see where he was coming from. So it didn't drastically lessen her estimation of him, but it definitely didn't do much to heighten it, either. While her opinion of him didn't really go way up or down, she definitely felt like she understood the kind of person he was much better, though.
She has a tendency to think most people are Better And More Pure than her, and he definitely got a lot of that belief from her, especially after he mentioned he might be unwilling to kill someone. In some ways, that did frustrate her, though it's more the town as a whole that caused that frustration rather than him. The full version of what I mentioned above about her saying he was too good for this place was "Noctis is always going to be way too good for this place, which means he's not always going to be willing to do what might have to be done". That isn't necessarily a point against him in her book, but it's definitely a knock against the town itself. She was pretty concerned that he was going to be put in a position where he had to make an impossible choice, especially given what Sara said about the choice she was given when she was a Bandit.
The only time she was frustrated solely with him was when they were all watching the showdown from the train, when she mentioned to everyone that Percy was the Coal Miner. In her opinion, his anger was misplaced, and it was a little unfair of him to say with no doubt that he would have told everyone about his role with no doubt, when he didn't have to deal with the same stakes that Percy had been dealing with the entire game. She understands why he was frustrated, definitely, and it did fade pretty quickly! Mostly because she thinks if there was a list of people who would be open about having that kind of role, Noctis probably would have been on it.
She still can't believe this Hot Topic poster boy is a king though??
kicks down the door weeks later!! also before i start this i gotta reiterate how much i hate you because i'm suffering just thinking of what i have to write?? save me
She adores Jason so much, it's the worst and I can't believe this happened to me. She started out thinking he was decent and probably trustworthy! She's definitely not the type to trust easily, but from the beginning, he seemed like he genuinely cared about the people here and keeping them safe. Of course, this also means she was Concerned for him from the get go, even if it took a while for her to actually express any of that worry. She was cynical enough to believe a lot of people were going to die, which she could see weighing really heavily on someone like him. This was pretty much solidified with him telling her in their first private conversation that if Bruce were here, he would have gotten all of them out safely already. So, the foundation they started on was basically her wondering if he had a huge inferiority complex and being worried that he was going to break down eventually because he couldn't save everyone who was going to die.
Then the mines happened! And in this case, it actually matters more what he didn't do, rather than what he did do. Out of everyone who came to visit her in the clinic or who she spoke to afterwards, he was one of the only people who didn't push or even ask her for an explanation of what happened down there. He did hear eventually because he was at the meeting where she talked about it, but the fact that he didn't ask was pretty important. She was basically Done with talking about everything that had happened, so the fact that he didn't pressure her for any details was definitely something she appreciated! It was one more point in his favor, one more reason to trust him and feel more at ease around him. It's why she felt comfortable enough to check on him after the trial that week, even if Feelings Are Hard. She was starting to get the feeling that trusting him wouldn't blow up in her face.
It's also part of the reason she went to him about her role first, though it's not the only reason. As the weeks went by, in addition to starting to trust him more, she got to see the way he interacted with not just her, but with Percy as well while they were trying to figure out how this place worked. While she fully recognized that he could be a Shitty Teen, she was pretty impressed by how intelligent he seemed nonetheless! Of course, the fact that he was also a Shitty Teen helped her feel more comfortable with him, because he wasn't so mature or smart or composed that she put him on a pedestal. The other reason he was the first person she told about her role was that otherwise, it would have been Percy or Xion, and she was basically terrified of them finding out that she could have revived Annabeth or Riku and chose not to. His reaction to her role made her pretty confident that he was the right person to tell, too; the fact that he made sure to tell her that she should play by her own rules since it was her role instead of pressuring her to protect Damian immediately was a pretty huge relief to her.
However, the fact that she thought he was pretty intelligent and competent meant she was extra frustrated when she found out he broke into one of the buildings with Shinnosuke. The reason she didn't, like, immediately seek him out after finding out what happened is because she didn't trust herself/was afraid she would tear him a new one so thoroughly that they wouldn't be able to move past it (and also because I was swamped OOCly and I suck), oops. Part of the frustration, of course, stemmed from concern, but her typical way of dealing with worry for people she cares about is to get really mad, as one does. It also, however, made her realize how hard it would hit her if he got killed or seriously injured again, which was a pretty terrifying realization to have to deal with - but it's one that would come into play again pretty soon, because. Glances at the lake and whispers here we go.
If were anyone else but Jason or maybe Xion or Percy who found her at the lake right after Seizaburo got deered, her reaction would have been much, much different. By that point, though, she was comfortable enough with him (and scared enough of losing him) that he didn't get the furious meltdown anyone else would have been treated to, he just got....... the sad one, oops. Even if she trusted him a pretty substantial amount, she had been kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop basically the entire game, because she is bitter and cynical and pessimistic. When he first came to the dock to find her, a large part of her diving into the water was from not wanting to talk about what happened, but a smaller part was because she was secretly terrified that he was coming to find her to yell at her for fucking up so intensely.
The fact that he was instead so understanding about what had happened to Sei, and more frustrated by her self loathing was extremely baffling to her. She kind of views affection as something that has to be earned through hard work, through not making mistakes, through being perfect enough to deserve it. I touched on it in bracket text, but the fact that he just willingly accepted her and stayed with her despite what she viewed as such a horrible mistake that cost someone their life was almost more than she knew how to handle. It was contrary to basically everything she's believed about how people work, how the world itself works - she's used to people leaving her behind for much smaller faults of hers. The fact that he didn't, at a time when she was already so desperate and emotionally vulnerable, made him shoot waaaaay up in terms of people she was willing to trust and depend on. Also, it also improved the sense of fondness and affection she held for him in general - the easiest way for her to come to care about someone is them showing her that they won't leave her behind, and he basically did that without a shadow of a doubt. At the time, it was a little hard to swallow, but it's basically exactly what she needed at that point.
Which is also why it was super frustrating to see him so down on himself after Yuna died. It would be pretty hypocritical of her to be angry at him for it given what happened just days ago, so the frustration wasn't necessarily aimed at him. Still, it hurt to see him so distraught over what happened, to see him blame himself and apologize to her for what happened to Yuna. She pretty firmly believes that it wasn't something he should be apologizing for, because she's certain that it wasn't his fault at all, but she also recognizes that making him see that himself might be a little more difficult. She still isn't sure if there's anything more useful or helpful she could have said in those moments that could have made him see how he didn't have anything to be guilty about, but she at least hopes that being around him and not letting him stay alone afterwards brought some measure of comfort.
AND THEN..... week six. laughs into hands.
To start with, he was probably both her biggest push to and her biggest pull against choosing Hannibal! On the one hand, his talk about how he was so willing to get himself hurt or worse for the greater good in the Bounty meeting had her nearly beside herself, because she didn't know what she would do without him at that point. It made her a little bit terrified that he was going to try to take Hannibal on his own, because he viewed himself as more disposable than the rest of them. That fear definitely played into her decision after she was chosen as a Bandit, but almost as strong was her desire to not leave him, to not hurt him. She has a tendency to undervalue herself or underplay her own importance, so she probably wasn't as concerned about the effect her death would have on him, but that doesn't mean she wasn't concerned about it all. Much more than that, though, and perhaps a bit more selfishly - she really, really did not want to leave him. There were a lot of things that tore her up about the decision she made, but being without him was definitely a large part of it. By that point, she honestly adored him, and the thought of leaving him was heartbreaking. This is where the kiss came from: half from her own fear of losing him forever, and half from some (probably misguided, given the timing) urge to show him, before she died, how much he meant to her and how much he would still mean to her even if they never saw each other again. Actions speaks louder than words, or something!!
She wasn't optimistic enough to believe without reservation that they were going to see each other again, but if that was the case, she was absolutely going to give him the best chance to make it to the end that she could orchestrate (#killhannibal2k17). Her last way of protecting him, other than whole murdering a polite vore man thing, was in telling Will that she absolutely didn't want him to be the executioner. She definitely thinks Jason is Pure and Good, but that's why she didn't want him to have to perform that role; he shouldn't have had to dirty his hands like she did. She felt horrified enough in the day that followed murdering Hannibal to know that above all else, she didn't want that feeling for Jason. It isn't necessarily that she thought he wasn't strong enough to move past it, but she definitely thought that he didn't deserve to have the feelings that come with killing someone on his conscience.
Which, of course, made her completely lose it when she got to the train and found out all of them were going to have to die no matter what! Oops. More than nearly anyone else here, she didn't think Jason deserved to have something like that happen to him. It did soften the blow that this version of death came with less finality than it normally would, as did the fact that it was a relatively peaceful way to go, but even so. Jason was supportive and encouraging and gentle and kind and a whole lot of other things, but none of the descriptors she could use for him would include someone who deserved to die once, let alone twice. Their conversation on the train (not the reunion, though I'm getting to that in a second) cemented this for her in a way; while she listened to him talk about how he was scared about becoming a horrible person. The person he was describing was such a stark contrast to the person she knows that it was difficult for her to really get her head around it, so while it's the opposite of what he was explaining to her, she ended that conversation even more sure that Jason is A Good.
I'm going out of order because their train private conversation was connected directly to that last part BUT!! Reunion in death, yikes. Even if he had stayed with her through some (in her opinion) awful things that she'd done, she spent the week before he showed up terrified that he was finally going to hate her when he inevitably arrived on the train. Not only had she killed someone on purpose this time, but she lied to his face and promised him it was going to be fine when she knew full well that it wasn't going to be an iota of fine. Based on what Sara told her about his reactions at the trial, she'd kind of realized by then that she might have been underestimating how important she was to him, so she was pretty much ready for him to finally reject her! Only, you know, that didn't happen, because contrary to her beliefs not everyone is looking to ditch her at any provocation. Which is still a really weird thing to her, but she can't deny that she was relieved to see him again, to hear his voice again, and to know that even if he was understandably pissed, he didn't hate her.
Possibly selfishly, she's really, really happy he decided to come with the three of them to New York. She absolutely wanted what would have made him happiest, no matter what, but she's extremely relieved they won't have to be separated in the foreseeable future. Gross.
From the first time or two they spoke, she was super impressed by Milla already. She was upfront, honest, didn't take any nonsense, and was incredibly tough and strong. These are all good things in Natalie's book! So she was hopeful all these elements would continue to be true even when things in the town got more difficult. And they definitely did, in such a constant way that she couldn't have predicted. In some ways, it was so constant that it ended up being a source of frustration, but I'll get to that soon!!
At first, she honestly wasn't sure what to make of Milla. The fact that she said with no hesitation in one of their first conversations that she would be willing to execute someone should have been worrying, she figures, but somehow the way she said it (straightforward, with no hint of doubt) made her less concerned than she would be otherwise. She could tell that Milla wasn't stupid, so she automatically doubted she'd say something so openly if she thought it was something suspicious. That was just the first of many things that made her curious about Milla, tbh.
She could see the value of coming to ask her what happened in the mines, but there was a bit of annoyance there, too, especially once she was less painkiller'd up - not so much towards Milla personally, but the entire experience was harrowing enough that she just didn't want to talk about it ever again. Milla didn't push as much as some others, but she did express that she thought it was a good idea for more people to explore the mines, which would have made Natalie freak out a lot more if she wasn't under heavy painkillers, so good timing.
This ties into the thing she disliked most about Milla - her tendency to take (in Natalie's view, at least) unnecessary risks. This came into play as soon as she heard her and Xion had been seriously hurt trying to break into a building! Of course, how angry she was came from a sense of worry, as it typically does with her. For Xion, but a lot of that concern and fear was on Milla's behalf, too. By that point in the game, she'd honestly kind of started to think of Milla as indispensable. She was so strong, so determined and intelligent that she wasn't sure what she, much less the rest of the town, would be able to do without her guidance in trials and elsewhere.
That concern, of course, led her to basically lose it at the other woman after Yuna died! Part of it was honestly that she was distraught because she liked Yuna, but part of it was the fact that it easily could have been Milla or Jason who were killed out there, and she would loads more upset if either of them were killed, oops. They at least got to talk that out later, and her conversation with Milla afterwards honestly cemented a lot of what she thought about her; how strong she was, how able and certain she remains no matter what. The fact that she was willing to express her insecurities and ask how Milla was able to be so determined all the time says a lot for how much she trusted her. Her opinion on how strong Milla is all the time got a final confirmation when they both reached the train and Natalie heard the way she died, and she absolutely wasn't kidding when she said that she thought if anyone could take on the Sheriff and live to tell the tale, it would be Milla.
i might add to this later i feel like i'm forgetting something really important BUT FOR NOW there u go
Sweats softly!! Anyways, for her relationship with Hannibal to make complete sense, I have to go a little bit into her current canon point. Her backstory is basically "sad lonely girl neglected by parents develops huge trust issues as a result", but Stuff Happens over the course of the show that makes her mother entirely forget she had a daughter. So, Natalie's canon point is basically right after ruining the only really positive relationship she had (the circumstances of this aren't super important for context, just the fact that it happened), then coming home to her mom being like "hi who are you why are you in my house". l...aughs...
So! When she arrived in Whole Ass, she had even more of a Parental Figure (TM) shaped hole in her heart than she typically does. And then in comes Hannibal, who saved her life, comforted her, listened to her worries, encouraged her... I think it was in their next private convo after he helped with her arm when he told her not to compare how she's feeling to others, and asked her how she felt in comparison to how she normally does. This was a really important turning point! She was already extremely grateful to him for saving her life, but in comparison to her actual father (who often encouraged her to put aside how she's feeling to be more supportive for the rest of her family) it was a pretty big deal to hear someone say the opposite so easily and simply.
She has a lot of trust issues due to her upbringing, so the fact that he was the first person she was willing to honestly speak with about her problems is pretty telling. Something about his manner, how patient and gentle and supportive he always seemed to her, definitely helped that along. He made her feel like her worries and her feelings were important, like they mattered. That's a big deal for someone who's felt invisible and unwanted for most of her life! And bonding over music automatically got him 9182732918 points in her book, honestly. She cared about him a ton, which brings me to the next part, laughs into hands.
Going back to her trust issues - one of her biggest fears is not only emotional vulnerability, but having that kind of trust betrayed. She didn't really suspect for a moment that he could have been the Deputy until one of the Bounty & Co. meetings when the conversation turned in a way that made her put Will's drunken rambling about cows into context. Thanks Will!! Regardless, even in that meeting while everyone was sharing 'Hannibal is super sketch' stories, she was still mostly scrambling to find another explanation for all of it. That's a testament to how much she absolutely trusted him, and also how much it destroyed her when Percy told her for certain that he was the Deputy.
This was, like, the perfect storm of horrible coincidences...... She would have been absolutely disgusted and furious upon finding out regardless, but the fact that she found Yuna's body the week before, who got killed because she stayed outside to protect someone at the stocks definitely did not help!! So she was already feeling betrayed, but that added another layer onto how absolutely livid she was. Because she trusted him!! He was the first person to hear about her brother, her parents, what bothered her most about the labyrinth. It's worth saying that when she's dealing with any level of stress, she has a tendency to transform it into anger at even slight provocation, and this definitely wasn't slight. Then she got picked as a Bandit when she was already lowkey out for blood, and there was basically no way she wasn't going for him.
Which brings me to the second of her biggest fears that he also played on! Which is her fear of losing her mind. Most of her canon is about her mother's mental illness and the effect it has on the rest of her family, and the effect on Natalie in addition to the whole "sad, lonely, neglected girl" part is that she's absolutely terrified of insanity. Her arc in canon climaxes with a song about all the ways she could hurt everyone around her if she ever lost it. She was already feeling like absolute scum after she killed him, because there was some measure of relief that he was dead even though she cared about him so much, and. And then she got his letter.
It fucked her up so much and I'm so glad?? She trusted him an extreme amount and told him things she'd never told anyone else, so the fact that his last words to her (that weren't on the train, at least) basically proved to her that he knew she was Messed Up enough to do this is honestly the most damaging thing he could have done. Y...ay... She was, like, clinging to the hope that Will had used his magical empathy powers to tell Hannibal what was going to go down, but he confirmed in her kill log that he didn't. Honestly, I think the letter she received from him after killing him wrecked her even more than the act of murdering him itself did.
Anything he could have said to her after that point would have hurt her, honestly, but their reunion on the train definitely Did Not Help. She knew he was awful and probably didn't care about her at all, given everything she'd learned about him, but the fact that he knew it would probably be her and still told Will to do the thing was like a final twist of the knife. She's probably going to be internalizing all of this for ages post game and I'm super pleased??
tl;dr the moral of the story truly is never talk to hannibal lecter
it's three months later but you made me sad about them again in discord so you get this now because i remembered i'm a loser who forgot to return your tl;dr
SO LIKE. her and jason were gross, her and xion were horrifyingly sweet, but i think she was actually closer to percy by the end than anyone else in the game. that's for two reasons! the first is that even if the course of their lives was very different, she felt as though she could relate to him more than anyone else. the second is that while she felt, even to the end, that there were some things she had to shield both jason and xion from, she never got that feeling from percy. i'm going to expand on the second part first!
while she found out about his role as the coal miner fairly late in the game, the idea that she didn't have to shield him came earlier in the game than that. this is because of his reaction to annabeth's death in two distinct ways. the first is because he mentioned how he was going to murder the shit out of whoever hurt her! the reason why this had an impact on her realizing he didn't need to be protected is probably pretty clear. the second, though, is all the backstory and exposition regarding their relationship that he revealed during that talk; given that the subject matter included battles and constant fighting, she figured at the point that he could solidly take care of himself. of course, that didn't mean that she wasn't worried about his emotional state, which is something which would only increase as the game went on.
i've mentioned it before, but part of the reason she didn't tell him about her role until they were incredibly close is because she was worried he would be angry when he realized she had the power to revive annabeth but chose not to. this is definitely something that had an impact on their cr, because it was this hefty amount of guilt she was carrying every time she could tell he wasn't in a good place and knew she could have made it better. this is because, despite her constant protestations and better judgment, she cared for him a great deal. that point is worth a sidenote, so—
natalie honestly adored percy by the end of the game. he was supportive, kind, intelligent, and sassy, all traits she admires. while she would be hard pressed to admit any of this, a good majority of his threads with her just served to increase how much she appreciated him. from their constant talks about what they had learned from the sheriff and how to apply it to their circumstances to the way he responded to each bit of her backstory that she laid out for him, everything about him just made her affection for him grow. well, mostly everything.
after all, there were some things about percy that made her want to gently scream. especially after annabeth died, his seeming disregard for his own wellbeing and worth terrified her. given that she's a girl who stresses endlessly about forming attachments, the fact that she had grown so fond of someone who seemed to be ambivalent about whether he lived or died by a certain point was incredibly stressful. especially when she found out he knew about hannibal's role and how it factored into annabeth's death, she was terrified something would happen to him. still, that's only a testament to how much she loved him - and love really is the right word. by the end of the game, they had reached prime found family status.
along with the aforementioned supportiveness and kindness, this is also because she felt as though she could relate to him very well. while sally is a wonderful parent, she can definitely understand the idea that one of his parents was fairly uncaring and absent in his life. given that this is her Entire Backstory, once she knew enough to piece it together, it made her feel as though she'd found a kindred spirit of sorts. of course, for as fond as she is of him, she's also more than capable of returning his endless sass with her own attitude. this is amplified when he started accusing of her having Feelings, which was honestly rude and unwarranted?? (no it was entirely fair).
moving past her reflexive sarcasm, though! the fact that he ended up her Most Trusted Person really came to a head in their final private convo in the church. with literally any other person, if they had asked her if they were right about her killing hannibal, she would have continued to deny it. even if they had guessed correctly and forced her into acknowledging it, she wouldn't have discussed it as thoroughly as she did with percy. this is honestly the most clear evidence of how much she adored him and trusted him and knew that he would never mistreat her, and i hate it. she was more comfortable being honest and vulnerable around him than any other character in the game. similarly, if anyone else tried to give her a different point of view or understanding re: will graham in the final log after everyone had died, she would have absolutely torn them a new one. she felt as though percy was the only person who had really earned the right to say something like that to her, after the incredible amount they had been through together by that point.
basically even months later i hate them and blame you for ruining my life
i reread the bit where natalie just ripped the "concerns" part out of "questions and concerns" and put it in her pocket right in front of yuna and just pretended it never happened the other day and couldn't stop laughing
From the very beginning Yuna was so baffling to her!! Natalie absolutely isn't used to people who are A. as energetic and upbeat as Yuna always was and B. as genuine and sincere in her affection for basically everyone. Not only is this confusing and strange to her, it was also kind of intimidating to her, because she's ridiculous. It takes a lot for anyone to earn her trust, so paradoxically, the fact that Yuna was so sincere and so kind to her even upon first meeting her actually made her trust her a little bit less? Because clearly nobody can be this sweet and good upon first meeting someone, that's just not how it works, so there must be a catch. "Seems fake but okay" perfectly sums up her reaction to Yuna as a whole in the beginning tbh
But then Yuna just kept on being herself, and the longer that kindness and sincerity didn't fade away, the more Natalie's opinion on her shifted from mild distrust and discomfort to honest admiration and respect. She might have thought Yuna was absolutely ridiculous and going to get herself killed, but. There's something about the kind of strength it takes to keep on being so positive all the time in the face of all the horrible things Whole Ass threw at them that Natalie can't help but be fond of, even a little proud of. To see it in a girl who wasn't even her age was kind of mindblowing and she still doesn't know how Yuna exists??
Either way, absolutely did not enjoy finding her corpse laid under the porch, 0/10 would not recommend
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God!! She loves Xion so much and wanted to protect her more than anything in the entire world and I'm still dying.
From their very first talk, she could tell that Xion was a Good Kid who didn't deserve to be here. That's why when Percy mentioned to her that she'd asked the Sheriff if she could be a victim, she was pretty disturbed - not just by the question itself, but by the fact that someone like Xion was asking, because. No?? And that concern is really all where it started.
The private conversation where she cornered her in the tailor is honestly really important, because it formed the basis for the 'holy shit protect this child' mentality she had towards Xion for most of the game. Even if Xion's circumstances were waaaay out of her range of understanding at first, she could definitely empathize from the start with Xion feeling like she didn't belong, like she didn't deserve things that normal people do. That's why, from the start, she was devoted to helping her, even if she didn't really know how to accomplish that.
That concern went way up when Riku died, and it added a pretty thick layer of guilt to it as well - knowing she had a chance to revive him but didn't made her feel honestly awful, mostly because she could see how much his loss had hurt her. That's why she was a little more open with her from that point on, both in terms of physical affection and emotional honesty; she felt like she owed it to her to be there for her, since she could have helped her before and chose not to.
As time went on, though she was definitely still extremely protective, she started to see that Xion wasn't necessarily someone who needed to be protected. She kicks through floors to save her friends, she withstands having her leg fucked up, and she manages to do it while trying her hardest to support everyone else. Even if she was furious about her breaking into a building with Milla, it mostly came from worry, rather than any lack of belief in Xion's ability to handle something like that. She's honestly so impressed with how far Xion came; the thread where she said she wanted to live now made Natalie so proud. Look at her child wanting things for herself!!
How fond and proud she was of her also means she basically would have done anything to keep Xion safe. She wasn't lying when she said she thought they needed someone like her to make it to the end - if the situation ever arose, she absolutely would have prioritized Xion's life above her own. Half of that is from personal fondness, and the other half is because she honestly thinks Xion deserved to live to the end more than nearly anybody else. The fact that all of them had to die to get onto the train absolutely crushed her for several reasons, but a large one is that Xion should have been able to live through this entire experience without ever having something like that happen to her.
She wanted Xion's safety probably more than anybody else in the entire game, because Xion is Pure and Good and Deserved Better.
AS PROMISED SLAMS BACK INTO THIS DAYS LATER!!!
God okay so like, another Super Important Thing for their CR was absolutely the conversation she had with her and Jason in the saloon after Sei died. Jason had helped her a lot that night, but I think it was Xion who made a bigger impact, just because Natalie had seen her cradling Sei's dying body and she still immediately and openly forgave and accepted her. I mentioned it in bracket text, but she's used to having to fight tooth and nail to earn even a slight bit of acknowledgement or caring, so the fact that Xion made it seem so obvious and easy to not only forgive her for what she considers a horrible mistake, but to point out that she still thinks she's an amazing person in the same conversation, was incredibly meaningful to her.
Up until that point, she was trying really hard to be more of a support for Xion rather than anything else, taking care to put herself out there in case she needed a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to. I think that was the point where she realized how incredibly strong Xion is, and started to realize it was okay to lean on her a little in return. It also helped shift their relationship in that she started to see, even more, what an incredibly good kid she is - so when she started relying on her more, it wasn't just in terms of how comfortable she was with being vulnerable and honest around her. It was also in terms of relying on her to be this kind of guiding presence for her, strong and sweet and accepting and just all around Good. By the end, she definitely put her on a pedestal of some sort, even as she desperately wanted to protect her.
ps i hate them and you for doing this to me
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oh my god okay. So to start out with, at the beginning she definitely thought Will was more amusing than anything else! He was kind of an easy target to make fun of, what with the puking and the public drunkenness and tomato assistance. They were never close, but she at least had a mostly positive impression of him, because even if he was really weird, it was the kind of weird that was amusing to witness.
It soured a little bit during their conversation in the saloon; it wasn't so much him doxxing Hannibal that bothered her, since she assumed at the time that was just because he was really hammered. It was more the end, where he told her all her problems were stupid, laughs. She has a Thing about being invalidated, so even if he probably didn't mean it in an awful way, it definitely pushed a button that she doesn't like to be reminded of.
and then the thing happened
So!! To start with, she was absolutely expecting him to kill her, that much is true. What came with that, though, was a sort of confusion and mild hope, like... Maybe she was wrong! He gave her the information that kind of started her down the path to realizing how sketch Hannibal was and said that he would kill him himself if he could, so a small part of her was like, maybe he'll high five me instead of stabbing me in the face. That, of course, was dispelled pretty quickly when she went to meet him on Friday night. There's still a lot about the situation she's confused about, why he felt like he had to do what he did, but that mainly stems from the fact that there were a lot of answers she wasn't sure she wanted to know, so she just didn't ask.
It's also definitely worth noting that while she was expecting him to kill her, she absolutely was not expecting everything that came after. Yikes!! Yikes. While she wasn't really prepared to die (because, I mean, she's a sixteen year old girl), she was even less prepared for his description of what he was going to do with her body afterwards. Her whole thing is that she clings to logic and order because she doesn't know how to deal with the chaotic mess that emotions can be, so his reasoning was basically never going to make sense to her, even if she heard the entire thing and understood the situation in context. She pretty firmly believes that he absolutely didn't have to do what he did, and he's just a complete monster who was making excuses for his actions and pretending not to have a choice.
Even then, there are flickers of doubt on her part; she doesn't understand why he was so relieved to hear she hadn't eaten anything Hannibal had prepared, or why he apologized right before he grabbed for her. It's pretty hard for her to accept that there might have been shades of gray in the situation and that he was a victim of Hannibal's in a lot of ways, too. She isn't really comfortable with that level of nuance, especially when she's just so disgusted and angry and hurt by everything that he did to her. It's easier to just believe he's an irredeemable piece of shit!!
Their final thread in the graveyard was pretty important for cementing her thoughts on him, too. When she looks back on it once she's had time to find a moderate amount of chill, she'll probably understand that the way he acted was for the best. Trying to discourage her from talking to him wasn't a bad thing, but all she really wanted at that point was to let out some of the anger she harbored towards him, which was getting almost unbearable by that point. So, him acting so calm and unaffected by what happened definitely didn't help in that moment. It didn't really fit with the narrative she'd constructed for herself, where he's just this evil figure who wanted badly to hurt her.
It's also much harder to get properly angry when he seemed so collected in comparison to her fury, and the fact that he told herself not to hurt herself by talking to him didn't help. To her, it felt like he had no right to seem concerned about her well being after everything he had done to her, and the fact that he told her to leave, though not his intention, made it seem to her like he was trying to get away from what happened. And that made her angry like nothing else could have! At that point she's spent every waking moment since she got onto the train unable to stop thinking of what he did to her. So, her point of view is basically - what right did he have to seemingly just block it out and move on, when he's the person she'll see in her nightmares for years?
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They didn't know each other suuuper well (points to eyes, points to you, whispers next time), but she could definitely tell Barnham was a good person! Based on what she knew about him and what other people told her about him, too.
She had a generally positive impression of him before she died, but perhaps ironically, it was things that she learned once she got to the train that made her admire him more. One of her first threads when she arrived was someone else telling her that everyone needed to die to get on the train, and that because of this, Barnham was planning to basically kill everyone. (I can't believe murder sprees are being talked about in a positive context, THANKS WHOLE ASS!!). Regardless, while she has mixed feelings about whether that would have been the right thing to do, she has to admit that it took a great deal of strength to want to protect people from that truth for as long as he did.
Of course, the other side of that is that she believes he tried to take on waaaay too much by himself. Please take a nap and have some hot cocoa, justice dad, you've earned it. She touched on it in their last thread in the train, but she really is glad that it was him who found out about that rule, because she's pretty sure that all the people he killed as a result were taken out quickly and as painlessly as possible. Which is why she was pretty vocal about how he shouldn't blame himself, even if she definitely gets why he would be feeling pretty horrible about the whole thing. She'll just have to write him constant letters telling him not to be stupid?? Seems legit.
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So, to start with! She always appreciates people she can banter with, because sarcasm is pretty much her native language. The fact that they started by sassing each other meant that she knew how to communicate with him fairly easily, as opposed to The Pures of the town. Even back then, she was kind of impressed with how calmly he seemed to be taking everything.
She's still pretty sour about him coming to talk to her after she crawled back out of the mines, but admittedly, the frustration stemmed more from herself than anything he really said or did. She really, really did not want to talk about anything that happened down there, but she's also a naturally logical and pragmatic person. The fact that he pretty neatly laid out good reasons for her to go over what had happened was frustrating not necessarily because of the way he presented those reasons; instead, it made her angry at herself for not wanting to go over it despite knowing exactly why she should. In a weird way, she's actually grateful that he kind of pushed her into explaining, because knowing there was logic in explaining what happened means that she probably would have felt even worse if he'd let her shy away from talking about it.
Their dynamic meant that she basically wasn't ever going to say it, but she's pretty worried about his world and his life back at home! Every detail she's heard from either him or another person has been pretty horrifying, from weird labyrinth disease to Alice in Wonderland characters trying to murder him. Yikes. Of course, since she was assuming they were fairly similar, she also assumed that trying to find out more about him, his life, or his worries wouldn't have worked - at least, not if it didn't come up in a natural or authentic way like it did on the train. Basically, she felt like showing concern for him or trying to push him into talking about his problems would have made him even more resistant to doing just that. In a weird way, it was nice to have one person around who she liked, but didn't have to worry about things getting all emotional. She figures it was probably easier for him that way, too.
He definitely got a lot of points in her book for how pragmatic and logical he was the entire way through the game, which is why it actually came as a pretty big shock to her when he died. She definitely realized he was more vulnerable than most because of the lack of eyesight, but regardless, to her he definitely seemed like the type of person who would make it to the very end fueled by spite alone if nothing else. Of course, she found out immediately afterwards that all of them were going to get killed, but she's still a little surprised that he didn't make it further despite knowing exactly how and why.
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Their first few weeks in Whole Ass, she saw how he acted in trials and was pretty impressed, but her impression was still ruled by 'Hot Topic poster boy with the weird pretentious name who lives in a town with a weird pretentious name'. He was a really easy target to make fun of, so even while she could tell there was probably more to him, it was easier to tease him for a while. When they did start to get to know each other better, though, she had... mixed feelings! Which turned into mostly positive feelings, but.
Her opinion on him shifted pretty dramatically after she found out he was a Bounty. Once she actually knew what the Bounties were supposed to do (oops), she was struck with what an unfair situation he had found himself in; she couldn't imagine being forced to kill someone innocent solely because they refused to take a life themselves. When he mentioned that he might prefer getting killed to acting as a Bandit, she kind of got the full scale of how difficult being a Bounty must be for him, and that's where the mixed feelings come in!
As of the point he said that, she wasn't certain she would act differently if she were chosen. She was definitely sympathetic to that line of thinking, but while she could understand it, she's not certain if she could condone it. It was a little frustrating to hear, just because she knows that even if she didn't know him well, others in the town did and would be devastated if he got killed. Still, the fact that she didn't know him too well meant that she didn't really feel comfortable calling him out on it, especially since she could see where he was coming from. So it didn't drastically lessen her estimation of him, but it definitely didn't do much to heighten it, either. While her opinion of him didn't really go way up or down, she definitely felt like she understood the kind of person he was much better, though.
She has a tendency to think most people are Better And More Pure than her, and he definitely got a lot of that belief from her, especially after he mentioned he might be unwilling to kill someone. In some ways, that did frustrate her, though it's more the town as a whole that caused that frustration rather than him. The full version of what I mentioned above about her saying he was too good for this place was "Noctis is always going to be way too good for this place, which means he's not always going to be willing to do what might have to be done". That isn't necessarily a point against him in her book, but it's definitely a knock against the town itself. She was pretty concerned that he was going to be put in a position where he had to make an impossible choice, especially given what Sara said about the choice she was given when she was a Bandit.
The only time she was frustrated solely with him was when they were all watching the showdown from the train, when she mentioned to everyone that Percy was the Coal Miner. In her opinion, his anger was misplaced, and it was a little unfair of him to say with no doubt that he would have told everyone about his role with no doubt, when he didn't have to deal with the same stakes that Percy had been dealing with the entire game. She understands why he was frustrated, definitely, and it did fade pretty quickly! Mostly because she thinks if there was a list of people who would be open about having that kind of role, Noctis probably would have been on it.
She still can't believe this Hot Topic poster boy is a king though??
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She adores Jason so much, it's the worst and I can't believe this happened to me. She started out thinking he was decent and probably trustworthy! She's definitely not the type to trust easily, but from the beginning, he seemed like he genuinely cared about the people here and keeping them safe. Of course, this also means she was Concerned for him from the get go, even if it took a while for her to actually express any of that worry. She was cynical enough to believe a lot of people were going to die, which she could see weighing really heavily on someone like him. This was pretty much solidified with him telling her in their first private conversation that if Bruce were here, he would have gotten all of them out safely already. So, the foundation they started on was basically her wondering if he had a huge inferiority complex and being worried that he was going to break down eventually because he couldn't save everyone who was going to die.
Then the mines happened! And in this case, it actually matters more what he didn't do, rather than what he did do. Out of everyone who came to visit her in the clinic or who she spoke to afterwards, he was one of the only people who didn't push or even ask her for an explanation of what happened down there. He did hear eventually because he was at the meeting where she talked about it, but the fact that he didn't ask was pretty important. She was basically Done with talking about everything that had happened, so the fact that he didn't pressure her for any details was definitely something she appreciated! It was one more point in his favor, one more reason to trust him and feel more at ease around him. It's why she felt comfortable enough to check on him after the trial that week, even if Feelings Are Hard. She was starting to get the feeling that trusting him wouldn't blow up in her face.
It's also part of the reason she went to him about her role first, though it's not the only reason. As the weeks went by, in addition to starting to trust him more, she got to see the way he interacted with not just her, but with Percy as well while they were trying to figure out how this place worked. While she fully recognized that he could be a Shitty Teen, she was pretty impressed by how intelligent he seemed nonetheless! Of course, the fact that he was also a Shitty Teen helped her feel more comfortable with him, because he wasn't so mature or smart or composed that she put him on a pedestal. The other reason he was the first person she told about her role was that otherwise, it would have been Percy or Xion, and she was basically terrified of them finding out that she could have revived Annabeth or Riku and chose not to. His reaction to her role made her pretty confident that he was the right person to tell, too; the fact that he made sure to tell her that she should play by her own rules since it was her role instead of pressuring her to protect Damian immediately was a pretty huge relief to her.
However, the fact that she thought he was pretty intelligent and competent meant she was extra frustrated when she found out he broke into one of the buildings with Shinnosuke. The reason she didn't, like, immediately seek him out after finding out what happened is because she didn't trust herself/was afraid she would tear him a new one so thoroughly that they wouldn't be able to move past it (and also because I was swamped OOCly and I suck), oops. Part of the frustration, of course, stemmed from concern, but her typical way of dealing with worry for people she cares about is to get really mad, as one does. It also, however, made her realize how hard it would hit her if he got killed or seriously injured again, which was a pretty terrifying realization to have to deal with - but it's one that would come into play again pretty soon, because. Glances at the lake and whispers here we go.
If were anyone else but Jason or maybe Xion or Percy who found her at the lake right after Seizaburo got deered, her reaction would have been much, much different. By that point, though, she was comfortable enough with him (and scared enough of losing him) that he didn't get the furious meltdown anyone else would have been treated to, he just got....... the sad one, oops. Even if she trusted him a pretty substantial amount, she had been kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop basically the entire game, because she is bitter and cynical and pessimistic. When he first came to the dock to find her, a large part of her diving into the water was from not wanting to talk about what happened, but a smaller part was because she was secretly terrified that he was coming to find her to yell at her for fucking up so intensely.
The fact that he was instead so understanding about what had happened to Sei, and more frustrated by her self loathing was extremely baffling to her. She kind of views affection as something that has to be earned through hard work, through not making mistakes, through being perfect enough to deserve it. I touched on it in bracket text, but the fact that he just willingly accepted her and stayed with her despite what she viewed as such a horrible mistake that cost someone their life was almost more than she knew how to handle. It was contrary to basically everything she's believed about how people work, how the world itself works - she's used to people leaving her behind for much smaller faults of hers. The fact that he didn't, at a time when she was already so desperate and emotionally vulnerable, made him shoot waaaaay up in terms of people she was willing to trust and depend on. Also, it also improved the sense of fondness and affection she held for him in general - the easiest way for her to come to care about someone is them showing her that they won't leave her behind, and he basically did that without a shadow of a doubt. At the time, it was a little hard to swallow, but it's basically exactly what she needed at that point.
Which is also why it was super frustrating to see him so down on himself after Yuna died. It would be pretty hypocritical of her to be angry at him for it given what happened just days ago, so the frustration wasn't necessarily aimed at him. Still, it hurt to see him so distraught over what happened, to see him blame himself and apologize to her for what happened to Yuna. She pretty firmly believes that it wasn't something he should be apologizing for, because she's certain that it wasn't his fault at all, but she also recognizes that making him see that himself might be a little more difficult. She still isn't sure if there's anything more useful or helpful she could have said in those moments that could have made him see how he didn't have anything to be guilty about, but she at least hopes that being around him and not letting him stay alone afterwards brought some measure of comfort.
AND THEN..... week six. laughs into hands.
To start with, he was probably both her biggest push to and her biggest pull against choosing Hannibal! On the one hand, his talk about how he was so willing to get himself hurt or worse for the greater good in the Bounty meeting had her nearly beside herself, because she didn't know what she would do without him at that point. It made her a little bit terrified that he was going to try to take Hannibal on his own, because he viewed himself as more disposable than the rest of them. That fear definitely played into her decision after she was chosen as a Bandit, but almost as strong was her desire to not leave him, to not hurt him. She has a tendency to undervalue herself or underplay her own importance, so she probably wasn't as concerned about the effect her death would have on him, but that doesn't mean she wasn't concerned about it all. Much more than that, though, and perhaps a bit more selfishly - she really, really did not want to leave him. There were a lot of things that tore her up about the decision she made, but being without him was definitely a large part of it. By that point, she honestly adored him, and the thought of leaving him was heartbreaking. This is where the kiss came from: half from her own fear of losing him forever, and half from some (probably misguided, given the timing) urge to show him, before she died, how much he meant to her and how much he would still mean to her even if they never saw each other again. Actions speaks louder than words, or something!!
She wasn't optimistic enough to believe without reservation that they were going to see each other again, but if that was the case, she was absolutely going to give him the best chance to make it to the end that she could orchestrate (#killhannibal2k17). Her last way of protecting him, other than whole murdering a polite vore man thing, was in telling Will that she absolutely didn't want him to be the executioner. She definitely thinks Jason is Pure and Good, but that's why she didn't want him to have to perform that role; he shouldn't have had to dirty his hands like she did. She felt horrified enough in the day that followed murdering Hannibal to know that above all else, she didn't want that feeling for Jason. It isn't necessarily that she thought he wasn't strong enough to move past it, but she definitely thought that he didn't deserve to have the feelings that come with killing someone on his conscience.
Which, of course, made her completely lose it when she got to the train and found out all of them were going to have to die no matter what! Oops. More than nearly anyone else here, she didn't think Jason deserved to have something like that happen to him. It did soften the blow that this version of death came with less finality than it normally would, as did the fact that it was a relatively peaceful way to go, but even so. Jason was supportive and encouraging and gentle and kind and a whole lot of other things, but none of the descriptors she could use for him would include someone who deserved to die once, let alone twice. Their conversation on the train (not the reunion, though I'm getting to that in a second) cemented this for her in a way; while she listened to him talk about how he was scared about becoming a horrible person. The person he was describing was such a stark contrast to the person she knows that it was difficult for her to really get her head around it, so while it's the opposite of what he was explaining to her, she ended that conversation even more sure that Jason is A Good.
I'm going out of order because their train private conversation was connected directly to that last part BUT!! Reunion in death, yikes. Even if he had stayed with her through some (in her opinion) awful things that she'd done, she spent the week before he showed up terrified that he was finally going to hate her when he inevitably arrived on the train. Not only had she killed someone on purpose this time, but she lied to his face and promised him it was going to be fine when she knew full well that it wasn't going to be an iota of fine. Based on what Sara told her about his reactions at the trial, she'd kind of realized by then that she might have been underestimating how important she was to him, so she was pretty much ready for him to finally reject her! Only, you know, that didn't happen, because contrary to her beliefs not everyone is looking to ditch her at any provocation. Which is still a really weird thing to her, but she can't deny that she was relieved to see him again, to hear his voice again, and to know that even if he was understandably pissed, he didn't hate her.
Possibly selfishly, she's really, really happy he decided to come with the three of them to New York. She absolutely wanted what would have made him happiest, no matter what, but she's extremely relieved they won't have to be separated in the foreseeable future. Gross.
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From the first time or two they spoke, she was super impressed by Milla already. She was upfront, honest, didn't take any nonsense, and was incredibly tough and strong. These are all good things in Natalie's book! So she was hopeful all these elements would continue to be true even when things in the town got more difficult. And they definitely did, in such a constant way that she couldn't have predicted. In some ways, it was so constant that it ended up being a source of frustration, but I'll get to that soon!!
At first, she honestly wasn't sure what to make of Milla. The fact that she said with no hesitation in one of their first conversations that she would be willing to execute someone should have been worrying, she figures, but somehow the way she said it (straightforward, with no hint of doubt) made her less concerned than she would be otherwise. She could tell that Milla wasn't stupid, so she automatically doubted she'd say something so openly if she thought it was something suspicious. That was just the first of many things that made her curious about Milla, tbh.
She could see the value of coming to ask her what happened in the mines, but there was a bit of annoyance there, too, especially once she was less painkiller'd up - not so much towards Milla personally, but the entire experience was harrowing enough that she just didn't want to talk about it ever again. Milla didn't push as much as some others, but she did express that she thought it was a good idea for more people to explore the mines, which would have made Natalie freak out a lot more if she wasn't under heavy painkillers, so good timing.
This ties into the thing she disliked most about Milla - her tendency to take (in Natalie's view, at least) unnecessary risks. This came into play as soon as she heard her and Xion had been seriously hurt trying to break into a building! Of course, how angry she was came from a sense of worry, as it typically does with her. For Xion, but a lot of that concern and fear was on Milla's behalf, too. By that point in the game, she'd honestly kind of started to think of Milla as indispensable. She was so strong, so determined and intelligent that she wasn't sure what she, much less the rest of the town, would be able to do without her guidance in trials and elsewhere.
That concern, of course, led her to basically lose it at the other woman after Yuna died! Part of it was honestly that she was distraught because she liked Yuna, but part of it was the fact that it easily could have been Milla or Jason who were killed out there, and she would loads more upset if either of them were killed, oops. They at least got to talk that out later, and her conversation with Milla afterwards honestly cemented a lot of what she thought about her; how strong she was, how able and certain she remains no matter what. The fact that she was willing to express her insecurities and ask how Milla was able to be so determined all the time says a lot for how much she trusted her. Her opinion on how strong Milla is all the time got a final confirmation when they both reached the train and Natalie heard the way she died, and she absolutely wasn't kidding when she said that she thought if anyone could take on the Sheriff and live to tell the tale, it would be Milla.
i might add to this later i feel like i'm forgetting something really important BUT FOR NOW there u go
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Sweats softly!! Anyways, for her relationship with Hannibal to make complete sense, I have to go a little bit into her current canon point. Her backstory is basically "sad lonely girl neglected by parents develops huge trust issues as a result", but Stuff Happens over the course of the show that makes her mother entirely forget she had a daughter. So, Natalie's canon point is basically right after ruining the only really positive relationship she had (the circumstances of this aren't super important for context, just the fact that it happened), then coming home to her mom being like "hi who are you why are you in my house". l...aughs...
So! When she arrived in Whole Ass, she had even more of a Parental Figure (TM) shaped hole in her heart than she typically does. And then in comes Hannibal, who saved her life, comforted her, listened to her worries, encouraged her... I think it was in their next private convo after he helped with her arm when he told her not to compare how she's feeling to others, and asked her how she felt in comparison to how she normally does. This was a really important turning point! She was already extremely grateful to him for saving her life, but in comparison to her actual father (who often encouraged her to put aside how she's feeling to be more supportive for the rest of her family) it was a pretty big deal to hear someone say the opposite so easily and simply.
She has a lot of trust issues due to her upbringing, so the fact that he was the first person she was willing to honestly speak with about her problems is pretty telling. Something about his manner, how patient and gentle and supportive he always seemed to her, definitely helped that along. He made her feel like her worries and her feelings were important, like they mattered. That's a big deal for someone who's felt invisible and unwanted for most of her life! And bonding over music automatically got him 9182732918 points in her book, honestly. She cared about him a ton, which brings me to the next part, laughs into hands.
Going back to her trust issues - one of her biggest fears is not only emotional vulnerability, but having that kind of trust betrayed. She didn't really suspect for a moment that he could have been the Deputy until one of the Bounty & Co. meetings when the conversation turned in a way that made her put Will's drunken rambling about cows into context. Thanks Will!! Regardless, even in that meeting while everyone was sharing 'Hannibal is super sketch' stories, she was still mostly scrambling to find another explanation for all of it. That's a testament to how much she absolutely trusted him, and also how much it destroyed her when Percy told her for certain that he was the Deputy.
This was, like, the perfect storm of horrible coincidences...... She would have been absolutely disgusted and furious upon finding out regardless, but the fact that she found Yuna's body the week before, who got killed because she stayed outside to protect someone at the stocks definitely did not help!! So she was already feeling betrayed, but that added another layer onto how absolutely livid she was. Because she trusted him!! He was the first person to hear about her brother, her parents, what bothered her most about the labyrinth. It's worth saying that when she's dealing with any level of stress, she has a tendency to transform it into anger at even slight provocation, and this definitely wasn't slight. Then she got picked as a Bandit when she was already lowkey out for blood, and there was basically no way she wasn't going for him.
Which brings me to the second of her biggest fears that he also played on! Which is her fear of losing her mind. Most of her canon is about her mother's mental illness and the effect it has on the rest of her family, and the effect on Natalie in addition to the whole "sad, lonely, neglected girl" part is that she's absolutely terrified of insanity. Her arc in canon climaxes with a song about all the ways she could hurt everyone around her if she ever lost it. She was already feeling like absolute scum after she killed him, because there was some measure of relief that he was dead even though she cared about him so much, and. And then she got his letter.
It fucked her up so much and I'm so glad?? She trusted him an extreme amount and told him things she'd never told anyone else, so the fact that his last words to her (that weren't on the train, at least) basically proved to her that he knew she was Messed Up enough to do this is honestly the most damaging thing he could have done. Y...ay... She was, like, clinging to the hope that Will had used his magical empathy powers to tell Hannibal what was going to go down, but he confirmed in her kill log that he didn't. Honestly, I think the letter she received from him after killing him wrecked her even more than the act of murdering him itself did.
Anything he could have said to her after that point would have hurt her, honestly, but their reunion on the train definitely Did Not Help. She knew he was awful and probably didn't care about her at all, given everything she'd learned about him, but the fact that he knew it would probably be her and still told Will to do the thing was like a final twist of the knife. She's probably going to be internalizing all of this for ages post game and I'm super pleased??
tl;dr the moral of the story truly is never talk to hannibal lecter
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SO LIKE. her and jason were gross, her and xion were horrifyingly sweet, but i think she was actually closer to percy by the end than anyone else in the game. that's for two reasons! the first is that even if the course of their lives was very different, she felt as though she could relate to him more than anyone else. the second is that while she felt, even to the end, that there were some things she had to shield both jason and xion from, she never got that feeling from percy. i'm going to expand on the second part first!
while she found out about his role as the coal miner fairly late in the game, the idea that she didn't have to shield him came earlier in the game than that. this is because of his reaction to annabeth's death in two distinct ways. the first is because he mentioned how he was going to murder the shit out of whoever hurt her! the reason why this had an impact on her realizing he didn't need to be protected is probably pretty clear. the second, though, is all the backstory and exposition regarding their relationship that he revealed during that talk; given that the subject matter included battles and constant fighting, she figured at the point that he could solidly take care of himself. of course, that didn't mean that she wasn't worried about his emotional state, which is something which would only increase as the game went on.
i've mentioned it before, but part of the reason she didn't tell him about her role until they were incredibly close is because she was worried he would be angry when he realized she had the power to revive annabeth but chose not to. this is definitely something that had an impact on their cr, because it was this hefty amount of guilt she was carrying every time she could tell he wasn't in a good place and knew she could have made it better. this is because, despite her constant protestations and better judgment, she cared for him a great deal. that point is worth a sidenote, so—
natalie honestly adored percy by the end of the game. he was supportive, kind, intelligent, and sassy, all traits she admires. while she would be hard pressed to admit any of this, a good majority of his threads with her just served to increase how much she appreciated him. from their constant talks about what they had learned from the sheriff and how to apply it to their circumstances to the way he responded to each bit of her backstory that she laid out for him, everything about him just made her affection for him grow. well, mostly everything.
after all, there were some things about percy that made her want to gently scream. especially after annabeth died, his seeming disregard for his own wellbeing and worth terrified her. given that she's a girl who stresses endlessly about forming attachments, the fact that she had grown so fond of someone who seemed to be ambivalent about whether he lived or died by a certain point was incredibly stressful. especially when she found out he knew about hannibal's role and how it factored into annabeth's death, she was terrified something would happen to him. still, that's only a testament to how much she loved him - and love really is the right word. by the end of the game, they had reached prime found family status.
along with the aforementioned supportiveness and kindness, this is also because she felt as though she could relate to him very well. while sally is a wonderful parent, she can definitely understand the idea that one of his parents was fairly uncaring and absent in his life. given that this is her Entire Backstory, once she knew enough to piece it together, it made her feel as though she'd found a kindred spirit of sorts. of course, for as fond as she is of him, she's also more than capable of returning his endless sass with her own attitude. this is amplified when he started accusing of her having Feelings, which was honestly rude and unwarranted?? (no it was entirely fair).
moving past her reflexive sarcasm, though! the fact that he ended up her Most Trusted Person really came to a head in their final private convo in the church. with literally any other person, if they had asked her if they were right about her killing hannibal, she would have continued to deny it. even if they had guessed correctly and forced her into acknowledging it, she wouldn't have discussed it as thoroughly as she did with percy. this is honestly the most clear evidence of how much she adored him and trusted him and knew that he would never mistreat her, and i hate it. she was more comfortable being honest and vulnerable around him than any other character in the game. similarly, if anyone else tried to give her a different point of view or understanding re: will graham in the final log after everyone had died, she would have absolutely torn them a new one. she felt as though percy was the only person who had really earned the right to say something like that to her, after the incredible amount they had been through together by that point.
basically even months later i hate them and blame you for ruining my life
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CRIES ALL THE WAY TO YOUR MUSEBOX POST?
goddamnit Eli I hate this, I hate them, I can't believe they were literally #goals for found family what the hell. UGGGGH I LOVE THEM.
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From the very beginning Yuna was so baffling to her!! Natalie absolutely isn't used to people who are A. as energetic and upbeat as Yuna always was and B. as genuine and sincere in her affection for basically everyone. Not only is this confusing and strange to her, it was also kind of intimidating to her, because she's ridiculous. It takes a lot for anyone to earn her trust, so paradoxically, the fact that Yuna was so sincere and so kind to her even upon first meeting her actually made her trust her a little bit less? Because clearly nobody can be this sweet and good upon first meeting someone, that's just not how it works, so there must be a catch. "Seems fake but okay" perfectly sums up her reaction to Yuna as a whole in the beginning tbh
But then Yuna just kept on being herself, and the longer that kindness and sincerity didn't fade away, the more Natalie's opinion on her shifted from mild distrust and discomfort to honest admiration and respect. She might have thought Yuna was absolutely ridiculous and going to get herself killed, but. There's something about the kind of strength it takes to keep on being so positive all the time in the face of all the horrible things Whole Ass threw at them that Natalie can't help but be fond of, even a little proud of. To see it in a girl who wasn't even her age was kind of mindblowing and she still doesn't know how Yuna exists??
Either way, absolutely did not enjoy finding her corpse laid under the porch, 0/10 would not recommend
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