Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nat could feel it, as she dragged herself through the snow, rifle in hand. Ahead of her, Travis stomped his way between the trees, seemingly oblivious. He was determined to find his brother and nothing would distract from that mission, Nat knew; even her gambit with Javi’s clothes had been undone by Lottie’s words reinforcing the belief that he *must* somehow still be out there. Even the work of hunting, the task they were supposed to be focusing on, wasn’t enough to grab Travis’ attention away from finding him. But could he really not feel it?

Not that Nat could really describe what *it* was, anyway. It was just a weird feeling, some errant sensation that told her something important was about to happen. She sighed, wondering if those morning blessings from Lottie were starting to spread the same madness to her that had already claimed everyone else in the cabin.

Travis turned his head slightly at the sigh, shooting her a questioning glance. Nat shook her head and he looked back ahead, his eyes scanning for the slightest discrepancy in the landscape that he could trick himself into thinking was Javi. Nat tried to dismiss the feeling that still clung to her but it hung on stubbornly. It didn’t feel like her other instincts, trained to alert her if her senses had picked up movement that her brain had skipped over. No, this was some kind of itch seeping into every nerve of her body, as if it coated her. It was a sense of dread, of profound wrongness, to a degree she’d never felt before.

Nat shivered slightly, silently so as not to invite Travis’ attention again when she had nothing to offer him. She adjusted her gloves a little but it wasn’t the colds’ doing.

She reasoned that a sense of unease wouldn’t exactly be uncalled for. When they’d headed out that morning, she could see the remains of the pyre. In her mind’s eye, it still stood, just as tall as it had when they’d built it a week ago. Nat could still see her friend-, no, the body, the fucking body, that’s all it was laying across it, clear as day, as if they hadn’t sat around her, it, as if they hadn’t fucking helped themselves like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Travis didn’t talk about it. None of them did, at least not during the brief periods Nat had hung around inside since then. She’d already gotten into the habit of leaving early for these daily outings before last week and she sure as shit wasn’t going to change that now. She didn’t know how any of them could act normally now, or at least what passed for normal out here. Nat wondered if any of them thought the same things about her.

Travis had already been barely meeting her gaze and not talking much, focused as he was on the task at hand. So Nat appreciated that that hadn’t changed.

She was still lost in the middle of her drifting thoughts when she suddenly noticed Travis had stopped. They were on their way back at this point and found themselves now near the plane wreckage. Shauna’s message on the side of it was still legible but Nat had trouble imagining it was going to end up being any help.

There were still trees blocking Nat’s view of the plane but Travis’ angle had clearly afforded him a better perspective. He ducked low, as if to stay out of sight, and Nat mirrored the movement. Together, they crawled forward, dragging their elbows across the snow-covered forest floor.

As they got closer, Nat was able to make out what Travis had glimpsed. It was a dark shape, standing out against its stark white surroundings. And it was moving.

Nat readied the rifle. Finally, the meat shed might stop looking quite so empty.

Travis looked confused about something. Nat might only be able to see his eyes but the slight furrow of his brow was unmistakable. Taking a closer look at her target herself, something occurred to her. Whatever this thing was, it was standing. On two legs. Two arms hung from what were inarguably shoulders. A head, a definitely-human-shaped head, rested above those shoulders.

Probably someone from the cabin, Nat reasoned, a familiar disappointment claiming her. Recognition that they were looking at a person and not an animal hit Travis a second after it had hit Nat, but where she felt disappointment, desperate hope blazed in his eyes.

He quickly stood up and bolted at the figure. Nat sighed and followed. At this distance, she couldn’t make out details but she could tell with ease that the height and build were all wrong for it to be Javi.

“Travis!” she shouted futilely after him, pulling down the fabric covering her mouth to stop her voice being muffled. “It isn’t him!”

Nat hadn’t expected that to have any effect but, to her surprise, Travis had frozen up just as abruptly as he’d started moving. By his side a moment later, Nat gently placed a hand on his arm, her head bowed as she looked in the direction of the cabin again, ready to head back. She tried to pull him back but still, he didn’t move.

“Come on,” she exhaled. She turned to look at who they’d stumbled on. “It’s only-”

Nat’s brain utterly failed to supply the end to the sentence it had promised. Her mouth hung open in shock as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. As most of her mind was occupied with that mammoth task, a part of her idly wondered how the fuck Lottie would spin this one.

As she pulled that thought back in line to concentrate on how the fuck she would spin this one, the fire-damaged skeleton in front of them walked forward a few more paces, fell to its knees and screamed. Incredible amounts of rage and pain and grief and shame and sorrow mixed into a sound that threatened to sear itself into Nat’s soul.

What the fuck.

Her daughter was nearly a month old when Marilyn Taylor started to get sick of her. Young Jacqueline was just so demanding all the time. She was always hungry or tired or just plain lonely, and she hardly ever simply shut up. Marilyn had already prepared to teach her daughter all about her role in life, what it was she was meant to do and how she was meant to behave while doing it, but she made a mental note to prioritise teaching Jacqueline about not being quite so difficult.

Jacqueline Taylor was five years old when she met Shauna Shipman on the playground and they swiftly became inseparable. At their first meeting, Shauna had called her Jackie and just half an hour later, Marilyn’s daughter was insisting on being called that by everyone. Marilyn did not approve of this friendship, or the name change, but Shauna quickly proved to be the first crack in the structure that was her total control over her daughter. Marilyn could demand “Jackie” dress a certain way or go to certain activities but she found that Jackie steadfastly refused to let go of Shauna. Exasperated, Marilyn eventually gave up on trying to set that nice Matthews girl up as her daughter’s best friend and accepted that Shauna was going to be a part of her life for the foreseeable future.

She stood at her window now, a glass of wine in hand as she watched Jackie and Shauna play in the backyard. Marilyn sighed and took a sip as Jackie fell in the grass, her cries vanishing instantly as Shauna dashed straight to her side.

Jackie Taylor was eight years old when she came home from school and showed her mother a drawing she’d done in class, in brightly-coloured pencil. It was meant to be a wedding. Two women, a blonde in a green dress and a brunette in a blue one, stood beaming in the middle, surrounded by friends.

“Where’s the groom?” Marilyn asked, carefully examining the picture.

Jackie scrunched up her face a little in thought, considering the question as if it just hadn’t occurred to her. “There isn’t one,” she shrugged. “But why would one be there? This isn’t about him.”

Marilyn drew herself up to her full height. “A wedding is always between a man and a woman,” she told Jackie sharply. “You know this. Where did you hear any different?”

“Shauna’s mom told me and Van last week,” Jackie told her. 

Of course Van was part of this, Marilyn thought, mentally spitting out the nickname with disgust. Another girl with no sense of decorum who had somehow wormed her way into Jackie’s life. 

“She says anyone should be able to get married if they really wanted to,” Jackie continued, excitement speeding up her voice. “‘Cos sometimes boys like boys and girls like girls and Van said that me and Shauna should get married and Shauna told her to shut up and Mrs Shipman laughed. I think she was joking. So when Miss Simons told us to imagine a happy wedding, that’s just what I thought about-”

She didn’t mean to, she’d insist to her husband later. She’d just forgotten what hand bore her wedding ring, she would tell her circle of friends who would all nod sympathetically. But the truth was, Marilyn Taylor’s hand moved with the speed and intent of a viper and a second later, a small but unmistakable drop of red was forming right beside Jackie’s right eye, which itself was welling up with tears.

“Go to your room for the rest of the day,” Marilyn instructed, her voice quiet but hard-edged as she threw the drawing in the trash. “And don’t bother coming out for dinner. You have a figure you need to watch anyway.”

Jackie ran like the devil was on her heels and cried in her bed all evening, eventually going to sleep in the same clothes she’d gone to school that morning in.

No-one noticed when she got up early the next morning and recovered the drawing. That day at school, she gave it to Shauna to keep it safe since there was nowhere in her room that her mother wouldn’t find it.

It was still screaming as Travis ran back to the cabin as fast as his legs would take him, but stopped soon after he was gone. As it slowly got up, Nat stayed where she was, feet rooted to the ground. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain that the honest-to-God walking, screaming skeleton before her wasn’t a threat. Nat didn’t have anything to be scared of from it.

Wait. No. Not “it”. Her.

A feeling of immense dread and guilt welled up in Nat’s stomach as she realised that she recognised those bones.

Jackie Taylor was fourteen years old when she and Shauna joined their school’s soccer team. Another thing Marilyn didn’t approve of but Jackie had already carved off so much of herself for her mother that, like with Shauna herself, she clung onto this.

Jackie loved being able to throw her all into the game, pushing everything out of her mind that wasn’t the ball or her teammates. She made friends she really cared about, not just friends her mother wanted her to have and Jackie found herself very happy that Lottie Matthews, the one point of overlap in that venn diagram, was also a keen participant in the sport.

Jackie Taylor was newly fifteen years old the day she kissed Shauna Shipman. 

Marilyn had arranged a birthday party, with all of the Taylor couple’s parent friends and their children. Lottie, Jackie’s usual reprieve at these gatherings, was too sick to make it and Jackie had found herself miserable. To make matters worse, her mother was needling her with extremely unsubtle hints about a boyfriend, pointing out Jeff Sadecki in particular as a good candidate. It had built up until midday when her parents, together with the Sadeckis, fucking presented Jeff as if he was their birthday present to her. Which, it turned out, he was.

Jeff had delivered some monologue that Jackie barely paid any attention to as her brain felt frozen. It ended with him asking her to be his girlfriend.

At her lack of response, Marilyn had encouraged him, “She gets like that when she’s excited. Trust me, she’s beaming on the inside.”

And Jeff had taken that with a nod and a smirk and kissed her.

Jackie had been led to expect that her first kiss would lead to fireworks in her belly, a bright and shining moment where everything just made sense.

Her stomach almost flipped at this one and she felt extremely ill. Every nerve ending in her body screamed at her to get away. So she did.

Jeff looked taken aback as she ran out of the room (“It’s just nerves, dear,” said Marilyn and Jackie wasn’t sure who she was trying to comfort). She didn’t know where to go but some part of her apparently did, which is how she found herself at Shauna’s house, breathless and crying. Deborah Shipman had seen her running down the street and opened the door for her immediately, letting her bolt straight up to Shauna’s room.

Jackie unloaded onto Shauna everything that had happened that day, sparing no detail. Shauna’s expression was unreadable, not that Jackie noticed, caught up as she was in her own misery.

“Maybe,” Shauna said slowly, in a tone of voice that indicated a joke but not very confidently. “You just need practice.”

Jackie looked up at her hesitantly and saw a nervous smile dancing on the edges of Shauna’s lips. “Practice what?” she asked. “Kissing?”

“It was just a joke,” Shauna said, laughing a little too quickly and turning her face away. “Sorry, I-”

Jackie gently but firmly grabbed Shauna’s chin and guided her face closer to Jackie’s own, now only inches apart. Whatever the end of Shauna’s sentence was going to be was lost amid heavy breathing and heartbeats that thundered in their ears, threatening to drown out the entire world.

As if their minds were one, they both moved. Their lips met. Jackie felt those promised fireworks.

They paused for a moment, separating and just gazing at each other. A small amount of Jackie’s strawberry-flavoured lip gloss had rubbed off on Shauna’s lips and the part of her brain still thinking coherent sentences liked how it looked there, marking the other girl as hers. 

The moment passed, after which they were on each other again. For possibly the first time in her life, Jackie felt good, like everything in the universe aligned to create this one perfect slice of time that she could happily spend forever in.

But it didn’t last. Jackie jerked away as she felt a twinge by her right eye, an occasional reminder from a scar that refused to ever truly heal. A familiar coil of fear and shame wrapped itself around her spine, threatening to tear her apart.

“What’s wrong?” Shauna’s eyes were deep with concern and confusion. She was breathless and Jackie knew she was seeing her own disappointment in the moment not lasting reflected right back at her. “Did I-”

“No,” Jackie said hurriedly, beginning to cry. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. You never could.”

“Then what is it?” Shauna demanded to know as frustration joined, and began to dominate, the mix of emotions raging across her face.

“I’m sorry,” Jackie told her, standing up as tears raced down her cheeks. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t-”

The words blurred together as she fled the room and then the house, leaving a confused Deb Shipman in her wake, who began to hurry up the stairs to check on her daughter.

Jackie soon found herself back at her own front door. She’d dried her tears, adjusted her hair and fixed a practised smile on her face, one that radiated artificial tones of warmth and sincerity that her mother had coached her into being able to fake.

She entered, spying her mother with an arm around Jeff’s shoulders. Jackie approached, made apologies, smiled, laughed, grabbed Jeff’s stupid shirt and, to cheers from the other partygoers, pulled him in for a stupid kiss on his stupid lips.

He tasted like acid. Jackie wanted it to destroy her, to melt her down to nothing so she wouldn’t have to feel it, or anything else, anymore.

Jackie was the one to announce to the world the next day that she and Jeff were a couple now. Lottie raised an eyebrow while Van just looked puzzled, as if she’d done some math wrong in her head. Through every conversation she had, Jackie maintained the facade that she was fine, more than fine actually, everything was great. She was Marilyn Taylor’s finest work.

Shauna barely spoke a word to her for a week, the longest week of Jackie’s life. They resumed their status quo after that, neither one of them even mentioning The Kiss. Jackie found it necessary to pull Marilyn’s curtain over even this part of her life now too, just enough to make interaction with Shauna possible again. Jackie wrapped the curtain around herself a hundred times over in the next few weeks. The tightness of it threatened to suffocate her as tiny barbs in the fabric turned her heart into a pincushion.

But it was worth it to be able to breathe the same air as Shauna, to hold her hand, to hear her laugh without being in danger of giving in to the instincts that had driven her to that one perfect moment she often mentally revisited when she was lying awake at night, unable to sleep.

There was a part of her, deep inside, that begged to know why she couldn’t pursue that. But Jackie smothered that part as best she could. She knew, as certainly as she knew the sky was blue and grass was green, that having what she truly wanted meant she would be hurt. It probably wouldn’t take the same form it did when she was eight, but it was still the back of her mother’s hand and the glint of a ring that she flinched from in her dreams.

Shauna became her lifeline in the midst of all this. Even if Jackie couldn’t be with her the way she wanted to, she still took as much as she could. Shauna’s smiles illuminated the darkness Jackie hid away in, providing her with just enough to sustain her and keep her going through life, one step at a time. 

She knew Shauna loved her, even if she didn’t believe it was anything like what Jackie felt for her. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that, or else Shauna would be hurting too and she could not let anything hurt Shauna. And to Jackie’s relief, she seemed okay. She smiled and joked and talked to her the same as she always did so surely The Kiss didn’t mean the same to her as it had to Jackie and that was fine, really, it was fine. With her mind and heart in shambles, Jackie was content to live out the rest of her life awash in Shauna’s love for her as a best friend. Even if it meant marrying Jeff and having his children, if Shauna loved her, then she could survive anything.

Without Shauna’s love, Jackie would shatter into a million pieces and not make the slightest effort to stop them blowing away in the wind.

Jackie Taylor was eighteen years old, starving in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and her heart already mostly unravelled, when she finally and completely fell apart. The light of Shauna’s love for her hadn’t just been switched off, it had never even been there.

Jackie waited for the cold, or Shauna, to claim her. A moment of hope quickly became a moment of terror and Jackie Taylor died.

Nat took a slow step forward. Her heart sank, not with surprise but with shame, as the desiccated girl in front of her seemed to notice her for the first time, and shrank away a little. There was no face for Nat to read but she’d seen enough fearful people in her life to recognise that body language, even when spoken in its barest form, especially after living in close quarters with this person for a while until only a couple short months ago.

She swallowed as her eyes met empty sockets. Nat tried to smile, as casually as she could, as if she’d run into a friend while out on a stroll down the street. She even gave a little wave, trying to make the situation feel as relaxed as possible. It seemed to have a positive effect, as she could feel the tension very slowly draining out of the air between them, but there was still a long way to go.

“Hey, Taylor,” Nat said, putting her all into making her voice sound as even as she could manage. 

Uncomfortable in the silence that followed, a further question slipped from her lips before her brain could give it a once-over. “How’ve you been?” she asked, with a hint of a playful tone that she immediately reprimanded herself for in her head.

Jackie Taylor was two months dead when she looked at Nat, raised the bones that made up her hands to examine them and let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Before she knew it was happening, Nat had closed the short distance between them and suddenly had her wrapped in a hug, tight and firm like she wanted to hide her somewhere safe, away from the world. 

Nat didn’t know how this had happened or why but she did know when someone needed her. She hadn’t saved Jackie then, when she’d just focused on getting inside, not sparing a second glance toward one misshapen lump of snow off to the side in the dark. But she made a silent promise now, as Jackie hesitantly returned the embrace and buried her face (such as it was) in Nat’s shoulder, to never let her old captain down again.

Chapter Text

Lottie seemed unsettled today.

She always had a bit of that look about her, as if suddenly finding herself in a position where nearly a full soccer team’s worth of girls hung on her every word as she dealt with things beyond her understanding that confused and scared her as much as they did everyone else spooked her a little.

Lottie hadn’t totally felt like herself in a while, not since she’d watched Laura Lee ascend halfway to the heavens in an old abandoned plane before going the rest of the way on her own. She wondered these days if she’d ever really had a self of her own to go back to.

But even with all that accounted for, today’s antsiness was something else. Lottie jumped at the slightest unexpected movement from the others and spent a lot of her time pacing around. At one point around the middle of the day, she’d started to count the nearby trees to keep herself distracted. Tai was never Lottie’s biggest fan, and especially not after the confrontation after finding out how Shauna had been spending her time of late, but she was still always one to care and stopped Lottie wandering off into the dense forest surrounding them, at which point Lottie lost count and gave up on that particular venture.

The result of all this was that the entire cabin was on edge, apart from Ben who seemed barely all there these days anyway. So when they all heard a scream, long and loud, everyone quickly gathered outside, eager to do something, to expel this energy in a burst of action. A few of them thought they recognised the scream’s owner but couldn’t place it. Only one of them felt instant recognition deep in her bones and froze up immediately while another knew that this was what she’d been waiting for. She looked at her unmoving teammate, put two and two together and figured out whose scream it was. It felt less like the surprise it should have been and more of a casual confirmation of something she just hadn’t yet realised she’d seen coming.

When Travis ran up to them, panting, alone and babbling about something in the snow near the plane, something he couldn’t describe, Nat’s still there, Nat’s alone with it, Nat’s in danger, the Yellowjackets were ready. They charged out as a group (Travis started out in the lead but quickly lost the position), most of them without anything they could even pretend was a weapon but all of them thankful for something to seize on and ready to do anything for their endangered teammate. 

Not all of them. Lottie hadn’t moved. She just stared after the shouting mob, her face riddled with anxiety and unease.

“No, you mustn’t,” she’d tried saying as everyone was moving around her but either they were all too focused on this suddenly-urgent mission to acknowledge her or she’d said it too quietly. “You can’t hurt her.”

One other person also remained behind. Not that she really felt like going on runs these days anyway, Shauna fixed Lottie with an unreadable stare from only an arm’s length away.

“What do you mean?” she asked, in a way that was somehow simultaneously quiet and also impossible to not hear.

Lottie just looked at her, her eyes wide, saying nothing.

“You said to not hurt her,” Shauna pressed, advancing a little, now close enough that the little clouds of fog that the winter turned their exhales into were mingling with every breath. “Who’s ‘her’, Lottie? Who do you mean?”

“I can’t give you an explanation and I know how this sounds,” Lottie said after a long blink. “But I think you know.”

And Shauna was immediately off after the others, pregnancy be damned.

When Shauna caught up to the others, she saw a stand-off. Nat had her back to the plane wreckage and was pointing the rifle at the group, aiming unflinchingly at Tai, who had been granted the misfortune of being at the head of the pack. Shauna pushed and shoved to the front beside her friend and watched as the gun barrel shifted ever so slightly over to her.

“What the fuck, Nat?” Tai was saying, taking a second to flash Shauna a brief but appreciative look.

“Travis said you were in danger,” Van added, her eyes darting around. “Said there was something out here with you.”

“I don’t know what Travis said he saw,” Nat replied steadily. “But there was nothing. I thought there might be something, but there wasn’t. End of story.”

“And why are you pointing the gun at us?” Mari huffed from her position near the back and to the side of the group, far away from where Nat was aiming, throwing her hands wide like she was the victim of a personal affront and not the witness of a violent threat.

Nat lowered the rifle slowly. “Sorry,” she mumbled. 

Tai crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, unsatisfied. Nat rubbed her eyes. “You guys just startled me, is all,” she added sullenly, not meeting Tai’s gaze. The taller girl sighed.

The group started to disperse and head back to the cabin, their interest gone but at least their earlier anxiety forgotten too. The rush of energy had done some good, after all.

Travis’ forehead creased in confusion as he swears he knows what he saw but then refuses to elaborate, eliciting teasing from the girls. Mari raised the point that it must’ve been his scream they’d heard, to widespread laughter as Travis silently raised the cloth he wore back over the lower half of his face.

Shauna stayed where she was, fixing Nat with a stare that was making her uncomfortable.

“You coming?” Tai asked her, gesturing toward the retreating backs of the other Yellowjackets.

Shauna ignored her. “Where’s Jackie?” she asked quietly.

Tai groaned and looked away briefly as she rolled her eyes to the heavens, so she missed how Nat stiffened for a moment before recovering back to a slouch. Shauna didn’t.

“Shauna, she’s,” Tai said softly, before sighing and trying again. “She’s not with us anymore.”

“Yeah, Shipman, you should remember that,” Nat muttered, roughly kicking some snow. “You made damn sure of it.”

Tai shot her a glare before returning to Shauna. “Come on,” she said to her, laying an arm across Shauna’s shoulders and beginning to gently guide her back to the cabin after the others. “I thought you’d finally accepted it.”

“Lottie said-” Shauna began, before stopping, knowing there was no way this ended well. Nat’s face was mostly unreadable but there was a look in her eyes indicating that she was, for once, extremely interested in what Lottie had said.

Tai cursed. “Sometimes, Lottie says more than enough. She’s just as fucked up here as the rest of us, remember that. She is not my idea of sane guidance.”

Shauna changed the topic. “What are you waiting around for?” she asked Nat, who was starting to stand awkwardly with the unmistakable posture of someone just waiting for everyone else to leave. Tai paused in her step, looking back to Nat for her answer.

“Just wanna check out something,” Nat informed them, regarding Shauna coolly. “I was kinda in the middle of sweeping around out here before you guys came blundering in.”

Tai nodded and turned back around. Shauna let herself be walked back to the cabin, her mind ablaze. Logic dictated that her raised expectations were never going to be met. Even if she’d imagined that first morning in the snow, the following two months and then especially the unplanned midnight feast a week ago left her with some pretty fucking solid evidence that there was no recovery for Jackie Taylor.

But suspicion still plagued her, playing at the frayed edges of every thought. There was no way in hell she’d mix up the sounds of Jackie and fucking Travis. Why had Nat reacted like that when she asked about Jackie, and what exactly was it she was waiting for them to go for?

All this speculation was well and good but the fact she’d digested Jackie days ago was a pretty insurmountable wall for a distant scream and Natalie’s weird body language to try and conquer. So Shauna fell back into old habits when it came to Jackie-related thoughts, and let it all simply simmer inside her.

She glanced back once, after a few solid minutes had passed, just to see Nat disappear through the trees in the opposite direction.

Nat had broken the hug and told her to run the moment they’d heard the incoming yelling. Jackie had paused for a fraction of a second, hesitating to leave her.

“Go!” Nat had insisted, unslinging the gun from her shoulder and readying it in one fluid motion. “I’ll buy you time.”

So Jackie had run, her new form light enough on its feet in a sprint that she barely left any marks in the snow. She was some distance away before she stopped and actually took in her surroundings.

Ever since the crash, she’d not been exactly eager for exploration and as a result, she had no real idea where she was, only what direction to go in if she wanted to head back to the crash site. Which she definitely did not. Leaning her back against a tree with her legs extended out in front of her, she sat down, hoping Nat could find her.

Jackie noticed for the first time, in the quiet moment she found herself in as she wondered what to do next, that she wasn’t breathing. It was, to put it mildly, disconcerting. She wasn’t out of breath, she wasn’t sweating, she hadn’t had to adjust for the lack of muscles and flesh weighing her bones down as she ran. It seemed that she wouldn’t have to go through a period of getting used to her body or anything; it handled as naturally as it had just a few months ago.

Well. She might not have to get used to it physically. But, as she reached for her cheek and felt only a hard-angled piece of bone (she could feel! She didn’t know how that worked but she was willing to just accept it), she knew mentally would probably be another matter altogether.

Jackie ran her skeletal fingers over her rib cage, wondering darkly if her mother would finally be proud of her figure. One of her fingers accidentally dropped in-between two ribs and she looked at it for a moment, as if considering something.

Very slowly and deliberately, she raised her finger to the hole where her nose used to be. She expected to meet resistance, so kept going until she was caught off guard by her knuckles hitting the edges of the hole. She mentally blinked and reassessed as she realised that meant her finger was fully inside her skull. She pulled it out quickly and looked at it, as if expecting it to be covered in gunk. It wasn’t.

Jackie laughed, for the first time in a long while, even discounting the time she’d spent dead. A genuine laugh with nothing but amusement behind it, the kind of laugh a toddler might produce after playing in mud for the first time even as their parents disapproved of the mess. She stuck her finger into her nose hole again and wiggled it around a little before pulling it out again. The laugh became a more subdued giggle but didn’t totally stop.

Maybe the mental adjustment wouldn’t be much trouble either.

“Glad you’re having fun,” Nat said from behind her, her words failing to hide some mirth of her own.

Jackie raised her head and looked behind her. The edge of Nat’s mouth was threatening to shatter her tough girl act by very nearly twisting into a smirk. For the moment, it just about managed to stand resolute.

Jackie tried something, not realising it had been something in question but she was still pleasantly surprised to pull it off. “What happened back there?” she asked, finding that her voice sounded just the same as it always had.

Nat’s eyebrows raised slightly for a moment. “So you can talk, then,” she mused before her face hardened. “The others showed up. Travis got them all spooked and I had to make them think nothing was up. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him.”

“So you didn’t…,” Jackie swallowed nervously, or at least went through the motions of it, more out of habit than anything else. “You didn’t tell them about me?”

“And say what?” Nat asked her, squatting beside her so their eyes were level. “That Jackie Taylor was back, and a skeleton? I think they’d probably have a little trouble believing that one.”

“You’re taking this well,” Jackie said, after a brief pause.

“Yeah,” Nat affirmed. She sighed. “I don’t get it. I won’t pretend to understand how and I know this sure as shit ain’t something that can just happen naturally. Part of me still wants to freak out. But a larger part of me just accepts that you’re here. You’re my friend, even if worrying about Shauna can fuck you up and make you a bit of a bitch. I know you’re not a monster, Jackie. And trust me, you’re hardly the scariest person out here.”

Jackie looked away, out through the trees. “I was in the plane when I… woke up,” she told Nat, who nodded slowly. “I can get that I was there, ‘cos it might be harder to bury someone in the snow or whatever.”

“That’s basically right,” Nat confirmed. “The ground was too hard.”

“Right, but,” and at this, Jackie looked back at Nat. Nat could feel Jackie’s eyes wide and begging for the truth even if she couldn’t see them. Jackie gestured at her body. “Why am I… like this? Why am I just bones? Has it really been so long? Are you, like, way older than you look right now?”

Nat suddenly looked like she’d been slapped. She bowed her head, unable to meet the imploring gaze Jackie had somehow been able to produce with only the blank features of a skull to work with.

“What do you remember?” Nat asked at last. “Before, before you died?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Please.”

“Okay,” Jackie looked out to the trees again, collecting her thoughts. She shivered, though it had nothing to do with the cold she was inexplicably able to feel but not really be bothered by. “There was… there was the fight. With Shauna.”

Nat placed a hand on her shoulder, which was instantly met with Jackie’s own. “I’ve been told about it. You don’t have to give me the details of all that if you don't want to.”

Jackie nodded as Nat gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “After the fight, I went outside.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t… I didn’t really have a choice.”

Ever since she’d learned about what happened, her own guilt over not noticing and helping Jackie in the snow, while still formidable, had found itself company. Anger at everyone for making it happen had taken root in her. She’d mostly learned to temper it, to stop herself snapping at everyone in that cabin who so much as approached her, but now it made itself known again, threatening to take over like it had that first week, when she’d snarked at Shauna for putting on a caring act too little too fucking late. 

Tai had reprimanded her, and most of the cabin had given her disapproving or apathetic looks, but a moment of silent eye contact with Van had been turning over in her mind ever since. She hadn’t known what to make of the unreadable expression and had never asked about it, but Nat suspected she was not the only person there who held her sentiment.

“Did you get someone to help you set up at least?” Nat asked. “To help with a fire, or something? Anything?”

“I needed to do it on my own,” Jackie said. “If I couldn’t even do that, then what use was I?”

“I dunno, how about your value as a fucking human being? Someone should’ve helped you, Jackie.”

“That doesn’t cut it out here,” Jackie shot back, flatly. “And you know it.”

Nat did, in fact, know it. She knew that if she was in that cabin at the time, or if she’d just gotten back sooner, or anything, she would’ve wrestled Jackie inside if she had to. But she also knew they didn’t all think like she did. Despite what Lottie might say, Nat wasn’t part of this in the same way they were. Whatever this bullshit was that had started to turn the Yellowjackets into a cult, it wasn’t in her.

She hoped.

“I felt it get colder,” Jackie continued. “And I gave up on the fire. What was the point?”

“To live?” Nat offered.

“Shauna hates me,” Jackie said quietly, but with an impact like someone had taken a sledgehammer to Nat’s soul. Nat could feel Jackie’s shoulder shake a little and knew that if Jackie had the ability to produce them right now, her cheek would have tears running down it. “I finally fucking figured it out after all these years. Now I know. Well it took me long enough, right?”

Jackie let out a bark of laughter after that last part. Nat shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think anyone would’ve thought that,” she ventured. “She really does care about you, dude.”

“Yeah, right,” Jackie scoffed, still crying. “She can make a good show of it but I read her journal, Nat. Page after page about how much I was the worst person ever, how I kept her in my shadow. No wonder nobody would’ve said she hates me, I kept her so smothered she could never make herself heard. That’s the kind of person I am.”

“You’re not,” Nat shook her head. “I think you’re kinda great, if it’s anything.”

Jackie sniffled a little bit and looked back at her. “That’s really sweet of you to say.”

“I mean it.”

Jackie turned back round again, ignoring that, set on continuing her story. “I fell asleep. I knew that would be the end and I welcomed it. There was… a dream. And then I died.”

“And then?” Nat prompted, trying to play off her concern as mere curiosity. She mentally filed away the dream as something to ask about later.

“And then nothing,” Jackie said thoughtfully, a frown in her voice.

“Nothing?”

“Flashes, maybe. Nothing substantial. Nothing to help me understand why I’m like this.”

“What’s in the flashes?”

“I don’t know, okay,” Jackie snapped. “They’re not nice.”

“Sorry.”

Nat let the conversation mellow, let Jackie’s frustration fade a little.

“I’m sorry,” Jackie apologised, looking at her. “I shouldn’t have-”

“No, it’s fine,” Nat cut her off, making a sharp gesture with the hand that wasn’t on Jackie’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have pressed that.”

“Well, then I woke up in the plane,” Jackie said, coming to the end of her tale. “And it was like a nap, where you know time has passed but it still feels like you were awake just a second ago? And on top of that, I knew there was something I was forgetting, something important, but I couldn’t figure out what it was and the breakup with Shauna was so fresh in my mind and all my emotions were on high or something so when I came to and realised I was still alive somehow despite, y’know, everything, I stepped out of the plane and just fucking screamed.”

“Oh,” said Nat, who was already filing away the choice of the word ‘breakup’ in the cabinet in her head, in a document labelled as much higher priority than that dream thing. “Yeah, I saw that bit.”

Jackie nodded. “And there you were.”

Jackie and Nat let a fat pause enjoy a long and happy life between them for a few minutes. “Well, I guess there’s one another thing,” Jackie added.

“Oh?”

“I’m just noticing it now, actually. And it’s probably just part of the whole weird magic skeleton thing.”

“What is it?”

“It’s just, I feel this ache. Like something’s pressed into me,” Jackie said, reaching up with her free hand to gently touch a part of her forehead that Nat remembered, clear as day, as the exact spot she’d seen Tai’s teeth sink into a week ago. She froze.

“And it’s not just there,” Jackie continued, untangling her other hand from Nat’s, who withdrew hers so she could rub them together for warmth for a moment. She gestured to various parts of her bones. “It’s here, and here, and here and, well, everywhere really.”

Nat’s brain felt like it was shutting down as Jackie unknowingly pointed out where Shauna’s knife had dug into her, where Lottie’s fingers had plucked at crisp flesh, where Nat’s own hands had ripped off a chunk.

“Can’t help you with that one,” Nat finally said, forcing a smile onto her face. “Maybe you got good massages in Heaven?”

Nat could hear Jackie’s eyes rolling in her voice. “Maybe,” she said slowly, with a tone that made it clear she wasn’t considering that for a second. “You still haven’t said, by the way.”

“Hmm?”

“Why I’m bones. Not even white either, like I’ve been burned.”

Nat swallowed. “Oh, right. Yeah.”

“So what happened?”

“We thought we should cremate you,” Nat told her, leaving out how long it had been before coming to that decision and why they’d finally made it. A small omission, compared to what was coming up.

“Then why aren’t I just ash?” Jackie asked, looking at her arms for a second. “Not that I’m complaining though, this is definitely better than just being dust.”

“It got interrupted by a bear and some inconvenient wind that blew out the fire,” the falsehood slipped from Nat’s lips easily. She didn’t like lying to Jackie but she liked the idea of her knowing the truth far less. “After we found you, I gathered up the bones and brought them to the plane to bury later.”

Jackie looked through the trees for a while. “I got eaten by a bear?”

Nat swallowed again and looked straight ahead. “Yep,” she lied. “Two months ago.”

“Did anyone… did anyone care? Besides you, I mean.”

A part of Nat felt great for a moment that Jackie thought well of her, before it was consumed by guilt and shame. “No-one likes to talk about it,” Nat told her. “I think no-one wants to really believe it happened.”

“Should I…,” Jackie started, before stopping. She started again, nervously. “Should I show myself to them?”

“No,” said Nat, firmly and quickly. “My gut told me you had to go when they were coming and I stand by that instinct. Besides, do you even want to?”

Jackie shook her head. “I don’t know if I can trust them.”

“Yeah,” Nat agreed. “I don’t either. And I have no idea how they’d react, anyway.”

“But then what do I do? I mean, do I just sleep in this tree like a squirrel?”

“There’s a bunker up there,” Nat pointed to the nearest mountain. “About halfway up.”

“Wait, really?”

“Me and Travis split up sometimes when we’re out so even he doesn’t know. It’s not big enough for us all to live in, it’s too far away to conveniently keep food. It’s basically just one room and a few stairs down to get to it.”

“That’s kind of a bombshell.”

“I also wanted it kept secret,” Nat admitted. “I’ve… considered just moving in there. I don’t know how much longer I can stay with all of them.”

“And you’re letting me in on your big secret?” Jackie teased, though she couldn’t disguise her gratefulness. “That’s quite a step, Scatorccio.”

Nat laughed. “Well, if you tell anyone,” she considered briefly. “I’ll smash your skull in.”

“Nat!” Jackie exclaimed, equal amounts of shock and amusement tinging her voice. Then, quieter: “Would that work?”

“Probably,” Nat shrugged casually but her eyes hardened a little. “We’re not going to find out.”

Nat stood and Jackie took her proffered hand, pulling herself up alongside her. “How far away is it?” Jackie asked.

“Not too far,” Nat mused, raising her hand to her eyes to avoid the evening sun’s glare as she looked toward their destination. “I will be spending the night with you, though. Too far away to get back to the cabin afterward before dark and I’m not staying out here at night.”

“You said there’s only one room, right?” Jackie asked hesitantly. Nat began to walk to the bunker and she followed.

Nat snorted. “We can take opposite corners if you want, Taylor.”

“No, it’s okay,” Jackie said quietly. “I kind of… wouldn’t mind. If you wanted to sleep next to me. Just was checking, that's all.”

They walked on in silence for a spell, before Jackie spoke again. 

“Is there anything to actually do there?”

Nat rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I forgot to mention the TV all set up and ready to go, Princess.”

Jackie flinched as if she’d been physically struck, and stopped walking. Nat stopped immediately and put her hands on her shoulders. “Hey, what is it?”

“Nothing, just,” Jackie drew in a deep breath. She didn’t have to, but sometimes it felt appropriate. “Just something Shauna said.”

“Shit,” Nat muttered. “That’s still fresh for you, isn’t it?”

“It was just last night to me,” Jackie told her, nodding. She gently took Nat’s hands off her shoulders. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just get going.”

They resumed walking, shoulder to shoulder though with Nat slightly ahead, leading the way. “I’ll be over as often as I can, okay?”

“What about your hunting?”

Fuck. Nat had been so caught up in trying to reassure her in the moment that she’d forgotten all about hunting. “I never catch anything anyway.”

“But you can’t just give up on it. There could always be something, and you guys need to eat.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I think it’ll be okay if I’m just with you sometimes.”

Jackie was about to protest some more when Nat held up a finger to what used to be her lips. “I will definitely be over tomorrow,” she added with the beginnings of a smirk forming. “Or in the next few days, anyway. I don’t know if you need them but you’ll probably be wanting clothes.”

Jackie shrieked at that as if she’d just realised herself. “I’ve been out here all day wearing nothing?!” she exclaimed, futilely trying to cover various bits of herself before giving up and groaning. “Oh my God…”

Nat’s smirk gave way to a chuckle. “Hey, I think it’s kinda hot.”

Whatever reaction Nat had been expecting, this wasn’t it. Jackie shut up immediately and turned her head away, the instinct for hiding your face from someone. Nat could somehow hear a blush in her voice as she asked: “How close is it?”

“Not far now,” Nat answered, accepting the conversation change. Her mind was racing over the events of the day. She knew she should be a lot less casual about all this but Jackie Taylor appearing in her life again, after all that had happened, triggered a protective instinct in her that let her set aside the weirdness of it and just accept the situation.

Nat wasn’t kidding when she’d said the one room of the bunker wasn’t big. It was only about the length and width of Jackie’s bedroom back home. It seemed like it was carved straight out of the stone of the mountain, with a ceiling only just high enough for Jackie to avoid having to duck. Small, strategically-placed vents were hidden somewhere in the ceiling to let in enough air and light for someone to live by. She wondered what purpose it had been made for.

As night claimed the forest, Jackie lay still on her side. Nat lay beside her, staring at the back of her skull. She didn’t know if Jackie was sleeping. Laying so perfectly still like that, Nat thought she looked just like an actual skeleton, a normal one, the type that gets left behind by its previous occupant. She hoped that this wasn’t all just a dream.

At some point during the night, Nat’s arm wrapped itself around Jackie’s ribcage, carefully, with no fingers falling through the gaps. Jackie let her.

It’s the most peaceful sleep Nat has gotten for a while. For the first time in ages, her dreams don’t twist into nightmares, as if Jackie herself is keeping the darkness at bay. She found herself hoping she could get used to this.

Chapter Text

It was noon when Nat returned to the cabin. Van sat on the steps out front, looking off to the side, while Tai stood behind her, her arms crossing as she watched Nat approach. She was about to speak when Mari came storming out of the cabin.

“Where have you been?” she snarled, getting right up in Nat’s face, forcing the shorter girl to stop walking in the middle of the clearing. “Lottie’s been worried for you! Travis had to go out by himself this morning and well well, it looks like you didn’t catch anything, either.”

A few of the other girls were coming out of the cabin now too, assembling on the porch. Nat sighed. No Shauna, at least. Nat wasn’t sure she could look at her right now.

“I was tracking something,” she began but was cut off. “Something small, maybe a rabbit-”

“And where is it?” Mari demanded. “Did you get it?”

“Obviously not,” Nat shot back, gesturing to the empty air behind her. She took a deep breath to compose herself. “I knew we needed food so I was too focused on it and wasn’t looking where I was going. I stumbled into a ditch and knocked myself out. I only woke up not long ago.”

Akilah frowned from her position on the porch. “You don’t look frozen, or even cold,” she said slowly, her eyes scanning over Nat’s body. “You look fine.”

“I guess I just got lucky,” Nat responded quickly. 

“Lucky?” Mari scoffed, raising an eyebrow. “You should be thankful the Wilderness spared you. You’re our hunter, even if you don’t seem to be taking that seriously.”

Tai groaned inwardly and she could see the way Van’s shoulders set. They were all a little pissed at Nat right now and Tai knew that her girlfriend was a Believer with a capital B. But, Tai thought, any one of them would feel hard-pressed to genuinely take the side of Mari Sinapellido when she’s in the middle of bitching at someone.

For her part, Nat just rolled her eyes. “Right, yeah, the wilderness saved me,” Nat snapped, with a growing frustration that Tai had come to recognise. “Funny how it’s kinda picky with who it chooses to save, huh?”

If her fight was with anyone else in that cabin, it would’ve ended there. As it was, the girls on the porch backed off a little with only Tai and Van not moving. Whether they were afraid of Nat biting their head off or of the avatar of bottled-up rage that Shauna sometimes seemed on the verge of becoming, no-one liked to bring this particular topic of conversation up for very long.

Almost no-one, anyway.

“Get over that already,” Mari groaned, rolling her own eyes right back at Nat. “She wasn’t one of us. She wasn’t helping. All she could do was throw a party, but at least you know how to use the gun. The one Travis had to go out there without today, by the way, because you had it unconscious in a ditch.”

“Fuck off, Mari," Nat growled, her body tensing as if she was about to throw herself at Mari right there and then. Tai was already moving but Van got there first, right as Mari was readying a response.

“Hey, back off, Mar,” Van told her, gripping her by the arm of her worn yellow sweater and firmly directing her toward the cabin. “Go inside and think about soup or something.”

“Hey, Nat’s the one who-” Mari began to protest as Van released her and she stumbled.

“Go,” Tai told her, in a tone of voice that made it clear she had no time for her today.

Mari seemed poised to continue the argument but thought better of it after a moment. She shot Nat a glare and stomped inside, sheepishly followed by the others. That fight may not have been fun but it wasn’t boring at least, and they were all feeling a little disappointed it was over despite the territory it was heading for.

“Thanks but I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” Nat snapped. Van started to steer her toward the area behind the cabin but Nat shook off her grip. “Hey, what the fuck?”

“We need to talk,” Tai told her firmly.

Nat rolled her eyes but followed Tai.

“Where were you?” Van asked once they were back there, in a spot they’d discovered long ago they could talk normally in and not be heard from inside the cabin. “I mean, really.”

“I answered that already, or do you want me to show you the specific ditch?”

“You’re not that good a liar, Nat,” said Tai softly. “That stunt yesterday, with the gun? And now this?”

“You’re hiding something,” Van concluded, never one for slowly building to a point. Tai made a small noise of disapproval that Van ignored.

“There’s nothing,” Nat insisted. “Just had a bad day, I guess.”

“Why?” Tai pressed, not believing for a second there wasn’t some specific thing behind it. “Why now? What prompted this?”

Nat responded only with a glare. Van sighed with understanding like something obvious had just struck her and leaned against a tree. “Sorry,” she said, sending Nat a sympathetic glance, which seemed to be at least a little appreciated.

“What?” added Tai, frustrated, her arms folding. “What is it I’m not getting here?”

“Fuck you,” spat Nat, as she stormed off.

“Hey, we’re not done here-” Tai called after her, stopping as Van interrupted her.

“We are,” she said simply.

“What is it you two communicated back there?” Tai demanded, rounding on her. “What’s going around I don’t know about?”

Van just met her gaze coolly and waited a moment for Tai to chill. 

“Sorry,” Tai sighed. “It’s just so frustrating. We can’t have this kind of thing out here, where one bad day can end a life.”

“Yeah, I think she’s aware of that,” Van told her. “What was her fight with Mari just about?”

“That she had gone missing,” Tai answered, thinking back. “That she hadn’t found food, that she didn’t appreciate the Wilderness enough? What is it you’re getting at?”

“You saw where it was going though,” Van reminded her. “And that was the first real talk anyone’s had with her since, y’know.”

Since we ate Jackie, Tai thought with a grimace. Van saw the understanding on her face and continued.

“You saw what she was like back when Jackie died. I think it’s just all come back to her.”

Tai sighed. “So now she’s going to be lashing out at people for no reason for a few weeks again. Great.”

“Don’t be hard on her,” Van said softly. “We’re not exactly blameless for all that.”

“You told me you didn’t have a problem with what we did,” Tai reminded her. The look she’d seen on Van’s face when they’d watched Jackie’s pyre burn, the way she’d spun and hurried inside the moment others started to, like it was hurting her to watch but she was waiting for unspoken permission to be allowed to leave, all of that was suddenly fresh in Tai’s memory like she was witnessing it for the first time all over again. Van’s eyes hadn’t been dry when they’d settled in to sleep that night but she seemed to have hardened ever since the morning after.

Van met her gaze and something in Tai responded to the hard stare in ways she was definitely going to be thinking about later. “For that? Yeah, I don’t. She was already dead, we’re starving and struggling to survive. I won’t apologise for that.”

“Then-”

“Christ, Tai, yeah, she was already dead when we ate her but her death in the first place was bullshit. It was stupid and cruel and none of us raised a finger to help.”

“Hey, I told them to stop, Jackie ignored me-”

“Jackie would’ve ignored anyone who wasn’t Shauna at that point. But you and I and anyone else with a heart, we could’ve stopped her leaving. Manhandled her, whatever. But we didn’t. And none of us have a good reason for that. You knew your words would be useless, I could see it on your face when you tried.”

“I thought it’d blow over by morning,” Tai protested. “Nobody thought it was going to snow-”

Van turned her face roughly, giving Tai a full view of the scars that ran jagged across the side of her face. “Yeah ‘cos that’s the only danger with sleeping outside,” Van remarked, the sarcasm dripping from her words so tangibly that Tai almost expected it to melt the snow at her feet. Van turned back to face her. “You saw the way everyone’s mind was turning in there. Sending her out was a banishment, a death sentence, and we all knew it.”

Tai stood silent for a moment. She was unable to meet Van’s eyes, which burned like she was daring Tai to challenge her, to try again and justify why Jackie’s death was okay. Tai had spent two months carefully constructing arguments in her head to hold the guilt at bay and Van was shooting them down like they were nothing. She had only one left and she knew it didn’t hold up, knew she shouldn’t even try, it’d only make things worse if she did-

“She left you for dead on the plane,” Tai blurted out, instantly regretting it.

“Yeah ‘cos that situation would’ve been so different if it was you and me and Jackie was the one stuck,” Van blazed at her. “Yeah, I was pissed at that, and I had a right to be. But I couldn’t keep that up for long, not once I thought about if the situation was different, and especially not when Jackie was beating herself up over it plenty enough for both of us.”

“Van-”

“And then she saved my life from that propeller. So that should make us even, according to whatever fucked-up favour-based morality system you’ve got for yourself there.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“And even if that hadn’t happened, even ignoring everything before then. Jackie was one of the best people we knew, upset about the messed up shit we did at Doomcoming, upset more about a fight with her girlfriend and to be honest, even if it wasn’t for all that? We just don’t let people go outside to die, Taissa!”

Van stopped, staring at Tai expectantly, waiting for some kind of attempt at rational counterargument. In her head though, Tai had nothing. As if acting independently and sensing her trouble, Tai’s mouth acted seemingly of its own accord, latching onto the one thing in Van’s tirade that she felt could maybe be accurately countered.

“Shauna wasn’t her girlfriend,” Tai said weakly, her brain desperately willing her face to shut up, four words too late.

Van scoffed in disbelief and stormed off, leaving Tai alone. With the walls she’d built up against it so thoroughly dismantled, the guilt she’d just barely been managing to stave off rushed in all at once. Not just over not doing more two months ago, but also over the fact she had tried to justify it to herself, to Van.

Tai took a few short steps forward and leaned her hand on the tree Van had stood against, as if expecting it to comfort her. She felt a tear forming in the corner of her eye and looked up to the sky, stopping it from spilling onto the ground like that would’ve been the worst thing she could do.

She stayed like that for a short while before standing up straight again, having successfully fought back her tears. She drew in a long breath and was about to head inside when she noticed something. Or someone, rather, their knee poking around the corner of the cabin as they sat there cross-legged. Not the same side of the cabin Tai had come down, or that Nat and Van had left by, so they wouldn’t have seen her before. And their conversation was heated enough that none of them had really noticed an errant knee a short distance away.

Tai walked over to the seated Yellowjacket and looked down at them.

“Hey, Shauna,” she tried as a casual greeting, her voice trying but failing to hide how upset she was right then. Shauna didn’t look up.

“So, how much of that did you, uh,” Tai began to ask and then Shauna did look up at her, letting Tai see a much less successful fight against tears. Shit. She’d probably been out here since before Nat got back.

She sat down beside Shauna, letting herself lean back against the cabin wall. She had no idea what was going through Shauna’s head right now or if she’d even want her comfort. She hoped she hadn’t blown things with her best friend too.

But when Tai hesitantly opened her arms, Shauna responded immediately. The two girls held each other like that for a little while, each a solid anchor for the other in the storm that was currently their lives.

Shauna wasn’t in the cabin and hardly anyone glanced her way, so taking a few shirts and pairs of shorts from Jackie’s luggage that Shauna kept by her sleeping space went over easier than Nat had thought it might. She stuffed them under her own clothes, trying to spread them out just enough that she didn’t look unnaturally padded. It was a difficult thing to do subtly but she managed, finding herself fortunate that no-one had come into the pantry.

By the time Nat was finished and was re-entering the main room of the cabin, Van had returned, pissed at something and with Tai nowhere in sight. As much as everyone else here scared her these days, she hoped she had nothing to do with that. Van’s eyes met hers and Nat gave her a small nod. A brief pause followed and Van gave her an almost-imperceptible nod back. 

Well, maybe there was one person she could trust in here after all.

Other than Ben, she supposed, but trying to get anything out of him these days was like pulling teeth, especially in the last week. Nat was aware that she wasn’t much easier to talk to at the moment but with Ben, it seemed… different. If he died in his sleep, she wasn’t sure even he’d notice.

Nat sat and waited for Travis to return, silently staring at the wall. Mari’s mouth began to open but Van shot her a glare immediately and she thought better of it. She returned to whatever hushed conversation she was having with Akilah and Gen, while Melissa simply slumped lazily next to Gen. Lottie sat by the window, staring off into space. Crystal and Misty were glued to each other’s side in a corner, giggling about God-knows-what.

As Tai and Shauna returned, a little while later, Nat took the opportunity to head out, deciding it was better to wait for Travis outside than to have the conversation she wanted inside, where anyone might hear. Tai held the door open for her but Nat didn’t meet her gaze, let alone acknowledge the gesture. She simply went outside, sat on the front steps and waited.

Jackie Taylor was easily bored.

She had enough sense to her that she figured she probably shouldn’t leave the bunker and go wandering about the nearby area, trusting a sense of direction she didn’t possess to find her way back. So Jackie took a little tour of the bunker instead.

A door. Four stairs. One moderately-sized room. Well, that was quick.

She tried counting her bones but lost count several times. Jackie also wasn’t one hundred percent about whether some counted as one bone or were actually two separate ones that were just really close together. She briefly considered, assuming she made it back to civilisation one day, actually learning science and anatomy before deciding that the idea of her focusing on studying science was the most unrealistic thing about her current situation.

Nat had told Jackie, just before leaving that morning, that she probably wouldn’t be back today. She’d have to talk to Travis to keep him quiet, probably have to explain her own overnight disappearance and she likely wouldn’t have time to go out again today just to get all the way up to the bunker and then head all the way back. Jackie knew there’d be a lot more days like this, where she’d have to occupy herself alone, though she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to face her first quite so immediately.

She was so lucky to have Nat, she thought. A real friend out here, who she could trust and who had helped her. Her faith in the concept of friendship was a little shaky right now, but Nat was doing a good job at steadying it.

Jackie frowned, mentally. All things considered, Nat was being pretty fucking amazing. She’d always been a good person and friend, someone you could count on to do the right thing, which is why it had stung that one time she’d been too busy screwing Travis to hunt when they were all hungry, when they’d all needed food, when Shauna had needed food- No, not her right now. Busy. Thinking. About literally anyone or anything else, ideally.

Was a walking, talking skeleton really so mundane that Nat was so unbothered by it?

Wait, hell, why wasn’t she more bothered by it?

Jackie looked at her hands again, taking in the bony digits. She’d freaked out at first, she remembered, but that was more about still being alive (for a given value of “alive”) than about the fact she was operating a skeletal body. Some kind of supernatural force had strung her bones together and returned her consciousness to its original venue and she was just pissed about the fact it meant she’d have to keep on going in a world where she was hated by-, someone. No-one in particular. Anyway.

Jackie thought really hard about it all. Really turned over in her head the idea that she was a skeleton now, examining the concept from every angle. She could feel herself slowly approaching the point of distress but as she neared it, she just backed away from it again.

It was like there was a voice in her head, one that was familiar but that she couldn’t quite place, soothing her and comforting her and letting her know everything was okay. Jackie felt she could relax in the warmth of that voice all day.

She knew then that however it was she’d come back, it’d been with help. Someone had cared enough to help her back to the world, and to do it in a way that would help stop her and anyone who saw her from going totally and irreversibly nuts over it.

Yay. So she had two friends.

Though that still didn’t quite fill the hole left by-

Jackie jumped up to a standing position, ready to busy herself. Maybe she wasn’t going to go insane from just thinking about how she was a skeleton but, as degrees of insanity went, she was pretty sure that whatever she’d potentially get from that wouldn’t even come close to what she’d get from sitting in a bunker for days on end with her at the edges of every thought.

She ran her hands over the walls, feeling for grooves or ridges, anything even mildly interesting. She frowned in her head again as she found something almost immediately. Some kind of shape was carved faintly into the back wall, completely unnoticed earlier but now that she knew it was there, she could kind of make it out. It was large, covering most of the wall in its lines.

There was a triangle as part of it, Jackie was pretty certain. She felt along the edges and found a bit more, lines that came out from the sides of the triangle. Odd. There was a circle up here near the top and some kind of curve, a hook, extending from the base…

Jackie stepped back suddenly, as if she’d been zapped, once she realised what it was. She backed up against the front wall, the one that was interrupted by the small stairway, and just stared at the symbol covering the back of the bunker. 

She’d never been as unsettled by the symbol as some of the others had but something in it scared her now. The comforting blanket wrapped around the core of her mind, put there by some caring hand, seemed to recoil at the sight of it.

“So glad you’re joining us.”

Jackie’s gaze whipped from where it had been fixed to the wall, over to a corner, where a figure she couldn’t quite make out seemed to be coalescing out of the dim shadows. He was a man, and his hair was short, but no other details seemed to be clear, as if he denied light itself. He was leaning against the wall as he smiled and Jackie felt ice clutch at her heart.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” he said and stood up straight, no longer leaning.

Jackie’s back slid slowly down the wall as the man took a few steps toward her, covering the length of the room easily. She flinched away, but nothing happened. 

He was gone. Jackie sighed. He hadn’t ever been there. Just a bad memory.

She shivered. Maybe being back wasn’t so bad if it meant staying out of reach of him.

“What the fuck do you want me to say, Natalie?” Travis demanded, keeping his voice quiet as if Nat hadn’t directed him down to the lake to talk precisely because she knew no-one was around down there. “I know what I saw. You saw it too.”

“We’re just starving, Travis,” Nat muttered, burying her hands under her armpits. “Sometimes we just see shit out here.”

“The same shit?” Travis retorted. “And it’s not like we were just talking about skeletons or we had bones on the mind.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nat spat, turning to look back out over the frozen lake.

Travis sighed and let the silence between them grow a little. 

“I…” he said at last, slowly. “I think about it too.”

“There you go then,” said Nat flatly. “We both were thinking about it, we both hallucinated it. End of story.”

“Nat, I know what I saw.”

“Then why won’t you tell the others?” Nat asked quickly, whipping back to face him and seizing upon his sudden hesitation. “It’s ‘cos it sounds as ridiculous as it is.”

“Nat-”

“Let’s just keep quiet about it, huh,” she instructed, turning to head back to the cabin.

“Lottie might believe us,” Travis said quietly, offering up the option carefully.

Nat stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder. “There’s nothing to believe.”

“It just doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Yeah no shit the freaky starvation-induced hallucination was a little unsettling. Now come on.”

This time, Nat did not turn back; she just continued walking straight on back, an impatient set to her shoulders. Travis sighed and followed. He hadn’t really intended to tell Lottie. He wasn’t sure he’d be believed anyway but on top of that, if it was something Lottie should know about, he had faith that she would, with or without him.

No, he’d just been looking for a sign, any sign, from Nat that she didn’t really believe what she was saying, that they actually had seen a genuine walking skeleton out there. He’d never admit it but he trusted Nat’s senses more than his own and if she was genuinely certain this wasn’t anything, there was a part of him that trusted that.

Travis still couldn’t shake what he’d seen from his mind, though. It had seemed so real, so detailed, so tangible, even as he’d felt some kind of comforting presence within his head convincing him it was fine. His brain’s efforts to stop him going truly insane, perhaps. He shook his head, as if he could physically dislodge the thought.

Unable to, he opened the box in his head that he stuffed everything he didn’t want to think about anymore into, everything he tried to bury so it wouldn’t consume him. The box was filling up pretty quick out here.

The skeleton hallucination he wasn’t sure was actually a hallucination fit neatly in-between retrieving his dad’s ring and the pang he’d used to feel watching the girls his dad coached bonding and laughing together. Hurriedly, Travis dismissed these thoughts as best he could, and went back to normal which, for him, meant acting like the box at all worked and that all these things weren’t constantly plaguing the edges of his mind.

The next morning, Nat and Travis weren’t the only ones up so early. There was Lottie, of course, there to bless them for the hunt, hoping to keep them safe. Nat might usually roll her eyes or sigh or affect some other expression of her disdain or apathy for the proceedings but today, she accepted it graciously, if hurriedly. If Travis noticed his hunting partner was acting unusually, he didn’t let it show.

They headed out. A fourth person who was awake at this ungodly hour, already wrapped up in her warmest outfit, started for the door a little bit after them before making eye contact with Lottie, who sat by the window.

Van froze, unsure what to do, when Lottie nodded and Van let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Van nodded back, and headed outside. She’s not sure what she would’ve done if Lottie had done anything else.

She’d seen Nat yesterday, after the half-assed confrontation attempt. She’d caught a glimpse of one of Jackie’s shirts peeking out from under Nat’s clothes and heard Nat curse under her breath as she’d tucked it back in. It hadn’t taken Van long to put two and two together after Shauna had started panicking quietly about some missing clothes from Jackie’s luggage and Nat had subtly made sure to always have someone else in-between her and the crazed brunette. She was just observant like that.

Originally, Van had just wanted to talk to Nat, to get closer to her while she was currently pissed at Tai and Nat was the only other person who seemed to be operating on a level she could understand, at least about certain Jackie-shaped topics. And with generally-unsuccessful hunting trips being how she spent most of her days, this seemed to be the best way to spend some time with her, following her secretly as Nat initially would definitely refuse her company but planning to get closer once they were far enough way that it’d just be stupid to send her back so she might as well stick around.

She also wanted to ask about the whole stealing-Jackie’s-clothes thing. As she’d waited for Nat and Travis to leave, she’d spotted a few more flashes of Jackie’s clothes poking out from under Nat’s, disturbed by the blonde’s ever-restless sleep. If it was just some kind of coping mechanism or similar, she could understand that. If it was for some… weird reason, she supposed she couldn’t judge anyone out here too harshly. Either way, Van was curious and it’s not like she could get easy answers for most of the other things she was curious about out here.

Now, though, she was curious about a little more than just that. Nat and Travis had separated after a brief discussion which only confirmed to Van that Travis’ goal out here was more about looking for his brother than hunting. Presumably, they’d meet back at this point after some time, which suited Van just fine. It was Nat she wanted to talk to anyway; Travis being there would just make it more awkward. Once he was out of sight, Van picked up the pace a little, trying to catch up to Nat.

She should’ve caught up by now, except Nat was also moving pretty quick. She was distracted, focused on something other than hunting. She was making a beeline for the nearest mountain, not looking around for animal tracks or whatever it was a hunter was meant to do, or else Van was sure she would’ve been spotted by now.

Even when Nat broke the treeline and was striding through open snow, she still didn’t notice Van carefully trailing behind her. She started to catch up a little more now, with Nat having to struggle a little through the snow and Van taking advantage of the path through it that she made.

It was as Nat made her way up the mountain a little and approached a nondescript steel door that looked like it had been designed to not be noticed by casual passers-by that Van was noticed. Nat was inches away from grasping the door handle when she suddenly whipped around, rifle immediately at the ready. Van froze, wondering what kind of sixth sense she’d triggered.

“Go,” Nat commanded, keeping her voice quiet. Her voice carried no emotion but her eyes betrayed panic.

“What have you got in there?” asked Van carefully, not making any sudden movements but still ignoring Nat’s demand.

“Nothing worth seeing,” Nat told her. “Just go.”

“Nat? Is that you?” came a voice from behind the door.

Van recognised that voice. But, it… couldn’t be. 

“What is this?” she asked, trying to race through possibilities in her head. But nothing she could come up with would match up with what she’d heard just a moment ago. As if to ram the point home, the voice called out again.

“Nat?”

Nat let out a sigh, one that held an air of defeat to it. “Shit,” she muttered, lowering the gun, Van immediately pushing past her. 

She had a hand on the door handle when Nat gripped her shoulder. Van turned her head to look at Nat.

“Please, just,” Nat swallowed, an imploring look in her eyes. “Just don’t freak out.”

Van could make no promises but some instinct in her told her she could trust Nat. She nodded and Nat let go of her shoulder.

“There’s someone else with me,” Nat warned out loud to the mountain bunker’s resident. “She’s okay.”

At that last remark, she gave Van a much harder look than before and Van remembered how she’d held her ground pointing a gun at Tai and Shauna, which she knew Nat would never do unless it was for the sake of something serious. This was a big thing Nat was letting her in on (especially if her ears were to be believed) and she didn’t want to let her down. She took in a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Four stairs led down into a modestly-sized undecorated room with walls of stone. Light seemed to drift in from somewhere but Van wasn’t sure where. Her attention was a little occupied.

Near the back, a skeleton stood in the corner, facing her. A skeleton. Stood. In the corner.

It acted like it was a work-averse student in a classroom, trying to avoid the teacher’s attention by hiding behind her classmates, but here there was no-one and nothing to hide behind. The skeleton gave her a shy little wave.

“Hi,” greeted the bones of Jackie Taylor, nervously.

Van’s mind shrugged and gave up as Nat gently pushed her down the stairs and followed her in, closing the door behind them.

Chapter Text

Jackie Taylor was eighteen years old, starving in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and her heart already mostly unraveled, when she finally and completely fell apart. A moment of hope quickly became a moment of terror and Jackie Taylor died.

For most people, that would be the end of their story. But, Laura Lee mused as she peered through the window of this simulacrum of the cabin and watched Jackie’s eyes widen as realisation set in, a lot of the normal rules didn’t seem to hold out here.

The illusions of Jackie’s friends began to flicker and fade. Laura Lee watched a copy of her own face disappear and found it mildly disconcerting.

The fake Lottie was one of the last to go. Laura Lee could’ve sworn it glanced straight at her before it, too, was gone, taking a piece of her heart with it. Laura Lee hadn’t seen Lottie since the day she’d tried to fly the plane and this tantalising glimpse of what Lottie must look like now was almost too much for her to bear.

Jackie looked to the fake Shauna and whimpered as it, too, disappeared. The hot chocolate in her hands vanished, leaving her grasping at air. She shivered as the blanket around her was gone soon after and collapsed to the ground in a heap as the chair beneath her abandoned her like everyone and everything else had.

Cabin Guy remained, a smile dancing across his lips. “You’re gonna love it here,” he said mockingly as he walked slowly toward Laura Lee’s terrified former captain.

Laura Lee chose this moment to burst in, sending the door almost flying off its hinges with the force of the determination she’d summoned to herself. Cabin Guy immediately scowled and hissed at her, repulsed by some power Laura Lee knew she possessed here but did not really understand.

Jackie looked at her distrustfully, unsure what to believe. Laura Lee ignored the look and grabbed her by the hand, pulling Jackie to her feet.

“Run,” she instructed simply. They ran.

Laura Lee felt a rush of satisfaction at the inhuman roar of frustration she heard from behind them. She didn’t know what that monster wanted but was certain it wasn’t anything good. Ducking around hazy shadows of trees that didn’t seem quite there, the pair of them eventually stopped in a clearing.

Jackie’s eyes were still wide and, as Laura Lee let go of her hand, she dropped to the ground. Leaning her back against a tree, she put her head in her hands and it wasn’t long before Laura Lee heard her start to cry.

Laura Lee knelt in front of Jackie and gently took hold of her hands, pulling them away from her face. Jackie looked up at her and sniffed.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Where am I?”

Laura Lee hesitated, not so sure she had all the answers herself but unwilling to admit as much to someone who now found themself so dependent on her.

So Laura Lee simply swept her up in a hug, which was gratefully reciprocated.

“You’re safe now,” she told the girl in her arms with a conviction she didn’t feel and something in Jackie’s head latched onto that. “You’re safe with me.”

They stayed that way for a long while, Jackie finding some small peace in the embrace and Laura Lee happy to give it.

The three girls sat cross-legged across from each other, the points of an invisible triangle. Jackie’s clothes hung off her skeletal frame, used to dealing with a bit more meat than their current occupier was providing them. Still, they helped, and Jackie seemed to like having them and that was the important thing.

Van couldn’t take her eyes off Jackie. Her brain had felt surprisingly willing to just accept the whole skeleton idea, as if there was a voice in her head assuring her it was fine, but she was still getting over the fact that here in front of her was Jackie Taylor.

She’d yet to say anything, just sat down to collect her thoughts as Nat pulled Jackie’s clothes from under her own and Jackie put some on, putting the rest in a small pile by the corner. The two of them had exchanged a few words and then sat by Van, waiting for her to say something. Nat cleared her throat awkwardly and Van drew in a breath.

“How?” she asked.

Jackie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she replied. “After… the fight, I went to sleep outside and woke up as bones in the plane wreckage. And then Nat found me.”

She stretched out a bony hand to Nat, who took it as if it were a precious gift. Nat shuffled a little closer, so that their hands could rest, joined with interlocking fingers, on the floor.

“I can’t help any more than that,” Jackie added, apologetically. “I know it’s been two months and I know a bear ate my body and I have no idea if any of that factors into anything. What?”

The question was a response to Van’s eyebrows, which had shot up at the bear mention. “A bear…?” she repeated, hesitantly.

Jackie bowed her head a little, her gaze fixed on the floor. “Nat told me,” she said quietly. “I know you guys don’t like to talk about it so, I know. You’re spared having to break it to me.”

Van looked to Nat, whose pleading eyes were begging her to not correct this. She seemed more desperate than Van had ever seen her.

But Van had never been one for shying away from a harsh truth. She took a deep breath and was about to speak when Jackie got in first.

“I can feel it, I think,” Jackie told her, softly, as if saying it too loudly might cause the ceiling to cave in. She raised her free hand to gently rub, almost unconsciously, at a spot on her cheek where Van vividly remembered savagely tearing off a loose bit of flesh, ripping it off the bone to satisfy her hunger. Van’s words died in her throat.

Nat smiled. It looked forced to Van but Jackie didn’t notice. “What about the massages in Heaven idea?” she asked, raising Jackie’s hand to kiss it. “You said you didn’t know what that feeling was.”

A sad smile entered Jackie’s voice as she snorted with fond derision. “That sounds nice,” she replied, lifting her head. “But I doubt it. I’ve had a day to think about it and what I keep coming back to is that it’s the bear I’m feeling.”

“Does it hurt?” Van blurted out. Nat shot her a look of warning but Jackie just tilted her head lightly in curiosity, probably unaware she even did it.

“Well, it’s not fun,” Jackie admitted after a moment, shrugging. “But it’s just a small ache. I’ll get used to it.”

There was silence for a moment before Jackie added without thinking: “It’s not the worst feeling I have right now, anyway.”

Van and Nat shared a glance. “If it’s not that,” Nat said slowly. “Then what is?”

Jackie opened her jaw to speak, before clamping it shut again and repeating this a couple more times. She bowed her head once again. “Shauna hates me,” she said, finally. 

Van could see Nat had heard the words before but also that the familiarity didn’t make them any easier to hear. She could see something in Nat’s eyes, some mix of guilt and anger that looked like it might consume her if she let it. Van recognised it. She felt it too, her last conversation with Tai adding large helpings of frustration as fuel to the blend.

Jackie wasn’t looking at anything but the floor so didn’t notice the flames in the eyes of her friends, fully submerged as she was in a self-constructed vat of negative feelings the others knew she couldn’t be easily helped out of. “And she’s right to,” she continued.

“Hey,” Nat interjected, gently yet firmly raising Jackie’s head with her free hand so she could look directly into the empty eye sockets. “Hey hey hey, no. None of that.”

Jackie broke her skull free of the grip, looking first at Van, then at the wall in front of her. “I ruined her life,” she added simply, like she was reminding them of something they should already know. “I loved her but didn’t let her live, not really. At least now she’s free of me.”

“You loved her?” Van prompted with the air of a scientist on the verge of confirming a years-old theory, but not that excited about it, so confident that they were right that it felt more like wrapping up a loose end than making any kind of new discovery.

Nat rolled her eyes but Van knew she was just as curious what the response to this would be. Nat looked slightly wounded as Jackie withdrew her hand so she could wrap both arms around herself.

“Yeah,” Jackie admitted out loud at last. She detached one arm from herself just briefly enough to gesture to Van. “Like, like you guys. You and Tai.”

Van decided to leave that particular potential avenue of conversation alone for the moment, still unsure exactly how pissed at her girlfriend she currently was. Just getting Jackie to acknowledge this openly at all, even if just to two friends in an isolated bunker, was a major breakthrough.

Nat smiled, a more genuine effort than her last. “It’s nice to hear you say that, Taylor,” she said. “I thought you never would.”

Jackie looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

Van grinned. “Well, I’ve been thinking it for a long time.”

“You haven’t,” Jackie replied, shocked, as she whipped her head round to stare at Van.

“Remember when we were kids and Deb told us some girls love other girls?” Van reminded her. “And then a week later, you drew your idea of a happy marriage which just so happened to include a familiar brunette?”

Jackie was silent for a moment, before: “That could’ve been anyone,” she said quietly. “That was a stick figure.”

“It could’ve been,” Nat admitted. “But it wasn’t, was it?”

Jackie didn’t respond to that one.

“I gotta say, I was surprised you got together with Jeff,” Van told her. “But then I saw your face whenever your mom was gushing about how proud she was of you bagging such a prize boyfriend. We’ve known each other since we were kids, Jack. I know what it looks like when you’re not really happy.”

Nat cursed under her breath, never happy with anything she learned about Jackie’s mother. Neither of them anticipated Jackie’s next words.

“I kissed her that day.”

Now it was Van’s turn to tilt her head with curiosity. “What?”

“The day I,” Jackie swallowed, somehow, forcing her way through the sentence. “The day I got with Jeff. The day my mom forced him onto me.”

“Jackie, that was your birthday,” Van said slowly as she recalled it from a few years back, a familiar simmering feeling rising. “I remember that, you told us the next day that you and Sadecki were a couple. You were fifteen.”

“I couldn’t stand it all,” Jackie explained. “And I ran to Shauna’s and in the heat of all the emotions or whatever, I kissed her. And it felt good, until it felt wrong and I ran away. I thought she just didn’t care about it ‘cos she never mentioned it again but she wrote about it in her journal. She thinks about it all the time and she hates me for it.”

Nat was frozen, not moving a muscle except to send a glare in the direction of the far-off cabin.

“It felt wrong?” Van repeated Jackie’s words back at her, well aware this was the third time just in this conversation she’d done this. Jackie instinctively brushed the bone right beside her right eye socket. It didn’t reflect on her skeleton but Van immediately recognised the location of the faint scar she’d always wondered about but never been totally sure of.

“I’m not homophobic,” she said hurriedly, with a conviction that had Van rolling her eyes. “I genuinely do love you and Tai and I was really hoping Lottie would work up the courage to ask out Laura Lee when she was asking us for advice last year.”

“Jackie,” Van said slowly. “I wasn’t going to accuse you of being homophobic.”

“Oh. Good.”

“But what did you mean, it felt wrong?”

Jackie shifted a little. “Just something my mother said once,” she said quietly. “I’m not meant to be like that.”

“Fuck her,” Nat stated, very matter-of-factly. Van just nodded. “Live your life your way. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you different.”

“It’s not that easy,” Jackie insisted, shaking her head. “I needed to be what she needed me to be or else…”

“Or else what?” Nat pushed.

“You don’t get it,” said Jackie, her voice raising. “If I let myself love Shauna, I’d be hurt. And hey would you look at that? I kissed her and loved her and I fucking died and you know what? I deserved it.”

No-one quite knew what to say to that.

“I’m sorry, Jackie,” Van said quietly. “You shouldn’t have died.”

“You didn’t do that.”

“I could’ve helped you.”

“Why didn’t you?” Nat interjected, looking at Van fiercely. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you regret it and all, but why didn’t you help? You of all people should’ve understood the risks of sleeping outside.”

“Nat…”

“She’s right, Jackie,” Van sighed. “And I have turned this over in my head a lot the last couple months.”

“Well?” Nat prompted.

“I was afraid.”

“Of who? Shauna?”

“Lottie.”

Nat blinked. “What was she doing?”

“Nothing,” Van replied. “Nothing at all. She was so calm, like it was nothing to her. Doing anything would’ve felt like… interfering with something.”

“That’s some bullshit,” Nat snorted.

“Nat!” Jackie reprimanded but Van interrupted her.

“She’s right,” Van said again. “I don’t have a good reason for letting you die, Jackie.”

“I left you,” Jackie reminded her. “On the plane. I left you for dead.”

“Don’t. I’ve been down that road in my head already and there’s nothing you can say to me Tai hasn’t tried to say already.”

“Van,” Jackie said firmly, looking straight at her. “You are not to blame, none of you are. You didn’t push me out there, you didn’t let the fire go out. I did that. You could go on forever thinking about if you had done this or that, but at the end of the day, you didn’t kill me.”

Van didn’t meet her gaze and Jackie let it drop, wrapping her arms around herself again.

“How long have you known?” Nat asked quietly.

“What?”

“How you felt about Shauna. Did you figure this out when you kissed her or since you came back or what?”

Jackie looked at the floor for a long moment. Van wasn’t sure if Jackie would even answer.

Nat was drawing in a breath to say something else when: “Always,” Jackie said simply. “I’ve known for sure I was gay since the kiss but I think I’ve loved her and known it for… well, always.”

Van and Nat glanced at each other.

They had to leave before long, with it being a not-insignificant walk back just to the point where Nat was meant to meet back up with Travis, let alone all the way back to the cabin.

Few words were spoken on the trek. Not much was really needed, only an exchange of confirmations of what they both knew.

Shauna definitely had reciprocated Jackie’s intense feelings but by God those emotions had gotten warped in her head. Jackie had died because of it once already and no matter what Shauna might say now about needing her back, Van and Nat agreed, more immediately than they’d ever agreed on anything before, that Shauna would just hurt Jackie again if she found out she was back.

They were already not going to tell the team at large, a group who’d already driven Jackie out even before she’d come back looking like a Halloween decoration. Not even Lottie, who Van was sure would have the answers they wondered about regarding how this had happened but that Nat wasn’t sure wouldn’t immediately call for Jackie’s destruction. Not even Tai, who Nat thought might be the most reasonable about not treating Jackie like a freak but that Van wasn’t sure would get why this had to remain a secret, especially from her.

Because above all that, a golden rule hung in pride of place between them. No matter what else might happen, they absolutely could not let Shauna find out. Desperate desire to make up for past mistakes no-one else blamed them for channelled its way into a determination to protect Jackie in this second chance and it was clear to both of them that Shauna discovering Jackie was still around, even in this state, was the fastest way to fuck that up.

So Nat and Van were on the same page when they arrived at the rendezvous, an explanation for the latter’s presence already prepared (really just the truth but without the whole Jackie part in there). Van received her second shock of the day when they noticed Travis wasn’t alone.

Travis wasn’t totally sure what to think of Nat right now. She’d shown him a piece of Javi’s bloody clothing scarcely a week ago but Lottie had just reinforced the part of him that refused to accept that. And there was the whole skeleton thing which, again, part of him refused to accept her hallucination theory even though, this time, he really wanted to believe her.

All of this, everything out here, it was a lot. Travis could practically feel the Wilderness expertly deconstructing every wall he’d built up around himself but behind all those walls, he wasn’t sure what he’d find. He’d built them so long ago they’d just become part of him and whatever was being held back by them at the core of his being was like some whole other self to the one he’d been trudging through life as all this time. It scared him. 

Out here, and without his father, Travis’ usual grips on what he was sure his life was were absent. Whenever he was alone with only his thoughts for company, he began to feel that, without those grips, he’d be drifting helplessly, unable to do anything but try and untangle the complicated mess at his center. And he’d really rather do anything other than that.

Unfortunately for him, he was finding himself alone more and more often these days. It was the inevitable clash of his desire to find his brother and Nat’s obligation to hunting so Travis felt he only really had himself to blame for it, but still, he couldn’t help himself. With whatever he had with Nat in danger of fraying at the edges, and with Lottie scaring him almost as much as she was a comfort, he really needed his brother.

Travis paused in the snow, leaning against a tree to catch his breath.

When he was very young, Travis’ mother had given him a picture book. He didn’t remember much detail, or even what name was on the cover. But it was about a young girl named Isabella who, through the power of sheer determination, was able to do pretty much anything she set her mind to. His mother had joked that she looked kind of like him and he’d said nothing in response, simply nodding.

He’d gotten really attached to this book apparently, to the point of carrying it everywhere. Not a fan of this, his father had discarded it and just watched in disapproval as Travis had cried and turned the house upside down looking for it. 

His mother had filled him in on some of this in the years since but Travis didn’t really remember it very clearly. He did remember Isabella though, seemingly woven securely into the fabric of his soul. He would never tell anyone this but even as he’d grown up and become One Of The Guys, Isabella had remained. Her persevering spirit became the source of his strength, a warden against ever totally giving up on anything important. 

Now, as he stood against a tree, Travis drew on that strength once again, channelling Isabella as he privately had a thousand times before. He exhaled, ready to search a hundred more miles if that was what it took to find Javi, and took a step forward.

Only it didn’t seem to land quite right.

The patch of snow before him was deeper than it looked and he found himself tumbling into a small depression in the land. He waved his arms around frantically, which didn’t help. The last thing to go through his head before he smashed it against an exposed rock was a silent admission that Nat’s story of why she went missing a couple days ago really ought to have taught him a lesson in looking where he was going but honestly, if it happened to Nat, it wasn’t that bad a mistake, right, like really it could just about happen to anyone-

Travis woke up with a start. It seemed he hadn’t been out for long, maybe a few minutes at most. He stood up slowly, wincing at the stabbing pain in his head and the newfound soreness in his legs.

“Hi,” said a voice. It rang with something familiar but even if it wasn’t for the headache, he wasn’t sure he could place it.

Travis turned, looking up, and saw a woman standing right by where he’d fallen. If he had to guess, he’d say she was Spanish, and about his age. She could easily pass for a Martinez cousin, with her face bearing a unique but familiar something that he’d seen in his father, his brother and his mirror. Hell, if she’d been introduced to him as a long-lost sister, he could see how he might believe it.

She also seemed to him to be beautiful. He wasn’t sure what it was, he’d seen plenty of girls with brown eyes and long dark hair, but there was just something to her he couldn’t pinpoint. He didn’t think she was hot, per se, but just genuinely lovely to look at in the same way he’d used to pretend in front of his friends that a sunset wasn’t. He felt not quite attraction, but some kind of longing for her he couldn’t explain.

She wore white robes and a golden circlet rested delicately on her head. She squatted down at the top of the depression he’d fallen into and reached out to him.

“Need a hand?” she asked.

Travis shook his head, wanting to accept her help but some irrational fear holding him back. He started trying to climb up by himself but his efforts were quickly frustrated as he simply couldn’t find a handhold. He succeeded only in causing more snow to fall in.

“Who even are you?” he asked, as he hissed in frustration.

“Oh, I don’t think we have time to unpack all of that,” she replied with a faint smile, withdrawing her hand. “Just call me Isabella.”

“Isabella,” he repeated, in a disbelieving tone. He was pretty sure this wasn’t real somehow but the ache in his head made it difficult to draw any definite conclusions. 

“Isabella,” the woman affirmed again, her faint smile growing into a grin. “It’s a good name. I know you like it. Come on, lemme help you up.”

Isabella’s hand was once again proffered and once again rejected as Travis tried again to somehow force his way out of his predicament. Once again, he failed.

“You’re going to find him, by the way,” Isabella continued.

“Find who?” Travis asked, as he tried to scramble up the snowbank surrounding him, which seemed impossibly steep.

Isabella rolled her eyes. “Who else are you out here looking for?” she retorted. “And how many people out here go by ‘him’?”

Travis stood, looking her in the eyes, silently demanding she say the name aloud. She rolled her eyes again.

“Javi,” Isabella said, very slowly and deliberately, as if making sure he couldn’t possibly miss either syllable. “You’re going to find Javi. I think the Wilderness had other plans but the Vessel doesn’t have the emotional support she needs right now to really do her thing, so. Plan B. Congrats.”

She delivered a round of awkward applause, such as a kindergarten teacher might give when presenting a gold star to the only kid in the class who hadn’t yet received one, on the final day of the school year. “Yay,” she said, without any real energy.

Travis’ mind latched onto a concept it could at least halfway understand. “So you’re…” he said hesitantly. “You’re from the Wilderness? I’m having a vision right now?”

Isabella cocked her head to the side a little as her face seemed deep in thought. It was a move Travis knew well, something he’d done a lot before he’d hit puberty and suddenly become very self-conscious about all the little ways he moved his body. “Sort of?” she replied at last. “I think? More like now it has a purpose for you, the Wilderness’ attention is on you. It kinda just rattled the drawers in the desk of your mind, so to speak, enough to shake a couple things loose apparently.”

“Things like?” Travis asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Well, me,” Isabella informed him, smiling as she angled her hands underneath her chin like her head was on a pedestal before putting them back down again as she continued. “You bolted me down a long time ago and I get it, I really do, but you can’t just keep withdrawing into yourself. That closet’s awful tight and I don’t want to be found hanging from the rafters in my 40s ‘cos I’d been lonely and so utterly miserable for so long. So now I’m loose, and you aren’t going to just stuff me back in a box. Not when you need my help.”

Isabella reached out her hand again, the faintest hint of tears forming in the corners of her eyes after her little monologue. “Please,” she implored him, even as she struggled to get his name out, as if it sat wrong on her tongue. “Please, Travis, please just take my hand. Take my hand and you’ll find Javi, I promise.”

Something in Travis wanted to, really deeply truly wanted to. He started to extend his hand toward hers, but stopped just before their fingers could touch. 

“That closet?” he asked, repeating her words. “What do you mean by that? I’m not gay.”

Isabella just looked at him, her eyes wide and her expression suddenly unreadable. She looked as if she was holding something back, and on the verge of failing.

“I like girls,” Travis insisted. “I’m a straight guy.”

Isabella suddenly burst out laughing, using the hand she’d extended to him to wipe away the tears that had finally burst their banks, only for them to turn out to be tears of mirth instead of sorrow. “I’m so sorry,” she said, choking out the words when she finally could. 

The look on Travis’ face nearly set her off again. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she repeated, holding her hands out with the palms facing him as if she was trying to placate an angry animal. “You’re so right. You do like girls, I agree.”

“Then what-”

“I’d say don’t worry about it,” Isabella told him as she reached out for him again. “But you really do need to figure this all out. We’re probably not going to talk like this again, so please, do figure it out. Accept me.”

After a moment of hesitation, Travis firmly took her hand in his. “Without you to tell me, how can I?” he asked. “None of this has really made much sense.”

“If you actually think about your feelings for five seconds instead of pretending they’re not there, you’ll put it together,” Isabella promised, insulting him fondly. “I have every faith in you, idiot though you are.”

With impossible strength, Isabella pulled him out of the loose natural pit in one fluid motion, and straight into a hug that Travis found himself returning. Her head rested on his chin and she was crying again though this time, Travis couldn’t tell what emotion they were representing. It seemed like a mixture, with joy, sadness, resolve, exhaustion and relief all blended into one.

“You’ll be okay,” she whispered. “You’ll make it.”

The hug tightened, like she was trying to squeeze him so hard she’d leave an impression on his body. Travis expected it to feel uncomfortable but it oddly didn’t. There was something so right about embracing Isabella, something that made him feel like he could keep doing it forever-

Travis woke up suddenly, bolting upright as someone shook him roughly. He scrambled to his feet, finding himself getting quickly reaccustomed to the various aches and sores in his body that had faded away during the dream without him noticing. His head ached hard and his immediate feeling was one of frustration at being disturbed from the first moment in a long time that he’d actually felt content, pushing down any surprise he may have felt that he was somehow at the top of the depression in the snow that he’d knocked himself out falling into. Whoever had shaken him backed up quickly and he spun to glare in the direction of the swift movement.

“Who-,” he began, only to freeze as he found himself staring into the eyes of his brother.

Javi froze too, uncertainty and fear filling his face.

They stood there for a short while, the only change coming from Travis as he slowly relaxed his posture.

“Hey,” he said, giving a little wave. “Did you… were you worried I was dead?”

Javi hesitated. After a second, he nodded, his eyes wide. He looked ready to bolt any moment.

“Where’ve you been?” Travis asked. He received no response.

Travis felt some uncertainty of his own seeping in. “It’s okay,” he told him. “You don’t have to tell me right away.”

Javi moved but before Travis’ heart could leap into his throat, he noticed Javi was running to him, not away from him. A second later, he found himself hugging his brother tightly.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “It’s okay.”

Largely thanks to the dream he’d just had, Travis knew as certainly as he knew the snow was white that it was the Wilderness that had guided Javi back into his life. He didn’t know why, and felt equally strongly that Isabella would’ve told him if she knew, but he could only imagine it was a kindness. 

He let out a silent prayer of thanks as he continued to hug his brother.

The walk back to the cabin was starting to feel a little awkward.

Van didn’t really know Javi very well but she gave him a smile she hoped was reassuring. Nat hadn’t spoken a word since seeing him, leaving it up to Van to explain her presence though she wasn’t sure Travis was even listening. His attention seemed totally fixed on his brother, making sure he was okay, holding his hand tightly and occasionally whispering to him small comforting words Van felt it best to pretend she couldn’t hear.

Travis had smiled upon seeing Nat and seemingly taken her shock at face value, assuming that’s all there was to it and not thinking about it any deeper. An understandable thing to do, with most of his mind just focusing on Javi. But Van knew Nat well enough now to know when she was simply heaping more guilt into the massive supply she kept herself on.

Nat had found a scrap of Javi’s bloodied clothes, out there in the snow, and so had been the one to “confirm” his death, insisting on it even as Travis seemed unwilling to believe it. Van could only imagine what was going through Nat’s head right now. She hoped Nat could forgive herself; it didn’t seem like Travis was blaming her, and rightly so. It’s not like she had chosen to find that.

“It’s good to see you,” Van said aloud, trying to make things feel less awkward. Nat shot her a look she couldn’t read. “We weren’t really sure if you were, y’know, still around.”

“Nat found a piece of your clothes over that way somewhere,” Travis explained, gesturing where Nat had gone that day as Javi looked up at him. “Bloodstained. I… I almost believed you were really gone then.

Nat was now just looking straight ahead. “I’m glad you’re alright,” she said quietly.

Javi seemed confused about something after that, looking back a few times in the direction Travis had pointed out.

“What is it?” Van asked.

The group stopped walking, as Travis’ eyes scanned over Javi’s clothes. He wore the outfit he’d worn to Doomcoming, with a couple layers of other clothes Van couldn’t identify haphazardly draped over the top. Wherever they were from, they weren’t recognisably his. Something seemed to click for Travis, and he shot Nat a look. She avoided his gaze.

“Those clothes, I don’t know them,” Travis noted, with a sudden lack of emotion. “Is the Doomcoming outfit the only clothes of yours you have?”

Javi hesitated and then nodded. Van could see where this was going now, and she looked to Nat, who suddenly seemed intent on studying the ground beneath them. If the scrap of clothing Nat had found, when she was on her own, hadn’t even been in Javi’s possession these past couple months then…

“Have you even been out that way?” Travis asked, gesturing again toward where Nat had claimed to make her discovery.

Javi shook his head.

“I didn’t want to see you clinging on to false hope,” Nat blurted out, finally raising her sorrowful eyes to meet his accusatory ones.

“It wasn’t false hope,” Travis retorted. “He was alive, I felt it. He is alive!”

“He shouldn’t be!” Nat exclaimed, before lowering her voice as Javi took a step away from her. “I’m sorry, Javi, but I just don’t get it. You’ve been out here for two months, just out in the snow? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Lottie knew it,” Van said quietly, as Nat glared at her.

Travis nodded. “She hasn’t been wrong about anything since we came out here.”

Nat sighed, sensing the brink of a discussion she didn’t want to find herself in again. “Look,” she began, drawing her hands together. “Travis, I’m sorry. I just-”

“Don’t,” he told her, his voice low. With Javi by his side, he walked on, leaving Nat and Van lingering behind. Nat’s eyes were fixed on his retreating back.

Again finding herself in an awkward moment, Van reached out to Nat, placing a hand on her shoulder and drawing the other girl’s attention to her.

“I get it,” Van told her, hoping Nat would accept her support and knowing she wouldn’t be receiving a lot of it from anyone else once Travis got back to the cabin. “I understand why you did it.”

Nat just looked at her for a few seconds and then Van found herself wrapped up in a hug. Nat’s body was shaking as Van returned the embrace.

The two of them had not been super close before the crash, but now they shared something with each other that they didn’t with anyone else, not even with Tai or Travis. Van knew that Nat wasn’t exactly popular with a lot of the other girls and that she was making no moves to change this. Van had already been noticing Nat’s position amongst the group drifting to the edges, tethered mainly just by her skill with the rifle.

She wasn’t sure what the future would hold now, but she knew then and there she was going to spend it supporting Nat, at least enough to keep her going. As they broke off the hug and headed toward the cabin together, Van could see in Nat’s eyes that she was grateful to have her there.

There seemed to be a lot of commotion going on outside the cabin. Travis had found Javi, and everyone was eager to get a good look. Everyone except Coach anyway, who seemed content to rot away in that bed forever despite technically still breathing. 

When someone had asked why Travis still looked pissed about something, he told them and it seemed to get everyone pretty annoyed but for the life of her, Shauna just couldn’t seem to care. She was sure she’d find out what it even was in due course if everyone around her kept on about it. Lottie seemed oddly quiet about the whole thing, even as people started loudly going on about how she was right, and Shauna found herself grateful for small mercies.

She felt like she rested delicately at the very edge of her mind, like a thin length of string about to snap or a dam about to burst. Van and Nat arrived side by side shortly after Travis and the group’s attention immediately turned to them. Mari was gearing up to say something when Shauna headed into the meat shed, away from it all. Nobody seemed to notice except Tai, who might have followed her in to talk to her if her concern about Van hadn’t been eating her up all day and needed resolving right this second.

Shauna settled onto the ground of the shed, pointedly ignoring a spot in the corner that injured her deeply just from how empty it stubbornly continued to be, and pulled a scrap of paper out from the folds of her clothes. It used to reside in a special place in a drawer in her room but she’d always brought it with her when travelling and the trip to Nationals had been no exception. It used to stay carefully tucked away in her luggage but for the past couple of months, it had practically become grafted to her. 

Shauna had been eight years old when she’d received it and she’d spent enough time looking at it that the brightly-coloured image was imprinted onto her brain, a permanent brand on the skin of her soul. It was a wedding of two girls. A brunette in a blue dress and a blonde in a green one whose face she had caressed, both on the page and in her mind, a hundred thousand times at least. There was a crowd too, friends and supporters, but Shauna never paid them much mind as the woman in green demanded her full attention every time. She was a stick figure but was far more valuable and important to Shauna than something like the Mona Lisa could ever dream of being.

As had become almost ritual to her whenever she had a private moment this past week, she clutched the paper to her chest and felt tears begin to build.

“I really need you right now,” Shauna begged to the open air, seemingly to nobody in particular. “Please.”

There was no response.

When Tai found her half an hour later, she’d been crying nearly that whole time.

Chapter Text

“Morning, Jax.”

Jackie stirred, blinking herself awake. She pulled back exquisite covers and yawned as sunlight streamed in through the bedroom windows, illuminating the white walls with the extensive intertwining pink and green flowery patterns.

“I still feel tired,” she grumbled, as she pulled loose strands of hair out of her mouth.

Her wife laughed. “Tough,” she said from the doorway, a smile evident in her voice. “Breakfast is nearly ready.”

Jackie sat up quickly, and looked at the woman she remembered marrying all those years ago. Familiar dark hair came to rest on shoulders she knew intimately, perfectly framing big brown eyes that Jackie knew could order her to walk straight into hell and she’d do it. The woman’s forehead creased ever so slightly as Jackie continued to stare and say nothing.

“Are you feeling alright?” Shauna asked, clear concern driving every word.

A smile found its way to Jackie’s face, as easily as breathing, borne from a lifetime of hiding her true feelings. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just still a bit tired, is all.”

“Are you sure?” Shauna pressed, taking a couple steps into the room.

“I’m sure,” Jackie insisted, pulling herself out of bed on the side closest to Shauna. “I’ll be down for breakfast, just give me a minute.”

They both fell silent for a moment. Jackie took hold of Shauna’s hands.

“I’m fine,” Jackie repeated softly. “I know you were scared, and so was I. But we both saw the results, Shauna. I’m okay.”

Shauna raised Jackie’s hands and gently kissed her knuckles, before looking back into her eyes. It was a gaze that held far more pain and torment than any human should have to endure in a single lifetime, but seasoned with generous helpings of love for the woman in front of her, and relief that things seemed to be going alright now.

“Mom, you should let Mama sleep in,” called a young voice from the hallway outside the bedroom. “I can make sure none of her breakfast goes to waste.”

A fond smile broke out across Shauna’s lips as footsteps could be heard quickly carrying their owner down the stairs and presumably toward the kitchen. Jackie gave her a quick peck on the cheek before turning back to get dressed, as Shauna headed to the doorway again.

“I’m coming down there now, Callie,” she called out. “I better not find you’ve helped yourself to hers already.”

One hand on the doorframe, Shauna looked back. “You’re just a bit tired?”

Jackie nodded. “Just a bit tired,” she said, flashing Shauna another smile. “I’ll be down soon. Go, save my breakfast.”

Shauna rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling back, before she left the room and headed downstairs.

Jackie took stock of herself. It wasn’t even really a lie, was it? She must be just a bit tired, that’s all it could be. There was no good reason she could think of for this feeling of wrongness.

She was where she’d always wanted to be, in a nice house with the woman she loved and a daughter they cherished. They were still close with their friends; Nat had swung by for a chat a couple days ago, they had plans to visit Tai and Van next week, Lottie had called yesterday to tell them about some award her darling Lisa had won that she claimed was due entirely to Laura Lee’s influence-

Jackie frowned as she slowly pulled open the door to the closet. Except, wasn’t Laura Lee supposed to be… away or something?

She pulled a shirt out of the closet and screamed as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Everything about the last few months of her life, her real life, came flooding back in an instant.

Jackie fell to her knees and immediately felt a familiar presence around her, like someone was hugging her and whispering gentle affirmations, that it was okay, that she was okay, that it was still her. They were keeping complete madness at bay but it was proving difficult to combat the shock she was feeling as she stared at her skeletal reflection.

Difficult, but not impossible, as she slowly stood up and prepared to race out of the room downstairs. More than anything, Jackie just wanted to let herself fall into the arms of the woman she loved and let her embrace chase all her worries away.

When she turned around, Shauna was there, looking at her. She didn’t seem to be surprised in the slightest, but the look on her face didn’t carry any love, either. Narrowed eyes threw a glare at Jackie that may as well have been a knife to the chest.

“Get out,” she said firmly.

“Shauna, please,” begged Jackie, her voice beginning to break.

“I don’t want you in my life anymore,” Shauna replied, her voice beginning to raise in volume. “I regret the years you already stole from me. I don’t want you taking up a single extra second of my time.”

Jackie didn’t move. She wasn’t even sure she could. She just stood there, her hands out, staring at Shauna, silently pleading with her. She could feel a familiar twinge in a spot right beside her right eye as part of her accepted she deserved this.

Shauna stepped forward and roughly grabbed Jackie by the shoulders. They suddenly weren’t in a bedroom anymore, but instead were on the edge of a cliff, tall enough that Jackie couldn’t make out the ground below.

“Don’t you get it?” Shauna snarled. “I hate you.”

With a shove, Jackie was falling. She quickly could no longer see Shauna, which was the worst part of it all. If she had to die, let it be looking into Shauna’s eyes, even if they were filled with hate for her. In a manner of speaking, she’d at least been granted that small mercy the first time.

And then Jackie bolted upright in the bunker. Leaning back against a wall, she sat and felt like crying for a while.

She’d thought at first, in the few weeks since she’d come back, that she didn’t dream. But it seemed that idle minds, when given nothing to do for many hours on end, could get cruelly creative.

That was it, Jackie decided. She couldn’t stay cooped up in here, in this one small room. Van and Nat would occasionally let her outside for a bit, never leaving the immediate area and under their very attentive supervision, and she understood why they were so strict about it. But it was the middle of the night, and the apparently-untrustworthy girls she cared so much about would all be asleep, and a fair walk away from here.

Her mind made up, Jackie stood and made her way to the door of the bunker. She took a deep breath, or at least imagined herself doing so, and pulled it open. She didn’t intend to pick a particular direction but her legs instinctively started to carry her toward the cabin.

It had been nearly a month now since Jackie’s flesh had fed the Yellowjackets and about a fortnight since Coach Ben’s had done the same. Tai liked to imagine he didn’t even notice his death, that he’d just slipped away painlessly like they all had predicted he would, but she also couldn’t bring herself to care that much for him and hadn’t for a while. Only Nat seemed to spare him any real concern but even that had dried up of late. That morning, she’d simply left with Van without so much as a peek into his room to check on him.

Taking Van hunting with her was the new normal nowadays. Ever since Javi’s return, Travis had taken him along hunting, just as he always made sure now that his brother was never out of his sight. He also refused to go with Nat. 

Travis would wake each morning, rouse his brother, collect the spear he’d spent a day working on a few weeks ago and set off. Nat kept hold of the rifle but needed a partner with her for safety and so it came to be that Tai’s days would now always begin with Van getting up and climbing down from the attic with barely a word spoken.

It was a miracle she still slept up here at all. Tai stood by her reaction to Van sneaking off without telling her that morning Javi was found but Van hadn’t taken it well. That plus the fight the previous day had put something of a strain on the relationship. The rift only further widened with each day neither of them approached the other to try and repair it. 

For Tai’s part, she badly wanted to but was afraid not knowing what to say. Or worse, knowing exactly what to say only for it to turn out to be the wrong thing and digging her own grave deeper. That had been the problem so far.

So they had a new routine. Van would get up early in the morning and head out with Nat. Tai would go through her day on autopilot, performing whatever chore the cards assigned her and spending time with Shauna, mostly in silence which seemed to be appreciated. Van would eventually return, with Tai usually waiting on the cabin’s front steps by that point. Van would walk straight by her with only a single moment’s hesitation but the hope Tai always felt in that single moment would be enough to power cities.

They still slept with rope binding them together even though she hadn’t gone sleepwalking in weeks. So far, Van hadn’t suggested not bothering with it anymore and Tai would rather die than willingly give up the one spot of intimacy they still shared. So, it was together that they still slept.

Uneasily at least, as tonight, Jackie wasn’t the only Yellowjacket with a nightmare.

Tai dreamed of Van’s broken body lying in a ravine, after an unsuccessful hunt with Nat. Tai couldn’t tell which felt worse, the simple fact that Van had died or the idea that she’d died with this split still unresolved between them. What did she think of Tai in her final moments? Did she think Tai hated her, the same way Van once commented under her breath recently that Jackie must have felt about Shauna as she died?

In the dream, she went to Shauna, the one other person (and really the only one at the moment) that she was so close to out here, only to find Shauna dead too. She’d finally given birth, but it had gone wrong, of course it had, and she hadn’t made it. All during the time Tai was out in the forest moping over Van. Shauna had Lottie with her but of course that hadn’t helped, maybe just maybe, if Tai had been there, she could’ve done something-

She ran out into the woods, some random direction, not thinking, just running. Eventually, she tripped over a root and came crashing down to the ground. Tai picked herself up slowly, stood, and screamed her lungs out.

She screamed about nothing and about everything and about a thousand little things she couldn’t change or take back.

Tai tried to make sure everyone was looked after, she really did, but there was only so much longer she could keep that up out here in this hell. She could practically feel her mind cracking and straining under the pressure.

Her scream ended only when she woke, sitting up suddenly in the attic. Van was immediately awake as well, eyes full of concern.

“Tai?” she asked quickly. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Tai gazed into her eyes for a moment, drinking her in. Van, beside her, real, alive. Tai hugged her, an embrace that was promptly reciprocated, and felt more at peace in that moment than she had in a long time, despite the nightmare she’d just had.

“Nothing,” she mumbled. “Just a bad dream.”

Van kissed her shoulder gently and they stayed in each other’s arms for a while. But they were both exhausted and it was the middle of the night so it wasn’t long before Tai was claimed once again by sleep, though at least this time blessedly dream-free.

Isabella dreamed of her brother’s blood coating the end of her spear and of her willingly, gleefully, driving the weapon into his body. Nat was there too, with the same expression of guilt and clear wish to be able to talk to her that Isabella had gotten used to seeing on her recently in the real world. Despite the death of her brother, it was that look on Nat’s face that caused her the most pain.

Isabella woke up and quickly brought her hands to her face, a new morning ritual for her, the first thing she did immediately after waking up these days. To her disappointment, her hair was still short and her face still felt like a mask that sat wrong on her head but that she couldn’t remove. She wasn’t surprised, she supposed logically, yet still she always held that tiny sliver of hope that she’d magically changed. At least she was herself in her dreams, even the bad ones.

The rest of the dream then made itself known in Isabella’s memory and she looked to Javi, seemingly sleeping peacefully, still wearing ill-fitting clothes he wouldn’t explain the origin of. She insisted to herself that she wouldn’t let anything like that happen to her brother.

But as Isabella settled back down to sleep, she wondered if she would really have the courage. She hadn’t even told anyone the big secret about herself yet, despite figuring it out weeks ago. If she wasn’t even taking care of herself, how could she take care of another?

These thoughts were already a constant companion of hers throughout the day but they didn’t seem content to wait until then, accompanying her now as she drifted out of consciousness.

Nat dreamed of Jackie’s bunker, open and violated. She stood and could only watch in horror as Lottie directed the Yellowjackets to collect the already-dismembered bones, to melt them down in a soup. The nutrition couldn’t go to waste.

“Great, bone broth,” Mari quipped sarcastically, rolling her eyes as she detached teeth from a lifeless jaw and scooped them into a pocket. “I can’t wait.”

Van was the only one standing beside Nat, her own eyes blazing at what they saw. She was about to say something when Tai whisked her away to talk and Nat didn’t see her again. She noticed Shauna, off to the side, holding a rib delicately, almost reverentially. It was the only bone they were letting her keep to herself.

Travis worked with the group, though couldn’t meet Nat’s gaze. She suddenly became aware of a figure standing behind him, tall and gruesomely missing half his face. He shook his messily cross-sectioned head in amusement.

“Never could protect the ones you cared about, could you, Natty?” he asked in a patronising tone as he reached forward and snapped Travis’ neck before Nat could even make a sound. The other Yellowjackets didn’t seem to notice. “Honestly, I don’t know why you even try.”

When Nat woke, she didn’t move. She continued to lay there, staring at the wall and doing her best to think about nothing in particular, until she drifted back to sleep. With the way she constantly tormented herself while she was awake, she barely noticed the difference.

Van dreamed of life after being rescued. Death didn’t touch her but life had other ways of inflicting pain.

She never reconciled with Tai. That was the worst part. She went off for her education and to chase her political ambitions. In her later years, Van thinks she can recall Tai found someone else, a woman named Sally or Samantha or Simone; it was definitely something beginning with S. 

Well then. She hopes they were happy.

She’d been making plans with Nat to smuggle Jackie back to Wiskayok somehow, and have her live with them. She’d hoped the three of them could stay close. Until one day, Nat had disappeared. Under the guise of seeking closure, Van headed back up to the forest they’d once been trapped in and went straight for the bunker, only to find the note Nat and Jackie had left, apologising but explaining why they thought it’d be safer if it was just the two of them in hiding together.

Van never got close to anyone after that, even as life continued roughly dragging her along. Still, death refused to claim her, seeming to find the alternative more amusing. Age wearied her even faster than it did her other traumatised girls from her group but still it wouldn’t end. That was her struggle, her personal hell. She just lived, alone and unloved for decades. She hoped Nat and Jackie were okay.

Van woke with a small gasp in the attic. She remained lying on her side, hoping to not wake Tai again as she resumed breathing normally. She was certain she hadn’t moved but Tai drew her in closer anyway, as if out of some instinct for when the woman she loved was in distress.

She wouldn’t tell her this out loud, not with the divide that currently existed between them, but as she sank into Tai’s embrace, she found that she had never been gladder about anything in her life than she was about having Tai with her right now.

Lottie, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts she distinctly remembered she hadn’t packed for the trip to Nationals, was in the woods. Or at least, an impression of them. Every tree was a little hazy, as if her eyes were unable to adjust to them. It was dark out, yet she was somehow able to see perfectly clearly. She briefly wondered if this was how cats saw the world.

“Lottie.”

Lottie could feel an uncomfortably familiar buzz behind her eyes. This was a dream, she knew. And not just any dream, it’d be one of those Wilderness-influenced dreams that would try to tell her something she’d be obligated to pass on to the team. They’d hang on her every sleep-starved word, ready to interpret the wildest things into every half-remembered detail.

Lottie groaned inwardly, sat down on a stump that flickered slightly and waited for something to happen.

“Lottie!”

She’d been here a few minutes now and still, nothing. Lottie frowned. Normally, it didn’t take this long for her to get a glimpse of a bear or fire or bones or something. Was the shadowy forest itself the message this time? Despite herself, Lottie found herself looking forward to seeing what strained conclusion Mari and the others would somehow draw from this.

Suddenly, she was shoved off the stump from behind, falling to the forest floor in a heap. She slowly turned her head to see what had pushed her when-

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” the words flowed from Laura Lee’s lips like a river, fast and easily and with no sign of slowing down. She was quickly by Lottie’s side, helping her sit up and dusting off her shoulders. “I kept trying your name but you seemed like you couldn’t hear me so I got frustrated and I-”

Lottie’s arms were suddenly around her, and the flood of hurried apologies ceased as Laura Lee buried her face in the other girl’s neck and hair. Lottie mirrored her movement and they held each other like that for a while.

It was Laura Lee who forcibly ended the embrace first, pushing Lottie away and holding her at arm’s length. Lottie let out an unintentional little whine that was not unlike that of a puppy.

“I’m sorry,” Laura Lee said, swallowing as her arms and shoulders trembled. “But I don’t have forever here.”

Lottie sighed as a memory returned, showing itself to her again now she was in the place where it had happened.

“You’ve done this before,” Lottie said, as much to herself as to Laura Lee.

“Just once,” Laura Lee nodded. “A few weeks ago. When I realised I could.”

“You told me Jackie was back.”

“And did you remember afterward?”

Lottie shook her head slowly. “Kind of. Nothing stuck. I knew she was back, but not how I knew.”

Laura Lee let go of Lottie’s shoulders and stood, offering a hand to help pull Lottie up too, which was immediately accepted. “I had to let you know she was coming,” she explained, as they started walking side by side through the trees. “I didn’t know that was something I could do before, but I learned a lot that day.”

“Why couldn’t I remember?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I was panicking and I wasn’t focused enough.”

“Is that how it works?”

“I don’t know!” Laura Lee stopped suddenly and kicked a tree, tears springing to her eyes and making themselves heard in her words. She squatted down and buried her face in her arms. “I don’t know how any of this works.”

Lottie lowered herself beside her and tried to comfort her, placing her hand on Laura Lee’s back and tracing her thumb in circular motions. Laura Lee was beautiful to her, a saint that could probably directly trace her lineage to the Sun and held the balm to every wound; the solution to every problem rested in her eyes. But here, now, Lottie took a mental step back and regarded her objectively.

She was still beautiful. She was still everything to Lottie. But she was also scared. She was just a seventeen-year-old girl. She played soccer because she loved the team. She laughed at Van’s jokes and groaned at Shauna getting pissed off when Jackie didn’t give her enough attention. She sucked at trigonometry, openly loved her teddy bear and secretly loved chocolate wafer sticks.

And she’d tried to save everyone and died for it. So now, as Lottie looked at the crying girl beside her who had leaned her head to the side to rest it on Lottie’s shoulder, she once again felt anger at the Wilderness, at the plane pilots, at her father, at the whole world for letting this happen. Her heart bled for Laura Lee. She would offer it to the Wilderness on a platter in exchange for whatever Laura Lee wanted if she could. In the meantime, she could only do what Laura Lee had tried to do, and keep everyone safe.

“Why did you come to see me this time?” Lottie whispered, trying to both change the subject and give Laura Lee something to focus on.

Laura Lee sniffed and raised her head, looking at Lottie with wide eyes. “It’s Jackie again,” she sighed. “She needs help.”

Lottie frowned. “Where even is Jackie?”

“I thought I told you to look out for her,” Laura Lee said slowly. “Don’t you know?”

Lottie smiled despite herself. “Okay, I did not remember our talk,” she reminded her. “I remembered being sure she was coming and I thought I heard her. But it turned out to be just Travis and then, well, I’ve been doubting myself a lot for months now so…”

“You mixed up Jackie and Isabella?” Laura Lee asked, tilting her head with a teasing glint in her eye.

Lottie’s smile widened, only hampered slightly by the sudden confusion. “It was a good distance away and the alternative was believing a dead girl was back and… Isabella?”

Laura Lee looked away from her. “I don’t think she knows she’s doing it,” she began, every syllable sounding measured and deliberate. “But she finds herself up here occasionally, when she’s asleep. I’ve seen her spirit.”

“So Travis is…” Lottie tried to find the right words to articulate her meaning but she suddenly felt as if all vocabulary had left her. “A girl?”

“It’s Isabella,” Laura Lee corrected her gently. “And yes. I probably shouldn’t be the one to tell you that, but, yeah. She’s a girl.”

“Right,” Lottie nodded, filing that away in a cabinet labelled That’s Neat To Know. “The point is, no, I don’t know where Jackie is, but if that was actually her I was hearing then…”

She trailed off, and Laura Lee looked at her curiously. “What?”

“Nat knows,” Lottie said excitedly. “Nat was there that day, making sure we all kept away from where we heard a scream.”

Carried away in the moment, Lottie stood and started pacing in a small circle. Laura Lee stayed on the ground, and gazed at her fondly as she rambled.

“She convinced us it was nothing,” Lottie continued, the words flowing out of her as soon as her neurons produced them. “She made sure we all left before heading off elsewhere. And then, and then! She was gone all night, with only some bullshit excuse to explain it. Oh my God.”

Laura Lee stood up at that without thinking, as if being physically closer to Lottie would draw more out of her. “What is it?”

“Shauna recognised it too,” Lottie explained, her eyes shining. “If it was Jackie, and I’m sure it was, she’s the one person who definitely would recognise her based off so little.”

“I knew she was away from the cabin,” Laura Lee said. “But I had no idea everyone was so in the dark. Only Nat knows?”

“Yes,” Lottie nodded, but then immediately shook her head. “Wait, no, Van as well. They’ve been spending so much time together lately, especially away from the cabin. Nat likes to act like she doesn’t need anybody but that’s never been her, and for something like this, she would definitely need a friend in the group she can have no secrets with, just to stay sane. And I’d bet anything that’s Van.”

“Anyone else?” Laura Lee teased. “Or does Sherlock think that’s it?”

Lottie rolled her eyes but answered earnestly. “Yeah, that’s it,” Lottie frowned as another thought occurred to her. “How could you tell she’s away from the cabin?”

Lottie didn’t know if Laura Lee could actually feel the cold but the other girl was suddenly wrapping her arms around herself regardless. “I can kind of track her,” she admitted. “There’s some of her still here. She went back but something messed up, like she didn’t go all the way, so there’s some trace of her that hangs around wherever she is in the real world.”

“So where’s she been?” Lottie asked.

“Oh, far over that way,” Laura Lee gestured vaguely to her right. “It’s right next to a big symbol so I can’t really get too near but that was fine ‘cos it meant he couldn’t either.”

Laura Lee shivered at the mention of a mysterious “he” and Lottie fancied she could feel a faint breeze shake all the nearby leaves.

“But she’s left that place now,” Laura Lee continued. “That’s what I meant earlier, about why I came to see you. I don’t know what she’s doing or if she’s with anyone. But if she doesn’t get back there right now, he might find her. It doesn’t matter how much of her lingers here, it’ll be enough for him to find her and take her.”

“How?” Lottie questioned, already willing to do whatever Laura Lee asked of her. “Even if I remember this, how can I find her? I can’t track her like you can.”

“You should remember this time,” Laura Lee said with conviction. “You have to. I am putting so much into this, it has to work.”

At that, Laura Lee flickered for a moment. Lottie immediately reached out to her, but she put her arms back on Lottie’s shoulders, keeping her away just enough to still be able to look into her eyes.

“And I can try and give you the ability to find her, too,” Laura Lee continued, a little less sure of herself on that point but still continuing on. “That’s the secret here. You can do just about anything you set your mind to, as long as you really believe you can.”

Lottie shifted her weight from one foot to the other uneasily. “How are you going to do that to me?” she asked.

Laura Lee blushed suddenly. “There’s probably a hundred different ways to do this but-”

She rushed forward and her lips met Lottie’s. Initial surprise immediately gave way to desire and Lottie found herself eagerly returning the kiss, only to be disappointed that it didn’t last.

Laura Lee didn’t meet her gaze. “Sorry,” she said quietly, apologising but unable to stop herself smiling shyly. “I didn’t ask you, I just… I just always wanted to do that.”

With a hand on Laura Lee’s chin, Lottie gently guided her face up to look into hers, forcing their eyes to meet. “I always wished you would,” she said softly.

Neither of them said anything for a few moments. Lottie was about to back down, to drop her grip and mumble an apology when Laura Lee was on her again with an energy that would’ve very much surprised any of the others.

This was more than a brief peck. Their lips didn’t just meet, they got extremely well-acquainted as they parted for each other. Hands roamed, hesitantly at first but quickly growing in confidence. Laura Lee’s hand was on the hem of Lottie’s shirt when she suddenly pulled away, breathing heavily.

“Jackie,” she managed to get the name out, just barely. She took a few steps back. “Jackie’s in danger.”

Lottie nodded. “Right,” she said, catching her breath. “Right, yeah, Jackie’s in trouble. And I can find her now?”

“Do you, um,” Laura Lee blushed profusely. “Do you feel any different?”

Lottie’s mind felt nearly empty. She almost fancied she could feel fireworks going off inside her. “You could say that,” she said slowly. “Maybe you should try again, just to be sure.”

Immediately, Laura Lee almost did, taking an instinctive step forward, her hands already reaching for Lottie’s face, before smiling nervously and awkwardly clasping her hands together instead. “I’d be forever,” she told her. “But I’ve wasted enough time getting sidetracked. Jackie needs you.”

“Will I see you again?” Lottie blurted out. “And not just when there’s something important to tell me. Will I get to simply see you again?”

Laura Lee didn’t say anything for several agonising seconds before she nodded and Lottie’s heart leapt. She raised a hand to Lottie’s cheek and gave it one delicate stroke. “You will,” she said simply. “I promise.”

And at that, Lottie’s eyes shot open in the cabin. Taking a moment to rub them, she sat up, her mind racing.

She remembered it all. More than just a faint impression, she could remember Laura Lee’s lips on her own, her hand on the back of Laura Lee’s head. Lottie knew that was a memory she’d keep forever.

Oh, and the Jackie thing. 

Lottie groaned out loud, fortunately not waking any of the sleeping girls around her. She loved Jackie just as much as all the rest of them, but damn it if she didn’t have to ruin something great here by being in danger and all. Although, she wasn’t sure if Laura Lee would’ve even come to see her (if she even could have come to see her) without that so she supposed she may as well thank Jackie when she saw her.

Which, it hit her suddenly, was going to be tonight.

Acting as if off some basic instinct, Lottie concentrated and almost startled herself when she got a very definite feeling on where Jackie was. Nothing more than a direction and a sense of distance but it was enough.

Taking care not to wake anyone, she got dressed. She briefly considered taking the gun but decided Nat needed it more than she would. Besides, she doubted whatever was after Jackie would be scared off by a rifle, even if she’d known how to use it.

At the thought of Nat, Lottie also briefly considered bringing people with her. But she reasoned that if Jackie didn’t want the Yellowjackets knowing she was alive, then she would respect that, especially if Nat and Van were respecting it too. With a pang of guilt and a flash of recent memories, she didn’t suppose she could blame Jackie for that.

After packing on all the clothes she needed, Lottie took a deep breath and stepped outside.

Shauna dreamed of her bedroom back home. It was a memory, from what her brain told her was only a few years ago despite the lifetime it felt like.

“And it was awful, Shauna,” Jackie was telling her, finishing off her story as she wiped away a few faint tears, having run straight here from her fancy parents-arranged birthday party. “I thought a kiss was meant to make you feel… good.”

“Maybe,” Shauna said slowly, in a tone that suggested a joke as she tried to lighten Jackie’s mood. “You just need practice.”

She smiled nervously as Jackie looked up at her. “Practice what?” Jackie asked, an unreadable expression dancing across her features. “Kissing?”

“It was just a joke,” Shauna told her hastily, her words spilling out as fast as she could think them as she let out an unnatural-sounding laugh and turned away. “Sorry, I-”

Jackie’s hand was suddenly on her chin. The grip was firm, yet gentle, as she directed Shauna’s face back towards her own. Shauna’s head was empty of thoughts but filled with instinct she didn’t know why she was suppressing as their lips found themselves nearer to each other than they’d ever been. They both took hurried, heavy breaths as Shauna’s body screamed at her to close the gap between them.

Evidently, Jackie’s body was giving her the same message as they moved, as one, toward each other and their lips met. Shauna was fifteen years old but she may as well have been born a moment ago, the way nothing else that had ever happened to her felt like it mattered anymore. She felt like her life began and ended with kissing Jackie Taylor.

The two of them parted for a second, though with their foreheads still pressed together. Shauna spent the time gazing at Jackie as Jackie spent it gazing right back. Jackie’s eyes were full of desire, a real and tangible hunger for her that Shauna knew was mirrored in her own. She could taste Jackie’s strawberry lip gloss on her and it felt good. Jackie tasting of strawberries just made the moment sweeter.

They were on each other again in an instant and however much was still left of the everyday coherent-thinking sentence-forming Shauna Shipman wished she could spend the rest of forever like this.

Their tongues were on the verge of getting formally introduced when the moment came where everything went wrong.

Jackie pulled away suddenly, flinching like she’d been struck. The faint scar by her right eye twitched as she started to cry again.

“What’s wrong?” Shauna asked breathlessly, feeling a deep and profound disappointment at the moment not lasting. She knew, somehow, this was her own doing. “Did I-”

“No,” Jackie reassured her hurriedly, unsuccessfully. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. You never could.”

Shauna’s stomach twisted. “Then what is it?” she demanded. The storm of emotions raging within her came to be dominated by frustration, an all-too-familiar feeling for her.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Jackie babbled tearfully as she stood, the same few words cycling over and over again. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I’m sorry-”

In the memory, Jackie fled from the room, leaving Shauna behind, heartbroken but unable to articulate it.

In the dream, Shauna stopped her.

She stood and grabbed Jackie by the shoulders, forcefully holding her in place.

“What is it?” Shauna demanded again. Jackie only shook her head wordlessly which frustrated Shauna even more. “What’s going on?”

She desperately needed Jackie to say out loud what was happening here, what was it that they had between them, why was Jackie afraid to admit it and how did Shauna simultaneously both deeply know and utterly not understand it?

“Please, Jackie,” she pleaded, with tears of her own forming. “Tell me! What is it?”

“Shauna…” Jackie struggled to get the name out, trying to fight off Shauna’s hands.

Which had now somehow found themselves wrapped around her throat.

Shauna looked into Jackie’s eyes as they filled with palpable terror. She mentally recoiled as she noticed her hands strangling the life out of Jackie but she couldn’t will them away. The sight made Shauna cry even harder, even as she couldn’t stop continuing to kill her.

“What is it, Jackie?” she shouted as Jackie’s eyes fluttered closed. Still, her hands remained around the other girl’s neck, squeezing every last drop of life out of her, despite Shauna’s unheard protests against it.

Suddenly, her hands moved again. They freed Jackie, who slumped to the floor and lay there, unmoving.

“No no no no no no,” the words tumbled out of her so fast they practically blurred into one. She shook Jackie’s body, as if trying to stir her from a simple nap. “Jackie, wake up! Jackie!”

Shauna sobbed uncontrollably as she rocked the corpse she’d created back and forth. “Jackie, wake up!” she begged. She screamed Jackie’s name until her throat felt hoarse.

Nobody was disturbed by Shauna waking up. The sound of her occasionally weeping as she slept was one of the more regular noises that could be heard during the nights out here and the transition into her weeping while awake and lying still was hardly noticeable. Eventually, her mind drifted off to sleep again, returning to the torture chamber in her head she kept herself bound to.

Lottie quickly learned that stumbling through the snow-covered trees in a dream was a lot easier than doing it for real.

The full moon was out and the treetops generously allowed a little of that light to shine between them, illuminating the way for Lottie. She was grateful for it, not knowing if she could manage at all in the pitch black she knew it could’ve been.

Still, even with that natural aid, Lottie found herself tripping over roots and rocks several times. She cursed as she fell, again, and took a moment to collect herself before getting back up.

She was really going to meet Jackie. Dead Jackie. Or not-dead Jackie, whatever. She wasn’t sure how to classify her captain, not sure what state she’d find her in. Laura Lee had mentioned something about her return being “messed up” somehow and for the life of her, Lottie couldn’t begin to guess what that might look like.

As she slowly stood back up and refocused on what direction Jackie was in, Lottie noticed she was by the plane wreckage now. She frowned as something seemed off but she couldn’t quite tell what-

There!

Oh right, the graves.

Oh shit, the graves.

Lottie peered at them. The snow had obscured the signs marking which grave belonged to which corpse, but the ground of one of them had been notably disturbed. She could make out what she thought were animal tracks leading away from it, but she wasn’t enough of an expert to know what kind of animal it had been.

Lottie a year ago might have felt a little sick at the thought. Lottie now simply regarded the sight with a sigh. Ideally, whatever animal it had been would have had more respect for the dead. But she’d been out here long enough by now to know that nature didn’t work like that. With food so scarce, it made sense that the wildlife might get desperate for food from other sources, even less-than-perfect ones.

Besides, she could hardly get mad at the animals in these woods if they decided to eat a dead human. She was many things, but she was no hypocrite.

Continuing on, it wasn’t long before Lottie heard the snap of a twig she was confident hadn’t been her doing. She froze in place.

Whatever it was took another step. It was definitely getting closer. Lottie relaxed a little as she refocused on her newfound Jackie-sense and realised what it must be.

Jackie Taylor, wearing oddly-fitting clothes that Shauna must have been missing for weeks, stepped perfectly into a patch of moonlight and stopped suddenly as she noticed Lottie in front of her.

First and foremost, she was a skeleton, which startled Lottie a lot less than she thought such a thing would. It was as if there was a comforting and familiar voice in her head, assuring her that despite Jackie’s skeletal nature, she was fine, it was all okay. Instantly, she recognised the voice. She felt like she could look at Jackie forever if it meant having Laura Lee in her head all the time.

“Uh,” Jackie spoke first, if ‘uh’ really counted as a word. She gave a little wave. “Hi?”

“Hi, Jackie,” Lottie whispered. The pleasant feeling of seeing her friend again fell away as she remembered why it was she was even dead. She may not have directly participated in that argument, but she sure didn’t help matters either.

As she was trying to figure out what to say next, Jackie sprang forward and gave her a hug, which Lottie instinctively returned.

“Hi,” Jackie said again. Lottie didn’t know what she must have thought of all the cult stuff before she died, or of them eating her. But clearly, at least in this moment, she was just happy to see an old friend and Lottie would’ve been lying if she said she didn’t feel the same, guilt aside.

The wind ruined the tender moment as it began to pick up quickly, threatening to bury them under snow if they didn’t move now. Lottie frowned at the sudden change in the weather and broke off the embrace.

“We should get inside,” she said, as Jackie looked around. “Where’s your place? Is it close?”

“No,” Jackie shook her head. “But I think I saw a tree hollow not too far back. Unless you think we could head for the cabin?”

“Definitely not,” Lottie said firmly, curious why Jackie seemed so suddenly determined to head for the cabin after spending weeks resolutely away but at the same time very certain it wouldn’t be a good place for her to be. “Too far. The hollow it is.”

As the wind increased in intensity, the two girls huddled together as they walked. Lottie had a million questions she wanted to ask but decided they could wait, at least until morning.

All things considered, Lottie Matthews figured she was having a pretty good night.

Chapter Text

Two Weeks Ago

On the first occasion, it had been two months before they’d lit the pyre and received their reward. This go round, they wasted no such time.

Back then, it had been in the name of closure and respect. Now, they said the same but they all knew why they were really doing this. Back then, they hadn’t intended for that result. Now, they definitely did, and badly so.

Their stomachs growled as they hefted Ben Scott’s body onto the heap of wood they’d prepared. Food was running extremely low and they were desperate, just not yet enough to openly admit it.

The Yellowjackets wanted a feast once again. And, as the wind just happened to snuff out the flames at the ideal point for the flesh to be perfectly cooked, the Wilderness gave it to them.

Javi was reluctant but Isabella ensured he gulped down at least as much as she did. There was less guilt on Nat’s face this time and Shauna treated the event with much less reverence. Tai’s face carried the most disgust, her other self having protected her the last time, but she couldn’t deny her hunger for long as Van, with a look of concern, made sure she ate even as she had her own fill. Lottie kept pausing between mouthfuls, looking around at the others to make sure they were having enough.

The meat was all gone faster this time now they were slightly more experienced and most of the Yellowjackets scampered back into the cabin quickly, as if fleeing a crime scene, or perhaps just eager to get out of the cold. Van and Nat were the last to go, standing uncertainly and exchanging meaningful glances over Ben’s bones as if they expected them to get up again.

The hunger wasn’t totally banished, they all knew. But it was once again held at bay.

Someone none of the girls could see watched the proceedings unfold with narrowed eyes that weren’t really there. As Nat closed the cabin door behind her and the gathered teens all settled in to sleep, their unseen visitor shuddered in disgust.

Now

The snow whipped the air around them as they made it to the hollow Jackie had spotted earlier. It was a little more cramped than the bunker but was still a welcome relief from the ferocious weather outside.

There was a bed in here, or at least a rough assortment of fabric that was probably meant to pass for blankets, all bunched up together next to a heap of clothes designed for someone bigger than them. A couple cans of food sat by one end that quickly revealed themselves to be just as spoiled as the cans they’d discovered on their first day in the cabin, all that time ago. And beside those cans lay a couple scraps of meat, barely anything but enough that Lottie would feel guilty about simply having them herself without offering them to the other Yellowjackets first. That is, if they hadn’t caught her attention in a different way first.

“Shauna mentioned someone was stealing meat recently,” she said, tilting her head and frowning at the meat.

“I thought you guys figured that was probably Javi,” Jackie responded as she looked around the hollow.

Lottie looked at her curiously. She shrugged. “Nat and Van don’t tell me a lot,” she added, avoiding Lottie’s gaze. “But they tell me some things. I’m glad he’s alive, by the way. I… didn’t notice he’d gone missing.”

“None of us did,” Lottie told her with a shrug of her own. “Nobody except Nat and Isa-Travis.”

She hesitated for a fraction of a second but if Jackie had noticed the slip, she didn’t say anything. Lottie knew she had to get better at keeping secrets but her head felt so full so often, it was sometimes difficult to remember who should know what.

“We all were pretty busy that night,” Lottie pressed on. “But yeah, after Javi came back, we realised he must’ve been the thief. And he hasn’t left Travis’ sight since then, so…”

She gestured to the meat as Jackie finished the sentence. “This must have been his place,” she concluded. “This is how he survived the snow.”

They fell silent for a second before Jackie piped up again: “What were you doing out there?”

“Looking for you,” Lottie replied simply.

Jackie sat down, leaning her spine against the side of the hollow. “Did Nat… tell you?” she asked after a brief moment. “Did Van?”

Lottie shook her head as she sat down across from Jackie, their outstretched legs meeting in the middle. “No,” she told her. “If they promised you they wouldn’t tell, then they wouldn’t. No, it was Laura Lee.”

Jackie tilted her head to the side and gazed at her with empty sockets. Lottie, used to seeing what people were thinking by looking at the emotions dancing in their eyes, felt a little bit disconcerted as she realised she was seeing right to the back of Jackie’s skull.

“Isn’t Laura Lee… y’know, dead?” Jackie asked, tipping her head back to its normal upright position.

Lottie shrugged again. “Aren’t you?”

“Fair enough,” Jackie said, crossing her arms over her chest and going silent again. She may not have had a face to read but Lottie could practically hear the cogs in her head turning as she carefully selected her next words. “So… is Laura Lee also… back?”

“Not like you,” Lottie told her, running a hand through her hair after some of it had fallen over her face. Jackie watched the motion with the faintest hint of palpable jealousy. “But she can talk to me in my dreams.”

“Ah,” said Jackie, giving that explanation a few polite nods. “But, why only now? How long have you known?”

Lottie opened her mouth to answer immediately but decided a simpler answer was better than the complexity that encased the whole truth. “She only visited me tonight,” she told Jackie. “We caught up, she told me about you and that I had to find you.”

Something about the way Lottie said those words must have caught Jackie’s attention as she tilted her head again and spoke with a hint of faint amusement. “You caught up?” she clarified with a voice that carried a fond smile.

Lottie blushed and turned her head to look anywhere but at Jackie. “Yeah, we, y’know,” Lottie seemed to have trouble finding what to say. “Talked and stuff.”

“And stuff?” Jackie teased further. “Did you finally tell her how you feel?”

The memory of last year, when Lottie asked a few of her fellow Yellowjackets for help asking Laura Lee out on a date before she’d gotten cold feet at the last moment, suddenly flashed before Lottie’s eyes.

“I should never have told you about that,” she groaned, her face in her hands.

Jackie laughed as she got up and moved to sit beside Lottie. “Hey,” she said, serious again, putting a bony hand on Lottie’s shoulder. “I’m really happy for you.”

It was moments like this when Lottie remembered why Jackie deserved her spot as captain. She genuinely did care about them. They might not all be what her universe revolved around quite as much as Shauna was, but the girls on this team really did mean the world to her. 

It was moments like this when Lottie felt guilty again, as if she was back watching the door slam behind Jackie that one fateful night and not doing a damn thing about it.

“Thanks, Jackie,” she said softly, resting her head on her captain’s shoulder, grateful to be talking to someone who didn’t hang reverentially on her every word.

“She talked about you a lot, you know,” Jackie told her delicately. “Laura Lee. I told Nat I didn’t really remember anything and it was true then, but it’s been coming back to me. And a lot of it is her being hung up on you.”

Lottie blinked. The kiss Laura Lee had initiated, the kiss she’d followed up by telling Lottie she’d always wanted to do that, played on repeat behind her eyes. “Yeah, we uh,” Lottie began as she turned her head so she was face-down on Jackie’s shoulder to hide the sudden blush in her cheeks, resting her forehead on the bone. “We had a little talk about that. I think we’re kind of girlfriends now.”

Jackie laughed lightly, careful not to shake or move in any way that might cause Lottie discomfort. “Congrats, Lot,” she said, in a voice tinged with real joy. Lottie hadn’t heard it from her in a long time.

Lottie sat back up suddenly as she remembered part of the conversation with Laura Lee that hadn’t been the kiss. “She also mentioned some kind of… bad guy,” she said warily, uncertain what to expect.

Jackie’s mirth evaporated in an instant. “I don’t remember a lot about him,” she said slowly. “But I don’t think there really was a lot to remember.”

“Who is he?” Lottie asked. Jackie paused, collecting her thoughts.

“You remember the body we found in the attic?”

Lottie shivered and nodded.

“Well,” Jackie continued with a shudder of her own, turning to face Lottie and leaning in slightly. “You were right to be scared of him. What did Laura Lee say about him?”

“Just that wherever you were before was next to a big symbol,” Lottie told her. “And that meant that you being there kept you safe from him. But once you left, it meant he could get near you. And, um, get you.”

“He can get me here?” The sudden fear in Jackie’s voice was practically a tangible thing. “How?”

“Laura Lee said when you came back, you didn’t come back all the way or something. There’s a tiny bit of you that you… left behind. And he can track that.”

“Then I have to go,” Jackie said determinedly, standing up.

“But the snow-”

“It doesn’t matter. If I’m only safe from him in that bunker, then that’s where I’m staying.”

“How big is the symbol there?” Lottie asked curiously.

“Pretty big, why?”

“Is it as big as this one?” Lottie responded, gesturing to the floor.

The symbol had been carved into the ground here, taking up all the available space. Jackie jumped back a second when she noticed it, as if it were electrified.

“Yeah,” Jackie told her hesitantly. “Yeah, this size feels about right.”

“I think we’ll be fine here then,” Lottie hummed as Jackie slowly sat back down next to her. “We can head for the bunker when the weather’s nicer. I hope it’s roomier than this hollow.”

“Just about,” Jackie said distractedly.

Lottie yawned and rested her head on Jackie’s shoulder again. “That’s settled then,” she decided as she settled back in to sleep. “And I’m tired anyway. Goodnight, Jackie. I really do love seeing you again.”

Jackie moved to kiss the top of her head but succeeded only in sort of pressing her teeth up against Lottie’s hair. Lottie smiled a little in appreciation but the reminder of another little thing she couldn’t do anymore just made Jackie want to scream.

Jackie put her arm around Lottie as she drifted off. “Goodnight, Lottie,” she said softly, pretending it was just like when they were nine, having a sleepover while the Matthews were away on a business trip, falling asleep hugging each other after they’d stayed up way too late staring out the window at the rain. Just thinking about the simpler time almost made her want to cry. “And ditto.”

They slipped into unconsciousness together as just for a short time, they both could forget their current worries.

The hunters and their partners were all used to getting up early by now. Everyone else, not so much. 

So there were more than a few annoyed grumbles and groans when Nat woke them all up, banging the butt of the rifle against the wall. Van wondered how much she was enjoying the opportunity to bother them with something they couldn’t deny they should be bothered with.

“What is it?” moaned Mari as she lamented the loss of her precious sleeping hours. “This better be important.”

“Lottie’s missing,” Nat told them, looking Mari straight in the eyes as if devoting significant telepathic effort to making her shut up.

Worried whispers filled the cabin immediately. If it was perhaps anyone else, many of them might have just settled back to sleep again. But this was Lottie. They needed her.

“Where is she?” Mari asked, glancing around at the other girls like Lottie might just appear from behind one of them.

Van rolled her eyes. “If we knew that, she wouldn’t be missing,” she responded, her feelings of annoyance with Mari granting her a brief reprieve from her worry over Lottie.

Tai appeared in the door of the pantry, having finished climbing down the ladder. She made eye contact with Van but Van found her gaze unreadable and looked away. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the possibility that Tai might be communicating some negative feeling about her, or the fact that Van didn’t know her well enough anymore to be able to tell.

“Did she say anything to any of you recently?” Nat was asking the crowd. “Any hints like ‘I’m planning to sneak out to the lake tonight’?”

The mass of murmurs that made up the collective reply sounded pretty negative. No-one wanted to be the one to loudly declare they couldn’t help or potentially talk over someone who could.

“She hasn’t left the area around the cabin recently,” Tai piped up. “And it’s not like she has chores that might take her elsewhere.”

Mari rounded on her. “She doesn’t have to, she already does enough for us-”

“I wasn’t arguing that,” Tai told her, raising her hands in a placating gesture. “Just pointing out, she’s not left the immediate area in months, nor has she even had any reason to.”

“Reason to,” Melissa repeated softly as a thought struck her, faintly blushing as attention switched over to her. Gen nestled closer to her protectively as she elaborated. “What if she has reason to now?”

“Well obviously she had a reason,” Nat sighed. “She got properly dressed and everything, there must be some kind of reason she went outside.”

“No, I mean,” Melissa paused as she considered how to articulate her meaning properly. “What if Lottie received a reason she was needed outside?”

“As in, by the Wilderness?” Gen asked for the sake of clarification. “The Wilderness needs her somewhere?”

“Maybe,” Melissa shrugged. The other newly-awakened girls exchanged looks as they considered it. Nat covered her hands with her face. Van couldn’t see whatever facial expression Nat was wearing but she could make a pretty good guess.

“But…” Mari protested weakly. “But we need her.”

“If the Wilderness wants her for something…,” Yumi said slowly. “Who are we to stand in the way of that?”

Van could read Tai well enough to know she was barely holding back a few choice scathing remarks. Nat carefully removed her hands from her face and held them out by her sides, palms facing the floor and eyes shut. She took a deep breath before bringing her hands together with a single clap and opening her eyes again.

“Okay,” Nat began carefully. “Well now you all know. So you won’t be surprised when you wake up later and see we’ve gone out looking for her.”

Crystal raised her hand. Nat looked at her expectantly before it hit her that Crystal was seriously waiting to be verbally acknowledged.

“Yes, Crystal?” Nat asked the uplifted hand in a tone indicating she did not have nearly enough patience for this. The hand was lowered.

“But if it is the Wilderness calling her out for something, shouldn’t we just let her come back on her own?” Crystal asked, with the same air she might have about her as if she was asking her teacher a question about the homework. Misty nodded along encouragingly.

“But what if it’s not?” Travis retorted, his first words of the morning. “What if she needs help?”

Nat flashed him a grateful look for the support before answering Crystal herself. “Bottom line is, we are going out there,” she informed the group in no uncertain terms. “We’re going to look for her.”

“If the Wilderness wants us to find her, we will,” Van added. “If it doesn’t, we won’t.”

General assent spread through the assembled Yellowjackets. Nat sighed in something like relief as she turned to the others in the little hunters group.

“We ready?” she asked them. Van and Javi nodded but Travis put a firm hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“Not today, Javi,” he told him. Van’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Javi looked at Travis in confusion, casting a single nervous glance over his shoulder at the other Yellowjackets.

“We just really don’t know where Lottie is,” Travis said. “But we can’t come back without her and I don’t know how long we might be.”

Javi still looked on the verge of stubbornly coming along. “You’ll be safer here,” Travis added. “And at least you’ll be fed, even if it’s only a scrap.”

Travis looked around the room, as most of the girls resigned themselves to getting up for the day, before leaning down and whispering directly into Javi’s ear so only the four gathered here could possibly hear him.

“Help with a chore,” Travis murmured quietly. “Be useful.”

Finally, Javi nodded. Travis nodded back as he picked up his spear, which had been leaning against the doorframe. Nat was looking at him like she was reappraising him.

Van looked over her shoulder and saw Tai gazing right at her. This time, her expression was easier to read, her eyes full of concern, her body language indicating she wanted to come over and hug her but that she was holding herself back. With a heavy heart, Van simply nodded awkwardly at her before looking back to the pair she’d be going out there with.

“You have your map?” Van asked and Nat nodded, patting a pocket.

“Right here,” she affirmed. 

Before Ben had stopped responding to the world, he and Nat had worked on the map together across multiple sheets of paper but she’d recently copied it to a single sizable page that could be folded up and carried with her. It was very handy.

Nat had offered to make another copy for Travis but he’d declined, saying he’d memorised the larger original. He did indeed seem to spend a lot of time looking curiously at it, but Van noticed his attention only ever seemed to be on one small section of it.

“Well then,” Van said now, letting out a long breath. “No time like the present.”

Javi not going with them felt like an itch on her back she just couldn’t scratch but Isabella remained sure she’d made the right call. She kept glancing back at the cabin until it was out of sight, to the point where Nat had started to give her concerned looks each time.

They’d decided to head to the plane wreckage first, being the nearest landmark they all knew that wasn’t the lake. Beyond that, they didn’t really have a clue where to go. Ideally, they would just happen to stumble across Lottie by that point but none of them really expected that.

They hadn’t come across any signs of life by the time they reached the wreckage (unsurprisingly, as it seemed the weather had acted up during the night, covering up any tracks that might have been made) and they stopped to discuss their next move. Before such discussion could begin however, all three of them noticed something amiss, some slight discrepancy in the land around them that Isabella couldn’t quite put her finger on.

It was Nat who approached the graves first, the ones they’d made for those who had died in the initial crash. They were all covered in a blanket of new snow and the markers they’d made to indicate whose body was in each one had been damaged or knocked over by harsh weather. Isabella could no longer read the writing scratched into each one so couldn’t tell which grave it was that Nat bent over now, gently brushing away the snow to reveal unmistakably disturbed ground.

Van swore. It looked like an animal had been digging at it, and recently. Isabella shivered, more at the thought that even the animals were as desperate as they were than at the cold.

“At least this means there’s still active wildlife around,” Isabella offered, the only thing she could think of to say which was helpful.

Nat glanced at her and Van in turn before nodding. “If we find it, we’ll bring it back,” she said slowly, one hand unconsciously reaching back just to feel the rifle. “Same as ever. But today, the priority is Lottie. Whatever this was, we can’t track it.”

“We can’t track Lottie either,” Van pointed out. “It’s not like she left breadcrumbs to follow.”

“Which brings us back to the point,” Nat sighed. “I think we should split up.”

“We’re already missing one person,” Van protested. “We can’t lose another out here.”

“There is somewhere I want to check out,” Isabella said quietly. Van and Nat both turned to her and she shrank a little under the attention before composing herself. “Javi pointed it out on Ben’s map. I think it’s where he was staying after Doomcoming.”

“Where?” asked Nat, already pulling out her copy of the map and unfolding it.

Isabella pointed it out and Nat seemed to consider it thoughtfully.

“Why haven’t you gone before now?” Van asked. “With him?”

“Because I brought up that idea just once,” Isabella told her. “And he seemed dead against it. But it’s presumably got shelter and he’s not with me to protest it now so I think it’s worth checking out.”

“You think Lottie might have just stumbled across it, out of all the random spots in these woods?” Van challenged.

“Travis is right,” Nat said as Isabella tried to ignore the feeling that gripped her for just a second as Nat used the only name for her that she knew, a feeling like a beetle was roaming under the skin of her cheek. “It’s a better option than wandering aimlessly.”

“If the Wilderness saved Javi with that place, it might have saved her too,” Isabella added. 

Nat shot her a look she couldn’t read. Isabella knew Nat hadn’t taken to believing in the Wilderness the way she, Van, Mari and others had but her attitude toward there being some kind of… something out there with them certainly had changed in the last few weeks.

“That makes sense,” Van sighed.

Nobody moved.

“So, are we going or not?” Isabella asked, unable to discern why Nat and Van were hesitating as the two girls shared a look.

“We’ll meet you there,” Nat told her. “But there’s somewhere else I want to check out first.”

“Where?”

“Just out that way.” Nat gestured vaguely toward the nearest mountain. Van gave her a strange look as she tried to figure out what to say. “I just have a feeling.”

Isabella didn’t know what to say to that for a moment. Her first instinct was to protest, that it made more sense to at least make for a spot where they knew there was something and Van had a point about not splitting up. Except…

Lottie had had all sorts of feelings since they came out here, and they all turned out to mean something. Isabella herself had had an unshakeable feeling Javi was still alive against all odds and he was. She knew that several of the other girls had feelings about things occasionally, which kept turning out to be accurate.

Sometimes, she could swear she practically felt some kind of guiding hand around them, directing them this way or that. If Nat had a feeling like this now, Isabella felt she could trust that, or at least give it a chance.

Nat seemed about to draw breath to try another tack at convincing her but Isabella cut her off. “I’ll meet you there,” she said and watched as Nat’s eyes expressed relief.

They began to part ways, Isabella watching the pair start to leave, when Nat turned and dashed back to her. She looked nervous about something and the guilt that had become her trademark had resumed its usual task of dominating her features. In a flash, Isabella remembered the anger she was meant to be feeling over her part in trying to convince her Javi was dead, briefly forgotten in the early-morning scramble as they’d found Lottie was missing and set out on their expedition.

Except she’d been turning it over and over in her head and had forgiven Nat for it weeks ago already. It wasn’t anger, but fear that had kept her from just talking to Nat for all this time. Fear that if she began to talk to Nat, began to open up, then she wouldn’t stop. She’d let things slip. And then what would happen?

Isabella wasn’t a fool. She knew she wasn’t popular among the Yellowjackets. They didn’t properly accept her as one of their own and the response she’d witnessed to people like her back out there in the world beyond these woods was enough to convince her the girls here would accept her even less than they did already.

She could trust Nat with a lot. But just the mere fragment of a chance that, upon learning who Isabella really was, she might turn away in disgust was enough to frighten her to death.

It occurred to Isabella only now that Nat hadn’t been privy to her fears. From her perspective, she must have just been angry about the Javi thing. She knew Nat well enough to know that had probably eaten away at her every time Isabella had turned away from her without a word or refused to be alone with her. Oh, God.

Nat threw her arms around Isabella now. “I’m sorry,” she said simply, her voice slightly muffled against Isabella’s shoulder. “I know it was about Lottie but these are the most words we’ve spoken to each other for a while and I just wanted to say that while I could.”

Isabella said nothing, internally reeling as the full weight of what she’d unintentionally put Nat through landed on her. Nat started to pull her arms away reluctantly, taking her silence for something else, before Isabella surprised her by returning the hug.

“I forgave you weeks ago, Nat,” she said, giving the other girl her second surprise of the minute.

“Then…” Nat looked up at her as she tried to put things together. Her eyes were so wide and devoid of malice that it took everything Isabella had to not let herself drown in them. “Then why?”

Fuck it.

“There’s something I’ve been afraid to tell you,” Isabella began before drawing in a breath, unsure how to continue. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Van keeping a respectful distance but clearly able to hear them both. Van was regarding her with an expression that, for once, seemed to betray no trace of contempt for the person she’d thought was nothing more than a misogynistic asshole who’d creepily skirted around the edges of some of their practices. If anything, it seemed Van was considering she just might have more to her than what she’d always tried so hard to portray on her surface.

Well, such progress was certainly nice but Isabella did not have quite the same bond with her as she did with Nat.

“What is it?” Nat asked softly. “You can trust me.”

Isabella decided that she could. Words drawn from her own subconscious about how she couldn’t stay closeted and miserable forever floated to the top of her mind and with all of her resolve, she pushed down her earlier misgivings.

“After we find Lottie, I’ll tell you,” Isabella promised, wrapping a glove-covered pinky finger around Nat’s own. “I swear. I don’t want to keep anything secret from you anymore. I trust you.”

Something seemed to strike Nat’s thoughts at that. She looked guilty anew for a moment before closing her eyes and exhaling. She seemed to mentally take a leap before opening them again and replying.

“After we find Lottie,” Nat repeated back at her. “No more secrets. I trust you.”

Van’s eyebrows were raised but she said nothing to interrupt the moment. Isabella and Nat embraced tightly.

“Meet you at Javi’s spot,” Isabella said to the both of them after letting go.

“See you there,” Nat agreed, smiling faintly and sending her a loose mock salute.

The group of three split and continued their search, feeling a little more optimistic on average about their future.

“Also,” added Crystal, leaning in. “Young Kevorkian was kind of hot.”

“I know, right?” Misty said excitedly as the pair of them burst into a fit of giggles.

“What are you two dorks dorking on about?” Mari interjected as she approached, holding the playing cards in her hands and wearing an expression of mock interest on her face. Crystal seemed about to genuinely answer her when she continued, clarifying how much she actually cared. “Actually, don’t answer that. Just pick your chore.”

Feeling mildly dejected at the reminder of the casual cruelty to which both she and Misty were often subjected, Crystal selected a card from the splayed array Mari held out.

“Again?” she whined as she saw her result. It was as if the Wilderness had decided emptying the toilet bucket was to be her sacred purpose in life.

Mari giggled and Misty had a feeling she knew the real reason Crystal just happened to keep drawing this card. A flash of anger was gone as instantly as it appeared. “It’s okay,” she said, smiling affectionately at her friend. “I’ll help you carry the bucket.”

“Really?” Crystal looked back toward her, eyes shining.

“Mhmm,” Misty nodded.

“Thanks, bestie,” Crystal said softly. They smiled at each other, once again wrapped up in a world that was all their own.

“Ooookay,” Mari said under her breath, moving on from them quickly as if trying to avoid a contagion.

“Let’s get started,” Misty said brightly, standing up and starting to move toward where the bucket sat in a shadowy corner. Crystal stood up with her, the two girls walking hand in hand.

“What, now?”

“The sooner we do it, the sooner it’ll be done.”

They collected the bucket and soon were out the door. Among the misery and despair that often permeated the cabin, Misty was happy to finally have someone she could really be close to.

“Are you really gonna tell him?”

They weren’t far from the bunker now when Nat stopped and turned, regarding Van coolly. “Yes,” she said simply, before turning back round and continuing on.

It was clear she wanted to move on from the topic. Unfortunately for her, Van didn’t.

“Are you sure you can trust him?” she asked, in an uncertain tone. Before Nat could snap back something pithy, she continued on. “I’ll admit I might have misjudged him earlier on but… I thought we weren’t going to tell anyone.”

Silence followed her statement. It was only for about a minute but the way that minute stretched in Van’s head, it put hours to shame.

“I trust him,” Nat said finally. “He trusts me. It’s a leap, but it’s one I’m ready to take. Because so is he. I… I want to be close to him again.”

“Close to him,” Van repeated. “As in…?”

Nat turned her face away from Van, too late to hide the blush that had immediately started to spread across her cheeks. “I really like him, Van,” she told her. “The real him. There were these moments sometimes when we were together, when he wasn’t acting like a guy or a dude or whatever. He’d be more than just someone who had also lost their dad. He’d smile or we’d share an intimate moment or something and I could feel like he was someone I could be comfortable with. He wasn’t a dick, not deep down. There’s a real him lying under all that bullshit and that’s someone I want to spend more of my time with.”

She stopped suddenly, as if aware she was rambling, and smiled faintly, embarrassed. Her tone, tinged in wistfulness and affection, put Van in mind of the way she would talk about Tai before their falling out. Or the way Lottie had talked about Laura Lee before the crash. Nat didn’t have a lot out here, none of them really did, but Van was glad it sounded like her friend could have someone who made her smile like this, other than herself and the living skeleton in the mountain.

“I’m not going to pretend I see the value in a man like that,” Van began, clapping a hand on Nat’s back and delivering the words in a way that made sure Nat would know she was joking. Indeed, Nat rolled her eyes fondly at her as she continued. “But it’s awesome you have someone who makes you happy. God knows hardly anyone in that cabin fully trusts anyone else.”

There was silence again, albeit a more amicable one.

“I almost hope you’re right about your feeling,” Van said quietly as a familiar train of thought struck her, one she’d kept quiet from Nat for a while. “That Lottie must’ve found Jackie somehow. That we’ll find her up here.”

Nat whipped her head around to face her as they walked. “How’d the conversation get to there?” she asked. “I trust Travis, I don’t trust Lottie. Not like you do.”

“I’ve started to have doubts,” Van told her. “About what we’re doing with her.”

“Protecting her?” Nat snapped, good mood forgotten.

“I agree she shouldn’t just come back to the cabin or whatever,” Van said, raising her hands slightly as if to pacify a bull that was about to charge. “I don’t trust most of the others and I definitely don’t trust Shauna not to hurt her. But look at what we’re doing instead. We basically keep her locked up in a box in the mountain, alone for most of the time. It’s fucked up.”

“What’s your better option?” Nat growled. “I would go and stay up there with her if it weren’t for you and now Travis keeping me grounded down at the cabin, and if you guys didn’t need me to find food for you.”

Van shrugged in defeat. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I believe Lottie can think of something.”

“I thought we were past this bullshit,” Nat groaned. Van didn’t respond.

No words were exchanged for the rest of the journey. When they arrived at the bunker door, Nat took a deep breath and knocked. There was no reply.

“Jackie?” she called out. Still, nothing.

Van and Nat shared a worried glance and burst in only to find what they were afraid they would. Nat took a few hesitant steps to the middle of the room, as if Jackie might suddenly appear from one of the corners.

“She’s not here,” Van observed from the door in a worried tone.

“Yeah, no shit,” Nat responded under her breath. Her legs were shaking, as if she might topple to the ground at any moment. “And I have no idea where she is.”

“We might not know where,” Van said quietly. “But I’d bet you anything we know who she’s with.”

“We find Lottie,” Nat mumbled. “And we find Jackie.”

She knew Nat didn’t want to believe it but Van had hardly ever felt surer of anything and she was certain Nat felt the same. Nat turned back to look at her and for a moment, Van simply took in the sight of her.

It was as if Nat had been keeping up a front until now but finally just let it drop. Van knew she herself wasn’t much better off but the exhaustion in Nat’s eyes gave the impression she hadn’t slept soundly in a long time. Every hardship she’d ever faced, every struggle that had ever threatened to keep her down, all of it was reflected now in a gaze belonging to someone who had never truly known the meaning of ‘rest’.

Van stepped forward hurriedly with her arms out and Nat fully collapsed into the embrace. She stayed there for a little while, letting the tears flow, as Van rubbed her back in comforting patterns.

Eventually, Nat detached from the hug and Van stepped back, giving her space. She took a deep breath and pulled out the map, unfolding it and holding it so Van could see it. She gestured to a stylised drawing of a tree that looked to Van like any other one.

“That’s where we find where Javi was staying,” Nat said shakily. “It’s probably our best bet now.”

Van nodded. “It’s also where we’ll probably be sleeping tonight,” she pointed out, noting the position of the Sun as Nat folded the map back up and tucked it away. “Assuming there’s shelter there.”

“There’s got to be,” Nat said, her words more confident than her tone. “Javi survived two months out there. And we don’t have another choice, we have to find them.”

Stepping out of the bunker, Nat closed the door behind them before turning to Van and putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. Her eyes still betrayed her exhaustion but there was something more there now; gratitude, deep and sincere, shone through her gaze as she looked at Van.

Van took the hand on her shoulder in her own, holding it and giving it a gentle squeeze. “No worries,” she said with a smile, before adding: “If Travis can really give you even half the support you need, I’ll never say a bad word about him again.”

Nat laughed. Genuine mirth spilled from her lips and Van felt relieved to hear it. It had been a while.

“Never?” Nat challenged, a glint in her eyes.

Van shrugged. “None that I’ll mean,” she said lightly.

Nat smiled and readjusted the rifle over her shoulder, securing it in place. She let out a deep breath.

“Let’s go,” she declared, for her own sake as much as for Van’s.

They fell into step beside each other as they journeyed, headed for Javi’s secret place and, hopefully, Jackie and Lottie.

Laura Lee had insisted they call it a date. Lottie had enthusiastically agreed.

It had only been a few hours since they’d last seen each other but moments after Lottie fell asleep beside Jackie in the hollow, Laura Lee was rushing into her arms like she’d been away for years.

Several kisses later, they were walking hand in hand through the shadowy nightmare woods but with Laura Lee by her side, they didn’t seem so unsettling.

Lottie told her about how she’d found Jackie and Laura Lee had blushed at Jackie being so supportive of them. She confirmed Lottie’s theory that the big symbol in their hollow would keep the threat at bay and agreed that the bunker Jackie had described was probably a better place for her, its size allowing for at least a little more comfort. Apparently, there were several other points in these woods that contained a symbol big enough to serve as a safe space but Laura Lee couldn’t exactly check them out so the hollow and the bunker were the only options they could discuss.

The whole skeleton thing had taken Laura Lee by surprise but she’d quickly adjusted. She didn’t know why or how Jackie’s resurrection had taken the turn it did but she accepted it. Laura Lee also guessed that this mental reassurance Lottie described when looking at Jackie, that stopped her from well and truly losing her mind about it, must have been borne from her own hopes that Jackie would be safe when she left this realm. That’s how everything worked up here, the willpower to believe you can do something often coupled by strong emotion fuelling the desire to do said thing.

After that, they’d just talked about themselves (Laura Lee had described the night Jackie had arrived there and the way she’d saved her by repelling the shadowy man who’d wanted her with a power she hadn’t understood at the time but now did) and what they wanted. Lottie hadn’t felt so at ease in ages when a thought had struck her.

“This place doesn’t exactly look like the afterlife the Bible describes,” she had said uncertainly, not quite sure how to properly get at her point.

“No, it doesn’t,” Laura Lee had agreed, shrugging. “You’re not the first to point that out to me, y’know. Rachel said the same thing.”

“Doesn’t that mess with you?” Lottie had blurted out. Laura Lee had turned to look at her as they both stopped walking.

“I haven’t thought about God much since I got here,” Laura Lee had sheepishly admitted.

“Do you… not believe anymore?” Lottie had asked nervously. Laura Lee had bobbed her head from side to side at that one.

“I do,” she’d said, slowly. “Generally. Not as fervently as I was taught to, growing up. I’m not diving so obsessively into it to escape my true feelings anymore.”

“But, that power of yours,” Lottie had pointed out. “That shield or whatever, what you used to keep Cabin Guy back when you saved Jackie.”

“What about it?”

“You said when you’d finally figured it out, you realised it was powered by your faith.”

Laura Lee had simply looked at her, tilting her head and waiting for the point.

Lottie had swallowed. “If your faith in God isn’t as… all-consuming as it once was, then what-”

Laura Lee had blushed and laughed as it hit her. Lottie had stopped talking immediately.

“The faith that makes me strong isn’t in God, Lottie,” Laura Lee had whispered as she leaned in. Lottie felt like she could hardly breathe as she continued. “I don’t need God. I have you.”

Laura Lee kissed her again at that. 

All things considered, as first dates go, Lottie mentally tallied it up as being one of the best experiences of her whole life. Certainly miles better than any interactions she’d had with the succession of boys her parents had tried to set her up with.

She could still taste Laura Lee as she woke up, blinking slowly. She was still beside Jackie, her head on the other girl’s bony shoulder and Jackie’s arm around her. As Lottie gazed at her, it struck her that she really couldn’t tell if Jackie was awake or if she was essentially just lying against an inanimate skeleton like any other. There were no fluttering eyelids, no rhythmic rising and falling of a chest as it drew breath in and out. She could still accept Jackie for what she was now, but it definitely troubled her a little.

Jackie chose that moment to speak. “Hey,” she said softly, turning her skull to look down at Lottie with disturbingly-empty eye sockets. “You slept in.”

“I had a long night,” Lottie reminded her, yawning and lifting her head off Jackie’s shoulder. “If you were awake, why didn’t you move?”

“You looked like you needed your sleep,” Jackie shrugged. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Thank you,” Lottie said quietly as she stood up. “So did you just… think about stuff?”

“I do that a lot,” Jackie answered. “Mostly about regrets. Mostly about Shau- nobody in particular.”

Lottie decided to let her avoid that one for the moment. “Any particular regrets stand out? Any other people?”

“Travis,” Jackie said simply.

“What about him?” Lottie asked, as if she wasn’t twitching internally at the use of the name she had to remember Jackie didn’t know not to use.

“So, I’m gay,” Jackie remarked, before looking at Lottie as if waiting for a reaction. For her part, Lottie simply raised a solitary eyebrow.

“I’m unsurprised,” she told her, to which Jackie let out a single dry laugh.

“Everyone is,” Jackie noted, with not-insignificant fondness in her voice.

“What’s your point?” Lottie asked, though she was afraid she half-knew what Jackie was driving at.

“I like girls,” Jackie reiterated. “And my one and only experience with outright sex, the loss of my virginity, was with a guy.”

Lottie’s instinct to correct her was intercepted and violently tackled to the ground by her desire to not tell a secret that wasn’t hers. This was becoming seriously unfair.

“I mean, he seemed really sweet and all which is more than I expected after experience with guys like Jeff,” Jackie continued, rambling on at a million miles per hour. “But it was just so underwhelming, which I guess I have to admit is what I expected sex with a man to feel like.”

“Not to question your lesbianism,” Lottie interrupted. “Because I don’t doubt you are one hundred percent gay. But maybe, in those circumstances, sex with anyone would’ve felt underwhelming.”

“What do you mean?” Jackie asked, looking at her curiously.

“Is there a reason you did it on Shauna’s bed?” Lottie challenged, her arms folded as she raised her eyebrow at Jackie again.

Jackie didn’t meet her gaze, looking down at the ground instead. “Does she… does everyone know that?” she asked quietly.

“Everyone knows you did it in the attic,” Lottie pointed out. “And only her bedding got messed up. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, unless you want to try and tell me you mostly did it on the hardwood floor.”

Jackie didn’t say anything to that one. Lottie squatted down next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Look, I know why,” she said gently. “When you put all the pieces together, it adds up. You just had to do it on Shauna’s bed for the same reason she did it with Jeff, the same reason she felt she had to have… Travis and kissed her, him, the moment she knew what you’d done.”

Jackie turned to look at her. “Wait, ‘kissed her’?” she questioned, finally picking up on the latest slip when it became about the implication of Shauna potentially kissing a girl. Lottie just knew that if she had eyes, she’d be narrowing them.

“Slip of the tongue,” Lottie told her, groaning internally. She’d only been awake for mere hours since learning Isabella’s secret and already she’d nearly spilled it about a hundred times. If Isabella didn’t come out to the group soon, Lottie might accidentally do it for her. “The point is, you two want each other. But you both just need to admit it ‘cos every misconception you’ve built about each other is just hurting you. Fuck, it literally killed you, Jackie.”

But Jackie was already shaking her head. “Shauna doesn’t want me,” she said, her voice hollow. She sighed, which Lottie didn’t know she could do. “You’re half right, I do want her. But she only went for Jeff and Travis to get at me, to hurt me. Because I forced her into my shadow for most of her life and she grew to hate me for it which, y’know, I get.”

“Shauna doesn’t hate you,” Lottie frowned.

“You were there for the fight, Lottie,” Jackie reminded her.

“Except I wouldn’t call that a fight,” Lottie shot back. “Fights aren’t usually so one-sided. You weren’t trying to beat her, you were just probing her, trying to gauge how much she hated you.”

“And you saw the result of that!” Jackie cried. “She hates me, Lot. Totally, completely hates me.”

“You just picked a bad time,” Lottie tried to reassure her. “She was confused, and angry at herself, and honestly I have no idea if she even knows she likes girls that way. All her frustration came out at just… the worst possible time that it could have.”

“She let me die out there,” Jackie said. She pointed at herself. “She’s the reason I’m like this right now.”

“It never occurred to her that would happen,” Lottie insisted. “You didn’t see her the next morning, Jackie. It took the better part of a whole fucking day just to pry her off you. She didn’t say a word for a week after that and we thought it might’ve been from her tearing her throat apart screaming your name.”

Jackie went silent again and looked away as she considered the words. Lottie waited for her to be ready.

“I know what I just said,” Jackie said at last, her voice sounding pained. “But I let myself die out there. In a world where Shauna hated me, what was the point?”

Lottie almost rolled her eyes at how hopelessly head over heels Jackie was for Shauna but stayed quiet, and let her continue.

“So… what you just described, that really happened?” she asked, looking to Lottie for her answer.

Lottie nodded.

“I put her through all that,” Jackie noted, sounding on the verge of tears. “One final act that I just had to make all about me and now she’s in all this pain.”

Lottie blinked. She’d underestimated the insane degree to which this girl could blame herself for all of Shauna’s troubles. “You really shouldn’t blame yourself for that,” she said slowly. “But if you are, that means you understand she’s grieving you, right?”

“Yes,” Jackie sniffed mournfully.

“Okay then,” Lottie brought her hands together. “So you should get that she doesn’t hate you. You just need to talk to her-”

“You don’t get it, Lot,” Jackie helpfully informed her. “It’s complicated. Underneath it all, she despises me. The last thing she would want is me around again.”

Externally, Lottie betrayed no emotion on her suddenly-still face. Internally, she let out a scream of frustration. She loved Jackie and Shauna, she really did, but good God did they need some serious wrangling.

Lottie drew in a deep breath, held it for a few moments and let it out.

“I understand the bunker is the best place for you ‘cos of the cabin guy,” Lottie said slowly. “And ‘cos I’m not sure the group as a whole would take you well. But I really think you should see Shauna again. I can bring her up there-”

“If Shauna didn’t hate me,” Jackie began, cutting her off. “Then why would Van and Nat be so sure she’d hurt me?”

Lottie looked at her blankly and she shrugged. “My hearing is better than they think it is,” she added.

“Well,” Lottie said carefully. “That’s their opinion. In my opinion, if you two were to be clear with each other about how you really feel, then I think she would stop at nothing to make sure no-one hurts you ever again.”

“It’s a nice thought,” Jackie told her. “But you always see the best in everyone. You’ve always been hopeful, a dreamer. Nat and Van are more… shrewd.”

Lottie thoroughly did not enjoy having her opinion dismissed so casually but the patience she was willing to afford Jackie in her current situation hadn’t completely run out yet. She was definitely going to pay her back at some point, though, when circumstances weren’t quite so extreme.

She gave up on trying to get Jackie to see the truth about Shauna and changed tack, trying to at least make her feel a tiny bit better.

“If it’s anything, you have at least helped Shauna greatly since you died,” Lottie told her. “I might even go so far as to say you’ve kept her alive. The whole team of course, but that includes her.”

“What did I do?” Jackie asked with a frown of confusion in her voice.

“A blood sacrifice to the Wilderness typically seems to mean a reward,” Lottie explained. “You died… and we got to feast.”

“What, did you guys catch a bear or something?” Jackie queried, still not catching on.

“I assumed Van and Nat told you,” Lottie admitted. It was her turn now to be confused. “About the attempted cremation…”

“Oh, right, that,” Jackie said, like dots had just been connected for her. “Yeah, Nat filled me in about that on my first day back.”

“Sorry about that by the way,” Lottie said delicately.

Jackie shrugged. “I could hardly blame you for something like that,” she said.

“Thank you,” Lottie told her and she had hardly ever meant something so sincerely. “But not just for seeing us fed, I’m sorry for, well, for all of it. You shouldn’t have died.”

Jackie composed herself, but it was clear she’d had that conversation before. “Seriously, don’t worry about it,” she instructed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy I’m a corpse. But if my sacrifice led to Shauna getting fed, to you all getting fed, then I can live with that.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Or not, as the case may be,” she added with a laugh.

“The Wilderness provides,” Lottie said simply.

“So long as we sacrifice to it first,” Jackie pointed out.

Lottie shrugged. “Nothing’s free,” she remarked solemnly.

“Tell that to the shirts at TJ Maxx,” Jackie joked, with an audible smile.

Lottie’s serious attitude vanished as she and Jackie giggled like they were young again. Once again, the thought struck Lottie like a sledgehammer that fuck, she had badly missed her old friend.

They stood up together once the fit of laughter had passed. “Ready to go?” Jackie asked, holding out her hand. “If we leave now, I think we’ll be at the bunker before dark. You might have to… spend another night with me.”

Lottie took hold with her own hand and nodded. She gave Jackie’s hand a squeeze.

“I’d be happy to,” she told her. “I can head back tomorrow.”

“I know you don’t agree with it,” Jackie began slowly. “But can you promise to not tell anyone? Even Shauna?”

Lottie nodded again. “Even Shauna,” she promised.

The skeleton wearing ill-fitting clothes that hung off her like she was a washing line might’ve seemed a ridiculous sight to some. But Lottie could feel the warmth and love emanating from her. She hadn’t been on the best terms with Jackie before she died but she was happy to have a little something of their old bond back.

They were about to head out when they heard someone calling from outside. Lottie froze.

“Hello?” came a very familiar voice. “I, I can hear your voice. Lottie, is that you? Please, I need help.”

“You go,” Jackie told her. “Bring ‘em in, I’ll try and sort some space out on this ‘bed’.”

For the third time in as many minutes, Lottie nodded. Letting go of Jackie’s hand, she dashed outside only to see Isabella Martinez a short distance away, limping toward the hollow.

“Lottie!” Isabella called out at the sight of her. She looked very tired. “I hurt my foot on the way here.”

Lottie was at her side in an instant, supporting her and helping her along. “This way,” she guided.

“I know,” Isabella told her, wincing with pain every couple steps. “This is where Javi was.”

“Yeah, we figured that out.”

“We?”

Lottie didn’t respond verbally to that, simply rolling her eyes instead. There were too many damn secrets in these woods and none of them were hers.

With her support, Isabella limped inside the hollow. Jackie had arranged the blankets neatly and stood anxiously by as Lottie guided Isabella onto them, sitting down on them and allowing her to take the weight off her injured foot.

“Here, Isabella,” Lottie murmured as the other girl’s eyes closed for a moment as she caught her breath.

At the mention of her name however, Isabella’s eyes snapped back open immediately and stared at her intently with a mix of confusion, suspicion and fear. Lottie had already stepped back to give her space when she realised what she’d just done.

“Isabella?” Jackie repeated the name, confused.

At the sound of her distinct raspy voice, Isabella’s gaze switched over to her like she’d only just noticed the other person here.

“Jackie?” Isabella asked uncertainly, her brain having some trouble understanding what she saw.

Lottie groaned out loud.

Oh, well. Lottie couldn’t pretend she wasn’t slightly glad she wouldn’t have to keep watching her words around at least these two people. Honestly, this was for the best.

Since Ben had died (the most useful thing he’d done in months), Shauna had been given the bedroom. She knew it was because of her pregnancy. The Yellowjackets felt she deserved the relative comfort and the plan at the moment was that she would stay there, and could take advantage of the relative privacy when it came time to care for the baby.

Mari had tried to insist that Lottie should have the room but Lottie herself had shot that down.

Shauna had at first refused to leave the spot on the floor where Jackie had originally slept but at Tai’s gentle encouragement, she’d finally accepted the room, just so long as she could take Jackie’s things with her.

Shauna and Tai sat on the bed together now, Tai’s hand on Shauna’s back, Shauna’s head on Tai’s shoulder.

No words were spoken as Shauna held a familiar sheet of paper out in front of her again. She hadn’t shown it to anyone else before, not since Jackie had first given it to her, but Tai was her best friend and she couldn’t exactly hide it after Tai had found her crying over it in the meat shed weeks ago.

Tai regarded the drawing silently. She’d had a few questions about it at first, like what exactly it was and where it had originally come from, but beyond that basic information, there wasn’t much to know. It was a small, straightforward thing.

Well. Maybe neither of those words were quite right for it. But regardless, Tai had no trouble grasping the shape of its significance to Shauna.

She glanced from the green dress in the drawing to the one Shauna now kept under the pillow. Eventually, she knew she’d have to try and talk to Shauna about all this and how unhealthy it was for her. Tai missed Jackie too sometimes, just, not like this.

But she couldn’t think of a way to even approach that subject that wouldn’t likely just hurt Shauna further, especially not while they were still stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with a supply of food that had rapidly dwindled to nearly nothing. 

They’d eaten two entire people in the last several weeks but while the quick boosts to their bodies had carried them a little further than they otherwise might, the effect hadn’t lasted as long as Tai would’ve liked. The food situation was at a point where, without the cannibalism allowing for even stricter rationing of the remaining bear meat, more of them might have died. An indescribable feeling sat coldly in the bottom of her heart, whispering to her that such an outcome might still yet come to pass. She felt sick with herself as she found herself on the verge of hoping that someone else would just happen to fall dead to misfortune, so that their meat at least could provide for the rest.

Tai cared about everyone on the team, she really did. But the practical truth of the matter was, she almost certainly couldn’t keep all these girls alive. And if one or more of them (so long as it wasn’t someone she cared about more than the rest, so long as it wasn’t Van or Shauna) had to die to keep death at bay for the rest, that could only be a net positive.

She hated that she was seriously starting to think like that. But think like that, she did.

Tai thanked whatever was out there once again that despite all the odds, Van wasn’t among the dead. For all she might say about how mentally and emotionally unwell Shauna was about Jackie at the moment, she knew she’d be just the same (if not worse) if Van was also gone. And if it came down to a feast, if Van was spread out before her like the world’s most unsettling buffet, a large part of her wasn’t sure if she could go through with it.

A much smaller part of her that rested at her core knew she could.

Shauna drew Tai out of her thoughts with a deep cough. Placing the drawing on the bed, she put a hand on her stomach and winced at something Tai couldn’t discern.

“You okay?” Tai asked gently.

“I‘m fine,” Shauna mumbled, her eyes closed. “Just don’t feel great.”

“I’ll go get you some water,” Tai promised. Shauna simply nodded and tucked the drawing away deep among her belongings as Tai stood and left the room.

She was halfway across the main room of the cabin when Misty burst in, slamming the door behind her, eyes wild. Everyone’s gaze immediately zeroed in on her.

“Misty?” Tai said, trying to grab her attention. “Where’s Crystal?”

Misty hesitated a moment but seemed poised to answer when a small but distinct scream of pain was suddenly heard from the bedroom. The sheer amount of anguish packed into the sound chilled the blood in Tai’s veins. 

Everyone scrambled to their feet, vague confusion over Misty’s surprising entrance dismissed in an instant as they approached the bedroom. Tai was first to the door, first to see Shauna laying back on the bed in significantly more distress than when she’d left her only a couple minutes ago.

Tai saw real fear as Shauna’s eyes locked on to hers, communicating so much with so little. Even before it was said aloud, Tai knew what was happening.

She rushed forward and got to her knees, gripping Shauna’s hand and feeling it tighten like a vice over her own. Another surge of pain rippled through Shauna’s body as Tai gently tucked some of her hair away from her face.

“What’s happening?” Melissa asked, to an incredulous look from Gen.

Tai didn’t bother shooting her the withering glance she wanted to, keeping all her attention focused on Shauna.

“It’s the baby,” Akilah answered quietly, taking the question seriously. Tai could not begin to understand the deep reserves of patience she must have access to.

“It’s coming.”

Chapter Text

The Day The Bones Started Screaming

“You let her go?”

“I couldn’t stop her, Rachel. And it’s her choice, really.”

“Oh yeah, she really seemed like she patiently weighed up the pros and cons of such an important decision.”

Laura Lee smiled patiently from the log she sat on. “She learned she could go back,” she reminded Rachel. “Back to the girls. Back to Shauna.”

Rachel took a minute to compose herself, putting her hands on her hips. “You haven’t gone back to your precious Lottie,” she pointed out. “I haven’t gone back to Yumi and God knows I want to.”

“I stay because I want to help anyone else who might die down there,” Laura Lee said sadly. “I’m not committed to the idea of going back. You stay for… your reasons, which you still haven’t told me. But you’re right, Jackie didn’t really think about it. She never does, not about Shauna. You told her she had the ability to go back and she was immediately one hundred percent emotionally onboard because of course she was. Intent and feeling, that’s how it is out here according to you.”

“One hundred percent?” Rachel challenged, with an eyebrow raised. “Then how come there’s a trace of her still here? Her journey back went wrong and the only explanation I can think of is that she had sudden doubts on the way.”

“Maybe she did,” Laura Lee shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t. We don’t know every rule of this place, we don’t know everything that can happen.”

Rachel squatted down in front of Laura Lee and put her hands on the other girl’s shoulders. “Think about it,” she said softly. “She’s in danger. If there’s a trace of her hanging around here that you can’t protect with your little faith-shield-thing, then he can track her.”

Laura Lee’s face drained of colour. It seemed blood had a sense of theatrical timing, even in a ghost.

“We have to help her,” Laura Lee said quickly.

“Finally, we agree,” Rachel gave her a quick smirk before worry retook her expression. “Maybe you could go down, convince her to kill herself again to come back and then you do the same?”

Laura Lee leaned back, a horrified expression on her face. “That’s awful,” she said, aghast.

Rachel shrugged. “I’ll agree it definitely doesn’t sound fun.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Laura Lee-”

“I don’t want to. And if I don’t really want to go back, then I can’t, can I?”

“That’s right,” Rachel sighed. “Okay, why don’t you enter her dreams and talk to her that way?”

Laura Lee didn’t respond immediately to that, unsure how to explain that she couldn’t do that for Jackie because she didn’t want to, because she wanted a link like that to only exist for her if it was with just one special person. And Jackie, bless her, simply was not that person.

“You’re still asking me to talk her into suicide,” Laura Lee said finally, giving Rachel a hard look. “Why can’t we find some way to help her finish her resurrection properly? That would hide that trace from him, or at least stop lighting her up like a christmas tree.”

“It would,” Rachel admitted, standing back up. “I think I might even know how.”

“Then hurry! If he figures out she’s on his radar where I can’t help her-”

“Because I don’t want her down there. Especially if she’s planning on running back to Shauna and the others.”

“What’s wrong with the others? They’re her friends.”

“Jackie never explained to us how exactly she died. She froze outside the cabin but she gave us precious few details.”

Laura Lee rolled her eyes. “I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. I gather it was some kind of tragic accident or misunderstanding but they’re our friends, Rachel. They’re not murderers.”

Rachel snorted and half turned away.

“I’m going to talk to Lottie immediately,” Laura Lee continued. “I’m sure I can talk to her in her dreams and I trust her to take care of Jackie. I don’t know what state Jackie’s in down there, I’m not even sure if she’ll remember her time up here, but even just the adjustment of being alive again will probably take some getting used to-”

“No,” Rachel interrupted, shaking her head. “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t wanted to say anything since your faith in that girl is what’s keeping him from getting at us but I do not want Jackie in Lottie’s care, or even her general company.”

“Why not?”

Rachel hesitated but seemed to just decide against answering.

“Rachel,” Laura Lee pressed, leaning forward as her earlier well of patience suddenly started to swiftly dry up. “If you have something to say against Lottie, spit it out.”

“I go down there sometimes,” Rachel spoke cautiously, like she was admitting a minor crime to a judgmental parent. “Just to see what the others are doing, how they’ve fared since I died, etcetera.”

“You go down?” Laura Lee repeated in disbelief. “Like Jackie did?”

“No, not all the way like that,” Rachel gestured toward the fragment of Jackie that remained in the realm of the dead. “Or mostly all the way, as the case may be. No, I just kinda… haunt.”

“Haunt?”

“Like a proper ghost,” Rachel clarified, smiling faintly. “I don’t inhabit my old body, thanks for burying that so efficiently by the way, and they can’t see or hear me so I can’t even talk to Jackie that way. I can just watch them. At first it was just to check up on Yumi but then…”

“Well?” Laura Lee prompted. “And what have you seen that’s so bad, you don’t think we can trust Lottie?”

Rachel’s smile faded. “I’m serious. We can’t trust her, or any of them. They’re not our friends anymore. I don’t trust anyone in these woods other than you and Jackie.”

“Why not?” Laura Lee asked insistently.

“Maybe Javi,” Rachel added with a thoughtful expression, acting like she couldn’t hear her. “And Coach didn’t seem too keen on the whole thing either.”

“Rachel!” Laura Lee shouted, leaping to her feet. Laura Lee took a deep breath and plunged on, ignoring the surprise in Rachel’s face at her outburst. “I know you were relatively new to the main team. I know it was scary being alone here for so long as that monster picked off the flight crew and Coach Martinez. I know you’ve latched onto me and Jackie as the only other dead here with you now. But there’s no need to lie just to keep us close.”

“I’m not lying,” Rachel insisted. “I just… don’t want to tell you.”

“How can I believe that?” Laura Lee asked.

Rachel said nothing.

“You know what I think?” Laura Lee continued, feeling heated. “I think you’re just jealous. We weren’t your friends before the crash but now you have us and you think you can use your relative experience here to frighten us into sticking with you.”

“No, that’s not-”

“Shut up!” Laura Lee commanded, surprising even herself for a moment. “You want me to believe Lottie and the others have done some horrible awful thing that would make anyone fear being around them but you won’t even tell me what it was.”

“It’s too much,” Rachel tried to explain. “It’s seriously fucked up, this is me protecting you-”

“And I’m just meant to take your word on that?”

“I thought you trusted me.”

“I thought I did too.”

Rachel went silent again, this time out of not knowing what to say instead of refusing to say something. She simply stood, her mouth hanging open a little.

“I’m sorry,” Laura Lee added with only a fraction of the apologetic tone she probably meant to have. “But I am going to contact Lottie and tell her about Jackie. I love her.”

“Please,” Rachel begged. “Please, do not tell that cult bitch anything. You’ll just be putting Jackie in danger-”

Laura Lee slapped her. Rachel couldn’t tell which of them was more shocked about it.

“I’ll tell her what I like,” Laura Lee said slowly, with the same look of resolute determination on her face as when she’d stood up to Ben’s authority the day she’d flown the plane. “But I think you should go.”

“Fine,” Rachel snapped, putting a hand to the slapped cheek. It still stung, causing her more pain than the large fragment of metal that had speared her in the neck had. At least that had been over immediately. “I survived out here for months without you, I can do it again.”

Laura Lee made no move to stop her as she slowly walked away, only to turn back around after a few steps.

“You wanna know what I’m talking about?” Rachel asked. “Ask her what her last good meal was.”

“Fuck you,” Laura Lee whispered, scowling at Rachel as she left, already mentally dismissing whatever nonsense she’d come up with. Lottie’s last good meal? That would have been months ago. Laura Lee’s faith in her, so powerful it held demons at bay (or at least the closest thing to a demon she’d ever encountered), would take a lot more than that to shake it.

As it happened, her contact with Lottie was panicked and rushed, the result of Laura Lee pushing limits on abilities she didn’t know she had, shaking what little confidence she’d had in what she thought she knew about how things worked. She wasn’t even sure if Lottie would remember the encounter or if she’d forget it the instant she woke up.

For her part, Lottie seemed mostly like her normal self at the sight of her, albeit a little distracted. Just seeing and talking to her again made Laura Lee a little giddy.

Laura Lee was still mad at Rachel, but she’d calmed down a little later on and decided she regretted sending Rachel away. For all the boasts, Laura Lee knew she was terrified of being out there alone and knew that the protection she could provide for Rachel was invaluable.

But after hours of searching, she couldn’t find Rachel anywhere. Alone once again, Laura Lee only hoped that he hadn’t found her either.

The Day The Wilderness Saw New Blood

Shauna screamed in agony. Tai was at her side, clutching her hand and trying desperately to ease the pain but she just felt so helpless.

“It’s too early,” Misty was insisting to anyone who would listen. She was probably right, she probably was keeping track of the days more meticulously than even Shauna had been with her journal, but just at this moment, Tai could not care less what Misty had to say, not unless she was going to help.

Akilah was helping at least, doing her best, but it was clear the poor girl was overwhelmed. Having a sister who had gone through the same process was not the same as actually being trained on what to do.

Mari got to her knees on Shauna’s other side and fixed her eyes shut. Tai couldn’t blame her for it all feeling like too much. That brief flash of sympathy ended the moment Mari opened her mouth.

“Wilderness, I hope Shauna doesn’t die!” she cried out. 

Tai’s gaze, formerly locked on Shauna and making only brief visits to Akilah, suddenly whipped round to Mari and aimed a glare at her that could’ve withered stone.

“Why the fuck…?” Tai was experiencing previously unimagined levels of Pissed Off as words temporarily failed her. “Why would you say die?”

“Die?” Shauna repeated with a whimper. She looked so terrified that Tai’s heart almost broke for her for the second time this winter.

“You’re not gonna die,” Tai told her, with more confidence in her tone than she felt. She raised a hand to Shauna’s forehead, gently pushing back hair that was soaked in sweat. “You’re not gonna die.”

She only glanced back for a second but it was enough to see nobody in the cabin looked as certain as she sounded. Javi’s eyes were wide and he looked almost as scared as Shauna. Gen clutched Melissa’s arm tightly but they still stared, transfixed by the sight before them. Which was more than could be said for Yumi, who seemed capable only of stealing the occasional glance in Shauna’s direction.

Misty came forward and tried to help, but the blood that was soon on her hands seemed to take her to another time and place and she was gone again. Tai cursed at her in her mind. The way some of the girls looked at her, she didn’t know if she’d actually made sure it was only in her head or not. She didn’t care.

Tai’s eyes met Akilah’s. The other girl looked like she could pass out at any second but still she kept at it. Tai could almost have kissed her.

Akilah swallowed uncertainly. There really was a lot of blood.

Tai raised her eyes to the heavens as, for the first time, she openly prayed to the Wilderness out of desperate fear for one of the most important people in her life.

“Hello, Jackie,” the man said with a smile. It put her in mind of a shark.

The last thing she remembered, Lottie had helped Travis (no, not Travis, Isabella? what was the deal with that?) onto the bed. She’d called him (them? her?) Isabella and Isabella had noticed Jackie.

Moments later, here she was. How fun.

Jackie stood up, taking in her surroundings. It didn’t take very long, given there was nothing to take in. It looked like an empty expanse of black, stretching out for miles in every direction. The only points of colour here were herself and him.

“Cabin Guy,” Jackie said slowly, taking in the red plaid shirt and unkempt hair. His smile widened, revealing an impossibly-numerous array of teeth.

“No need to be so formal,” he drawled before delivering a mock bow. “Call me Jacques, I insist.”

Jackie blinked. Memories of the ill-fated seance came back to her. Shauna’s random pick for a name had been right? Spooky. Not that they didn’t already guess that the seance had been under some kind of influence…

It occurred to Jackie that she’d just blinked. Her hands rushed to her face as she felt flesh, she felt hair, she was breathing, she was alive.

“Don’t get used to it,” Jacques chuckled as he noticed her observation. “You’re dreaming, sweetie.”

“I thought you couldn’t get at me,” Jackie told him. She felt a thrill as she tucked a few stray hairs behind her ear. She’d underestimated how much she missed the little things. “Not with this symbol where I am.”

Jacques bowed his head a little in acknowledgement of the point. “Yeah, those big ones,” he admitted, massaging the back of his neck. “I can’t go near those. Nasty as hell. But, I can still get into your head when I want to.”

With a surge of confidence, Jackie folded her arms across her chest. “So what’s the plan, tough guy?” she challenged. “You’re gonna bore me to death? You know, if you knock me out to force me into conversations with you like this, that doesn’t get me to you any faster.”

“I know,” Jacques said casually, not bothered in the slightest by her newfound self-assurance. “I’m not gonna visit you again like this, honest. Unless you want me to, of course. No, I’m going to convince you to come to me willingly.”

“Willingly?” Jackie scoffed. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“I do,” Jacques said simply, shrugging. “Come, I have something to show you.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

Jacques clicked his fingers. An actual environment suddenly faded in around them, as if it had simply been hidden until now.

Night blanketed the sky as thoroughly as snow blanketed the ground. They stood outside the cabin, facing away from it. There was movement, but Jackie’s eyes took a moment to adjust. She squinted at the shifting motion in front of her.

“Oh, sorry,” said Jacques with a grin, sounding very unapologetic. He regarded the hand he’d clicked with an amused expression.  “This is from a month ago. Honestly, you never know how these things get in there, do you?”

Jackie could make out Shauna now, picking her out in the dark. Jackie’s heart leapt into her throat at the sight of her. She sat over what looked like a hastily-stacked collection of sticks and branches, lit faintly by weak embers that refused to go out. A pyre?

Huddled with Shauna around the pyre sat other girls, all scrabbling at something, feasting on something. Lottie, Nat, Van…

Her friends.

Jackie’s stomach lurched with a feeling she couldn’t identify. The slight itches all over her body from where the bear had chewed on her bones, the sensation Nat had jokingly insisted must have been a reminder of massages from Heaven, seemed to increase in intensity.

She couldn’t tell what it was they were eating but the sight still made her sick. Beside her, Jacques shook his hand.

“Ah, I think I’ve got it,” he told her with a predatory smile. “Shall we move on? Or would you like to stick around, see what’s going on?”

“Just show me what you want to show me,” Jackie mumbled, her bravado having evaporated.

Jacques’ smile widened unsettlingly as he clicked his fingers again.

They were in the cabin this time, in the bedroom. Coach Scott had resided here before he’d passed away. Van and Nat had mentioned his death to her and assured her he’d received a suitably appropriate ceremony. A cremation, like hers, except one that apparently was more successful in its intended goals.

He certainly wasn’t here anymore. 

Shauna lay on the bed, in more obvious distress than Jackie had ever seen her. Tai was close beside her, providing Shauna as much support as she could. Jackie understood they were friends and knew a hundred other little things that made the feeling irrational but she still couldn’t help a tiny pang of jealousy erupting at the sight.

The other girls hung around, gawking, with the exception of Akilah, who was doing her best to help Shauna through this. As Jackie watched, Misty hurried over and lent her own efforts to the cause. Jackie felt grateful for the both of them right now, and Tai as well, but mostly she just felt shock and pain.

She was watching Shauna give birth, unable to touch her or help her. She so badly wanted to get down there on Shauna’s other side, to hold her hand and kiss her head and reassure her that everything would be okay and that she’d be there for her all the way. She knew Shauna wouldn’t want her there but right now, Jackie could so clearly see herself willingly taking whatever abuse might be hurled her way, just to do whatever she could to help.

Jacques stood beside her proudly, his hands on his hips.

“Yeah,” he said as he drank in the scene. “Yeah, this is it. This is now.”

“Right now?” Jackie asked softly. Shauna let out an anguished cry and Jackie’s heart wrenched.

“Right now,” Jacques nodded. He chuckled as Shauna seemed to dissolve into sobs. “Looks like it hurts.”

Jackie lunged at him, a sudden spark of anger lighting a flame inside her. He disappeared, reappearing on the other side of her. He wagged a finger at her as she whipped round to face him.

“None of that,” Jacques advised. “That Rachel girl tried that once too, y’know. You share some of her fire. Honestly, I wish I knew where she was nowadays, I miss that kind of spirit.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Because you have a choice.”

Jackie went silent, content to glare at him. He laughed again at the sight of her.

“This can be a pretty nasty process,” Jacques observed, gesturing at Shauna. “She hasn’t had the most regular or healthy diet of late and she’s entirely without the aid of any fancy modern equipment or even a trained doctor. She’s just a teenage girl stranded in the woods with the power of what, faith? replacing any kind of real medical aid. Anything could happen.”

Jackie walked slowly over to Shauna as he talked. She reached out to stroke her cheek, tearing up as her hand went straight through.

“The thing is, I promised the Wilderness two lives today,” Jacques continued, as casually as if he were discussing a grocery list. “Which is no small thing, I can’t just do that all the time. I was kind of hoping to get the both of you but that was always a long shot. And then someone else died earlier today who wasn’t nearly as high on my to-do list but hey, a death’s a death, right? Not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.”

At his words, Jackie glanced around, noting for the first time that Kristen didn’t seem to be among the girls gathered here. She tried to feel guilty about not noticing earlier but just couldn’t bring herself to feel any emotion that wasn’t about Shauna right now.

“The Wilderness is going to take someone else before the day is out,” Jacques promised her. “And I can pretty easily make sure it’s Shauna. She doesn’t have long left.”

Jackie looked at him wordlessly, understanding his point. He decided to spell it out anyway.

“Or you can leave your little hollow, without your friends by your side, and just let me take you,” he told her, placing a hand on her shoulder and affecting an air of mock solemnity, as if he wasn’t thoroughly enjoying the turmoil on her face. “And I promise Shauna will live… at least for a while. You have ten minutes.”

Before Jackie could respond, he moved his hand from her shoulder and flicked her right in the center of her forehead.

She stood the moment she woke up, nearly crashing into Lottie, who’d been peering at her with concern. She felt the air brush over her bones in ways that felt different to skin, another reminder she was back in the waking world.

“Are you okay?” Isabella asked cautiously, still sitting on the bed, with her spear laying across her lap. “You were out for a little while.”

Jackie walked up to her, cupped her face in her bony hands and just looked at her. Isabella met her gaze. There was fear in there, yes, of course there was, fear of the new problems life might choose to throw at her. But there was a challenge in there too, a fire that marked someone who knew who she was and felt relief in not having to hide it. Jackie knew that look. She’d seen it in Tai and in Van once they’d come out to the other Yellowjackets. She’d seen it in Lottie the first time she’d privately, nervously admitted that she had feelings for Laura Lee. She’d once hoped, on one of her more optimistic days, she could get to see it in her own mirror.

Isabella may not have chosen for Jackie to know her secret but she wasn’t rushing to take it back either, or insist that Jackie had misheard. Like it or not, Jackie knew now and she was glad she did. For the first time, Jackie laid eyes on Isabella and saw a whole person looking back.

It was a nice thing to see right before she was going to go get herself killed again. Jackie felt an invisible smile spread over lips she didn't have.

She broke off the hold on Isabella’s face and hugged her tightly. “Hi, Isabella,” she whispered into her ear. “It’s good to meet you.”

When Jackie stepped back, a solitary tear rolled down Isabella’s cheek. She could practically watch as a likely long-held anxiety dissolved a little bit in Isabella’s eyes. It wasn’t totally gone; Jackie was sure the other Yellowjackets didn’t know yet and telling the rest of the world definitely wouldn’t be easy. But Isabella seemed to be taking in her first sign that just maybe, she could actually consider the acceptance of those she cared about as a possibility.

Or second sign at least, Jackie reminded herself as Lottie piped up awkwardly. “I’m glad you’re accepting of Isabella and all,” she said cautiously. “But can we talk about what the fuck that was? You just fell over like someone flicked the off switch.”

“I have to go,” Jackie told her, moving to step out of the hollow.

“Now Isabella’s here, we should wait for her foot to get better before we head to the bunker,” Lottie advised, stepping into her way. “We can’t just leave her here but she also can’t go hiking around immediately.”

“Not necessary,” Jackie helpfully informed them both. “I need to go out there now. Just me.”

“Um,” Lottie blinked, trying to wrap her head around it. “Why?”

“Because Shauna’s gonna die if I don’t,” Jackie said bluntly. “That’s what I just saw. She’s giving birth and it’s too much for her. If I don’t give myself up to Jacques, the Wilderness is gonna kill her.”

“Why would the Wilderness do that?” Lottie frowned.

“Because Jacques has made it his bitch, by the sound of it,” Jackie shrugged. She tried to force her way past Lottie but the taller girl effortlessly held her back, even as she observed the symbol on the floor thoughtfully at Jackie’s words. Whatever strength Jackie had once possessed was much diminished these days; she missed having muscles. “Let me go!”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

“You didn’t hear her, Lot.”

“You’re willing to immediately kill yourself for her?” Isabella asked from behind Jackie. “Just like that?”

“Are you surprised?” Lottie asked, genuinely interested.

“No,” Isabella answered, after a brief silence.

“You wouldn’t do the same for Nat?” Jackie asked her, briefly turning her skull back to look at her. She turned back to Lottie. “Or you, for Laura Lee?”

As Isabella and Lottie both quietly admitted they would, Jackie sighed. “So you get it?” she asked, with a hint of desperation.

“I get we’re all equally nuts,” Lottie answered. “But I can’t let you do this, Jackie.”

“Either I die or Shauna does,” Jackie reminded her. “And Shauna dying is not an option. There’s no other way around it.”

“I think there is,” Lottie said simply.

“What?”

“The Wilderness provides.”

The words, repeated from the morning, hit Jackie like a truck. She thought of sacrifice, of blood, of her dying leading to the capture of a bear that had eaten her (she was still a little fuzzy on the details of that one).

“Would it work?” Jackie asked hurriedly.

“For weeks, I would bleed for the safety of Nat and Isabella when they went out hunting. They always came back.”

“But I don’t have blood.”

“You have bone,” Isabella pointed out quietly. Lottie nodded approvingly. “Everyone has something they can sacrifice.”

“My only warning,” Lottie said, grabbing Jackie’s arm. “Is that whatever you do, be sure it’s what you want to do.”

Jackie’s gaze locked on to Lottie’s. Jackie may not have eyes but Lottie could still tell she was being fixed with a strong stare.

“It’s for her,” Jackie said, with a hard determination in her voice Lottie had rarely heard before. “I would do anything for her.”

Lottie didn’t have anything to say to that so Jackie turned around to face the bed. “Isabella,” she said in a low voice. “Give me that spear.”

“Shauna!” Tai cried out, as Shauna slipped into unconsciousness. She firmly slapped Shauna’s cheek, barely managing to stir her. “Shauna!”

Yumi had left the room, unable to stomach the sight of all the blood. Misty now held a crying bundle in her arms, wrapped up in a shirt Tai was sure had belonged to Jackie. That part had been at Shauna’s insistence, weeks ago.

The baby sounded alive, if a little unhealthy, but Akilah right now was more concerned with his mother. The bleeding hadn’t stopped and her eyes betrayed her helplessness at what to do.

Holding the spear upright, Jackie positioned her left cheekbone carefully, resting it against the sharp point.

“Please, Wilderness,” she whispered. “Save Shauna, I beg you. I have never wanted anything more in my life. Please, please, save her.”

After a brief pause, she made one swift movement and sheared off a sliver of her skull, leaving a small but very visible jagged line by her left eye. 

The fresh white bone from beneath the surface stood out like a beacon against the background of the rest of her bones, which were orange-y in places and partially blackened from the cremation that had failed to turn her to ash.

Jackie didn’t scream. She just stiffened in place for a moment, letting the spear drop to the ground. Isabella looked at her in silent awe as she retrieved her spear. Lottie, sitting beside Isabella on the bed, got up and hugged her.

“It heard you,” Lottie said softly to her. “I know it did.”

Jackie said nothing at first, but seemed to appreciate the embrace.

“Do you think it worked?” Jackie mumbled after a moment. “Did I do enough?”

Lottie almost laughed. “You carved off a piece of your face, Jackie. I think you did enough.”

For several minutes, the world itself seemed to hang on some unreadable balance. Tai knew it wasn’t looking good. She could’ve sworn at one point that Shauna’s heart stopped beating.

But then, she saw Misty look surprised, in a positive way. It was an expression she wasn’t sure she’d seen on Misty before but she would recognise it anywhere. Akilah heaved a sigh of relief as Shauna’s breathing slowly but steadily resumed a normal pace.

Tai cried with joy as Shauna’s eyes opened. She wasn’t totally all there, Tai could see, but it was nothing a good sleep wouldn’t fix. She sat up a little and held out her arms.

Misty handed Shauna the baby and she held it so gently that Tai was almost jealous of it. Akilah stood up, tired but smiling, and set about trying to get everyone else to clear out of the room, leaving Shauna, Tai and the baby alone. It took a minute, as everyone wanted to gather around the baby, but Akilah was soon closing the bedroom door behind her.

“We made it, Tai,” Shauna said softly, talking to her friend but unable to tear her eyes away from her son. Tai approved of him immediately as he set a good example for his mother in this moment by going to sleep.

“You made it,” Tai echoed, kissing her head. “Would you like me to go now or…?”

Shauna shook her head and looked at Tai with a tenderness she knew was reserved for very few. “You kept me going,” Shauna told her. “You pulled me through for months, ensured I made it here. I want you here with me, Tai. Always.”

Tai swallowed, unsure what to say. She just nodded, feeling full of warm emotion in a way she hadn’t since before she and Van had stopped talking.

“Unless you have to go piss or something,” Shauna added, with a glint in her eye. “Then you should probably leave.”

Tai and Shauna just looked at each other for a moment, fighting to stop immature smiles breaking out across their faces. They quickly gave up the fight and let themselves giggle. So much of the stress that had built for months left their bodies in a wave. It would be back, Tai was sure. But for now, life felt like it could be enjoyed.

“No,” Tai informed her, shaking her head as the more vocal evidence of her mirth subsided but with a fond smile still decorating her lips. “No, I’m good.”

“Then please stay,” Shauna said, holding the baby in one arm as she reached over and held Tai’s hand with the other. “I’m not asking you to literally stick next to me for the rest of your life but please, just for today, stay with me.”

“I will,” Tai promised with a whisper, raising Shauna’s hand and gently kissing it.

They smiled at each other before Shauna turned her attention back to her baby, retrieving her hand from Tai’s grip to hold her son with both.

It wasn’t long before both Shauna and the baby were asleep, exhausted. Tai felt pretty exhausted herself and she soon joined them in their slumber.

Elsewhere in the Wilderness, Van and Nat, on their way to Javi’s secret spot, had a sudden feeling that they had just missed something. Shrugging it off, they continued on their way. 

Van shivered, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up as if someone, or something, was watching her.

Shipman was off-limits. Jacques felt like punching something in frustration but that had stopped feeling satisfying after he’d died.

He was master of this domain, he’d spent a lifetime ensuring it. But now these… girls were acting like the Wilderness was theirs to do with as they wish. As if they knew a damn thing about it. What he refused to admit concerned him a little was that they just might be a little bit right. Sometimes, it felt like the Wilderness had designs beyond his own.

As the deadline he’d set for Jackie came and went, Jacques tried to have Shauna die. But the Wilderness refused. And Jackie hadn’t budged from her hollow, so there was no going after her either.

And to make matters more annoying, the Vessel was feeling better again, even if only for the moment. The last thing he wanted was that getting out of hand.

A life was still promised but he found he didn’t really care now who it would be (he guessed it might be the redhead, Van, who had been of interest to the Wilderness since her first day here but he’d never really seen the appeal). The coach, the man with one leg, hadn’t been a very satisfying catch, barely expressing surprise at his new surroundings before Jacques had descended on him. Laura Lee, Rachel and now that Kristen girl were all still out there and the game of trying to find them was proving to be more frustrating than fun.

At the thought of Kristen, an idea struck Jacques and he smiled to himself. While he would still have to go to the trouble of actually catching and consuming each individual girl, there was a way to at least… ensure the inevitability of that outcome.

He’d thought about it before, but he hadn’t had the perfect opportunity until now. It had fallen directly into his lap just as his frustration with the game was reaching its peak. Maybe the Wilderness was still on his side after all.

Jackie had been frozen stiff. Laura Lee had exploded. Rachel had been buried inconveniently deep and, by the time Jacques was first starting to consider this plan, significantly decayed.

He stood over Kristen’s body now. A little broken, sure, but still basically functional if you didn’t care about passing as alive. Fresh, flexible, relatively intact. Blood wasn’t even bubbling out of her mouth anymore, not that he was really bothered with appearances.

Jacques smiled. How did that one saying go? Waste not, want not?

It had been an hour or so since Shauna and the baby had drifted off to sleep when Tai woke up again.

She wasn’t properly awake, per se. But she was dimly aware of what was going on around her and could see things she normally couldn’t. Shadows bled out from corners where they shouldn’t. Faint light emanated from within Shauna that she knew physics couldn’t explain. The bedroom itself seemed to have a faint purple tinge to it.

Tai’s mind felt sluggish, like it had been dipped in treacle. She could hear the girls talking in the next room with senses that felt unnaturally heightened but in her current state, their words didn’t make a lot of sense to her, as if her subconscious was dismissing them as unimportant long before they reached her brain.

“The baby probably has Coach to thank,” Akilah was saying. “That might’ve been just the boost the little guy needed.”

“And what about Shauna?” Melissa asked quietly, yet she may as well have been speaking into a megaphone with the way Tai’s senses seemed to be acting right now.

“There was so much blood,” Gen mumbled. There was an impossibly faint rustle of fabric and a shift of muscle and somehow Tai knew Gen was clutching onto Melissa’s arm. Melissa kissed the top of her head softly.

“I don’t know,” Akilah admitted. “I… I really didn’t expect her to pull through.”

“Maybe…” Melissa said slowly. “Maybe it was the Wilderness. We all were praying for her, right?”

Murmurs of assent quickly spilled forth from the other girls like a wave.

“Thank you, Wilderness,” Yumi whispered, and everyone else followed suit.

“I’m glad Shauna’s alive too,” Misty pleaded, seeming to be resurrecting an earlier point of discussion. “But please can we go look for Crystal? She’s lost out there somewhere, I know it!”

“Performative much?” Mari muttered, only to receive an elbow to the ribs from Akilah.

“The snow’s picking up again,” Akilah told her apologetically. “It’s not safe.”

“That’s why we need to find her!” Misty insisted.

“The Wilderness seems to be in a good mood today,” Melissa offered. “Maybe it’ll save her like it saved Shauna.”

“Javi managed out there by himself for ages,” Gen pointed out before continuing under her breath. “Even if he won’t tell us how.”

A flurry of whispers followed her words. “He doesn’t help.” “Even Travis left him behind today.” “He’s not one of us.” “What is he hiding?” “He’s not one of us.”

A floorboard creaked as Javi, sitting by a wall and trying to fit as little space as possible, shifted uncomfortably. The Yellowjackets went silent for a moment before resuming their previous, marginally-more normal conversations. They mostly talked about the baby, how cute he was and how glad they were that both he and his mother had made it through. Melissa hoped Shauna would name him Melvin and got a playful smack on the arm from Gen in response.

Tai couldn’t really care less, even about the snatches of talk that sank in at all. She went to roll her eyes at the girls but found she couldn’t. Which brought her to her next significant discovery about whatever state of wakefulness she’d found herself in.

She knew things, as if by some supernatural instinct. One such thing she learned she knew was that she really wasn’t in control here.

Or at least, her conscious self wasn’t. But whatever was, it was something that came from within her. Familiar, in its way, as it filled Tai with the same feeling she had whenever she unsuccessfully tried to recall her sleepwalking, or in the moments immediately after being woken from it. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced now in weeks.

Tai felt her head lift, as if this inner self was forcing her to look up and see something. And see something she did, which scared her to her core.

A tall shadowy silhouette had strolled into the bedroom, ignoring the closed door like it wasn’t there. Something about it set every nerve ending in Tai’s body to panic stations just from looking at it.

It (walked? glided? jumped?) over to Shauna, who simply continued to sleep peacefully, and reached out to her with what Tai’s logical brain insisted must be an arm. Or maybe a tendril. Or a wisp of cloud. Tai’s sense of logic could pitifully try and say what it liked but Tai’s imagination didn’t have to listen.

Still, Tai couldn’t move. She wanted to defend her friend, to stand and attack the thing, or maybe just to grab Shauna’s hand to drag her away from it with all her might.

Except it occurred to her now from some deep recess within her soul that Shauna wasn’t in danger. Maybe she had been once, but whatever this thing was, it had been dissuaded from her.

But it wasn’t satisfied. It turned and seemed to look out through the walls. Tai knew she shouldn’t be able to see what it saw but just for a moment, she could, as if it carried her along for a ride in its gaze.

It looked out at people Tai gave a shit about. The other Yellowjackets in the next room, milling about in small groups. Travis with Lottie (at least she’d been found) and someone else Tai couldn’t make out (or that Tai’s inner self didn’t think she was ready to see) in the unexpectedly-sizable hollow of a large tree.

Nat, struggling through the snow as the wind picked up to dangerous levels. She looked back, shouted something.

Van, shouting something in response. She fell over in the snow and Nat hurried over, lifting her up before she could be completely covered by the elements. Van swore as she hurriedly brushed hair back with fingers that were ever so faintly tinged with blue.

The thing in the bedroom leaned forward slightly, as if in eager anticipation. Something (a finger?) twitched.

Van stumbled again. She immediately tried to recover her balance but the even spread of snowfall was a cruel and deceptive trickster and she found herself pitching forward into snow that was deeper than it looked.

Van fell completely, rolling down a brief decline in the land, coming to a stop face-down in the white expanse. Snow already was starting to settle on her back and her treacherous mind briefly considered letting it. She was so cold…

“Van!” Nat cried out, already rushing over to try and help her. “Van, no! Stay with me!”

Van faintly wished she’d stop.

Tai said something as she watched that unfold. It wasn’t out loud but it didn’t need to be.

The Wilderness had laid Van out on its butchering table and raised the proverbial knife above its head. She was struggling, even as Nat gave everything she had into trying to save her.

The Wilderness was going to take someone. The Wilderness was owed. Tai didn’t know the how or the why but she knew she couldn’t let it be Van.

But it had already been deterred from its prize once. It hungered. To send it another way again would require something special.

Van was the most precious thing in the world to Tai. But almost all of them had a connection like that to someone. There wasn’t anyone who everyone would find precious, who everyone would mourn so terribly, whose life in this cabin had, despite a bumpy start, been a source only of joy and relief to the Yellowjackets.

Well. That wasn’t quite true.

Tai wished she could hate herself for it. But she knew she would make the same decision again in a heartbeat, no matter how much it hurt her to do so. It was either this or lose Van.

And she couldn’t lose Van.

So Tai spoke, in her head, following the instincts her other self provided from within her. She silently begged and pleaded. She felt a little bit guilty at first, but the guilt was dismissed the instant the image of Van in the snow flashed before her eyes again and she was immediately fully committed to imploring the Wilderness to release Van from its metaphysical grip.

The thing in the bedroom regarded her curiously, as if appraising her for the first time. After a second that felt like an age, it agreed to her terms.

Sudden naturally-occurring turns for the worse weren't unheard of, especially among the very young. But despite what the rational side of her might prefer to believe, Tai knew what she saw (what she'd done, what choice she'd made) just as surely as she knew she would take it to her grave.

“Where is it?” came the sound of Nat’s voice, the notes of desperation piercing through the howling snow. “Fuck, where is it?”

Isabella was immediately outside, Jackie and Lottie only half a second behind her. Nat was struggling as she helped Van along, the two of them holding each other tight. Van was murmuring something but Isabella couldn’t hear what. She didn’t bother trying to as she focused on getting them inside.

The five girls huddled and moved to the hollow quickly. Isabella hadn’t trained with them on the field, hadn’t played as part of their unit, but slotted into place alongside them perfectly now. If it weren’t for the dire circumstances, she might’ve taken the time to appreciate that she was getting what she’d long hoped for, even if she hadn’t consciously known it all that time.

Once inside, Lottie and Jackie stepped back while Isabella and Nat instinctively moved as one, helping Van into the bed. Jackie handed them the oversized clothes this hollow’s previous resident must have used, the same pile Javi had taken from, and they made Van change into them before making sure she was wrapped up tight in the blankets. Lottie silently took the clothes Van had been wearing before, wet and sticking nastily to her skin, and did her best to wring them out. They weren’t going to be ready for use again any time soon, but Lottie would make sure they could at least be not totally ruined before they were brought back to the cabin.

Nat’s eyes were fixed on the middle and ring fingers on Van’s left hand. They weren’t totally blue but they certainly didn’t look great. The ring finger especially put Isabella in mind of the way Jackie had looked that one fateful morning.

“Are we going to have to…” Isabella began, before realising she didn’t really quite want to say it. She simply made a chopping motion with her hand instead.

“We don’t have all we’d need for that,” Lottie told her. “We could cut them off but we couldn’t cauterise the wound.”

“It might not come to that,” Nat insisted. “They don’t look too far gone so if we just keep her wrapped up warm, she’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jackie asked quietly.

“Fuck, Jackie, I don’t know,” Nat said as she sat down beside Van. The others exchanged glances and followed suit, sitting down around the hollow. It was getting kind of cramped in here.

Maybe it was just because everyone was quiet and the sound of the weather was muffled somewhat by the wood surrounding them, but Van’s murmuring seemed louder, albeit still indiscernible. Checking on her, Isabella could see her eyes were fluttering as she fought to stay awake.

“What’s she saying?” Jackie whispered.

Nat rolled her eyes but got up a little to lean over the bed, tucking Van’s freezing fingers under the blankets as she did.

“Hey, Van,” she said softly. Van’s eyes focused on her, as much as they could, and she stopped murmuring. “What is it?”

Van swallowed and seemed to gather all her strength. “It didn’t get me,” she said, clearly but a little shakily. “It had me, but it didn’t get me.”

Lottie smiled at her. “It sure didn’t,” she agreed.

“What didn’t?” Nat asked, without looking back at Lottie.

“The Wilderness,” Isabella answered, almost without realising. Lottie turned her head a little to include Isabella in her smile.

“Van’s too tough for it,” Lottie said proudly. “It can’t kill her.”

Nat turned to look at her this time. “Don’t you love the Wilderness? You sound happy about this.”

“Don’t complain that she’s rooting for me,” Van mumbled with the ghost of a smile. Her strength already seemed to be returning.

“I try to keep my mind open to it and its signs,” Lottie corrected patiently. “But I don’t love it and I don’t for a moment think it’s our friend.”

“Especially not under current management,” Jackie muttered.

“Guys,” Van got all the attention of all of them. “I’m going to be okay. It wanted me, I could feel it. Almost made me want it. But it’s passed me by. So if we could all focus on just clearing a few things up?”

“Like what?” Jackie asked.

“Like what the fuck did you do to your face?”

Nat wheeled round and took Jackie in for the first time that day. “What the fuck?” she echoed softly.

Isabella was still getting used to seeing Jackie’s mannerisms reflected in a skeleton and hadn’t known her well to start with but even she could see the way Jackie instinctively turned her head slightly as if to hide her cheek, but not even the side that had the wound. She wasn’t trying to hide the injury, no, it was that thinking about what she’d done for Shauna had put her in mind of blushing.

She wondered idly, not for the first time since the crash, how it was that anyone could think those two were not sickeningly in love with each other.

“It’s not a big deal,” Jackie said, with the embarrassed air of a five-year-old having been caught making a mess with her mom’s makeup.

“You’re missing a chunk of your face, Jackie,” Nat pointed out.

“Oh it’s not missing,” Lottie informed them. She held out her hand and let them all see the sliver of Jackie’s skull resting on her palm. “I have it right here.”

“Ew, Lot,” Jackie laughed. “Are you seriously keeping that?”

“Probably not,” Lottie shrugged. “I’ll likely lose it on the way to the bunker later.”

“Was this your idea?” Nat glared at Lottie.

“No,” Jackie said in a sudden low and dangerous tone. “It was mine.”

“Why the fuck would you-”

“Shauna was dying. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Van sat up in bed, looking at Jackie with a serious expression. “What do you mean, Jack?”

“Shauna’s given birth,” Lottie told them. “She wasn’t going to make it.”

“What, did you see that in a dream?” Nat scoffed. Van looked disapprovingly at her from behind.

“I did,” Jackie corrected, her voice daring Nat to challenge her.

“Her first plan was to go charging out into the snow and let some dead guy take her soul or whatever,” Isabella spoke up from her corner. “This was an option she could be talked down to.”

Over Nat’s head, Van sent Jackie a small nod of understanding and respect. Jackie sent one right back. 

Nat, giving up on discussing Jackie’s sacrifice play, properly looked at Isabella for the first time since arriving here, really took in the sight of her.

“Well,” Nat sighed as she gestured at Jackie. “I see you’ve met Jackie again.”

“Yeah.”

“That was the big secret I was gonna tell you about. So, uh, sorry you had to find out for yourself.”

“That’s okay,” Isabella told her. “You were going to, I trust that. You were being fully serious about that.”

“I was, yeah,” Nat confirmed quietly before looking back to Jackie. “So, Travis and Lottie. Anyone else in on it?”

Isabella knew Nat was observant enough to notice the small looks Lottie and Jackie sent darting her way as she said that. But, as she would tell Nat later, that wasn’t part of her decision to say what she said next. She was in no way forced into it. She wanted to.

“Actually,” Isabella began, drawing in a big breath. She took a moment before plunging on into territory she couldn’t back away from. “That’s not my name.”

Nat’s attention was on her again. Van was also regarding her with intense curiosity.

“Next to your thing, this doesn’t seem so important,” Isabella admitted. “But this is part of what I was going to tell you.”

“It sounds very important to you,” Nat said, looking at her intently. “But do you want to say it now? In front of everyone?”

“Lottie and Jackie already know,” Isabella shrugged.

“I told Jackie accidentally,” Lottie said, as if on cue, one index finger raised. “I didn’t mean to.”

“And how did you know?” Nat asked with an unreadable stare.

“Okay, that one was a dream I had,” Lottie admitted with a shrug. “Or rather, Laura Lee told me while I was having a dream. She told me about Jackie too; that’s why I’m out here, by the way.”

Nat blinked slowly before returning her gaze to Isabella.

“Is it… okay if I know as well?” Van asked hesitantly. “I’d offer to leave the room except, y’know.”

Keeping her hands firmly under the blankets, she gestured with her head toward the weather outside.

“I don’t want to keep it a secret from anyone anymore,” Isabella said quietly. “We could all die so easily out here. The least I can do is be honest about myself.”

Lottie and Jackie exchanged a glance. Nat’s eyes were fixed on Isabella’s own.

Isabella took a deep breath and just went for it, before she could find some way to coldly logic herself out of it.

“My name is Isabella,” she told Nat at last. “I… I’m a girl.”

Almost immediately, Van burst out laughing though Isabella could hear no malice in it. Nat, apparently, seemed less certain as she whipped round to her friend.

“What?” she growled, already protective about this thing she’d only just learned. “How is this funny to you?”

“Because it means that apart from Misty’s weird obsession with Coach,” Van giggled. “None of us have expressed any interest in men since we got here. We’re a cabin full of girlkissers.”

Jackie and Lottie joined the giggling at that and Nat cracked a smile, her expression changing in an instant.

Isabella felt a warmth she couldn’t describe spread through her chest. She had been afraid for weeks of what the reaction to her secret would be yet so far they’d all been accepting. And not just these four, but apparently Laura Lee as well? The Christian girl who’d suspected she might have caused the crash ‘cos she called her piano teacher a bad word in her head? Isabella had definitely underestimated her.

“No but seriously, congrats,” Van was saying now, with a genuine smile. “Am I to assume you’re still exclusively into ladies?”

“Yeah,” Isabella blushed but nodded.

“So you’re a lesbian too,” Van mused, sending her a wink. Isabella nodded again; this was something she’d already considered. “Now that’s a game I know how to play.”

“Join the club,” Jackie added with a faint smile in her voice.

“It’s a nice club,” Lottie nodded. “We sell t-shirts.”

“But even without that added bonus,” Van continued. “I know how scary the closet can be. Kudos to you for knowing yourself and double kudos for coming out about it. That takes a lot.”

Van’s eyes met Isabella’s for a moment that carried the weight of years behind it.

“Thank you,” Isabella whispered, barely knowing what to say. This acceptance of who she really was, instead of bare tolerance of who she was assumed to be? This was unfamiliar territory for her but for once, the unknown didn’t seem so scary.

Nat leaned forward toward her, shifting position to be closer to her than to Van, and pulled her into a tight hug. Discussion between the other three gradually picked up again around them but Nat and Isabella were in their own little world.

“Isabella,” Nat murmured against her neck, as if testing the name out on her tongue.

Isabella patted her on the back without letting go of the embrace. “That’s me,” she confirmed softly, to a faint chuckle from Nat.

Nat pulled back from the hug just a little bit, just enough to look up at her. “I like it,” she whispered, her eyes full of tenderness. “It suits you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Isabella smiled.

“Yeah,” Nat echoed as she tucked a stray hair away from Isabella’s eyes and behind her ear. “It’s beautiful. Just like you.”

Isabella blushed and couldn’t stop her smile widening. She ducked her head to the side a little out of instinct. Since her teenage years began, she’d always been told it looked weird on the few occasions she’d smiled out of genuine happiness, as opposed to a cocky smirk or a simple stoic expression of nothing. She hadn’t had to worry about it much, rarely having been complimented about anything that wasn’t about how well she matched the masculine image her father wanted from her, but still, it had been enough to form a habit, hiding any such displays of joy.

But Nat didn’t want her to hide. With a hand on Isabella’s chin, Nat gently guided her face back toward her own.

“Hey,” Nat breathed, looking at the real Isabella, wholly and truly, for the first time. “I mean it.”

Isabella was about to say something. Maybe it had been shy agreement. Maybe it had been a bid to downplay the complement. She certainly didn’t know, as Nat leaned forward and kissed her and suddenly her brain felt completely devoid of anything.

Isabella returned the kiss tentatively at first, but with swiftly-growing confidence as the next few seconds passed.

Van wolf-whistled from her spot in the bed and Nat, blushing, pulled away. She and Isabella both blinked as they let the world back in.

“Come on guys,” Van rolled her eyes with unmistakable fondness. “Get your own tree.”

Jackie’s face betrayed nothing (a perk of not having one) but from the way her hands were together and her head was tilted, Isabella knew she was having much the same reaction as when Tai and Van had kissed at Doomcoming. That look of pride and happiness in her eyes as she gazed at the couple was one of Isabella’s favourite memories of her.

“So,” Lottie teased. “Now you’ve had your first kiss as an open lesbian. Nice, huh?”

Nat flipped her off, grinning. “Shut up,” she grumbled without a hint of any actual annoyance as she leaned back against Isabella’s chest and Isabella put her arms around her.

“You could say that,” Isabella answered Lottie slowly. Van laughed.

Easy conversation trailed off as they turned their attention to making a serious plan. Isabella’s foot still ached a little more than was ideal and no-one was letting Van get up from the bed for a while longer yet, despite the miraculous rate of her recovery. It was getting late in the day, so it was decided the five of them would head out to Jackie’s bunker in the morning.

Jackie and Lottie explained the significance of why she had to stay there as Nat and Van exchanged an unreadable glance. Isabella shivered at the description of Jacques, a mysterious malevolent figure who held power here and who seemed interested in… taking Jackie but couldn’t seem to do so the way she was now, at least not when near a large symbol or with her friends apparently.

With Jackie safe, the rest of them would return to the cabin and explain they’d found Lottie here in this hollow. If Lottie mumbled something about the Wilderness wanting her there for a secret purpose, she figured that would satisfy at least most of the others. Nat agreed. Van looked affronted but said nothing. Isabella, too, couldn’t disagree.

Nat had brought a couple scraps of meat for the search, tucked away in hidden pockets. Combined with the scraps Javi had left here before Isabella had found him, that meant they had a total of four small pieces of meat here. Conveniently, only four of the girls gathered here needed to eat.

Jackie watched them all as they ate, concern and helplessness emanating from her like radiation. They put on a brave face of it, for her sake, but she wasn’t fooled. 

They were starving.

As the whirling snow outside began to die down and the dim evening sky began to take over the landscape, Isabella settled in to sleep. Doing so without Javi by his side was a little unusual but deep down, she right now preferred the company she currently had, these girls who knew who she truly was but didn’t turn away from her for it. Indeed, they loved her for it, moreso than before.

With Nat already drifting off into unconsciousness beside her, arms wrapped around her, Isabella let out a peaceful sigh. Despite everything going on with the harsh environment they lived in, the hunger coiling in all of them and the death that had already claimed a few of their number, Isabella fell asleep arguably more content than she’d ever been before.

The baby was crying when Shauna woke that evening.

Her mind felt hazy and unfocused. Try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to take in much detail of her surroundings but that was alright. She didn’t want to. Her son needed her.

From beside the bed, Tai was gently reaching over for the baby. Shauna frowned and pulled him away.

“Shauna…” Tai began, her voice sounding like it was on the verge of breaking. She was crying, why was she crying?

“He needs to feed,” Shauna told her. She didn’t know why Tai was sad but she hoped that would help.

As Shauna lifted her shirt, the others all hung around in the open doorway, unable to meet her gaze. A dour mood hung over them like a storm cloud. Gen’s eyes in particular were red, or at least as much as she could see of them peeking around from behind Melissa.

“Guys, it’s okay, he’s okay,” Shauna tried to reassure them. “He’s just hungry.”

“Shauna, he’s…” Tai trailed off again. She’d gotten another word out this time but still seemed unable to complete the sentence.

“He’s just having trouble latching on,” Shauna smiled fondly. “Mom told me once I wasn’t the best at it either.”

A slight frown flitted across her face as a thought struck her. “Oh, I haven’t even named him yet,” she realised out loud.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Tai whispered.

“No, no, I should,” Shauna insisted. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

She pulled her son closer to her breast, trying to guide him into place. She could hear him clearly, still crying loudly. “His name is Jack,” she told the gathered Yellowjackets. “Jackson Elizabeth Shipman.”

“Jack?” Tai repeated, her voice hollow.

“It just…” Shauna began uncertainly, before eventually finding her words. Quietly, she continued. “It just felt like a fitting name to give someone I love. And Elizabeth… Elizabeth was her middle name.”

Yumi looked to the others in mild confusion. “Her?” she whispered.

Gen looked like she was barely holding herself together but was still able to fix Yumi with a stare that implied she’d failed to grasp something obvious. “He’s also named Jack, Yumi,” she said slowly. “Who do you think?”

Realisation dawned on Yumi’s face and she looked genuinely ashamed to have not understood it before.

With a renewed sob, Gen fled the scene. 

“Gen just needs a minute,” Melissa said quietly. Tai nodded at her but Shauna didn’t think Melissa even noticed, as she was immediately following Gen out of the room.

Gen, openly weeping like that? Somewhere in her mind, alarm bells began to ring but Shauna paid them no mind.

“Don’t you like it?” Shauna asked. She raised Jack’s head a little and gazed at him fondly. He was still crying, bless his little soul, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel annoyed at him in her current daze. Her next words were as soft as the ghost of a breath, as if they were meant only for her mind. “He reminds me of her.”

“I can certainly see one resemblance,” Mari said in a deadpan voice. For a second, she was met with glares Shauna couldn’t begin to explain before Akilah roughly dragged her away, anger plain on her face when normally she was nothing but kind.

Something in Shauna’s mind was practically screaming at her that something was wrong but still, she resisted it. The sharp clarity of reality felt like a ceiling far above her. It carried danger somehow, like it was something she desperately wanted to avoid acknowledging, but the faces of everyone around her were sending her rocketing towards it. Shauna clutched Jack closer to her body protectively.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She began to cry, though she didn’t know why. “What is it? Is it that he’s crying?”

“He’s not crying, Shauna,” Tai said softly. Shauna’s gaze locked onto her with a sudden intensity. Tai’s face carried sadness so profound it was almost impossible to believe she was just as young as her.

“He is,” Shauna insisted. “Can’t you hear him?”

Tai shook her head. Misty slowly approached as Tai subtly gestured for her. “Just give him to Misty for the moment,” she advised. “She can have a look at him.”

“Why does she need to look at him?” Shauna pleaded, her vision beginning to blur. “Why can’t you hear him?”

Misty took another hesitant step toward Shauna, her arms outstretched, as she wore what was probably her best reassuring smile. “It’s okay,” she said, in a voice normally reserved for convincing a sick person to take medicine they didn’t want to. “It’ll only take a second.”

Shauna looked from Tai to Misty and back again, though she was barely able to tell the difference through the tears obscuring her sight. She had just about cracked the harsh ceiling of reality and was now fighting her hardest to ignore it. It was a battle she was losing.

“Why can’t you hear him?” Shauna repeated, not caring enough anymore to try and stop herself crying. “Why can’t you hear him?”

The fact that she couldn’t hear him either, not really, finally battered through her meager defences, shattering her. Her arms felt limp, just for a moment. But for Misty, swooping in with the precision and timing of a trained surgeon, a moment was enough.

Tai leaned over and put her arms around Shauna, who immediately returned the gesture, hanging onto her for dear life like a sloth clinging tightly to a tree. Tai tried to calm her, but she wasn’t speaking anymore. She just bawled her heart out, pleading with the world to stop.

Misty stood anxiously by, delicately carrying Jackson Elizabeth Shipman, who was still carefully swaddled in the old shirt of Jackie’s he’d spent his entire life in.

Chapter Text

Isabella was free.

She laughed, she cried, she danced and she did it all with a song in her heart, and with the other girls alongside her. Her long hair flew behind her as the wind caressed her face.

She lost all sense of time as the Yellowjackets moved to a rhythm no-one outside the group could ever hear, wearing elegant white dresses no-one outside the group could ever see.

Isabella was dimly aware she must be dreaming. The real world would never let her feel joy like this. The real world would never let Isabella Martinez out of her cage.

The sun had melted a small patch of snow into a puddle and she slowed for a moment to look into it. Isabella smiled, and felt herself heal just a little as she saw the actions she was consciously making reflected in a face she finally felt comfortable calling her own.

The girls continued their dance as Isabella noticed Javi standing in the middle of them all. He looked scared about something, and wasn’t meeting Isabella’s eyes.

Nat did though, even as she moved in sync with everybody else. She looked afraid too, and deeply saddened by something. 

Isabella spotted that Javi wasn’t remaining here by choice. He tried to get away a few times, but whatever direction he took, he found himself blocked by one of the girls. The dance always seemed to coincidentally make sure Javi had no avenue of escape.

The circle around the boy got smaller and smaller and the girls all raised makeshift spears that Isabella only now saw they were holding. Even Nat, a tableau of regret elegantly laid out across her features. Even Isabella herself, who didn’t know exactly why she was doing it but, driven by some unknowable instinct, she knew it was important. 

A song of joy still in her heart, and a smile still on almost everyone’s lips, Isabella struck the first blow. Blood stained her dress and it was beautiful.

Isabella woke up and her hands immediately went to her hair and face. The disappointment at learning she was physically the same as when she’d been yesterday was irrational, she knew, but still very real.

She didn’t bother reflecting on the dream anymore. It had been the same one she’d had the previous night, the same one she’d had every night for a week now. Maybe it was something to do with a deep-seated fear of losing Javi, of being the one to drive him away? Isabella was many things, but she was not a psychiatrist. If she really wanted to get to the bottom of the dream, such half-baked guesses would have to do.

Of more concern was the way she felt in the dream. But, she supposed, nightmares could be like that. Isabella would never admit that the sense of belonging she had with the group, even all in her head, was even more powerful a feeling to her than the bond she had with her brother, which had been borne more out of a sense of duty to family after her father died than out of any personal desire. Javi was a good kid, and she loved him. But they didn’t exactly get along much before the crash.

Her own wakefulness seemed to stir Nat, still cuddled up against her.

“Morning, Bella,” Nat murmured, the faintest hint of an Italian accent creeping into her words as the nickname slipped easily from her lips.

“Good morning, Nat,” Isabella whispered back, kissing her softly on the forehead. The ghost of a smile graced the other girl’s features in response.

Nat opened her eyes and looked up at Isabella, the smile widening to a grin as their gazes met.

“Hey,” Nat said lazily.

“Hi,” Isabella responded in kind.

“Hey, guys,” Jackie greeted from across the hollow.

Without the motion of her moving her jaw to speak, it was impossible to know she was awake. Not for the first time, Isabella found herself hoping Jackie’s current condition wasn’t permanent.

Nat instinctively bunched up against Isabella at the unexpected interruption. “Good morning, Jackie,” she said slowly, her eyes narrowing just a little bit.

“Sorry,” Jackie said, and she really did sound like she meant it. “I’ve just been awake for ages and it got really boring waiting for someone to wake up.”

“I’m also awake,” Lottie pointed out, to the clear surprise of Jackie. Lottie was draped over Jackie and had been motionless until right now as she chose to sit up. “I just didn’t want to disturb anyone.”

“You didn’t move a muscle,” Jackie told her in amazement. “Your breathing didn’t even change.”

“I guess I’m good at it,” Lottie shrugged.

“Well just so long as we’re all up,” Van grumbled from the bed, seemingly having woken up at some point during this conversation. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, still wearing the clothes they’d found here in the hollow that presumably had once belonged to Jacques. “We should probably think about getting a move on.”

“How’s the hand?” Nat asked quietly, sitting up straighter.

“It’s fine,” Van said casually, waving a hand dismissively. “Let’s go, I can carry the clothes I was wearing yesterday-”

Nat grabbed the hand she was waving, her left hand, and held it still.

“Shit, Van,” Nat breathed. Her middle finger was looking okay again but her ring finger had gone the other direction. Fully half of it was adorned in unpleasant black and blue, giving it the appearance of being thoroughly diseased. Nat gently tapped the end of it. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes,” Van mumbled, snatching her hand away from Nat’s grip. “Hurts like a bitch, thanks.”

“Do we need to get you to the cabin first?” Jackie asked uncertainly. “Have that looked at?”

“No way,” Van said firmly.

“You’re not going near that cabin, Taylor,” Nat agreed.

“It’s a good idea,” Lottie nodded. “Van and Isabella can go back, say Nat was checking out another lead but that they needed to get back first ‘cos, well, look at her hand. Nat knows the way to the bunker probably better than you do, Jackie, so we three can go-”

“No,” said Van, as she pulled the blankets back to stand up properly. “We’ll all go together, we’ll all come back together, besides Jackie. No splitting up. Misty can look at my hand when we’re all back.”

“What’s that you got there, Van?” Jackie asked quietly, as everyone stood.

“Found this in the bed last night,” Van told her, raising her right hand to show everyone the playing card she was holding. The queen of hearts, with the eyes scratched out and the corners ever so slightly blackened and twisted, as if it had been nearly burned. “I want to reunite it with the deck back at the cabin.”

“Are you sure?” Isabella asked. She couldn’t put her finger precisely on why, but the card creeped her the hell out. Lottie seemed actually afraid of it, as she took a small step behind Jackie, making sure someone else was positioned between her and the card’s line of sight.

It seemed to affect Van too, though she shrugged it off or at least tried to. “I like things being together,” she said softly, tucking the card away into an oversized pocket. Isabella picked up her spear.

There was no breakfast to be had and they were already dressed. With no other preparations to make, the five of them set out. Van took the lead, with Jackie and Lottie close behind her. Nat and Isabella were right behind them, bringing up the rear. They both scanned the trees around them, catching each other’s eye as they did so.

They couldn’t explain it, and they didn’t tell the others, but they couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling they were being watched.

The snowstorm had passed. If one were to take a step back and take a general look at the landscape, they would find it to be quiet, maybe even peaceful. But that would be wrong. Every Yellowjacket knew that just below the surface raged a maelstrom of rage and pain and sorrow and other such things most people would never expect a piece of land to possess. If it was not treated with appropriate respect, the Wilderness would strike back at you. You risked it all just being in its presence, let alone being trapped with it.

The same impression could be drawn now about Shauna Shipman.

Tai and Shauna had spent much of the night in each other’s arms, tears flowing so freely and in such quantity that Tai had almost forgotten what it was like to have dry cheeks. Misty had eventually left the room, taking the eerily silent bundle to the meat shed on Tai’s instruction. Just to keep the body cool, she insisted. They would deal with it tomorrow.

Exhaustion had inevitably claimed them and tomorrow was now today. In stark contrast to yesterday, Shauna was silent and hardly moved. Tai had slept beside her last night but upon waking, Shauna had asked to be alone, almost the only words she’d said out loud today as far as anyone could tell. She’d gone out to the shed just once early on, and been back significantly quicker than usual, as if not wanting to linger in there today. Handing Mari a handful of meat to use for breakfast, she’d uttered the only other words anyone had heard her utter today.

“That’s it,” Shauna had told them all, her voice hollow.

“You mean…” Melissa had trailed off, not daring to voice the fear as if that might make it real. Shauna stared right at her as she answered.

“That’s it,” she had repeated, emotionlessly. “No more meat.”

As everyone had exchanged apprehensive looks, she’d retreated to her room

So Tai now sat alone by the fire, staring into the embers.

She hadn’t actually done anything herself, she reasoned. She’d just watched as the baby’s breathing had slowed, gotten up too late to fetch Misty and Akilah, stared at Jack’s unmoving features as the others puzzled over what could possibly have happened.

Even if it was her fault (which it was, an inner part of her mind hissed at her), in a way she was really doing the kid a favour. This was no life for a baby. If by some miracle he’d survived out here, he’d have the most fucked-up childhood a boy could have. At what age would they tell him about the connection between the occasional disappearance of one of their number, of one of the faces he would see every day until suddenly he didn’t, and the times where their supply of food got a much-needed increase? Or would he chance upon it himself?

Tai groaned and closed her eyes, letting her head fall backwards in her chair. There it was, her need to justify this bullshit to stop herself feeling bad about it. The same thing that had sent Van storming away from her in disgust weeks ago. Tai couldn’t blame her for it.

The thing was, it was her fault. She could spin whatever excuse she wanted and hey, maybe, practically speaking, by hard pragmatic logic, it was the right call. But at the end of the day, none of that could change the fact she had wanted a baby to die and made that intention known, fully aware what would happen if she did.

She felt awful about it, a feeling that renewed itself like a fountain with every glance at Shauna’s face, but she also knew she would make the same choice again in an instant. She loved Shauna, she really did. But the other option had been Van dying instead. So honestly, in her heart of hearts, Tai knew it hadn’t really been a choice. Simply a terrible turn of events that could not have ended any other way.

“How is she?” Akilah asked her softly.

Tilting her head forward again, Tai opened her eyes. Akilah sat in front of her, exhausted. Tai wondered how much sleep she’d managed to get.

“Not well,” Tai admitted bluntly. “But at least she’s talking this time.”

“Given how she sounds when she does,” Akilah pointed out. “Is that better or worse? At least after Jackie, she was feeling something.”

“She’s feeling a lot now, Akilah,” Tai sighed. “Too much, even. God, her biggest worry right now should be a fight with her girlfriend about, I don’t know, something fucking stupid and petty. Not this.”

“Yeah,” Akilah agreed, swallowing heavily. “Speaking of… what are you going to do?”

“About?” Tai asked.

Akilah hesitated, before jerking her head in the general direction of the meat shed outside. “That,” she answered simply. She lowered her voice as she continued. “The body.”

No-one wanted to use his name.

“We’ll bury him today,” Tai whispered.

“I thought we couldn’t until spring,” Akilah frowned. “The ground’s too hard.”

“The grave doesn’t have to be very big,” Tai reminded her. Akilah’s face seemed to soften, and she nodded in acknowledgement of the point.

“Do we have to?” Mari asked suddenly, her voice low but carrying distinctly through the cabin. She was sitting by a window near the front door, looking out at the landscape, but now she slowly stood up.

Tai looked at her for a moment. “I was just going to do it with Shauna,” she told the group, who were now all listening. “But anyone else who wants to help is welcome.”

“No, I mean,” Mari hesitated. Her face betrayed some great inner turmoil taking place beneath the surface. Whatever it was, she was struggling a lot even to accept it for herself, let alone share it with the group.

Javi, right in a corner, huddled with his knees up and eyes wide, seemed to try shrinking further into it.

“Spit it out, Mar,” Yumi said, to a general murmur of agreement.

Mari and Tai’s eyes met just as Mari’s stomach let out a very audible growl. Something in Mari’s mind seemed to set into place.

“No,” Tai whispered under her breath, as she realised what the other girl was about to suggest.

“We’re out of food,” Mari began. “Like, totally out.”

“What the fuck are you saying, Mari?” Tai hissed, standing up to her full height.

“We’ve already eaten two people,” Mari reminded her. “Tragic, yes, but we had to. We have to again.”

“We’re not going to eat a fucking baby,” Tai told her. No-one would meet her gaze.

“We have literally nothing,” Mari snapped. “Even the hunters aren’t looking for food right now, they’re looking for Lottie. And they can’t find food even when they’re trying.”

“That last part felt uncalled for,” Melissa muttered.

“It’s not like she's wrong,” Gen muttered right back.

“Yes, we’re starving,” Tai admitted. “Yes, we have nothing. But can any of you really tell me you’re okay with sitting down and eating a baby?"

“I can,” Mari challenged, matching her stare. “We’d have to divide it up though, he’s tiny.”

“Oh, so you want his mother to butcher him?” Tai asked, folding her arms.

Mari’s gaze faltered. “I could do it,” she mumbled.

“No, you couldn’t,” Misty informed her chirpily. “You don’t have the skill for it.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Mari asked her harshly, grateful to have a natural way to avoid Tai’s glare.

“Literally anything would be a better idea,” Yumi spat. “Jesus Christ, Mar.”

Mari sat down, avoiding the stares of the others. The idea had been shut down pretty hard but Tai couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted. They’d eaten human flesh before and they’d acknowledged it in hushed tones after the fact. But openly admitting to wanting more was new.

Not for the first time, Tai wondered how much longer they’d be out here in these woods. How much had they fallen already, and how much further did they have to go? How much would they do to ensure their survival, and the survival of those they cared about?

Thinking back to yesterday, the choice she’d made and why she’d made it, Tai at least had an answer for that last question.

Silence followed Yumi’s rebuke, but it didn’t last.

“With the snow no longer being so heavy,” Gen began slowly. “Maybe we should go look for Crystal now.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Misty nodded.

“You don’t sound super torn up about the baby,” Mari quipped, to a glare from Akilah.

“Of course I’m upset about it,” Misty squeaked. “I wish he didn’t die. But I don’t want Crystal to die either.”

“What if she already has?” Melissa asked quietly.

No-one answered that. Misty looked around at everyone almost in a panic, but no-one would meet her eyes. Instead, one by one, they all looked at Tai, who met all their gazes evenly.

“I’ll stay with Shauna,” she announced. “We’ll take care of the baby.”

The rest of the Yellowjackets immediately started getting up and preparing to go out. For the first time since Jack had died, they all seemed to have a faint level of excitement to them. It was clear what they all anticipated.

And Tai hadn’t said no.

The only girl here who didn’t seem to share their energy was Misty, who looked at Tai almost pleadingly. Tai met her eyes apologetically but said nothing. Misty dressed up warmly with the rest with a determination Tai had rarely seen in her. As much as they all needed food, she couldn’t help but hope a little that Misty found her friend. If friend was the right word.

Javi also didn’t share the energy of the rest but he was separate from them in a lot of ways already. He shifted position a little but otherwise didn’t move. Tai rolled her eyes at him as she approached the bedroom door.

“Soooo,” Jackie drew out the single syllable to a degree that put whole sentences to shame. She bounced around so much as she walked that Lottie thought she might explode. “Did you see her again last night?”

Beside her, Lottie blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, unable to hide her smile.

“Who’s this?” Van asked from the front of the group.

“Laura Lee,” Jackie answered, with a note of pride and real happiness in her voice.

“I thought she was just there to tell you about Jackie,” Nat frowned.

“And me, apparently,” Isabella murmured, plunging the spear into the snow ahead of her as she walked, like a walking stick.

“She’s come back a couple times since,” Lottie said slowly. “We’re kind of dating now.”

“Dating?” Van repeated, looking back for a moment with a raised eyebrow and a grin.

“There’s lots of talking,” Lottie told them before her blush deepened. “And lots of, um, lots of kissing.”

Van wolf-whistled. “Sounds like a date to me,” she declared. “Happy for you, Lot.”

“So she keeps you busy every night now?” Nat asked, with a teasing tone that Lottie didn’t catch until it was too late.

“Yeah,” Lottie answered, without thinking. 

Jackie just barely managed to stifle a giggle. Van didn’t even try to fight herself and fully cackled out loud. Lottie couldn’t meet any of their eyes now, for fear of looking like a tomato.

“We couldn’t be happier for you,” Jackie told her, still calming down. “I’m serious.”

“Yeah,” Isabella agreed. “Though I am surprised.”

“What about?” Nat asked. “I once thought they’d be the first two of us to get together.”

“I’m just still getting used to people who were… gone, coming back,” Isabella said quietly. “And I just hope it can work out long-term.”

Nat and Isabella shared a look. Lottie had no idea what their own ideas about the long-term might be but she wished them all the best.

“It’ll work,” Lottie said firmly. “I know it will. If you’ve believed in me about anything, you can believe in that.”

“I do,” Van said, sending Lottie a comforting smile.

“I don’t know about me though,” Jackie added slowly. “Lottie told me that Laura Lee says I was meant to come back properly but something messed up along the way.”

“Is it possible to find out what it was and… bring you back the rest of the way?” Nat asked with growing excitement. “Finish the job?”

“Maybe,” said Jackie uncertainly. “Wait, then I could come back to the cabin-”

“No,” said Van immediately.

“But I wouldn’t have to worry about Jacques anymore,” Jackie protested.

“How would we explain you?” Nat pointed out.

“We all accepted it pretty easily,” Isabella mentioned, gesturing to the group at large.

“If I told them it was a Wilderness miracle, I think they’d believe it,” Lottie nodded. “They’d have to, with the physical proof standing right in front of them. And besides, would that even be wrong?”

“Isabella…” Nat said softly, touching her arm. “I trust you. I trust Van. I trust Lottie now, even if only ‘cos I have to. But I definitely do not trust all of them. This right here is basically everyone I think should know.”

“Nat,” Jackie said firmly. “If I get back to being me, I want to see them again. My choice.”

From opposite ends of the group, Van and Nat exchanged a glance. Van shrugged. Nat said nothing but her eyes suddenly seemed so full of pain.

“I have a theory about how you might be able to,” Lottie offered. Jackie looked at her curiously. “Laura Lee described the ability to do things like this as being very dependent on your belief you can and desire to want it.”

“I very much would like my flesh back,” Jackie pointed out. “I don’t enjoy being a walking xylophone.”

“Do you really want to be back?” Lottie pressed. “You really want to live here?”

“Duh,” Jackie scoffed.

“Nothing that makes you reluctant to come back to this world?”

“Jesus, Lottie,” Nat rolled her eyes. “How many times does she have to say it?”

“If you could be back at the cabin right now, what would you be doing? Who would you be with?”

“Fucking hell, Lot,” Van breathed, getting it.

The group’s pace came to a halt as Lottie did, putting her hands on Jackie’s shoulders. “Would you be hanging out with Shauna?”

“Of course,” Jackie snapped even as she stiffened at the name. “I need to help her, she’s just had a baby-”

“But she hates you, apparently,” Lottie pointed out. “She wouldn’t want you around.”

“I know that,” Jackie told her, suddenly tearful. No tear ducts but still able to perfectly sound and probably feel like she was crying. Lottie didn’t envy her. “I still have to be with her.”

“But could you?” Lottie asked. “Or are you reluctant to ‘cos her hating you is the most painful thing in the world to you?”

“Stop it,” Jackie protested, struggling weakly against Lottie’s grip.

“Lottie, that’s enough,” Nat stepped forward angrily, wrenching Lottie away from Jackie. Lottie crashed backward into the snow. “Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t you see?” Lottie asked excitedly as she stood, brushing snow off herself. “That’s it.”

She gestured toward Jackie, who was now in a big hug with Van and Isabella, who were trying to reassure her. “She can’t come all the way through ‘cos the thought that Shauna not only doesn’t love her but hates her is too much of a deterrent,” Lottie continued. “Living in a world where that’s true would be the worst kind of hell for her. But she’s still Jackie, and she can’t not be at least near Shauna if she has the choice, even with that in mind, so she couldn’t just go fully back, either. So, voila, she’s back but only partially.”

“What are you saying, Lot?” Van asked cautiously, breaking away from the hug to stand near Nat and Lottie. “She can’t be a real girl again unless she knows Shauna loves her? We just convince her of that and that’ll sort her out?”

“She hates me,” Jackie insisted, slightly muffled by the hug from Isabella, who leaned her spear against a nearby tree for the moment.

“I think so,” Lottie nodded, ignoring her. “I’m pretty sure of it. I’ll run it by Laura Lee tonight, see what she thinks.”

“I don’t think we can talk her into that idea,” Nat pointed out. “And then what if it works? She’ll run straight back to Shauna.”

“Which is a problem how?” Lottie asked. “They’ll be happy together.”

“Shauna is bad news for her,” Nat hissed. Van nodded reluctantly in agreement, unhappy to be disagreeing with Lottie.

“It’s a shame you think that,” Lottie said, regarding her steadily. “Since I think getting Shauna up to see her is the best way to solve this.”

The group fell silent, save for Jackie’s sobbing. Nat fixed Lottie with a glare that would’ve sent anyone else scurrying for cover. Lottie simply held her gaze calmly.

“Let’s get moving,” Van said quietly, her eyes darting between Lottie and Nat. Isabella recovered her spear.

Van headed the party again, this time with Isabella and a shaken Jackie in the middle. Lottie made to follow but Nat grabbed her arm.

“If you go hard on her like that again,” Nat whispered. “Or hurt her in any way with any of your bullshit, I will kill you.”

It was a promise Lottie didn’t believe she would keep, but she acknowledged it with a nod regardless.

“If I’m ever seriously hurting people I care about,” Lottie whispered back. “And not doing what’s really best for them, then I give you permission.”

Nat let go and the pair fell back into step with the rest of the group.

The little group was moving again. Nat seemed distracted by whatever had happened with Lottie, and was no longer paying as much attention to their surroundings. Travis too was distracted, with helping Jackie move along. This was good, thought the unseen observer of the little group. It allowed her to get a little closer, enough to even hear snatches of conversation if the group hadn’t decided to walk in silence since whatever that little incident was. She would’ve narrowed her eyes, if that was a thing she was really capable of doing anymore.

The incident in question had upset Jackie. That cult bitch Lottie had said something, done something, and Jackie had just let it happen. The group’s silent spectator supposed that Jackie probably considered Nat at least to be a friend, after the way she’d stepped in and defended her, albeit eventually. Jackie must know what the other girls had done to her, Nat included, but she also just was the forgiving type sometimes. Too much for her own good.

Jackie walked in the middle of the cluster now, which would make it difficult to get her out of there. Nevertheless, their watchful witness continued to shadow them through the trees with that exact goal in mind. She wasn’t hopeful; the ideal moment might have to wait until the group had reached wherever they were going. She’d only been up and about for a handful of days now, she could afford to wait a little more.

She ducked back a little as Nat seemed to look straight at her, or at least in her direction. She cursed. If Nat made it known she felt they were being followed, the person following them felt she might as well take action then. What was Nat gonna do, shoot her? Like that’d do anything.

The funeral was a pretty intimate affair. Tai and Shauna were the only attendees, but this was fine as they were the only ones who needed to be there. Or rather Shauna was, but Shauna needed Tai, so Tai was effectively needed too.

“Do the others not want to be here?” Shauna asked.

Tai shook her head. “I don’t think they should know where it is,” she answered quietly. She was grateful Shauna didn’t ask her to elaborate.

With a fragment of the plane’s door that Tai had brought for use as a shovel, they dug a hole. The ground was still fairly hard but it didn’t have to be very big. Tai had offered to do it herself but Shauna had insisted on helping. 

They lowered the bundle into the hole. It was so small, so helpless. Jack would’ve been kicking or crying or holding onto Shauna’s little finger with the whole of his little fist. But what they delicately placed into the grave was not Jack, it was an inanimate bag of meat and blood and bones that would never do any of those things again. Tai had thought Shauna would be the first to cry, but she now proved that theory wrong as she stood back up.

With a fond smile on her face, Shauna said a few quiet words, words that Tai would never repeat to anyone. They were mostly addressed to her son but toward the end, she raised her head and addressed Jackie as well. Tai didn’t know if even she was meant to hear that part.

She said a few words of her own, which she knew Shauna likewise would never tell a living soul about. She didn’t have as much to say as her friend but Shauna seemed to appreciate it regardless.

Tai couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes through the whole thing.

After that, they filled in the grave. It didn’t take long.

They gathered a few stones and stacked them carefully in place.

As they made their way back to the cabin, Shauna took a moment to address the third member of the triumvirate she considered the most important people in her life, and who was also the only one of that trio still alive now.

“Thank you, Tai,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

You’d still have a son, Tai almost said aloud. Instead, she swallowed and put on a faint smile. “No worries,” she said, taking her best friend’s hand in her own. “I’m always here for you, Shauna.”

“Ditto,” Shauna smiled softly back at her.

Tai did her best to put what had happened out of her mind as much as she could. She needed to prioritise. She couldn’t take it back and wouldn’t if she could, as she’d mentally determined every time she’d thought about it since. What mattered now was that Shauna needed her, as she needed Shauna. Van was alive. If she could simply focus on these things, she might just make it out of these woods alive.

They stayed hand in hand as they walked back to the cabin. Javi seemed to be scared of Shauna as they entered but Tai ignored him. Shauna seemed to want to comfort him but she also just didn’t have the energy. They sat by the window near the front door instead, and just gazed out in silence.

It had been so easy. Almost distressingly so.

A few short tear-tinged words about finding Kristen like Jackie, blue and stiff and with a little song frozen in her throat, and they’d let Misty go. Akilah was entirely too empathetic for her own good, honestly. It made her a lovely person but it also left her easy to manipulate. Mari might’ve tried to stop her except she could never stand in the way of whatever Akilah wanted for very long, which is something Misty might’ve found interesting if she ever thought about it for longer than two seconds.

Misty’s smile faded a little as she remembered what it was she was actually out here doing.

She stood now only a few minutes away from where she’d left Kristen. Kristen’s body. She hesitated before turning the final corner obstructing her view of the corpse. The bloody, broken, lifeless corpse. That she’d created.

Misty’s vision suddenly started to blur but she furiously blinked the tears away. It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her fault-

“I’m not gonna let them eat you, Kristen,” she whispered under her breath and, with renewed resolve, turned the corner to see the body.

Which wasn’t there.

Misty blinked. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. After all the snowstorms of late, especially the one that had started picking up as she’d hurriedly gotten back to the cabin without Kristen, it made sense the body would be buried. She would just have to dig for it.

Misty swallowed but then determinedly got to work. After a few minutes of scraping the snow away though, it was clear something was wrong. Her scoops were shallow at first, in case the body wasn’t very deep, but then got increasingly deeper and more frantic until she eventually had to admit defeat.

“Well, shit,” she said quietly, on her knees.

Kristen wasn’t here.

So was she… alive?

No way. Absolutely not, she was very certainly dead.

But… but then what was up with this?

After a million unlikely options had raced through her head, Misty had to settle for the generic ‘animals must have got to her’. Some animal apparently had seen fit to drag the body away. Which, sure, she supposed that made sense. What else could it possibly be?

It was as Misty made her way back to the cabin that she found her second sign of animals taking interest in the dead.

She was passing by the plane wreckage when a small but perceptible difference in the landscape caught her eye. Bending down to brush away snow, Misty discovered what was unmistakably disturbed ground over one of the graves. It looked like there had been digging here though if she hadn’t known better, she could’ve sworn the digging had come from within, with the dirt being hastily filled in again afterward.

The signs marking which grave was which were no longer legible but Misty had a good memory and a good sense of organisation. She didn’t need the signs to be able to tell that it was the body of Rachel Goldman that had clearly suffered this indignity at the hands of the cruel and unforgiving Wilderness.

Misty shivered, and it was only partially to do with the cold. Keeping a careful eye out, she walked back to the cabin.

“Guys,” Nat said quietly, getting everyone’s attention. “There’s something following us.”

Isabella shot her a questioning look. “It’s getting closer,” Nat continued. “And now I’ve seen it.”

“What is it?” Van asked, her eyes scanning the trees.

“I don’t know,” Nat admitted, before pointing to a seemingly random spot behind them. “But it’s as big as a person and it’s over there.”

The whole group stopped and turned to take a look as Nat pointed directly at her. Jackie took a few steps away from Lottie, away from anyone. Ah well. Now seemed as good a time as any.

The thing approached them head-on, abandoning subtlety with surprising speed. In only a few seconds, it had taken hold of Jackie’s wrist and was pulling her away from the others, managing several stumbling steps before Jackie managed to hold fast. It was a few seconds the other girls wouldn’t have given it, if they hadn’t been in mild shock.

“Oh, shit,” Van whispered as it turned back round to face them, one hand still gripping Jackie’s wrist tightly.

“Rachel?” Jackie asked hesitantly.

It was indeed.

Her hair had once been golden blonde. Her clothes had once been perfect, her nails neatly coloured. None of these things were now true.

What remained of her matted hair hung loosely from her scalp and no-one could call it golden anymore. Her clothes were torn and ruined and her nails (what remained of them) had chipped into claws. She was almost as much a skeleton as Jackie was but enough rotting flesh still clung to her bones like torn canvas peeling out of a picture frame that the term didn’t quite feel appropriate. The hole in her neck that had killed her was now hardly the most notable one on her body.

As she swept her gaze over them, Jackie noticed that only the left eye socket was filled, albeit bloodshot. She was pretty sure she could make out the remains of the right eye, frozen solid in the process of dribbling out the other socket.

“Come with me, Jackie,” Rachel hissed insistently, her voice sounding not quite right, as if she was speaking through a tin can.

“Rachel,” Nat said, her voice only shaking a little. “How long… how long have you been back?”

“I came back the day Jackie did,” Rachel answered. She spat, and dirt came out. “Just took me this long to get out of that damn grave. I only popped out of there to haunt you guys once, the night Coach Scott died.”

“Shit,” Van mumbled, sharing glances with Nat and Isabella. “The messed up grave. We saw that.”

Nat’s eyes widened slightly as she made the connection.

“Jacques can get us here, Rachel,” Jackie told her gently, but urgently, ignoring the discomfort on Nat’s face as Rachel mentioned that night. “We’re headed to a place right now where we can be safe from him but-”

“Jacques can get you here,” Rachel corrected. “I’m doing fine, actually.”

“Why was your return different to mine?” Jackie asked, a frown in her voice.

Rachel shrugged. “I’m committed.”

“Then why isn’t your body all better?” Lottie asked, with a frown of her own.

“Because I don’t want it to be,” Rachel answered slowly, fixing her one piercing blue eye on Lottie. “I’m here just to get Jackie and get out.”

“You didn’t want to, um, fix up anything?” Isabella asked quietly, pointing to her own right eye with a wince. Jackie could tell Isabella was having a hard time just looking at Rachel as she was now. The hand carrying her spear fidgeted.

Rachel turned the glare over to her. “Yeah, I wanted to come back all nice and proper, healthy living body and all,” she admitted. “But after the first fifteen times I suffocated on dirt before I could make any real progress on digging myself out, I got to thinking some things just weren’t priorities.”

“I’m so sorry,” Nat whispered, eyes full of guilt. Isabella put a hand on her shoulder, which Nat immediately grasped onto with her own. Despite the situation, Jackie felt warmth at the sight of what they had.

“I don’t blame you for that,” Rachel shot back. “I can get mad at a whole lot else though. Come on, Jackie.”

Jackie stood firm, preventing Rachel from dragging her off. “There’s a place nearby where I can be safe from Jacques,” she pointed out again. “Our friends were just accompanying me there now. I’ve been there before and it’s a little small but-”

“I know where a better place is,” Rachel told her, shaking her head. “It’s got a large symbol, the works.”

“You haven’t even seen the bunker yet,” Lottie pointed out. “How do you know your place is better?”

“Because I know that you,” Rachel spat at her. “Don’t know where it is.”

“Rachel,” Jackie said, trying to calm her. “These are my friends. I know you didn’t know many people on the team and you didn’t know Isabella at all, that’s Isabella by the way-”

Isabella gave a shy little wave.

”But you can trust them,” Jackie insisted. “They’ve helped me.”

“No, Jackie,” Rachel said, glaring at the lot of them. “Look at yourself, they’ve chipped off a piece of your fucking skull! We can’t trust any of them here. How can you say that after what they did to you?”

Isabella, Nat and Van suddenly found it even harder than it was already to meet Rachel’s gaze. Only Lottie stood firm, regarding her coolly, as if challenging her.

“It was my fault I died, Rachel,” Jackie said softly. “I’ve been over it a million times.”

“Wait,” Isabella said, trying to pause the world to clarify something. “She doesn’t know?”

“Bella, stop,” Nat wheeled on her, her voice begging and her eyes pleading. She looked like her world was on the verge of collapsing around her. “Be quiet, please, just for now.”

“It’s too late, Nat,” Van mumbled, as her eyes met Jackie’s empty sockets.

“Jackie,” Lottie began, taking a step forward as Jackie’s gaze switched over to her. “I’m sorry for everything we did.”

“I already said my death wasn’t your fault, Lot,” Jackie said, a little confused even as Rachel scoffed. “And neither was the Doomcoming stuff, you’d all been drugged-”

Confusion flitted across Lottie’s face as she interjected. “No, I don’t mean any of that,” she clarified. “I thought you knew.”

Nat whipped round, her eyes wide with horror. She opened her mouth but no words came out, as if her tongue had been stolen from her. Lottie continued.

“I’m sorry we ate you.”

“Lottie!” Nat yelled, trying to cut her off. But it wasn’t enough, or in time. She spun round again, this time to Jackie. She was nearly crying. “Jackie…”

“You… ate me,” Jackie echoed.

A memory flashed, a gift from her meeting with Jacques.

Shauna in the dark, Lottie, Nat, Van, Isabella, Tai, all of them, all around her. They gathered over a cooling pyre, scrabbling at perfectly roasted flesh. The feelings of discomfort all over her bones buzzed as she made connections in an instant.

It was her. Her body. Her flesh.

Tai’s teeth sunk into Jackie’s face.

Shauna’s knife cut deep into Jackie’s leg.

Lottie’s fingers delicately picked at Jackie’s crisp skin.

Nat pulled a chunk of meat off Jackie’s arm and slowly but surely put it in her mouth.

Van tore a loose sliver of flesh off Jackie’s cheek.

Isabella, Gen, Melissa, Yumi, Mari, Akilah, Misty, Kristen, everyone, they all gorged themselves.

There was no bear. And there were certainly no massages in Heaven.

It was them. It was her team, her friends. They had eaten her.

Jackie stumbled back, her vision showing her the present again.

“Jackie, please,” Nat begged, holding out her arms, tears flowing freely. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t, we couldn’t-”

She took a couple hesitant steps forward but something in the way Jackie looked at her in that moment stopped her in her tracks.

Jackie turned to Rachel. “Let’s go,” she said quietly.

Jackie appreciated that there was no hint of mockery or victory on Rachel’s face as she nodded and the two dead girls ran off into the depths of the woods. Nat almost ran after them but Van said something, stopped her, and she allowed herself to be swept up in a hug from Isabella. As Jackie looked back one last time before they plunged into thicker foliage, Lottie was looking straight at her, an apologetic glint in her eye.

From the dejected looks and the clear lack of any cargo, Tai gathered Crystal hadn’t been found. 

It was starting to get dark on their second day away and Van, Nat, Lottie and Travis still weren’t back. She hoped they were okay.

Shauna had retreated to the bedroom, preferring quiet company, as the other girls filed back in and sat down around the main room. Javi hadn’t budged an inch all day.

The fire had been started but Mari hadn’t done anything with it. There was no dinner to be had.

On reflection, Tai shouldn’t have been surprised that the conversation went where it did.

“That was the problem with Jackie and Coach,” Misty was saying now, in hushed tones. Mari, for once, was actually listening to what she had to say.

“What was?” she asked, in a tone just as hushed yet with a lack of any other conversation, it carried clearly through the cabin.

Akilah sat down beside Mari and placed a hand on her back but said nothing. As if summoned by the mention of Jackie, Shauna exited the bedroom and sat down beside Tai. Tai put an arm around her and felt Shauna lean into her shoulder a little.

“They kept us alive for longer,” Misty pointed out. “But only a little while. If we’d treated them like an animal caught by Nat, saved the meat like we do with any other dead thing we find out here, they could’ve lasted us for a week or two, at least.”

Tai could practically feel the temperature dropping, despite the fire blazing right behind her.

“It’s a shame we don’t have the baby anymore,” Mari muttered, sneaking a glance at Shauna.

Shauna tensed under Tai’s arm. Tai met Mari’s gaze coldly. “He’s gone,” she asserted. “Cross him off whatever fucked-up list you have him on in your head.”

Unlike this morning, Mari didn’t back down so immediately. Desperation changes a person.

“Then someone needs to die,” she declared, looking around the cabin.

“What are you saying?” Akilah asked quietly.

Javi moved. He stood, just a little, and took a few steps toward the cabin door, freezing in place only as the eyes of every Yellowjacket snapped over to him. He sat back down as they turned their attention back to the conversation.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Mari insisted. “Maybe Travis is dead. Or Nat.”

She glanced at Tai, and both girls’ eyes narrowed.

“Or maybe Lottie will be helping them carry Van’s frozen ass in through that door at any moment,” she continued pointedly, before looking back round to the others. “But if someone doesn’t die now, we all do. It has to happen before we’re all too weak to take advantage.”

“You want to deliberately murder someone?” Yumi asked. “So we can… survive?”

Only yesterday, her tone might have carried disgust and Tai would’ve respected that. Today, her tone carried only shy interest and Tai, as much as she didn’t want to, could understand it.

Mari nodded. Tai noticed Javi moving again, out of the corner of her eye, but said nothing. The first time he’d run, it’d been as the Yellowjackets had run through the forest on a hunt, carried only by instinct. If he was about to run again, Tai couldn’t find it in her heart to blame him, not when it looked like the same thing might be happening again, only this time as something they’d talked themselves into with the trappings of logic and pragmatism.

“Misty, how long could one person keep us fed?” Mari asked. “Properly rationed?”

Misty hesitated and it was Shauna who answered. “Enough to last until spring,” she said quietly. Misty nodded.

“So we’d only have to do it once,” Mari pointed out. “Just once.”

“Just once,” Akilah echoed softly.

As their eyes met, Tai saw a desperation in Shauna she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before.

Everyone in the cabin was getting tense, like fully-stretched rubber bands, one snap instinct away from leaping into action. Tai could see it written plainly in everyone’s faces. She could see it in Shauna. She could feel it in herself.

It was Gen who spoke up next. “How would we… choose?” she asked, holding onto Melissa tightly as if daring anyone to even try to take her away. With an arm around her shoulder, Melissa held on tightly right back.

It was then that Tai saw the gears in Mari’s head and realised this wasn’t coming out of nowhere. Even beyond her earlier remarks, she’d likely been thinking about this all day, at least ever since Jack and Crystal had both been taken off the table, so to speak.

“Ideally, someone we could agree was a weak link,” Mari said slowly. “Where them dying wouldn’t take away much from the group.”

“Someone who didn’t help,” Misty murmured, to an encouraging nod from Mari.

“Exactly,” she said, standing up slowly. “Or kept secrets from us that could have helped.”

“Like about how you could survive in the snow alone for months,” Yumi whispered, pointedly looking away from Javi. “Someone who hides things from us.”

“Someone who’s proven time and time again,” Mari continued. “That they’re not really one of us.”

A hard lump seemed to form in Tai’s throat. “Guys,” she began but Mari rounded on her.

“Can you honestly say you haven’t thought about it?” she asked. Before there could be any response, she pressed on. “Can you honestly say it’s not worth it? Just one death to save us all?”

Tai couldn’t answer. She lowered her gaze, ashamed.

No-one said anything.

The doorknob creaked.

Everyone’s eyes snapped over to Javi again, who had just pushed the front door open. He looked terrified, a deer trapped in headlights.

For a moment, everyone was still. Then Javi bolted out the door. Instincts snapped into place.

“The Wilderness chose for us!” Mari yelled as she led the charge after him.

Within seconds, every girl was running after her, with the exception of Shauna, who still felt too weak to do anything but walk. Tai hesitated, not wanting to leave her alone.

“Go,” Shauna told her firmly. Tai nodded, and went.

Whether to save the boy or damn him, she honestly had no idea. She took a deep breath and let instinct take over.

Javi ran, much like he did the first time. Though back then at least, the horde of crazy girls with murder in their eyes hadn’t been after him.

He had never been the most outdoorsy of kids while his pursuers were arguably the best high school soccer team in the nation that year. Sure, much had changed in the months since the crash, especially on his end, but enough to consider removing that difference from the equation? Unlikely.

Javi knew they’d catch him soon enough in a straight chase. His best option was to seek cover, to duck and hide, to lay low. It had been weeks since he’d returned to his hollow but if he could just remember the way, then he was sure he could lose the girls in the dark.

He briefly wondered what would happen when, if, they caught up to him. Once the fire of the chase had died down, could they really look a fourteen-year-old boy in the eyes, hold a knife to his throat and kill him?

He wasn’t sure Akilah could. Or Yumi, or Tai. Or any of them, really, even Mari, who simply sounded to him more desperate than actively villainous.

Then Javi remembered the fervour with which they’d eaten Ben and redoubled his efforts to get away, finding new strength in his legs.

The moon slid behind a cloud when he paused for a moment as he passed another tree and took a turn. Between Javi and his destination were another four girls, one of them carrying a spear. He wondered briefly how they’d gotten around him like this but they were facing him and while he couldn’t place them in the dark, their silhouettes were familiar enough that they were definitely Yellowjackets. With the other girls still hot on his heels, he threw caution to the wind and took the direct approach, hoping to charge through and slip between them before they could get their hands on him.

The walk back to the cabin was silent. Isabella, her spear out in her right hand, kept next to Nat as they travelled, providing her silent support. They were at the front, while Van and Lottie brought up the rear. Isabella and Van quietly agreed that whatever might happen if they put Nat and Lottie next to each other was almost certainly best avoided.

It was getting dark as they finally neared their destination when they heard a commotion. Lots of running, some indiscernible shouting. All headed their way.

“The hell?” Van whispered.

“Wait, is that…” Nat tried to peer into the shadows in front of them, stepping forward as a humanoid shape came bursting out of the trees around the group and charged straight in their direction.

One of the girls stepped forward and Javi shoved past her. Someone from the back of the group called out a name as the girl Javi had pushed past fell to the ground but the blood pounding in his ears drowned out the sound.

As he tried to move past the rest, the tall girl now closest to Javi blurred into motion.

“Nat!” Van cried out as Nat grunted and stumbled to the forest floor.

Their attacker had hurt Nat and was now almost upon Isabella. Her brain let impulse take over, her muscles moving instantly like a well-maintained machine. Her spear sprung forward like a viper as the group’s assailant came at them.

The moon came out again, no longer behind its cloud, bathing Javi in pale light just as he felt the sharpened point enter his chest. Blood already began to bubble at his lips as he looked up at his killer.

The light went out in Javi’s eyes right as Isabella made out who it was. Cradling her brother’s body, Isabella sank to the ground.

“Wait,” she said slowly, refusing to believe it. “No, no, no, no, no-”

Van put a hand on her shoulder but she only barely noticed. Isabella pulled out the spear, succeeding only in splattering more of Javi’s blood across herself. Blood stained the snow around her and in the moonlight, it was almost beautiful.

By the time Tai reached the scene, it was all over.

Blood coated the snow as Travis wept openly, holding Javi’s body delicately as he kneeled on the forest floor. His spear, never far from his side in the last month, was beside him now, the point covered in a striking crimson.

The Yellowjackets were all gathered round, watching silently. The expressions on their faces all carried some degree of sadness, shock or horror. Even Mari, who was starting to cry.

Only Lottie, staring at the blood that dripped from the corpse to the snow, had a completely unreadable expression.

“Isabella,” Nat whispered. Tai blinked and she could see the others murmur to each other briefly, a flash of confusion amongst the sorrow. Isabella?

Travis raised his head to look at her, eyes red. Saying nothing further, Nat sat beside him and hugged him tightly.

A motion from beside Lottie suddenly caught Tai’s attention and she ran over, past the others, past Nat and Isabella(?), past Javi. She swept up Van in her embrace and held onto her for dear life.

“Hey, Tai,” Van murmured before hissing slightly in pain as Tai adjusted her position.

Tai immediately pulled back. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I know we haven’t talked in… a while-”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Van assured. “The hug is nice. I’ve missed us.”

“I’ve missed us too,” Tai told her, briefly losing herself in Van’s eyes. “But then-”

“It’s my hand,” Van said quietly, raising her left hand and letting Tai see the blackened index finger. She put on a smile, one Tai knew as her brave smile. She was trying to appear tough, for Tai’s sake, to not let her see the pain underneath. “Probably going to have to get it chopped off.”

Tai took the moment to kiss her forehead tenderly. “I’ll be with you,” she whispered.

Van nodded, grateful, before she looked back at the dead kid in front of them all and her eyes filled with grief and sympathy. Tai found she couldn’t look, not again, and Van held her as the body was carefully carried back to the cabin.

“Hey.”

Laura Lee sat up a little straighter at the familiar voice.

Kristen was nearby, taking care of the baby. In the forest of the dead, that didn’t amount to much in the way of feeding, instead being more about keeping him still when he slept and keeping him entertained when he was awake. Laura Lee had found them together, just yesterday, and shuddered at the thought of Jacques finding them first.

“Crystal seems nice,” Rachel said quietly as she approached. “But I don’t fully-”

“Trust her?” Laura Lee finished, standing up. Rachel shrugged. “She’s good with the baby.”

“Shauna’s?” Rachel asked.

“I assume so,” Laura Lee answered. “He has her eyes. And it’s Kristen, by the way.”

They stood together awkwardly for a moment, neither meeting the other’s gaze.

“Where have you been, Rachel?” Laura Lee asked finally, lifting her head to look at her properly. “I thought he must have found you.”

“I went down there,” Rachel told her, matching her look. “I’ve got Jackie away from them and we’re holed up in a cave with a symbol on it, large enough to keep Jacques away from her.”

“What are you doing? And away from who?”

Rachel waved a hand dismissively. “Trying to find a way to bring her back up here that doesn’t involve bashing her head in,” she said. “Listened to her crying all afternoon and I don’t have it in me to actually hurt her. We’re by a large symbol so we can take all the time we need. I’m sure there’s a way to do it painlessly.”

“But away from who?”

“It doesn’t work with her of course ‘cos there’s no way she can commit herself to fully leaving Shauna but my body down there being, to put it mildly, a wreck lets me pop up here and back as much as I like, which is handy.”

“Who did you take Jackie away from, Rachel?” Laura Lee asked again, hands on her hips.

“Lottie and Nat and the others,” Rachel told her. “Listen-”

“Why?”

“I told Jackie-”

“And now you can tell me,” Laura Lee said firmly.

Rachel blinked and nodded slowly. “That was the plan, yeah,” she admitted. “That’s what I wanted to do.”

Laura Lee regarded her steadily. “Why change your mind?”

“Because Jackie knows now and I know for a fact Crystal, sorry, Kristen knows,” Rachel told her, nodding toward where Kristen was singing softly to the baby. “And because you were right. You should know.”

A small nugget of fear crept into Laura Lee’s mind but she ignored it, pushed it down.

Rachel raised her hand, ready to click her fingers, when she paused. “Are you sure?” she asked softly. “With your faith in Lottie being so important here and everything?”

“Haven’t seen hair nor hide from him for a little while now,” Laura Lee reminded her. “And like I’ve told you before, it would take something impossible to wrench my faith away from her. I love her.”

“We’ll see,” Rachel whispered as she clicked her fingers.

The trees faded from around them, taking them back to a night outside the cabin about a month ago. Laura Lee watched, at first with interest but then with growing horror as she took in what was happening. By the end of it, she was shaking.

“They, they were desperate,” Laura Lee said weakly.

“That they were,” Rachel agreed. “Would you like to see the second time?”

“Second time?” Laura Lee whispered.

Rachel nodded. Laura Lee struggled as it all sank in.

“She never told me,” she said under her breath as she sank to the forest floor. “She never said a thing. Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

Rachel let her take it all in, saying nothing as the surrounding woods seemed now just a bit more frightening, just a bit more looming and oppressive.

“Should we send Kristen away?” Laura Lee asked suddenly, looking up at Rachel.

“She seems honest enough,” Rachel admitted. “And she really does seem great with the baby. Just, keep an eye on her.”

Laura Lee nodded slowly, gazing out into nothing again.

"You used to be so sweet," Laura Lee whispered absentmindedly, her brain still taking in what her eyes and Rachel had shown her.

Rachel smiled sadly and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You just didn't know me yet."

Darkness fell over the bunker that night again without its usual resident. But that was not to say it didn’t have any occupant at all at the moment.

Jacques had no idea, for once, what the Yellowjackets were doing. Perhaps someone had died. Perhaps they were having a party. Perhaps Jackie Taylor had headed back to them. Perhaps all these things were true. It kind of gave him a thrill, not knowing.

He just hoped they weren’t all falling in love with each other. For a being now pretty much entirely composed of all the awful feelings and emotions his parents had been wary of, something like love was a poison to him he could not abide. Hence, the Laura Lee/Lottie situation he’d have to deal with later.

Still, the Wilderness was harsh enough that something like genuine love and joy lasting long out here was, to put it mildly, unlikely.

He slowly shuffled over to the back wall and, with a heavy stone, inscribed a small addition onto the symbol there. The hook shape at the bottom now formed a complete circle.

Jacques smiled with lips that weren’t his as, ever so subtly, he felt the landscape shift in imperceptible ways around him. A little power flowed through the broken veins he was using as, satisfied with the night’s work, he looked out over the Wilderness with stolen hands resting on stolen hips.

One down, five to go. He really should’ve done this earlier.

Chapter Text

Breakfast had been hours ago now. Gen had held her food out in front of her for a brief moment, wondering if she could tell what part of the body it had come from, before Javi’s face had swam into vision in her mind’s eye and she decided she’d rather not know.

It had been roughly a week (Gen didn’t really bother counting the days out here) since Isabella’s spear had pierced her brother’s chest. There wasn’t as much idle chatter as there once had been but it was better than in the days leading up to Javi’s death. This wasn’t the first person they’d eaten and the relative security of having an actual food source did wonders for the mood, if you didn’t think too hard about where it had come from.

Melissa sat beside her now, as she always did, the pink cap Gen had given her one Christmas still stuck on her head like it had grown there. Neither of them said anything, absorbing the silence with their backs to the wall, but Gen snuck her the occasional glance. Sometimes, it didn’t feel real that despite everything that had happened, Melissa was really with her. 

She was wondering what acts of extravagant charity she must have performed in a past life to deserve this when Melissa shifted slightly and a faint beam of light streaming in through a window caught the other girl’s hair just right, bathing it in a golden glow. For a second that felt like eternity, Gen forgot to breathe.

“Are you okay?” Melissa asked softly as Gen coughed suddenly. She turned her head to look at Gen, blue eyes deep with concern. The move took her out of the direct sunlight but that vision of her was now forever burned into Gen’s mind.

“I’m fine,” Gen insisted, catching her breath. “I’m fine.”

Melissa’s gaze lingered for a moment more (dangling the temptation to lose herself in them over Gen’s head) before turning back around. She fidgeted with her fingers slightly, clearly nervous about something.

For what was perhaps the millionth time, Gen pondered for a terrible instant the idea that maybe Melissa knew somehow. That she’d stumbled upon the closely-guarded secret that lay at the heart of Gen’s thoughts at all times, sometimes dominating her mind so loudly she could barely think. That maybe that’s why Melissa was nervous, because she judged Gen for it but didn’t know what to say. That maybe just beneath the surface, Melissa was seething with rage and disgust and hatred-

It was typically around this point that the more logical areas of Gen’s mind had to rein it in a little and reassure her that not only had she not made any slips regarding this secret, but that Melissa was a genuinely kind and good person who deserved better than her who wouldn’t act that way about- that kind of thing. At most, she’d be a little embarrassed. The worst thing she would do would be to let her down gently, to say no.

But what a devastating ‘no’ that would be.

So Gen locked up the secret again, once more resolving to never ever let it loose, despite the growing temptation to do exactly that the longer they spent out here in this hell on earth, where society wouldn’t know and the Yellowjackets certainly wouldn’t care. Not in a negative way, at least.

But the mere thought of that potential ‘no’ continued to keep that idea at bay. For the moment.

Gen’s brain briefly emptied as Melissa cleared her throat.

“There’s something I wanted to say,” she said slowly. “Been thinking about it for a while and I just thought, well Van thought and I agreed, that today would be a good day for it.”

Gen frowned. “Why today?” she asked, glancing outside. 

“Well, a week ago would’ve been rough,” Melissa told her, scratching an itch on the back of her neck. “Today’s the first day in a while that almost feels kinda nice but also it’s a special day today and, y’know, this is how Van said she did it-”

“Hi, guys!” Misty chirped excitedly as she sat down. “What are we talking about?”

There was a glint in her eyes as she looked at Gen, suggesting a barely-suppressed excitement but about what, Gen couldn’t begin to guess. Melissa’s shoulders slumped a little and Gen was about to practically snarl at Misty to leave when Akilah and Yumi, tired after a long walk (no-one emptied the toilet bucket alone anymore), joined them.

“The past week being not the greatest,” Melissa told them, almost mumbling the words as she looked at the floor. “Was just mentioning it to Gen.”

Gen sighed as she resigned herself to a prolonged interaction with the others before getting to find out whatever Melissa wanted to tell her. Something that she’d apparently already told Van which definitely didn’t make Gen feel jealous in the slightest.

Mari took notice of the little group and started to approach slowly. She’d been one of the quietest of the Yellowjackets recently, like the fight had all been knocked out of her, but she approached her friends now with the faintest hint of a hopeful smile.

“Amen to that,” Yumi sighed, not noticing her.

“It’s been bad for months, but that night…” Akilah shuddered. She turned around and saw Mari, freezing her like a deer in headlights, mouth already open to try a nervous greeting. Sweet, kind, gentle Akilah delivered unto Mari a glare that carried the force of a nuclear warhead.

Gen almost felt bad for Mari as she slunk away but ultimately just felt relief at the loss of what would’ve been yet another intrusion on her and Melissa’s moment. And at least none of the girls here had brought up the idea of eating a baby, or of deliberately murdering a kid though they’d sure gone along with it.

“Lottie was furious with us,” Yumi whispered. “And with her most of all.”

Akilah only shrugged. “She was right to be,” she said quietly.

“What a way to welcome Bella to the sisterhood,” Gen muttered.

“That’s Isabella,” Misty corrected hurriedly.

“It’s just a nickname,” Gen pointed out. “It’s still based off her name, her real name, so does it matter?”

“I think it does,” Melissa told her. “I think that’s just a thing for Nat.”

Gen found she could understand that.

“Still though,” Akilah nodded. “Like Gen said, it was a hell of a way to meet her.”

With a fury in her eyes that wasn’t there before, Lottie had demanded an explanation the moment the door closed behind her. Nat and Isabella were still outside, taking a final moment with the rapidly-cooling meat that had once been Javi. Van stood beside Lottie, holding Tai’s hand. Shauna sat on the floor with the others, though her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

Mari mumbled her way through a description of the night’s events, shrinking further back into herself as every word seemed to anger Lottie more and more.

Akilah and Yumi, shame written plainly in their features, filled in gaps in Mari’s story, such as the part where Tai had at least attempted to protest against it all. Van squeezed her hand at that, and sent her a reassuring glance.

Inevitably, the question came up of where Lottie had been but vague comments about the Wilderness needing her elsewhere were enough to shut that down. Shauna rolled her eyes, which at least proved she was paying attention.

“We’re sorry, Lottie,” Mari mumbled.

“It’s not me you should be apologising to,” Lottie hissed. “Try Isabella, it’s her brother you got killed.”

“Isabella?” Akilah questioned, almost flinching as Lottie’s burning gaze switched over to her. “Do you mean Tra-”

“She means Isabella,” Van corrected flatly.

Tai looked at her and raised one eyebrow slightly, not a challenge, just an honest question. Are you sure? Van nodded almost imperceptibly and Tai accepted it. That was that.

“She’s a girl,” Lottie added intensely. “She’s one of us.”

It was at this moment that Isabella and Nat returned, having just caught the end of this. Isabella hesitated for a second, before heading over to her sleeping space on the floor. She avoided everyone’s gaze while Nat met every single one, as if daring them to say something. They looked exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but nobody felt like wanting to engage with them right now. Well, almost nobody.

“Isabella?” Melissa tentatively called out, raising her hand halfway up, her arm forming a right angle with her elbow at the point. Slowly, and with Nat’s hand on her arm, Isabella turned to face Melissa.

“Yes?”

“Hi.” Melissa gave her a little wave with the hand that was in the air.

Isabella hesitated for a moment, and then nodded back at her.

“At least she has Nat,” Gen said softly, glancing toward the cabin door. 

Isabella and Nat hadn’t returned from their hunt yet today. 

It was just them out there these days. Nat didn’t seem to talk much to Van anymore and Isabella already hadn’t been that close to really anyone else. Gen supposed it probably wasn’t totally healthy but she couldn’t help but find some appeal to the idea of being so near-completely linked to just one other person, to really embody that ‘us against the world’ ideal. Recommended? Perhaps not, but intoxicating as a concept nonetheless, she thought as she unconsciously sought out Melissa’s hair as it grabbed at her attention from the corner of her eye.

Akilah nodded. “They seem sweet together,” she agreed.

“Speaking of being sweet and together,” Misty leaned in conspiratorially, as if what she was about to share wasn’t the most well-broadcast news this group had ever received together since the crash. “Have you noticed Tai and Van seem to be talking again?”

Yumi snorted. “I think they’re doing a bit more than just talking, Misty,” she said.

“So they’re really, like, back together back together?” Gen asked, not having paid much attention to the pair. “I know it was touch and go for a minute there.”

“Didn’t you see the way they were that night?” Misty asked her.

“And every day since,” Akilah added fondly.

“She was just making sure,” Melissa told them, putting an arm around Gen as if acting out of some protective instinct. “And not jumping to any assumptions.”

Silence settled over the group for a few moments, with Akilah letting out a mumbled apology as she glanced between Melissa and Gen. Gen blushed and pulled up the collar of her jacket a little.

“But, yeah, they’re together again,” Melissa said with a half shrug, pulling her arm back to pick something out of her hair.

“The way they were that night was very telling,” Misty echoed her earlier words, ignoring the glance from Melissa. “Instantly back in each other’s arms and then, well, y’know.”

The table was dusted off hurriedly, making absolutely sure it was as clean as they could make it. Van tentatively laid her hand on the wooden surface, wincing as she straightened out her left ring finger. Tai held her other hand tightly as Misty prepared the knife, heating it up by the fire. Akilah stood ready to immediately jump in to help with the bandaging that would soon be required.

The rest of the team was mostly sitting around the cabin, acting like they weren’t paying attention. It was only Nat, clutching onto Isabella’s arm in the corner they’d just moved their sleeping spaces together in, who watched the proceedings openly, her eyes wide.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Tai whispered, kissing Van’s knuckles. “But it has to be done. Now, before it can spread.”

“Yeah, I know,” Van whispered back.

“Just hold onto me, okay?” Tai instructed. Van gave her a nod.

“Could’ve been worse, y’know,” Van said, forcing a smile. “Could’ve been all of me, not just the finger.”

Tai said nothing, as a storm of emotions flashed across her face. Yeah. She knew. She was very well aware.

A sudden burst of speed and metal later and the blackened finger was removed, Akilah instantly leaning forward to wrap up the newly-shortened digit. Van cursed.

“Not even a countdown?” she hissed at Misty, who simply shrugged as she peered at Akilah’s work.

“I couldn’t risk you instinctively jerking your hand away at the last moment,” Misty said casually.

Van tilted her head, considering the point. “Yeah, fair enough.”

“Will it be alright?” Tai asked her gently as she drew her hand back from Akilah’s care, gingerly holding it in her other one.

Van looked at her like she was forgetting something obvious. “Hardly the worst operation I’ve had to take under this roof.”

“Just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Tai mumbled, looking away a little.

Something in Van’s eyes changed, like she was admonishing herself. “Tai, look at me,” she said firmly. Tai did so.

“I’m okay,” Van continued softly.

“You sure?”

Van nodded again.

“Yeah, I’ll miss what this finger could do,” Van added with a wink. “And I know you’ll definitely miss what it could do. But I’ll manage.”

Tai felt her face flush as she shoved Van’s shoulder lightly, in a half-hearted effort to make her shut up. Van only laughed in response. After double-checking with Misty and Akilah that there was nothing further that needed immediate doing, the two girls began to head for the ladder to the attic.

“And trust me, they did not go quiet for a while after that,” Yumi, whose sleeping space saw her spending every night right by the pantry door, told them in a low voice. The other girls barely stifled giggles.

“It’s nice to see them happy again,” Akilah said with a pleasant sigh. “They deserve it.”

“Don’t we all deserve it?” Misty asked.

“We don’t all have someone like that here,” Melissa countered. Immediately, Gen shot her a questioning look without thinking and took it back once she realised she was doing it. For her part, Yumi seemed to just accept the words like a cream, letting them soak into her skin forlornly.

“Like Lottie,” Gen mumbled, making sure she contributed to the conversation. All eyes turned to her and she shifted uncomfortably. “She woke up in a panic again the morning after Javi died. The same way she did back-”

“Back when Laura Lee died,” Akilah finished the thought glumly. “I wonder if there being another death put her in mind of that again.”

“I don’t know if it was because Javi died,” Misty piped up thoughtfully. “It didn’t happen after Jackie. But Lottie was definitely thinking about Laura Lee recently.”

Everyone’s gaze switched over to her and she mirrored Gen’s earlier discomfort. “I overheard her and Van talking,” she admitted.

“I thought you could track her or something,” Van said, with the energy of someone trying very hard to calm a distressed kitten. “That’s how you found her in the first place.”

“She won’t see me anymore,” Lottie cried.

“She won’t see any of us,” Van frowned. “That’s kinda the issue at hand.”

“Not her,” Lottie insisted. “I mean Laura Lee.”

Misty, crouched behind thick foliage and attracted by their raised voices, had a frown of her own. She hadn’t heard the first part of this conversation and was more than a little lost. Honestly, people should put in more of an effort to make things easier to understand, just for the sake of any potential eavesdroppers. She was tempted to just ask them frankly what they were talking about, except she had enough of an impression to know it was probably something they felt important to keep secret.

“What does that have to do with this?” Van asked slowly.

“Everything!” Lottie leaned forward suddenly, making Van take a step back. “She’s hiding from me and she’s hiding her from me too. That kiss, what she gave me, she’s taken it away.”

“She might just be busy right now,” Van suggested. “How do you know she’s actually avoiding you?”

Lottie sunk to her knees, despair evident in her face. “Because I can feel it. I know it. I could spend as much time as I wanted looking for her and she’d make sure I couldn’t get close.”

It seemed for a moment like more words might be coming, but all that came out of Lottie then were tears. Van dropped to the ground to hug the heartbroken girl silently, as Misty continued to watch from her hiding place and ponder.

“What does that even mean?” Yumi frowned. “She’s been seeing Laura Lee?”

“I guess so,” Akilah shrugged.

“I hope she sees her again,” Melissa said simply. “I think they’d make each other happy.”

“But is that a thing you can do?” Yumi insisted. “See a dead girl you loved?

“If it was, don’t you think Shauna would’ve seen Jackie by now?” Gen pointed out. As Misty opened her mouth to say something, Gen quickly cut her off. “I mean, besides whatever was going on in that shed.”

Akilah shuddered at that.

“If Shauna was seeing Jackie, genuinely, like Lottie with Laura Lee, she’d be a lot better off,” Melissa agreed. “Not… this.”

Everyone glanced in the direction of the bedroom. The door and walls obscured their view but they knew what they’d find if they went inside: Shauna, knees drawn up under her chin, sitting on the bed staring at nothing. But none of them would go inside, because being around her these days felt like being around a bomb that might go off at any moment. Occasionally, she would shift her gaze over to whoever was nearby, as if daring them to make a move in her direction. Only Tai seemed able to approach her without raising her ire but was doing so less often now, spending more of her time with Van instead.

“How do we know that Lottie seeing Laura Lee is genuine?” Yumi asked quietly, drawing their attention back to the conversation at hand. “I mean… Laura Lee died.”

“It’s Lottie,” Melissa shrugged. “I believe her.”

No-one quite knew how to respond to that. They all believed her talk about the Wilderness and what it could do too but actually seeing the dead was, well, it was quite a line to cross.

“Van seemed to believe it,” Misty reminded them. “And for what it’s worth, Lottie believes it firmly enough she wants to help Shauna see Jackie too.”

“Van’s been all-in since the wolf attack,” Yumi pointed out dismissively.

“Before that, even,” Akilah added. “That whole trip, she was pointing out to Tai how much Lottie just happened to be right about.”

“Nat believes it, too,” Misty continued with a trace of ill-placed excitement.

“Nat? ” Gen echoed, unable to believe it. “How do you know this? And that whole Jackie part?”

“The conversation didn’t stop there,” Misty revealed, leaning in to resume her story.

Van, still embracing Lottie, seemed to seek a change in topic.

“So, about Jackie,” she said slowly. “What else can we do there?”

“I still think Shauna should see her somehow,” Lottie raised her head to Van with renewed focus. “If they could just talk honestly, it would fix-”

“Those two talking honestly caused half this mess in the first place,” Van reminded her intensely.

“No, it didn’t,” Lottie insisted, wriggling out of Van’s grip to stand up again. “Neither of them were honest that night. Jackie was angling to find out how much Shauna hated her and as for Shauna? You’ve seen the way she runs to Jackie at every victory, the focus with which she handles the ball, the joy with which she celebrates with the team. Doesn’t even like soccer? She was just trying to hurt her.”

“Yeah, okay, I can agree on that,” Van nodded, standing before folding her arms across her chest. “And you think the best idea is to get a repeat performance?”

Lottie made a noise of frustration, like she was trying to reach for the words that would articulate her point perfectly but not quite reaching them. “She was just… stressed about things,” she pointed out. “Trust me, all this time she’s had to think, and to mourn, if she met Jackie now, she’d-”

“She’d just hurt her even more,” Van interrupted. “You think she just hurt Jackie ‘cos she was stressed before? How much stress do you think hanging out with a corpse she loved for two months, eating it, and then losing a baby might’ve added to all that?”

“Yes, she’s not doing great at the moment,” Lottie admitted. “We need her to let it out. But-”

“But nothing, Lot. Shauna was bad before and she’s worse now. We’ve both known Jackie for years, loved her for years, and you really think Shauna would be the best thing for her?”

“Yes, Van, I do,” Lottie told her firmly, with fire in her eyes. “They love each other, completely and truly. Underneath everything, it’s as simple as that and that will be what saves them. So, yeah, I think they need to meet.”

“I don’t.”

Isabella by her side, Nat entered the little space where they were having their conversation. Misty shrank down behind the foliage further but the hunters seemed well enough distracted. Nat had a fire in her eyes to match Lottie’s, but it was fueled more by pain than resolve. Isabella said nothing, her eyes darting between the other girls.

“You’re wrong, Nat,” Lottie said calmly. Nat took an angry step forward and it was then that Isabella moved, placing a hand on her shoulder, holding her back.

“I love Jackie too,” Nat hissed. “We didn’t always get along perfectly, nobody does, but I apparently sure as shit love her as a friend more than you do if you think Shauna should be anywhere near her.”

“Nat,” Van began, hoping to calm her down.

“Van, no,” Nat continued testily, gesturing at Lottie. “I almost hope she never comes back, just so Lottie can’t get her killed. Again.”

“Wouldn’t you want to see her again?” Van asked.

“Of course,” said Nat, hurt. “I’d do almost anything. But I value her safety more.”

“What do you think, Isabella?” Lottie asked gently. “Do you believe me? Do you believe in love?”

Isabella hesitated uneasily. “Nat knows them both better than I do,” she said quietly. “And I trust Nat.”

Lottie sighed and walked off, annoyed. Misty stayed still as a stone as Van, Nat and Isabella lingered for a second and then followed.

“Comes back?” Gen echoed. “The fuck?”

“I wasn’t sure about that either,” Misty admitted with a small frown. “But while the wording is weird, I think it’s just a hypothetical, or in whatever way Lottie was seeing Laura Lee. Jackie’s a bundle of bones in a bag, she couldn’t just walk that off.”

“Either way, even Nat is acting like it’s possible,” Akilah pointed. “So maybe there really is something to it.”

“I hope so,” Melissa said quietly. “I couldn’t imagine living without ever seeing the love of my life again.”

Gen flashed her a quick glance, but said nothing. 

If she’d done so half a second later, she might have caught Melissa doing the same thing to her.

“I hope so too,” mumbled Yumi. “Because I already have been.”

“Been what?” Misty asked, confused.

Yumi swallowed. “Living without… without being able to see…” She turned away suddenly, as a few tears made themselves known in the corners of her eyes.

“It’s okay,” Akilah said quietly, placing a comforting hand on her knee.

“Who was it?” Melissa asked, fixing Yumi with a sympathetic gaze.

“Rachel,” Yumi whispered, meeting Melissa’s eyes for a moment before looking away again.

“Rachel?” Misty blinked. “I didn’t even know she was gay.”

Yumi laughed, though there was no humour in the sound. “I don’t know if she was, either,” she admitted. “But we were close, and I loved her. Fuck, I’m the one who convinced her to join the team. I put her on that plane.”

“She put herself on that plane,” Akilah assured her. “You can’t possibly be blamed for what happened to her.”

The initial flurry of panic and hurried activity to get out of the burning wreck had been a confusing blur. But the sight of Rachel, pinned in place by a stray piece of metal that had speared her in the neck, was burned into all of their memories.

“I never even told her,” Yumi said quietly. “I know how it sounds; a typical teenage girl over-dramatic about a crush on my best friend or whatever.”

For Gen, it was like the rest of the world, aside from Melissa of course, had ceased to be, as if what Yumi was saying was the most important thing she had ever heard. She felt her heart twist violently just at the look on Yumi’s face.

“But I know how I feel,” Yumi continued firmly, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes. “I see it in Lottie whenever Laura Lee is mentioned, I see it in Shauna whenever Jackie is brought up. The way Tai and Van look at each other, I know that’s the way I looked at her.”

“Is it the same way she looked at you?” Melissa asked.

Yumi was silent for a moment, glancing between Melissa and Gen as if searching for something. “I don’t know, I didn’t look for it,” she admitted softly. “I was too afraid she wouldn’t love me back to say anything. And then suddenly, it was far too late. I would’ve spent forever with her but I couldn’t even seize a moment.”

“I lost someone too,” Misty said suddenly, flinching a little as everyone flicked their gazes over to her.

“Crystal?” Akilah guessed, and Misty nodded.

“Well, it’s actually Kristen, technically,” she corrected, adjusting her glasses. “She just liked the nickname.”

“You loved her?” Yumi asked, her eyes still haunted from the brief discussion of Rachel.

“I…” Misty hesitated for a moment. “I did. I don’t want to say I don’t feel love, ‘cos I do, I definitely do, I just… don’t think I feel it in the same way, if that makes sense.”

Melissa frowned. “I don’t think it does.”

Misty ran a hand through her hair, frustrated at her own inability to express herself as clearly as she’d like. “It’s just as real as any other love, I swear, it just doesn’t quite feel the same as people always describe it.”

“I get it,” Van said, sitting down next to Melissa. Gen blinked, and she wasn’t the only one; no-one had seen her approach.

“You do?” Misty asked, almost pleading for someone to understand her. “You feel the same way?”

Van shook her head. “No, I don’t feel that way myself,” she clarified, looking at Misty with more kindness than she ever previously had. “But I’ve met people who do. They had a word for it.”

“Really?” Misty asked eagerly. “What was it?”

“No idea,” Van shrugged apologetically. “A lot of the fancy terminology goes over my head. But I get it enough to know it’s just as real, just as strong, as how I feel about Tai.”

Misty nodded slowly. Gen fancied she could practically see Misty add finding that word to her list of things to do once they were rescued.

If they were rescued.

Misty, Yumi, Lottie and Shauna all filled Gen’s head. They could all die out here long before anyone found them and those four girls had already proven how easy it was to lose your love in the Wilderness, before you’d even told them they were your love.

How many people across the world had this happened to? How many lost chances, how many tragic ends, how many lives of regret had been lived because people had been too afraid?

Gen’s heart pounded hard in her chest, threatening to burst out completely as she turned her head, once again, to look at Melissa. She barely even noticed Van watching her closely.

“It’s a funny thing, love,” Van said slowly. “It’s amazing, but it’s all too easy to lose. The weeks Tai and I weren’t talking were the longest of my life and, looking back, the thought that something might have happened to her before we got back together, all ‘cos I was too stupid to talk to her, chills me.”

“What if you had someone you thought you loved but she keeps revealing herself to be an awful person you want nothing to do with?” Akilah asked. Her question could maybe have been taken to be a pure hypothetical if she hadn’t then looked over her shoulder for a second, straight at the back of Mari’s head.

“You have someone in mind?” Van asked in return, faintly amused as she rested her chin on her hands.

Akilah sighed. “Yeah, Mari,” she admitted. “But I’m done with her.”

Van shook her head. “No you’re not,” she told Akilah with a real certainty in her voice.

“Oh?” Akilah asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

Van met her gaze firmly. “I know shit talk when I hear it, I know when you’re done with someone. And you aren’t.”

Akilah held her gaze for a few seconds before looking away, defeated. There was a silence that no-one wanted to fill. Or, well, almost no-one.

“So where’s Tai?” Gen asked, changing the subject. “You’re stuck to her side like glue, most of the time.”

“You’re one to talk,” Van said under her breath, clearly amused, before continuing in a more serious tone. “She’s just taking a nap. She’s not been sleeping very well, so she's kind of exhausted.”

Yumi smiled faintly, keeping the mood light even as a solitary tear still dried on her cheek. “I bet she is.”

The other girls giggled softly a little at the remark and Van smiled, though it was a smile that seemed almost forced. There was a restraint to what she was saying, something she wasn’t revealing. But she kept quiet and just smiled.

“So how did you and Tai, y’know, get started?” Gen asked suddenly, blushing a little as Van regarded her curiously. “When did you… talk to each other?”

“Well,” Van said slowly as she shifted her gaze pointedly toward Melissa for some reason Gen couldn’t decipher. “It was her birthday. She invited me over and we had a moment that was just us and it just… felt right.”

“Oh!” Misty suddenly straightened up. “That reminds me!”

The glint Gen saw in her eyes earlier had returned as she turned round, now looking straight at Gen with a big smile on her face. “Um, Misty, what-” Gen began, as she faintly noticed Melissa’s cheeks bloom red with embarrassment. 

“Happy birthday, Gen!” Misty said brightly. Van’s forehead met the palm of her hand as Akilah and Yumi looked at her blankly.

Gen blinked. Her birthday? It… it did fit, she supposed. It was just that she had barely kept track of the date when she had a calendar and school schedule to help, let alone out here. 

God, they really had been here a long time.

“How did you know my birthday?” Gen asked slowly. Melissa cleared her throat awkwardly.

“I knew Misty was keeping track,” she explained as Gen turned back to her. “And I knew it had to be coming up so, I asked.”

“And I asked why she wanted to know what the date was,” Misty continued excitedly. “So she had to tell me.”

“It’s what I wanted to talk to you about earlier,” Melissa admitted.

“This is the thing you and Van talked about,” Gen realised aloud, before narrowing her eyes. “Wait, no, not quite. You said there was something you wanted to say to me but you and Van thought that today in particular would be a good day to tell me-”

“Today being your birthday, so that might be why,” Misty reminded her.

Yumi coughed. “Yes, Misty, I think we got that part.”

“So what is it?” Gen asked.

Akilah let out a noise signaling a realisation of her own. Gen looked at her and caught the glance she gave Van, who simply leaned back and said nothing.

“I just wanted to have a moment alone with you,” Melissa mumbled, picking nervously at the ends of her sleeves. She was scared. “To, like, wish you a happy birthday.”

Van raised an eyebrow. “Is that all?” she asked calmly, with the look of someone who already knew the answer.

Gen felt on the verge of exploding. Melissa was so nervous about telling her whatever this was that it made Gen feel anxious about it too. What could be so bad?

Her subconscious seemed to whisper something to her that she couldn’t quite hear, something that had her desperately anticipating whatever Melissa wanted to say. Whatever it was, it was suddenly the most important thing in Gen’s life.

Melissa blushed. “I didn’t get you anything,” she admitted with a forced smile. “I thought about borrowing Shauna’s pencil and asking for a paper from her journal so I could try drawing a picture of that flower you really like but, well, Shauna’s scary right now.”

“That’s okay,” Gen reassured her hurriedly, her heart melting at just the idea Melissa had wanted to do that for her. “That’s fine, honestly. I already have what I would want the most.”

“Really?” Melissa looked at her curiously, anxiety temporarily forgotten. “Out here in the Wilderness? What could you have that’s so good?”

“You.”

The word slipped from Gen’s mouth before she could stop it. Except she realised, as she took in the surprise on the faces of Yumi, Akilah and Misty, and the faint smile on Van’s, that she didn’t want to stop it. As she thought about love that had been won and lost among the Yellowjackets, emboldened by the recent discussion, she threw caution to the wind and set about unlocking the chains with which she’d kept her Big Secret bound.

“Me?” Melissa blinked.

“Yeah,” Gen said, looking at the floor. “What I want most in the world would be to just… spend every day of the rest of my life with you.”

Melissa took in what she said with a simple nod. “I can do that,” she said quietly.

Then Melissa let what she’d said sink in even further, as if finally acknowledging that the real Gen in the real world had really just said that to her, and blushed deeply. A distant part of Gen’s mind fancied she could be mistaken at a distance for a red traffic sign.

“Why would you want that?” Melissa asked her.

“Okay kids, maybe we should go,” whispered Van to the others, starting to get up.

“No, it’s okay,” Gen told the others hurriedly. “I don’t want this to be a secret.”

Van looked at her approvingly as she slowly sat back down.

Turning back to Melissa’s wide blue eyes, Gen took a deep breath and continued.

“I really… I really like you, Melissa,” she said, still avoiding The Word in case it might break the spell. “Like, a lot. And I’ve known for a long time but I’ve always been too afraid, even after Tai and Van came out and were accepted by everyone, even after Isabella was accepted by everyone, ‘cos the opinion of everyone didn’t matter to me, the opinion of you did. The thought you might hate me for it made me so scared but now we’re stuck in the middle of Fuckass, Nowhere and we could die at any second and I just had to say it now before it was too late and-”

“Gen,” Melissa interrupted her spiral softly, taking Gen’s hands in her own. She looked more confident now, like whatever had been hanging over her head had disappeared. “I love you.”

Melissa gave Gen’s hands a squeeze as she calmed down. It was like all of reality had suddenly clicked into place so perfectly and securely that she hadn’t realised it had previously been wrong. “I love you too,” she whispered as, in sync, the two girls kissed.

It was short but sweet. As they pulled away, none of Gen’s senses could tell her anything about the world around her, only that she could still taste Melissa on her lips. 

The cabin seemed to slowly fade back into view as Melissa pulled her into a tight hug. Akilah and Misty seemed surprised, Yumi seemed more than a little envious of what they had, Van seemed proud. But they all were smiling genuinely, wishing Gen a happy birthday or the pair of them congratulations.

Gen snuggled up to Melissa as close as humanly possible, feeling their bodies fit together perfectly like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and let herself bask in the joy of the occasion. Misty was buzzing around telling everyone the news that Gen and Melissa were now together, as in more together than they already had been, and Gen could feel the overall mood lift just a little.

The Wilderness was harsh and unforgiving and seemed interested in nothing more than breaking down their individual spirits. But, Gen reflected as she settled her cheek comfortably on Melissa’s shoulder, they had love. They had togetherness. And such things had to count for something, right? They may well just be the key to surviving out here.

Meanwhile, what may as well have been a whole world away,

“Ugh, there really is nothing good on, is there?” Jeff groaned, switching the TV channel over again. 

This time, he landed on something that looked at least mildly interesting. There were lots of cops and guns and women in bikinis, (some repeat from the 80s, Jeff supposed, in what was for him an unusually-brilliant display of deductive reasoning, helped along only by the graphic in the corner of the screen advertising the currently-airing 80s marathon) so his attention was broadly maintained.

“Say,” said Randy slowly from his spot on the couch beside Jeff. “I wonder how those girls are doing.”

“What girls?” Jeff asked, his face contorting in confusion before realisation struck. It only took a full half-minute of wracking his cobweb-filled brain before he figured it out. “Oh, them. Jackie and Shauna and the rest. Why?”

“I dunno,” Randy shrugged. “That kind of thing must tear you up inside, right? That feeling of not knowing what’s happening to them?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jeff replied, his gaze back on the television screen. “I mean, they’re all dead, right? That’s what the experts said.”

“Oh, right,” Randy winced. “Yeesh. Sorry, man, I know that has to be messing with you. Still, at least that means they’re not hurting anymore.”

“Yeah,” Jeff agreed slowly, as if the single syllable was giving him a lot more trouble than he’d anticipated. His attention was already elsewhere.

Onscreen, a policeman with a moustache so thick it looked like he’d glued a carpet brush to his face opened fire on a man in a black-and-white striped shirt. In a thick accent, the policeman’s partner made a very witty quip. Jeff laughed in time with the policeman and the previous conversation was obliterated utterly from his mind.

An idea hit him, an occurrence rare enough that the handful of neurons still active in his brain all sat up and took notice, ensuring Jeff gave the idea his full undivided focus.

“Hey, do you know Allie’s number?” he asked Randy, who blinked slowly in response.

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” Randy told him after a moment’s thought.

“Ah well,” Jeff shrugged, a little disappointed as his brain settled back down again. “She’s kinda cute.”

Chapter Text

“Maybe,” Shauna said slowly, in a teasing tone of voice. “You just need practice.”

She smiled nervously as she fancied she could see Jackie looking up at her hesitantly.

Nothing was said in response. Which was to be expected; corpses tended not to talk, no matter how well-preserved by the cold they might be, or how caked in make-up their faces were.

Nonetheless, Shauna definitely seemed to hear something, hastily forcing a laugh in reply to the empty air of the meat shed.

“It was just a joke,” she said hurriedly, looking away. “Sorry, I-”

Shauna’s words ceased as Jackie’s hand was suddenly under her chin. She didn’t even seem to notice it was her hand holding Jackie’s in place.

Their lips met. 

The muscles in Jackie’s face did not budge an inch, as they hadn’t for nearly two months now. Shauna’s mouth parted slightly, imagining a lot more reaction from Jackie than she was actually getting.

Shauna backed off for a moment, gazing adoringly at Jackie’s frozen features. She tasted strawberry on her tongue.

She moved in to kiss the body again, putting more into her movements this time, a hand coming to rest behind Jackie’s head to keep it in place.

A moment later, she jerked back in surprise.

“What’s wrong?” Shauna asked, out of breath. “Did I-”

She went quiet, cut off by an unheard response. Her face reflected the frustration swiftly growing within her at whatever she heard.

“Then what is it?” she demanded suddenly. She seemed to listen to more being said before she violently grabbed the shoulders of the frozen corpse in front of her.

“Please, Jackie,” Shauna pleaded, tearfully. “Tell me! What is it?”

She continued like this for a few moments, shaking the body back and forth as she cried intensely, asking both it and herself the same question over and over.

Without warning, she let go and the cadaver fell backward. It landed on its side, and a sickening crunch could be heard as the head connected with the hard-packed dirt.

Quickly, Shauna leaned over, turning the head of the carcass to the side to reveal an ear that had snapped cleanly off.

“Shit,” she breathed, trying in vain to reattach the broken appendage. Sitting back again, she looked from the ear to her friend’s remains and back again, before pocketing it.

Sitting the body back up again, Shauna hastily fixed up its hair, covering the damage. She stood up and backed away slowly toward the door, scooping up the meat for the other girls that she’d been sent out here to fetch.

“I’m sorry,” Shauna whispered. “I have to go.”

And with that, she fled from the shed. She didn’t notice Tai, pressed up against a wall that faced away from the cabin.

Tai was shaking, horrified at what she’d seen and heard through a small hole in the amateurishly-erected material that made up the walls of the shed. Her vantage point hadn’t granted her the perfect view, but it was enough.

Slowly, she circled around to the entrance of the shed. Tai really didn’t want to see what she was sure she’d be confronted with but at the same time, she had to know for sure or else she might convince herself she just hadn’t seen it right. Tai couldn’t let herself do that, not if Shauna really was as far off the deep end as she’d just witnessed.

With a deep breath, Tai entered the shed and turned to look at the corner she knew the body of her old captain her former friend had been propped up in.

She knew what to expect. But Tai still gasped at the sight of the lipstick, smudged unmistakably across Jackie’s face. 

The only question she still had was of how long this had been happening and she wasn’t totally sure, even with her resolve, that she really wanted the answer to that one.

Roughly two months after the attempted cremation of Jackie Taylor, and a few weeks since anyone in the cabin had last seen her, Lottie had a dream. Or at least, it felt like one, but it also felt like something else.

She stood in the midst of shadowy unfamiliar trees and felt a faint hope build within her. It had been weeks since Laura Lee had come to see her but could this be…?

Disappointment rocked Lottie when she saw a woman standing behind her who distinctly was not the blonde she was hoping for. This woman had dark hair, and must have been a little over twice Lottie’s age. She looked vaguely familiar, but it was impossible to tell for certain. The woman was blurry and unfocused, especially around the edges. 

Lottie reached out to her and found her hand went straight through the orange dress the woman wore, and the purple robe draped over that, across her shoulders. Despite her uncertainty over the situation, Lottie had to admit she liked the combination. There was something about the particular shade of purple that appealed to her.

The woman’s mouth was moving, but producing no sound. For the life of her, Lottie couldn’t begin to guess what this might be about but she knew instinctively it was intended for her.

She felt a sense of foreboding as she continued to watch the woman silently for the remainder of the dream. She might not understand it now, but she could feel in her bones she would have to soon. It was a message of some kind, meant for her, but just a little early, like a parcel she couldn’t open yet. And whatever it was about, it was probably important; dreams like this always were.

Lottie found she didn’t look forward to finding out what this was all about.

The sun lazily rose over the cabin once again, signalling the beginning of another unforgiving day in hell.

The very last vestiges of snow were now well and truly gone, and the woods were plentiful again. There was hardly a need for Isabella and Nat to go out anymore, but they continued to every day nonetheless, eager for the isolation the hunt granted them.

Still though, they didn’t get up quite so early anymore, and thus weren’t around to notice Tai and Van already outside. Tai was standing tall on the front deck, while Van slept soundly on the steps. She woke up as the sunlight began to stream down on them and looked around, sighing at the sight of Tai. She stood, before walking up to her girlfriend and shaking her gently.

“Hey, Tai,” she mumbled. “Wake up.”

Tai blinked and nearly stumbled, but Van kept her upright as she looked around.

“Oh, God,” Tai breathed. “Again?”

Van nodded silently.

Tai groaned. “Did she,” she continued, before swallowing. “Did I, um, tell you what I was doing?”

“Yeah,” Van said quietly, nodding again, her eyes full of concern. “You, the other you, she said she was on guard.”

“On guard?” Tai echoed, brows furrowed. “Against what?”

Van shrugged. “I don’t know,” she lied. “She didn’t say.”

Tai opened her arms and pulled Van into a hug. “What am I gonna do, Van?” she whispered, in a voice tinged with fear. “What is this going to do to me?”

“I don’t know,” Van admitted, kissing her cheek softly. “But whatever happens, I’ll be with you all the way.”

“Thank you,” Tai sighed, a dreamy smile finding its way onto her face. “We should probably get inside.”

“Yeah,” Van agreed. 

They disentangled reluctantly and headed inside, a few girls muttering as the opening door exposed them to the light. Van rolled her eyes at them.

Misty shifted a little under her blanket but didn’t seem to stir. Yumi and Akilah were sitting up nearby, annoyed as they rubbed their eyes. Mari lay behind them, eyes fixed on the back of Akilah’s head, while Gen and Melissa were wrapped up so tightly in their blanket bundle they were almost one person. Isabella and Nat were sitting upright, whispering to each other in low tones. Nat made eye contact with Van for a brief moment, just long enough to give her a nod. Shauna was yet to emerge from the bedroom.

Lottie also was sitting up. Her face was obscured by the shadows of the corner she slept in but Van could still make out enough to tell she was staring at Tai.

After Van helped an exhausted Tai back into bed and came back down from the attic, she found Lottie waiting at the pantry door.

“On guard again?” Lottie asked quietly.

Van nodded.

“From him?”

Van nodded again, remembering what Other Tai had told her. Lottie pursed her lips in thought.

“We have to be ready for him,” she said slowly. “Whatever he does, whenever he does it. That goes for you two as well.”

Lottie turned, revealing Nat and Isabella standing silently behind her. Nat still looked pissed at Lottie, a permanent expression whenever the other girl was in her vision, but she nodded.

“We have plenty enough meat to last a while now,” Lottie continued. “You should focus on finding Jackie.”

“We are,” Isabella told her. “It’s one of the main things we’re doing out there. But she could be anywhere in these woods.”

“And on top of that, there’s Rachel probably doing everything she can to make sure we can’t find her,” Nat added. Lottie opened her mouth to say something but Nat cut her off, raising her index finger and pointing it aggressively. “I’m not saying we won’t look, just don’t get your hopes up.”

And if we find her, why the fuck would we tell you? Van heard clearly the words Nat barely stopped herself from saying and she wasn’t sure she disagreed.

Lottie sighed, almost certainly hearing them too. “Come on, let’s do the pre-hunt ritual,” she said unenthusiastically, as she walked back to her belongings to fetch the mug she used to serve them her blood.

Nat and Isabella looked at each other and followed, moving as one.

Javi had told them, through writing in the dirt, that the baby’s name was Jack. Rachel didn’t have to think too hard about why this might be.

He had regarded Kristen with a little wariness at first but they got on well enough nowadays, and made a good team taking care of Jack. Rachel thought briefly, not for the first time, about the fact Jack wasn’t likely to age. Like before, she stopped before she could think about the implications there for too long.

Laura Lee was in her usual position when Rachel found her, sitting on a thick root and leaning back against a tree. She looked utterly miserable.

They were lucky Jacques seemed to be busy elsewhere, or else he would surely have found them by now and Rachel wasn’t sure Laura Lee would’ve lifted a finger to stop him devouring her.

Rachel sat down beside her and reached an arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t sure if Laura Lee even noticed the embrace but if she did, she didn’t acknowledge it.

“The thing is,” she began, continuing the mostly one-sided conversation they’d had every time Rachel had visited in the past few weeks. “It’s all about intent. I’m sure I can convince myself to just leave my body, pain-free, and that would be that. I mean, I’m doing that now, I could just choose to not go back. But Jackie, she’s so connected to the world down there, to Shauna, that there just isn’t a way I can see to bring her back up here that isn’t gonna hurt. The trick will be in convincing her to really want to come back here somehow.”

“Why not just let it hurt?” Laura Lee asked, in a voice devoid of emotion.

Rachel glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. Laura Lee stared at nothing. She was aware the blonde didn’t talk much at all anymore, leaving Kristen to fill up the silences in their little group (a task to which the little chatterbox was very well suited), and when she did, it was typically something like this.

“Because, knowing her and how she feels about leaving Shauna, the pain would probably be immense,” Rachel explained slowly. “And I’m not doing that to her. We have a place with a large enough symbol to be Jacques-proof so I can take my time with this. She’s been through enough.”

Laura Lee went quiet again after that, and Rachel couldn’t help but once again feel guilty about showing her what the Yellowjackets had gotten up to in her absence. Yes, she’d wanted to know, but this reaction is exactly what Rachel had expected, and exactly why she’d avoided it as long as she had.

It didn’t seem to have been the cannibalism itself, necessarily, but more the fact that Lottie hadn’t told her about it. And if Lottie had wanted to keep it a secret, that must have meant (to Laura Lee’s mind) that it was a terrible monstrous thing and Lottie doing such a thing was, it seems, unforgivable. Laura Lee probably would understand it if she’d been told about it earlier, after getting over the initial shock, but the fact that Lottie had deemed it important enough to not tell her gave it more weight than it otherwise would have held.

Rachel tried not to think too hard about all this and how dependent on Lottie it proved Laura Lee still was, even now.

They continued their discussion, such as it was, for a few hours more. Kristen and Javi joined them before long, baby in tow, but didn’t add a lot. Rachel hoped Jackie wasn’t getting too lonely.

She didn’t tell any of the dead what else was going on, or about the thing she’d sensed. But if what Rachel was feeling was right, she may not have as much time to help Jackie pass on painlessly as she was claiming. That would be something she’d have to check the minute she got back.

Jackie stood alone at the entrance of the cave, looking out at the forest surrounding them. It was something she did a lot nowadays.

She didn’t physically have eyes to close, but she felt like doing so nonetheless, and concentrating.

You there?

After a few minutes, Jackie still had no reply. She was about to head back into the main area of the cave, where Rachel’s desiccated body lay empty as it leaned against the wall, when she finally got her response.

Yes, Taylor. I’m here.

I was lonely.

Gee, I never could have guessed.

Jackie rolled her eyes, or at least imagined doing so. And what’s that supposed to mean?

You, by yourself, without intending it, under your own power, reached out to me. Several times now.

I didn’t mean to.

But you did. And given what we’ve discussed before, what you’ve told me you want, “lonely” feels like an understatement.

Whatever. Can you do it or not?

I’m busy.

Jackie waited a few moments, expecting an elaboration that wasn’t coming. Busy doing what?

Never you mind about that.

Are you afraid I’d disapprove?

I know you’d disapprove. If I cared the slightest iota for what a little girl like you thought, that might have given me pause. No, I just don’t care to explain the mechanics of it to you.

Just tell me when it’ll be done.

Soon enough. I’m at the little hollow now, the one you spent some time in recently, then I’ll be making my way over to you.

And how long will that take?

Well it’s daytime now, and I’d like to avoid Nat and Travis. An intact body like this is a precious thing, so, moving slowly, I dunno, a few days? Less? You’re pretty close.

That’s Isabella.

You may be amazed at the degree to which I truly do not care. Honestly, I’m surprised you do.

I care about my friends.

Jackie. You’re hiding out from them in a cave in the woods because they ate you. Or did you forget that part?

Jackie didn’t respond to that and she could practically hear the smile on the other person’s face as he continued.

That’s also why you wanted to die, last time I checked. Not just float back up to the realm of the dead, but seriously just be gone. Erased. Devoured.

That’s right. And I know you can do that.

And I will, promise. Believe me, I’m not going to miss out on the one person ever who willingly offers themselves up to me. But to bring it back to your friends for a moment-

Ugh.

Now, now. I’m just curious. What’s it like to think of them eating you?

Not great. Hence, wanting you to kill me.

Come now, you can do better than that. Natalie, Vanessa, Charlotte, “Isabella”, these were your friends, yes? The ones you were with when Rachel caught up to you, Natalie and Vanessa especially had been with you for weeks. They played the roles of concerned guardians so well, didn’t they?

Leave me alone.

That’s hardly the polite thing to say to someone that you initiated the conversation with. How about Shauna? Definitely must have hurt that your precious beloved would tear into your flesh like that.

Jackie paused, considering how to answer that one before eventually settling on the truth. She’d be dead soon enough anyway.

Actually…

Yes?

Eating me is horrifying and all, and lying to me about it is even worse.

I will never understand teenage priorities.

But I’m okay that Shauna did it. The others, fuck off, that’s fucked up, but Shauna being part of that is fine.

The man on the other end of this telepathic line seemed to consider things for a moment, before letting out a low whistle.

You’re a special kind of crazy.

I can accept that she hates me, honestly.

You want me to end your existence because, on top of your friends betraying you, you just can’t keep going in a world where she doesn’t love you so, to be clear, we’re both aware that’s a lie but do please continue.

But in that moment, she needed me. To survive, she had to have me. And I don’t care that I had to die to do it, I was able to provide her what she needed when it counted.

By having her eat you?

Yes.

I’m going to miss talking to you, Taylor, these conversations are fascinating.

It’s also…

Oh, don’t get shy on my account, I’m on the edge of my seat.

She literally consumed me, even while hating me. You don’t get any closer than that. I would do that a hundred times for her, even if she didn’t need it but was just feeling peckish. I would do it even alive, and conscious, and hyper-sensitive to the pain. Because I need her to have me, completely. And I won’t get that again, she wouldn’t even want to see me again… but that night, she had me.

Are all lesbians this completely off their rocker?

You’re one to talk about sanity.

He chuckled. I’ll admit, I’m not the picture of normal. But you’re a certain something extra. You don’t even make sense!

How so?

At the risk of losing myself my free meal, why don’t you run to this girl you’re clearly obsessed with?

Because I’ve seen her look at me with hate in her eyes just once, and I can’t do it again.

If Goldman is to be believed, she named her baby after you.

The baby that caused her nothing but pain and agony and was a genuine danger to her safety? I wouldn’t be surprised if she hated him too.

I see.

You stay away from him, by the way. You never ever touch that baby.

He didn’t respond to that one, letting her stew in silence for a minute. It was Jackie who spoke next.

It looks like Rachel’s stirring.

Before you go, one more question.

What is it?

I’ve turned this hollow upside down and I know Javi and Vanessa took some of my clothes to wear, I don’t care about that. But where’s my card?

Your card?

A playing card, the Queen of Hearts. I had it tucked into the blankets. It was my favourite one.

Jackie frowned mentally. Van took it.

Well, that’s something I’d like to get back. It was quite precious to me once upon a time. See you soon, Jackie.

Later, Jacques.

Jackie took another glance out at the woods surrounding them and made an effort at sounding like she was sighing as Rachel’s body slowly flexed its withered fingers and stood up.

There was something building inside her, she could feel it. It was a web of frustration and fear in her mind that had been there ever since she’d read Shauna’s journal. It had followed her to the world of the dead and it had followed her back when she returned. In all that time, it hadn’t stopped building up and threatening to send her utterly insane. It felt like a balloon getting bigger and bigger, and the thought of it bursting scared her. It inevitably would, however, and any thought she had about Shauna only hastened the process.

Good thing Jacques would be here any day now apparently, ready and willing to snuff out her existence for good. She couldn’t wait.

“I have to go,” Rachel announced, stepping up next to Jackie at the cave entrance.

“What?” Jackie asked, a frown audible in her voice. “Why?”

“I just need to check on something and I may be out for a little while,” Rachel told her, unhelpfully vague on details. “You really should be with me for your safety but I don’t want to risk having you out in the open where you might be seen.”

“So I just stay put here? In this cave?”

“Exactly.”

Without warning, Jackie punched the rock wall and made a noise of frustration as she did so.

“Jackie?” Rachel asked, her few remaining facial muscles twisting into concern. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” Jackie sighed.

“Jackie.”

“I just…” Jackie trailed off. “I’m just tired of it all. Don’t leave the cave. Don’t leave the bunker. Don’t leave Laura Lee’s side.”

“You feel confined.”

Impressively, Jackie whistled. “Excellent work, Sherlock,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Rachel raised her arms placatingly. “Look, I don’t love this any more than you do-”

“That’s easy for you to say! You can still go out!”

“I normally wouldn’t,” Rachel reminded her. “This is important. I think Jacques might be doing something.”

Jackie’s next words stopped dead in their tracks. “Jacques?” she repeated.

Rachel sighed. “Yeah,” she admitted. “The past few weeks have felt different.”

“Different how?”

“Like the land itself is just a little bit less… real. I don’t think I’d even notice it if I wasn’t constantly going back and forth between the world of the dead and this one.”

“What does it mean for us?” Jackie asked, more curious than concerned, which Rachel noted with interest.

There was a long pause before Rachel answered. “I don’t know,” she said finally, lying, unsure how Jackie would take the truth. “Just please promise me you won’t leave this cave while I go to the bunker.”

“What will you be doing at the bunker?”

“Checking out the symbol there,” Rachel informed her. “If I’m right, and it’s his work, then he’s got a physical body somehow and he’s using it to change the symbols. We already know he affected the Wilderness with them just by setting them up. If he’s using them again, I need to see that for myself.”

“But what about your feeling?” Jackie asked. “Surely you already know it’s going on because of that.”

“Realistically, that could be any number of things,” Rachel confessed. “It might not even be related to some change in the Wilderness at all, just the supernatural spiritual-world-hopping equivalent of car sickness.”

Jackie nodded, and walked over to the back wall in resignation, sliding her back down it. She glanced up, only to see Rachel still there, looking at her expectantly.

“What?” she asked, wondering what she was missing.

“Promise me, Jackie,” Rachel said firmly. “Promise me you won’t leave this cave.”

“I, I promise,” Jackie said weakly.

There was another pause in the conversation, before Rachel simply nodded and left the cave.

Jackie just sat and waited. She had nothing better to do and honestly, this might be for the best. If Jacques really was coming in the next couple of days, then Rachel leaving for the bunker right now might just fit that perfectly.

Except…

If Rachel was right, and Jackie was sure she was, it didn’t sound like whatever Jacques would want to do in this cave would be a good thing. Shouldn’t she at least try to stop him?

Jackie considered it, thought about preventing Jacques from carrying out his almost-certainly-wicked plan, which probably involved the symbol here in the cave. If not for her own sake, then for her friends, at least. For the others.

And if Jacques really was inhabiting a physical body now, then maybe Jackie could actually really get something done. She may be just bones now, but she was still spry, she still had some of the body of a Nationals-ready athlete. She was sure she could pull off something if Jacques were to try anything.

But then, as they always did, thoughts of the others led to thoughts of Shauna. Shauna crying on Jackie’s birthday, after a kiss she couldn’t take back. Shauna not talking to her for a week afterward. Shauna fucking Jeff, having his baby, applying to Brown, not telling Jackie any of it.

Shauna looking Jackie dead in the eyes and telling her that maybe she never knew her at all. Not coming out to even see how she was doing that one fateful night. Making it clear she didn’t care for Jackie, that she never really had, that she’d hated her.

Jackie sunk back into despair and resolved, once again, to just sit there and wait for Jacques to end her mockery of a life. She needed more than anything to stop feeling this way, and if this was the only way she could get that, then so be it.

Up in the attic, Tai’s eyes snapped open. This timing wasn’t great; Tai needed her sleep. But a golden opportunity had just opened up and it couldn’t be allowed to go to waste.

The pantry door creaked as Other Tai pushed it open. Most of the girls were inside at the moment, absorbed in their own discussions or by the view outside a window. Misty glanced up at her with a brief smile she didn’t return before resuming whatever hushed conversation she was having with Yumi and Akilah.

Nat and Isabella were out hunting by this point, which suited Other Tai’s purposes just fine. Lottie was a little more of a concern; she might insist on coming along and that would not be ideal. She hadn’t formally met the bundle of raw desire and instinct that dwelled in the heart of Tai’s consciousness, and Other Tai found that she really really didn’t want Lottie to. She could see through the Wilderness a little, when it suited her, but for the most part she only knew what Tai knew, and Tai had spent the last few months being increasingly creeped out by Lottie Matthews and her rituals and prayers. She’d been on the right side of history about Javi at least, which wasn’t nothing, but that didn’t stop Other Tai being very wary of what the other girl might make of her.

Another worry was Van. She may not know how Lottie would react to her, but she knew for sure what Van’s response would be, and it was vitally important that Other Tai not have *anyone* with her for this, especially not anyone who was part of that little group. Tai was the only Yellowjacket who was close enough, but who wasn’t involved in that whole mess Other Tai had glimpsed nearly a month ago, with whom this just might work. Van, unfortunately, was out of the question.

There was also Shauna. But the idea of bringing her came with its own mountain of issues, so, best not.

Other Tai concentrated, and borrowed the vision of the Wilderness for just a moment. Immediately, the other girls around her lit up like stars in the night sky. They shone with all the care Tai felt for them, all the longing she felt for the lives they should be leading and her frustration over being unable to help them get there. She looked round for Van and spotted her instantly; where the other Yellowjackets were a shining constellation, Van sparkled brighter than a galaxy.

She was behind the cabin, speaking urgently to Lottie. The both of them were very well positioned to not notice Tai’s departure. Perfect.

She shook Tai’s head, clearing her vision of distractions, and pressed on, ready to-

“Tai?”

Oh.

Other Tai turned, meeting Shauna’s gaze. Her usual anger at the world around her seemed to be held at bay, at least for the moment. “Where are you going?” she asked quietly, brows furrowing in thought. “And without Van?”

“Just out,” Other Tai said quickly, putting as much effort as she could into making Tai’s voice sound normal. Hopefully the other girl would write off any weirdness she might notice as Tai simply being tired. “Going for a walk.”

“Would you mind some company?” Shauna asked softly, sparing a glance around the cabin. Other Tai noted the way anyone who accidentally made eye contact flinched away, and she was sure Shauna did too. “I just… don’t want to be alone. And no-one else is my friend right now.”

Other Tai briefly considered dropping what she was doing and spending time with Shauna right there and then but she couldn’t. Her first window of opportunity in weeks to do what she needed had only just opened up and she couldn’t let it close.

“Sorry,” she said, immediately feeling awful at the sight of Shauna’s face falling, her eyes hardening. “I need to be by myself.”

Shauna said nothing to that, only turned and stalked back to the bedroom. Other Tai may only have been a distillation of everything important to Tai, but an important part of Tai was her care for Shauna. It hurt her to do that, rejecting the only plea for help that Shauna had willingly expressed since the death of her child. But this was just too important.

And besides, she’d be helping Shauna, ultimately. Or making her worse, perhaps, but somewhere in there would almost certainly be some kind of lift to Shauna’s spirits.

Not for the first time, Other Tai briefly thought about how she’d liked to have done this ages ago. But at the end of the day, Tai needed to be emotionally supported in order for Other Tai to function and her stupid argument with Van had kept her off balance for weeks; today presented the only chance to get this done since they’d reunited.

Other Tai opened the cabin’s front door and strode outside with clear purpose visible in every step. Mari, sitting on a stump by herself, glanced at her curiously before returning to her usual state of dejection she’d been in since the last time Akilah had said a word to her. Another problem, but not one she could solve right now.

After nearly an hour of marching determinedly through the woods, Tai’s legs ached, which was something Other Tai was only dimly aware of. Tai really needed a break.

Tai’s muscles thanked her as she came to a halt outside a barely-noticeable opening in a rock face, but Other Tai knew Tai couldn’t rest yet. The physical ordeal may be over, but she was almost certainly about to receive a shock.

A quick check through the Wilderness confirmed what she already knew, as she noticed the light of a girl inside that was, finally, on its own.

Well, then. No sense dragging it out.

Other Tai entered the cave abruptly, startling its lonely occupant, who she stopped a few feet in front of.

“Taissa?” came the shocked response. “What- how- did Van tell you? How did you find me? What’s going on?”

As much as she knew that regular Tai was just the complete version of herself, Other Tai felt a buzz of irrational relief at the idea of handing over the reins.

Jackie rushed forward instinctively as Tai nearly collapsed in front of her. With an arm around Tai’s shoulders, Jackie helped the exhausted girl down to the ground much more gracefully than her own body was promising.

“It’s okay,” Jackie reassured her, sounding much more certain of the situation than she felt. “You’re okay.”

“Jackie?” Tai whispered, as Jackie guided her gently to lean back against the rock wall. “How did I get here?”

“I thought you could tell me,” Jackie teased, though her voice betrayed her concern.

Tai closed her eyes as Jackie sat down next to her. “I sleepwalked here,” she explained simply, like that explained everything. Jackie supposed she could wait for a better explanation than that, with how tired Tai clearly was.

Tai exhaled, and looked back at Jackie. “...Am I dead?” she asked carefully, taking in her old captain, in the metaphorical flesh.

“I don’t think so,” Jackie informed her unhelpfully. “You’re breathing, but that could just be habit. Do you have a pulse?”

Tai checked her wrist slowly, not moving her gaze from Jackie. “I do,” she said, at last.

“Then yeah, you’re alive,” Jackie told her. “I figured as much. All the dead who are physically here tend to, well, look it.”

“Like you?” Tai asked, raising her eyebrows.

Jackie shrugged. “I’m working off a sample size of two, and apparently it’s possible to come back not looking obviously like a corpse but. Yeah. Like me.”

A silent minute passed. Jackie could practically see the gears in Tai’s brain trying to turn, to figure out the how and what and why. She looked at the ground, not enjoying the feeling of being analysed like this, or the idea that Van and Nat and the others might know where she was.

Jackie felt surprise as Tai suddenly put an arm around her and rested her head delicately on Jackie’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back, Jackie,” she said softly, sounding like she was about to cry. “I missed you.”

A familiar feeling rose up inside Jackie then. She didn’t want to be missed. She didn’t want all this. She felt guilty over reacting like this to Tai’s sincere expression of emotion for her, and that looped into her just overall feeling worse about the whole thing.

“I missed you too, Tai,” she said quietly. She saw the other girl smile faintly, the simple joy of being reunited with a friend, as she drifted off into what must be much-needed sleep.

Jackie swallowed uncomfortably, or at least experienced the feeling that would normally have led her to. She was happy to see Tai again, honestly she was, but it was an emotion that was tempered somewhat. Tai had eaten her face off, after all.

But she also hadn’t lied about it.

Tai was a friend, one of the Yellowjackets she was closest to, along with Nat and Van and Lottie. But if any of them, or Isabella, had walked into her cave today, Jackie knew she would’ve likely bolted. She probably would’ve also done so if it had been any of the others, who she knew and cared about but wasn’t nearly as familiar with. And if it had been Shauna, Jackie was certain she would’ve slammed her skull against the wall on the spot, in the hope of splitting it open.

So maybe Tai, sensible, caring Tai, really was the perfect person for her right now.

She hadn’t lied to her about the cannibalism (she almost certainly would never have), she did at least try to stick up for her in her final night alive, and she’d been the refuge from Jackie that Shauna had needed. Her jealousy over that had faded quite a bit in recent weeks, leaving her simply grateful that Tai had given Shauna the peace and happy friendship that Jackie would’ve done anything to provide for her.

As she sat there, Tai sleeping against her, Jackie took some comfort in the company of a friend. But she still felt the resolve, deep in her metaphysical heart, to let her existence firmly end when the time came. It occurred to her then that hey, if doing what she thought Shauna would want or approve of was a priority for her (and it certainly was), then fully removing herself from any semblance of life should still remain her goal. Hell, if Shauna had entered the cave just now, she probably wouldn’t have to do anything herself, Shauna would probably do it for her, she was sure.

Jackie could hardly wait for Jacques to arrive. She just hoped she could get Tai out of there before he did, but right now, she’d rather pull her own arm off than disturb the source of the one good feeling she’d had in a while.

Chapter Text

Isabella’s hair had gotten longer lately, nearly reaching the base of her neck. It had grown very quickly, as if the Wilderness was granting it the chance to make up for lost time. Nat knew her opinion on Isabella’s appearance was second to Isabella’s own, but she really dug the look.

There was only one problem with it, albeit a pretty significant one.

Occasionally, and instinctively (like she didn’t realise she was doing it), Isabella would go to twirl a finger in her hair or push it back off her face, her hand moving in such a way that suggested she was expecting it to be far longer. And every time, Isabella’s face betrayed a flicker of disappointment at the reminder that it wasn’t.

Nat knew Isabella didn’t believe a girl must have long hair (her hair was longer than Yumi’s, after all), it was just a choice she’d like to have. There was a goal she wanted to meet, an image in her head that she wanted to match, and Isabella felt a stinging frustration in every reminder that her body fell short of that mark.

Isabella had mostly accepted how she was, no longer felt quite so constantly uncomfortable in her own skin. The fact the others genuinely saw her as one of them now no matter what she looked like helped enormously, and was something she could cling onto when dysphoria and despair would spike for seemingly no reason. But she still wasn’t satisfied with her hair.

She’d told Nat about the vision she’d had the day she found Javi, her ideal self personified as someone she could talk to. Her hair had flowed long, like Mari’s or Lottie’s, and it had become important to Isabella that her hair in the real world should do the same. 

Everyone had aims, personal goals they intended to accomplish one day, come hell or high water. And, as shallow or superficial as someone might say this was (a hypothetical someone that Nat personally considered an enthusiastic volunteer for getting punched), Isabella’s was to grow her hair long.

Nat had once absentmindedly pictured Isabella with the longer hair she desired, falling elegantly in front of her shoulders and behind her back, and with a smile of joy and quiet satisfaction on her face at having just this one simple thing she wanted. It had apparently been so enthralling of an image to Nat that it had taken Isabella grabbing her hand to prevent her walking into a tree.

Isabella walked ahead of her now, keeping a watchful eye out for errant details in the vibrant land around them. As Lottie had pointed out that morning, they weren’t really in need of game at the moment, but it couldn’t hurt. More importantly, they might even find Jackie, or at least some clue to her whereabouts, though the chances of that were slim. The forest was big, and there was no knowing what hidden corner of it Rachel may have dragged Jackie off to.

For the most part, they just liked to be alone out here.

“Are you okay?” Nat asked quietly, as they stopped walking after what must have been at least half an hour of silent travel. Every day for the last few weeks had gone this way, with the only difference being the gradual lessening of snow in the trees.

Isabella sighed. “No,” she answered softly. This too was part of the typical exchange. It wasn’t a very in-depth response, but it was honest and it was straightforward, and Nat could appreciate that. She’d certainly take it over a lie.

Not that she expected a lie. They’d made a promise to each other the day Lottie had gone missing; no more secrets, complete honesty with each other. Nat knew it had sunk into Isabella’s soul just as much as it had sunk into hers. The bond they had opened up between them could never accept anything less.

Nat took a couple steps forward, ready for the embrace that typically formed the next part of these daily interactions, but Isabella wasn’t done yet, not today. “It’s about Javi,” she continued, as she sat down on a log, letting her spear fall to the ground and roll a little in the leaves. She took a deep breath. “I feel guilty.”

“That… that makes sense,” Nat said slowly, taking a seat beside her. “But these things take time-”

“I think I knew it was going to happen.”

Nat blinked. “What?”

A stray hair had fallen across Isabella’s forehead and she went to tuck it behind her ear. Only Nat, who knew her so well, could read the quick flash of irritation that crossed her face for only an instant at the discovery the hair was only barely long enough to do that.

“I don’t know how,” Isabella explained. “But for weeks, ever since I found him, I had the same dream every night. And it was freaking me out.”

“You killing him?”

Isabella nodded. “Very different details but yeah.”

“But that was just a dream,” Nat told her, moving her hand to Isabella’s back. “You couldn’t possibly have expected it, or planned for it. It was an accident.”

“But that’s not it,” said Isabella quickly. “Maybe I couldn’t have done anything. I don’t believe that but whatever. But after it happened, the dreams stopped. And the first thing I felt when I woke up after my first night in weeks where I didn’t see myself killing Javi was just relief that it was over.”

“And then you felt guilty for feeling relieved,” Nat sighed. Isabella looked at her curiously and she continued. “You know my relationship with my dad was… complicated, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well after that particular accident, after the dust had settled on all that, there was a part of me, and not a small part, that was just glad I wouldn’t have to see him again. There was no more of him demanding I to fetch him this or that, no more yelling over nothing, no more of the back of his hand.”

“Wasn’t he awful?” Isabella protested, as Nat brushed her cheek unconsciously at the return of some long-buried memory . “I mean, my dad was bad but he wasn’t, like, like that. I feel like being relieved he’s gone is fine, and that wasn’t even your fault, not really. But Javi-”

“Which, again, wasn’t your fault,” Nat pointed out firmly.

“He was a good kid,” Isabella whispered. “He was sweet, and innocent, and with his whole life ahead of him until I impaled him.”

“My point was that human feelings are complicated and fucked up,” Nat told her gently. “Feeling relieved that you no longer had a recurring nightmare is the most understandable any of us have been since we crashed. And feeling so guilty about it just reinforces what I already knew about you.”

Isabella turned to look at her, allowing Nat to see the tears that were starting to build. “What’s that?” she asked, so quietly Nat could barely hear her.

“You’re a good person,” Nat said clearly, leaving no room in her tone for disagreement.

Isabella shook her head, finding some anyway. “No, I’m not,” she replied, standing up suddenly. “Good people don’t kill their brothers, don’t feel good about the idea of getting away from the memory of it.”

“Everyone wants to get away from their bad memories,” Nat told her, following her to her feet. “But you haven’t even tried, have you? You’re mourning him with everything you have, letting it make you feel awful, and then making yourself feel worse because you think you’re not mourning him enough.”

“It’s what I deserve,” Isabella snapped. “Don’t you remember what I was like? I was awful to all of you, I pointed a loaded gun at you, Nat.”

“And then you got yourself drugged, chased through the woods, assaulted and nearly killed,” Nat reminded her. “I think the cosmic scales might have evened out a little there.”

“If they’d killed me, maybe Javi would be alive today,” Isabella muttered.

“If the plane hadn’t crashed, he’d still be alive,” Nat countered. “Or then again, he might’ve been hit by a car.”

“What?”

“You can wonder about ‘if’s all you like, but you can never possibly know what might’ve happened.”

Isabella slowly fell to the ground, purposefully, angling herself so that her back leaned against the log they’d just been sitting on. Nat joined her. “I do remember what you were like. I remember you acting out of instinct to climb high up a tree just on the vague idea your dad might need your help. I remember you holding Jackie by the lake when Laura Lee died and she needed someone there. I remember you going out there every single day, your own safety be damned, throwing yourself on the Wilderness’ mercy just for a chance at saving your brother.”

“Well,” Isabella said slowly. “Sure, if you cherry-pick the good-”

“Like you’re cherry-picking the bad?” Nat countered hotly, sensing she was gaining ground. “Isabella, yes, you’ve fucked up in the past. We all have. But I’ve seen you, all of you. You’re a beautiful and passionate person who would do anything for those she cares about, and you’ve proven that time and again.”

Isabella wasn’t trying to hold her tears back anymore. “I care about you and I pointed a gun at you-”

Nat rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “And that was a while ago. I pointed the same gun at Tai and Shauna and the rest a couple months ago.”

“You were protecting Jackie,” Isabella argued. “I was only protecting my pride.”

“I know what it’s like to hide yourself away,” Nat told her softly. “I know how angry at the world that can make you, especially when you don’t even know what it is you’re hiding from. I think that coming out, to yourself and to us, nearly made it better but then killing Javi just made you better at going from lashing out at others, to directing all that negativity toward yourself.”

“It was still a bad thing, no matter the reason,” Isabella shot back, but there was no fire in it. It seemed more that she was just desperate to hold onto something she could blame herself for.

“It was,” Nat agreed. “But I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago for it, and there’s not a single thing you’ve done before or since that I hold against you.”

“That doesn’t stop me from feeling so shitty,” Isabella whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

“You need to forgive yourself, too,” Nat smiled faintly as she guided Isabella’s face toward her own with a hand on the other girl’s cheek. “Accept that Javi’s gone, and that you can’t change that, and that it wasn’t your fault.”

Isabella turned properly to face her and leaned forward, her head coming to rest on Nat’s shoulder. Nat’s arms were ready for her and they hugged, as Isabella cried.

“I can’t just… do that,” Isabella murmured. “Like it’s a switch.”

“You opened up about this,” Nat reminded her. “It’ll happen. And I’ll be here for you as long as it takes.”

They remained that way for some time, at some point shifting position to simply sit next to each other, enjoying each other’s closeness.

“We should probably head back,” Nat remarked eventually as dark clouds gathered above them.

Isabella nodded. They got to their feet when suddenly-

A twig snapped. Foliage rustled. Something was moving through the trees, something probably large enough to keep them fed a while if they caught it. Not that they needed to at the moment, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Catching too much and having to just watch it spoil was an acceptable price to pay to avoid a repeat of the Javi incident.

Nat and Isabella whipped around in the direction of the noise. Using the log as partial cover, they silently got to their knees behind it. Nat immediately had the rifle at the ready, while Isabella instinctively reached for her spear. If the gun didn’t work for some reason, it was unlikely the spear would, but you never knew with this place.

Something was off about this situation. No wild animal they’d encountered in any of their hunts had made as much of a disturbance as this. There was no restraint in the movement, no caution. Whatever this was, it was simply interested in very intently going forward.

Then it stepped into their line of sight and Nat found she was too surprised to even point her gun at it.

Isabella blinked slowly. At the speed their almost-prey was walking at, that almost meant she could’ve missed it.

It was Crystal. Mostly.

Her eyes seemed dead and unseeing. Her mouth hung open, and was covered in long-dried blood. Her legs moved forward like a machine, like she was being pulled along on a leash. Her arms hung loosely from her shoulders

Nat and Isabella watched with wide eyes as Crystal strode away quickly, with a clear destination and purpose in mind. They weren’t putting much effort into hiding, but Crystal seemed not to notice them anyway.

“What the fuck?” Nat whispered, shivering.

“Crystal’s back now?” Isabella put the idea out there, but she didn’t believe it, not really. “Like Jackie and Rachel?”

Nat shook her head. “That wasn’t her.”

Isabella agreed. Whatever that was, it was something else. Isabella hadn’t known Crystal super well, but she had enough of an impression to know this wasn’t her. She’d sensed it as the body had walked by, there was something wrong with the thing that had just passed them, something downright malevolent.

They stayed there a few minutes longer to make sure it was gone, before they slowly stood up. Rain started to fall, lightly for now but getting heavier by the moment.

Suddenly, they heard something again. Coming from the direction of the cabin this time, they swung around as something crashed through the undergrowth, lowering their weapons as Van appeared, eyes wild.

“Van?” Nat asked, frowning. “What are you doing out here?”

“Have you seen Tai?” Van asked them, bending over as she got some breath back.

“No,” Isabella said slowly, exchanging a worried glance with Nat. “We thought she was back-”

“She’s not,” Van said shortly as she straightened up. “Everyone said she just up and left, Mari said she went in this general direction.”

“She didn’t tell anyone where she was going?” Nat asked as she looked around.

“Shauna said she needed to do something by herself,” Van told them. “Didn’t tell her what it was though.”

“Shauna’s talking?”

“She’s pissed off but she’s worried about Tai and for once, I’m completely on her side. We should all be out here looking-”

A peal of thunder interrupted her as the rain intensified unnaturally fast.

“We need to go back!” Nat shouted, making herself heard. “We’re not gonna find her out here.”

“But-”

“We have to trust she knows what she’s doing!” Isabella added, disliking the way her voice sounded when raised. “She’s smart, and we’re just gonna get ourselves hurt or worse stumbling around looking for her.”

Isabella and Nat both had hands raised out in front of their heads, keeping the rain from entering their eyes as best they could. Van did no such thing, instead just passing a glare between the two of them so intense that Isabella was almost surprised the water didn’t sizzle as it landed on her face.

“Fine,” she said finally. “But the moment it clears up, I’m out here again.”

Nat nodded and the three of them began the journey back to the cabin, arms around each other to support anyone who might slip and fall. Isabella glanced up at the sky briefly, wondering how the weather had gotten so bad so quickly. She couldn’t help but think it was a bad sign.

Hey, Taylor.

Jackie’s eyes, for lack of a better word, shot open to see a figure standing at the entrance to the cave. It wasn’t Tai, who was still sleeping against her. Dripping rain from the storm Jackie could make out outside, the figure took a few steps in. Quickly, she delicately moved Tai off of her and leaned her friend against the cave wall. Miraculously, she didn’t wake up. Jackie wondered for a moment how long it had been since Tai had gotten proper sleep, as she slowly stood up.

Is that Kristen’s body? What the fuck?

Wouldn’t be my first choice, I admit, but options were limited. Oh, is this for me?

Jacques, jerkily propelling Kristen’s corpse like a marionette on shaky strings, walked over to Tai.

Leave her alone. You can come back another time.

But I’m here now. Honestly, Taylor, you had to know my goal here wasn’t in your old team’s best interests, this can’t be a surprise to you. Or would you rather I end you first, just so you don’t have to watch?

Just leave.

Jacques bent over and reached out a hand to Tai’s neck. It would be really simple actually, just one quick squeeze-

With an audible cry of anger, Jackie leapt forward, shoving Jacques away. Kristen’s head hit the rock of the cave wall as he staggered back. He reached a hand to the back of his head and brought it back before his eyes, noting the drops of new blood he found there.

I wonder how long that’s just been sitting in that vein for, Jacques mused, his lips still unmoving.

“Get out,” Jackie said firmly.

Don’t tell me you don’t want me to help you out anymore.

“Later,” Jackie hissed. “When I’m alone, I’ll let you know. But you will not threaten my friends.”

Look- okay, wait, give me a minute, I haven’t used one of these in ages.

Jackie watched, deeply unsettled, as Kristen’s body drew in a breath and was suddenly overcome with hacking coughs.

I swear, this used to be a lot easier. Back in my day, eh?

Jacques let out a final cough that sounded more disgusting than any in the previous flurry. A mass of meat and tissue emerged from Kristen’s mouth (giving her lips a fresh coat of blood) and landed on the cave floor with a sickening splat. Jacques regarded it curiously for a second.

I wonder if that was important. Still, it’s not like she was using it anymore.

“Now, where was I?” Jacques pondered aloud, in a voice used to chattering excitedly to Misty or singing in a drama club and definitely was not suited for its current user.

Jackie felt a pang of sadness for a good-natured girl she’d hardly known, and disgust for the way her body was being treated. She almost vowed then and there to free the cadaver from Jacques’ influence somehow, even if it meant completely bashing Kristen’s head in, until she remembered, she needed him. Somewhere out there was a girl who’d last looked at her in hatred and had spent years secretly cursing her name, and for every second she was there, the brief spikes of Jackie’s will to live quickly and consistently withered away.

“Oh, yes, look,” Jacques began again. “I need access to this cave to do my thing, and then I can end your sweet misery. And after that, have my merry way with all your old comrades, yada yada, doesn’t matter, you’ll be gone by that point. Do you not get that? I can try putting it in smaller words if you like.”

“You can come back later,” Jackie stood firm, folding her arms across her chest.

“Or I could just kill that one now,” Jacques pointed lazily to Tai, still sleeping. “Trust me, that one’s been bugging me the whole time you’ve all been here, she has the potential to really cause me trouble.”

“I hope she does,” Jackie snapped. “You’re not getting her.”

“Look, it won’t take me a minute,” Jacques insisted. He took a step forward, trying to stroll around Jackie. “I’ll just-”

The knuckles of Jackie’s left hand, unburdened by soft skin, hit Jacques in the cheek and god damn did he feel it. He was fairly certain the sharper edges of the bone drew blood but he’d have to wait a minute before he could check that.

“Sorry, Kristen,” Jackie whispered as he staggered backward. Wasn’t this girl named Crystal? Whatever, there were more important issues to focus on at the moment, like Jackie’s right hand which was currently curled into a fist and headed straight for the center of his-

Jacques reeled back again as Jackie’s blow connected with the face he wore like an ill-fitting mask. He now found himself outside the cave and into the pouring rain again. Lightning chose that time to strike, briefly illuminating the skeleton that had forced him out, readying her fists if he made another move toward Taissa. Now there was a girl that knew how to relax, it seemed.

Jacques slowly wiped the fresh blood from his face onto his hand, before flicking it to the ground, his gaze not moving from hers. The little bitch had taken him by surprise with a couple good moves, while he was wearing a body so unlike what he was used to, but he had the measure of her now. Maybe it was time to show her what was possible when you really pushed your body to extremes, when you don’t need it to function as it normally would and don’t care what happens to it.

Except he did need it intact, at least for now. He had to be careful with it.

“Look,” Jacques tried again, raising his hands in surrender. “Just let me at the cave. I won’t harm a hair on the girl’s head, just let me in.”

“Go,” Jackie told him, not budging. “You can’t come back in here until I tell you you can.”

Jacques’ eyes narrowed as he could practically feel the weight of her resolve settle and harden over the world like cement. He knew, even if Jackie’s attention was elsewhere and he were to try just slipping past her, he wouldn’t be able to get into the cave.

She had declared he wasn’t allowed in until she decided otherwise, and the Wilderness was backing her. It provided whatever its guests wholeheartedly wished for, something that wasn’t meant to happen for anyone outside the realm of the dead but, well, Jacques had been busy lately. Apparently, bringing things together had its disadvantages.

“Alright then,” Jacques said at last, hoping to convince her he’d decided to retreat for fear of her athletic ability, as if he couldn’t tear her bones apart the instant she stepped a foot out of that cave. “But you let me know immediately when I can come back.”

Jackie nodded shortly. “Will do,” she promised and walked back in, out of sight.

Jacques set to work at once, hiding himself among the foliage. Once he was sure he was obscured from view, he settled in, ready to wait as long as it took. Checking his face, he found that Jackie had indeed drawn blood. Jacques cursed internally. God, it was going to be satisfying to devour her.

“Jackie?” Tai murmured as she stirred to find her friend no longer beside her.

“I’m here.”

Jackie stood at the entrance to the cave, looking out over pouring rain that Tai could barely see the trees through. She looked back over her shoulder as Tai woke up and made her way over to her.

“Hey, Tai,” Jackie said softly as she sat down beside her once again.

“Hey,” Tai said, smiling weakly in response. “You wouldn’t happen to have food here, would you?”

Jackie shook her head. “I haven’t needed it,” she reminded Tai, gesturing at her exposed ribs. “I haven’t really eaten in a while, and that’s something I could say even before I died.”

Tai looked at her carefully. “You were looking to die,” she said aloud, more an observation than a question. “And when Misty started all that, you could’ve downplayed it, mumbled a prayer and carried on. But instead, you poked at Shauna.”

Jackie stared fixedly at the cave wall opposite her. “Yeah,” she confirmed quietly.

“And then you came back,” Tai continued delicately. “How… how was that?”

“Not great,” Jackie admitted. “Nat said everyone in the cabin heard me screaming.”

“The week after we ate you,” Tai whispered to herself, before wincing. “Sorry.”

Jackie sat up a little more stiffly. “It’s fine,” she said quickly, before letting out a humourless laugh. “Hey, at least I had a way to help in the end, right?”

Memories of the morning after sprang to Tai’s mind again. Her panic at seeing Jackie had been eaten, her horror and disgust when she was told what it was that had done it. Her brows furrowed as a new thought pushed that back. “Nat knew about you?” she asked quietly.

“You didn’t know?” Jackie responded, surprised. “I thought Nat or Van must have told you. Why else would you come looking for me?”

Any hints of fatigue in Tai’s head was burned away in an instant. “Van knew?”

“Sorry,” Jackie mumbled, looking away.

“Did you tell them to keep it a secret?” Tai asked her.

“At the very start, when it was just Nat,” Jackie nodded slowly. “I was afraid of showing myself to you all. I didn’t know what you’d do to me.”

Annoyance was a mild word to describe what Tai was feeling right now but she supposed she couldn’t blame Jackie for that.

“Then Van turned up with Nat a couple days later,” Jackie continued. “And I’ve been kinda wanting to see you ever since, except-”

“Shauna,” Tai finished, sighing.

Jackie nodded again. “If she looked at me again, it would hurt worse than anything the rest of you could do to me. And Van and Nat were sure she’d do a lot worse than look at me.”

“What?” The word came out more harshly than Tai had intended, causing Jackie to flinch, but to be fair, she hadn’t had any time to examine it before it had slipped out from her mouth. “She loves you, she’d-”

“Lottie disagreed too,” Jackie interrupted with a shrug. “And I don’t know what Isabella thought but I don’t think she’d go against Nat.”

“Lottie?” Tai snapped. “Isabella? Who the fuck else knew?”

There were many interruptions, but Jackie was thorough in recounting the events leading up to her separation from the others. Tai’s eyes widened at the mention of Rachel, Lottie’s apparently-nightly outings with Laura Lee, and Jackie spearing herself to keep Shauna safe. The way Jackie described Jacques was downright chilling and Tai was ready to dismiss the whole thing if she wasn’t being told this story by an actual living skeleton. It dawned on her just how in the dark she and Shauna really were.

“So you’ve just been in this cave ever since then?” Tai asked, once Jackie had finished. “You and Rachel?”

“She’s off at the moment trying to find out what Jacques has been doing,” Jackie told her. “But yeah.”

Tai hugged her suddenly, catching Jackie by surprise. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “They shouldn’t have lied about eating you.”

“Would you have?”

“No.”

“Then you did nothing worth apologising for,” Jackie said firmly. “Though the hug is nice.”

Tai took in the jagged etching by Jackie’s left eye socket silently. God, Jackie and Shauna were just the right kind of insane for each other, weren’t they.

Why didn’t you tell me, Van?

She continued hugging Jackie in silence. For once, Tai found herself in full agreement with Lottie; Shauna had to know. She was still a little pissed at Lottie for not saying anything, but she reminded herself Lottie hadn’t known where Jackie was, and it was unlikely she would have believed her.

If Tai concentrated, she could see the route back to the cabin in her head, like a map had been laid out for her. If she ever found a way to communicate with her inner self, she’d have to begrudgingly thank her.

Her head was reeling right now, making it difficult to focus on any particular thing. But if she was certain about anything, it was that she was not heading back to that cabin without Jackie by her side. She’d give her old captain as much time as she needed (Tai had to admit, she’d been through a lot) but she was going to make sure her friends got the reunion they both desperately needed, even if she had to push past Nat and Van to do so.

“How, um,” Jackie began before pausing long enough to find whatever she needed within herself to continue. “How’s Shauna?”

Tai sat back, pulling her arms off of Jackie. “Well,” she said slowly. “Not great. Losing the baby wasn’t… easy, on any of us, but her most of all.”

Jackie nodded at her words. “Rachel told me the baby was up there,” she said, in a distracted tone. “I don’t know if he’s going to grow up but he’s going to have Laura Lee, Javi, Kristen and Rachel to look after him. He’ll be okay.”

“So will she,” Tai added, glancing at the scar Jackie had willingly engraved onto her skull. “You made sure of that.”

Jackie raised her hand to her face and felt the scar briefly. “Good.”

For just a moment, the secret Tai kept locked up in her head, the memory of what she’d done, kicked at its restraints as she seriously considered telling someone, anyone, and if this reminder of Jackie’s nature was anything to go by, she might just be the only person in her life who would fully get it. But then she thought better of it.

“You’d do anything for her, huh?” Tai asked as casually as she could manage.

“Anything,” Jackie echoed with a nod. Tai was about to open her mouth to speak when she continued. “I think… I think I’m the reason that baby died.”

Tai’s brain suddenly felt like it was filled with cotton candy as she tried to find the connection. “How?” she asked, after a beat.

“I stopped the Wilderness from going after Shauna that day, remember?” Jackie said quietly, gesturing at her scar again.

“So your alternative would be to let it get her?” Tai was confused. “But that-”

“Absolutely not,” Jackie said firmly. “I just didn’t think about the fact someone would still have to die. I should’ve just let Jacques direct it at me instead.”

“But you didn’t,” Tai reminded her. “And you can’t be blamed for that, not when you had another way to save her that didn’t end in you getting killed.”

“I should have,” Jackie whispered. “Should’ve just gotten it over with. Like you pointed out, it wouldn’t even be the first time I’d let myself die.”

“Jackie-”

“No, Tai. I still had a slim selfish spark of life in me then, ‘cos at least I had friends who still loved me. But then I got Shauna’s baby killed, made her miserable once again, and got what I deserved. Found out those friends ate me and lied to me about it.”

Tai didn’t know what to say to all that. “I’m sorry we ate you,” she said at last.

Jackie waved a hand dismissively. “I’m over that,” she scoffed, a little too forcefully to be genuine. “I just need it all to end.”

“I can’t let you do that, Jackie,” Tai told her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“And how are you going to stop me?” Jackie challenged, but not making any effort to throw off Tai’s hand. “You have to go back to the cabin eventually.”

“Not without you.”

“You need to eat, Tai. I don’t.”

Tai finally spotted the hole in her plan, now that Jackie had pointed it out. “Okay then,” she said slowly, as she thought of a backup. “Then I’ll just have to bring Shauna to you.”

Jackie reacted like she’d been stung, jumping to her feet in alarm. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered. Tai couldn’t tell if she was more angry or scared. “I can’t see her again.”

“You love her,” Tai stated as calmly as she could manage, standing up slowly because she could tell she was probably about to need to be.

“Of course.”

“And she loves you, so-”

“I ruined her life, Tai!” Jackie yelled. “I’m the worst thing that ever happened to her, and she knows it! She wouldn’t have been at risk of dying in childbirth if it wasn’t for her feeling like she had to sleep with Jeff to get at me. She wouldn’t have to grieve a child as a teenager if I’d just pushed past Lottie and walked out into the snow but I didn’t because I was weak and selfish and horrible and I just need it all to stop-”

Jackie interrupted herself then by letting her head fall back and throwing herself haphazardly at the nearest wall, hoping momentum would send her head cracking into the rock. It was a sudden, violent action but Tai was ready, holding her before she could do any harm to herself.

Her burst of self-abuse thwarted, Jackie sank to the ground once again, curling up into a ball. Tai sat down beside her and guided Jackie’s head into her lap as she somehow managed to cry. There was only the sound of tears, with no tear ducts to produce the real thing. But there was no larynx either, yet Jackie still talked, so Tai was half-expecting to see actual moisture rolling down her skull.

“She doesn’t love me, Tai,” Jackie whispered as Tai gently stroked the back of her skull, in lieu of having hair to brush or plait. “She hates me. I can’t live like this.”

You have to tell her, Tai told herself. She’d understand, she’d do anything to save Shauna’s life, hell, she may even do worse. And right now, she blames herself for Jackson’s death, as if no-one else had anything to do with that.

I didn’t have a choice, Tai argued back, which was probably a good sign for her mental wellbeing as long as she didn’t really think about it ever. It was going to kill Van, I couldn’t-

Tell her that, Tai interrupted herself which, again, could only be a fantastic sign for the state of her head. She’ll understand, just tell her. You can’t bottle this up forever.

Tai opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. As it turned out, there was no easy way to say “Sorry, I killed the baby of the woman you love”, no matter how much logical reasoning was tacked onto the end.

They stayed there a while, with Jackie quietly sobbing in Tai’s lap. A million things to say came to mind, some about Jackson, some about Shauna, some about this or that. But they all died on her tongue, shriveling up in the face of the sheer power of the emotion Jackie was emitting. Nothing felt appropriate to say. Tai found herself hoping that she could find some way in her power to make this girl happy again.

The attention of everyone in the cabin swung over to the front door as Isabella pushed it open. She, Nat and Van were soaked through to the skin and despite the serious looks on their faces, Lottie had to suppress a sudden giggle. Nat especially put her in mind of a wet cat as she leaned the rifle against the door.

At the sound of the front door closing, Shauna peeked out from the bedroom and made eye contact with Van, who simply shook her head. Before Lottie could guess what that was about, Shauna ducked away back into the room.

“No Tai then,” Yumi observed, glancing out the window.

“No Tai,” Van echoed, heading straight for the attic. “I’m going to get changed.”

“You all should,” Misty piped up. “Before you catch your death of cold.”

Nat shot her a look, before sighing. “Yeah,” she agreed. She was already taking off her outermost layers as she walked over to where she and Isabella stored their things.

“Looks real bad out there,” Melissa observed, sitting by the window and looking straight out. Gen was holding onto her arm like a sloth would hold onto a tree and at Melissa’s words, seemed to somehow tighten her grip. If Melissa minded, she didn’t say.

“It is,” Isabella told them as she took off her coat, a little more hesitantly than Nat. “Hopefully, Tai found some shelter.”

“And if she hasn’t?” Mari asked quietly. “I mean, it’s only rain.”

Akilah stood silently, ready to take the hunters’ wet clothes and organise drying them later. Nat, already having peeled off everything that had gotten soaked, was putting on one of her older shirts and nodded at Akilah as she approached, giving her permission to take what she’d removed.

“She could get sick,” Misty was saying, answering Mari’s question.

“She could slip in the mud and hurt herself,” Yumi added. “You can barely see out there.”

“None of that’s going to happen,” Shauna announced. She was wearing what looked to be as many layers as she owned. “I’m going to find her.”

“Shauna-” Lottie began but she stopped when Shauna whipped her gaze over to her. Lottie found herself taking a step back just from the force of the fire in her eyes.

“You’re not going to stop me.”

“Shauna, you won’t be able to see shit out there,” Nat insisted.

“Going out there won’t accomplish anything,” said Isabella as she handed Akilah her coat. Akilah hesitated, seeming to expect more but scurried off when she got the hint no more was forthcoming. Nat shot Isabella a look but said nothing.

Van, freshly changed, stepped out of the pantry and took in the ongoing conversation silently, adding nothing to it. Lottie noticed the way her hands balled into fists that she was probably more in agreement with Shauna than she’d ever been in her whole life. Lottie thanked whatever might listen that at least she was thinking clearly enough to see the wisdom in what Nat and Isabella were saying.

“Tai’s my friend,” Shauna nearly snarled, not someone to take helplessness well. “I’m not just going to sit here, I can’t lose-”

“I’m sorry, Shauna,” Lottie said softly, but clearly. “But just sitting here is exactly what you’re gonna do.”

“Nothing else that can be done right now,” Yumi added.

Shauna’s scrutiny switched over to her, sweeping over Misty, Melissa, Gen and Mari on the way. Most of them looked away as she did so; Mari actually flinched. For her part, Yumi didn’t seem to react at all. She simply met Shauna’s eyes with a firm gaze of her own.

“For what it’s worth, Shauna, I’m with you,” Van said quietly, looking at the floor. “But we need to wait, just for the rain to clear.”

Shauna looked around at all of them slowly, and Lottie thought she might just run outside. She seemed poised to for a moment, and Lottie noticed Nat and Isabella tensing up, preparing to stop her if necessary.

Whether Shauna noticed that or not, Lottie couldn’t tell, but she still backed down. It was obvious she hated it, but it seemed she’d accepted the facts of the situation, at least for the moment. She stormed back into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Lottie let out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding as conversation among the others slowly drifted back to normal.

Nat gestured with her head, beckoning her and Van over to a corner away from the rest.

“We need to talk,” Nat began, pulling a jacket on. “We saw something out there, before Van found us.”

“Jackie?” Van asked quickly, but Isabella shook her head. Lottie felt an uneasiness settle in her stomach.

“Crystal’s back,” Isabella told them, before tilting her head to the side. “Her body’s up and about, anyway.”

“It’s definitely not her,” Nat added, shuddering at a memory.

“How can it not be her?” Van asked, raising an eyebrow. “Can you take someone else’s body? Is that allowed?”

Lottie shrugged. “We don’t know all the rules,” she reminded them. “I’m not even sure there are any, beyond being able to do practically anything you put your mind to.”

“Could this be why Other Tai’s been on guard against Jacques?” Isabella asked quietly. “Could it be him, running around in a physical form?”

Far from the first time since they’d crashed out here, Lottie felt eyes turn to her instinctively, even Nat’s, looking to her for definitive answers she just didn’t have. She wanted to shrink into a ball and hide from the world but she settled for sighing instead. “Maybe,” she said. “That might explain why things have been feeling off lately.”

“Off?” Van echoed curiously. “Off how?”

“Just a weird feeling,” Lottie told them. Her hands fidgeted as she thumbed through her vocabulary for the right words to describe it. “Like the whole world’s been kinda fuzzy at the edges, like when you’re dreaming. Just a little less real, a little less tangible.”

Nat knocked twice on the wooden wall beside them. “Seems pretty tangible to me,” she said under her breath, ignoring a pointed look from Isabella.

“I don’t know how else to describe it, Nat,” Lottie snapped. “I’m trying my best.”

Nat met her eyes for a moment before looking away. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“If it is Jacques in Crystal’s body,” Van said slowly. “And this feeling means something, and I’m sure it does, they’re probably linked.”

“Would be a hell of a coincidence,” Isabella nodded.

Lottie murmured in agreement. They all went silent for a few moments, no-one sure how to follow that up or even if they should, but at least everyone was up to speed.

“Why are you still wearing your wet clothes?” Nat asked Isabella quietly. Isabella opened her mouth to protest and Nat hastily added: “Or most of them, anyway. Why?”

Isabella glanced over at the other girls before looking back to Nat. “I’ll change later,” she said quietly.

“You should do it now, before you get sick,” Nat instructed her gently. The way she was looking at Isabella, the concern permeating her voice, it all almost made Lottie feel uncomfortable just being there.

“Didn’t want to before, not in front of everyone,” Isabella explained, running a hand through her hair. “Usually, everyone’s asleep when we get up so it’s not too much of a problem, I just…”

She trailed off, but Lottie wasn’t sure if she’d actually run out of words to say or if the volume of her voice, which had been lowering throughout the whole of that last sentence, had finally dwindled to an inaudible level.

Regardless, Nat seemed to understand Isabella, if the hug she went for just then was anything to go by.

“The attic’s free,” Van said quietly.

Isabella looked at her gratefully and nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered, already heading for the trapdoor, scooping up a change of clothes as she went. Nat followed her as far as the pantry door, before leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe, eyeing anyone she thought might be getting near.

“It’s good they have each other,” Lottie remarked lightly.

Van nodded silently, glancing only once at the rain outside that was still going strong, like every cloud in the world had gathered over the forest together and collectively decided to screw over this one place in particular.

Rachel discovered that feeling your flesh moisten and slowly peel off your bones was more than a little uncomfortable. Jackie didn’t know how lucky she had it. One advantage to not inhabiting your body for months and then only slipping back into it in the dead of a freezing winter was that you didn’t have to feel yourself rot. The remains of her previously-frozen right eye had fully trickled out its socket an hour ago, mixing with the rain. She’d lost vision there for a minute until she focused, remembering she didn’t have to operate off the laws of anything resembling science.

Rachel hurried through the trees, nearly running straight into several. She knew now what it was Jacques was doing, and that he had physical form somehow. He’d be heading for the symbol in that cave, if he wasn’t there already. The whole reason Rachel had chosen to hide away there was the big symbol that would keep Jacques away from Jackie’s residual trace in the realm of the dead but that very soon wasn’t going to matter much. They had to get away.

As big a threat as this was, it didn’t escape Rachel’s thoughts that this was almost the perfect answer to her problem the last few weeks. If Jacques got what he wanted, she’d be able to reunite Jackie with the other dead and keep them all safe together very soon. 

She mentally recalibrated a moment as a further thought struck her. Strictly speaking, ‘the dead’ might be about to become a bit of a broad term. Rachel wasn’t actually totally sure what would technically happen to everyone in the Wilderness when this went down.

God, Jackie. Rachel and Jacques would able to slip out of the bodies they were wearing as easily as one might take off a suit but with all of Jackie’s mental hang-ups, it was just possible she’d have to be physically destroyed to free her from her skeletal trappings and that was not something Rachel was eager to do to her.

Never mind. This couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Except-

Except, if it happened, she’d probably be seeing a lot more of Yumi, be able to talk to her, be able to-

Rachel stumbled and fell, coating herself in mud. As slowly as she dared, she picked herself back up, spitting out mud that had slipped into her mouth.

She couldn’t think about Yumi right now. God knows she’d do anything for that girl but right now, she had to focus on herself and on Jackie. Besides, Yumi had eaten people for goodness sake, she couldn’t be the same girl she’d loved-

Though so had Kristen, and she seemed positively lovely. They’d just been desperate and starving, all of them, to the point of committing terrible actions, the likes of which Rachel and Laura Lee and Jackie had been mercifully freed of having to contemplate. She knew Yumi inside and out, she couldn’t believe Yumi would ever do something like that unless she absolutely had to. Maybe it was just a matter of perspective, of putting herself in Yumi’s shoes-

No. Rachel had spent quite a while now considering all the living Yellowjackets to be the enemy, a danger to be avoided. Everything that she’d done of late was built off of this, she couldn’t allow considerations of necessity to threaten it all now. She had to stay focused.

Visibility was awful but Rachel pressed on. She forced herself to go a little slower, knowing every stumble cost her precious seconds. Despite the sense she knew that made, she couldn’t help but feel the urge to run full pelt, as if doing so would allow her to escape the thoughts tumbling around her head.

She could practically feel her brain leaking out of her ears but a quick check of the side of her head confirmed that was only literal.

Hours had passed waiting for the rain to let up, to no avail. Eventually, day passed into evening and then into night, tracked by the gradual dimming of the little light that remained outside. Shauna still had to go out briefly, to fetch meat from the shed, but Nat and Isabella went with her, making sure she didn’t dart off into the woods. They needn’t have bothered. She couldn’t see a damn thing.

Shauna volunteered her blanket to be used as a covering they could hold above their heads as they went outside. It wasn’t perfect, but it definitely helped. Lottie commented on her generosity but it’s not like she’d slept under it in weeks, even when winter still gripped the trees.

After eating, Shauna eventually let exhaustion claim her. She slept fitfully and from her point of view, it wasn’t long before she woke.

She could hear the fire crackling healthily in the next room, which was a little odd since sound from there was usually somewhat muted. Looking over, she noticed the bedroom door was open, which at least accounted for that.

She also noticed her belongings all askew, like they’d been rifled through.

Sitting up more, Shauna briefly checked her things, looking for what might be missing. Her brain still felt fuzzy as she struggled to focus on something she wasn’t grasping, something very important if only she could tell what it was-

Then it hit her. Everything of hers was still here. Her clothes, her journal, her knife, it had all been left with her. What was missing was everything that had belonged to Jackie. With rapidly-growing horror, Shauna lifted her pillow to see Jackie’s green dress and even the precious wedding drawing were gone.

Shauna bolted out of her room and froze in shock in the doorway as she took in the Yellowjackets huddled around the fire. The remains of the dress Jackie had lost her virginity in could just about be made out in the middle of the flames. Nat and Isabella stood away from the group, looking ashamed. That was who they were, really. They cared.

“Hey, Shauna,” Mari drawled as she fed a familiar piece of paper into the fire. A sound of anguish slipped from Shauna’s lips as she watched Jackie’s childhood drawing burn.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she asked, still just standing there. She wanted to leap at the fire, to save what she could, but it was like her legs simply refused to obey her.

“We needed fuel for the fire,” Lottie replied casually. “It’s getting cold.”

“We’re surrounded by fucking trees,” Nat snapped. “There’s no shortage of fallen branches and sticks.”

“It’ll all be soaking wet right now,” Van reminded her.

“Then we could’ve let it dry,” Isabella said quietly. “We didn’t need to-”

Lottie flicked her gaze over to Isabella and her protests ceased. Nat squeezed her hand. At least they still had each other.

And wasn’t that just fucking grand, Shauna thought with a rapidly-growing anger. Jealousy may not feel good, but it was easy.

Looking around the group, Shauna noticed Tai wasn’t among them. Still gone, Shauna supposed. Just like everybody else Shauna loved.

Her mother, a million miles away. Her baby, sick the day of birth and buried in the ground. Her best friend, strolled straight out of the cabin and might never come back.

And Jackie, above all else, beautiful perfect darling Jackie that she’d tricked herself into hating, her angel, her saint that she had killed, frozen, eaten, and now all that she had left of her was taken away.

Shauna ran outside, ran anywhere, just to get away, barely even registering that the rain had stopped. Her mind raised red flags at the observation that apparently snow had come back and she glanced at where she’d discovered Jackie’s body all those months ago, almost feeling surprised not to see her there again.

“Wowza, Shipman.”

Shauna’s head whipped around, looking out into the trees. The voice had carried clearly through the air and she could easily follow it to its source. Standing there at the treeline was the unmistakable figure of Jackie Taylor, arms folded, an amused smirk adorning her face.

“Not even an effort to save me, huh?” Jackie shook her head. “Not that I’d expect any from you. I mean, you hate me, right?”

“Jackie!” Shauna cried as she raced over to her, arms outstretched. She was sure she’d covered the ground between them, only to find Jackie further away when she got to where she’d been standing.

“Hey now, Shauna,” Jackie admonished. “Not so touchy. Wouldn’t want you getting your hands on me, you’d only kill me again.”

She looked only barely out of reach so Shauna took a step forward, expecting to be able to hold Jackie in her arms once she did. Somehow, she was still inexplicably just outside of arm’s length even as Shauna took another step toward her, and then another. Jackie didn’t seem to be moving, yet she remained just barely away from Shauna’s touch.

“Please,” Shauna begged, crying as she reached for her.

“This look really doesn’t suit you,” Jackie frowned mockingly. “Oh, I know, try that look you had when you were telling me I never knew you. Or the one you had every time you went to fuck Jeff, the one you slipped into whenever you told me you loved me and I didn’t say it back. I mean, in hindsight, can you really blame me?”

“Jackie,” Shauna whimpered. “I love you.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Jackie laughed, raising an eyebrow at her. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have appointments to keep.”

“Appointments?” Shauna echoed. Her blood froze in her veins as a skeleton (a familiar one, the one from the attic) suddenly loomed behind Jackie, wrapping an arm around her throat.

“Yeah, Shauna, you should know about them,” Jackie said cockily as she leaned into the violent embrace. “You arranged them for me. You put me there.”

And with that, the skeleton descended into a crack in the earth, taking Jackie with it. Shauna leapt forward, trying to grab Jackie, but she was gone too fast. The ground where she’d been standing looked undisturbed, as if nothing had ever happened there.

Shauna woke up, though she couldn’t tell at first; the tears blurring her vision in the waking world felt just like the ones she had in the dream.

The rain really had stopped, and it really was the middle of the night, so the dream hadn’t been entirely wrong. Nat and the rest would probably say it was too dark out to go looking for Tai, but she was barely thinking about any of that right now.

Carefully, Shauna reached under her pillow and retrieved what she was relieved to find was still there. Holding the drawing up above her head as she lay on her back, she gently caressed with her thumb the image of the stick figure woman, with a green dress and dirty blonde hair.

“I need you, Jackie,” Shauna whispered, feeling the tears on the verge of renewing themselves.

She uneasily drifted back to sleep, clutching the time-worn page close to her chest.

Lottie was aware she was dreaming, which put her a step ahead of every other Yellowjacket. Having to interpret their signs and having her crush arrive in them to talk to her frankly and kiss her did wonders for helping her notice the hints. She wandered the shadowy trees aimlessly, hoping for Laura Lee but not expecting it.

“Hello, dear,” said a voice from behind her.

Lottie spun round. “Oh, it’s you,” she said as she regarded the dark-haired woman standing there, hands clasped together. The purple robe draped over an orange dress really stuck out to her again; Lottie had spent a good chunk of the previous day just thinking about how nice that shade of purple was. She hoped she looked half as good as this woman did when she reached her age which, again, she noted must have been roughly double her own.

“It is,” the woman nodded.

“Wait, you’re talking to me? Last night, you just sort of gobbed silently at me like a goldfish.”

“I was talking to you last night, too,” the woman chuckled. “You just weren’t there yet. From my point of view, I’m only experiencing this once. Last night was just a preview of sorts, I suppose.”

“So you have something to say to me,” Lottie sighed. “Well, just say it then.”

“Fair enough,” the woman nodded again, all amusement vanishing from her face though a fondness remained. “I know very well all that you’re going through right now.”

“Yeah, right,” Lottie scoffed.

The woman arched an eyebrow elegantly. Every move she made was elegant; whoever she was, she knew herself and was confident in herself and Lottie couldn’t help but feel a little envious.

“I know everything you’re feeling right now, every thought in your head,” the woman informed her firmly. “Better than you do. I need to tell you something important.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me whatever it is earlier?” Lottie asked. “There’s kind of a lot going on right now.”

“Because your feeling about the way things are at the moment is very real, Lottie,” the woman told her, leaning forward a little. “The link between the Wilderness and reality is currently at its weakest, very near breaking, while still being technically present. That’s why I can project back to you now, but it also is a symptom of the terrible danger you are all in.”

It was Lottie’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Isn’t that… good?” she asked hesitantly. “We crashed here in a plane in the real world, surely the Wilderness withdrawing from the real world is a good thing. It might even let us be found.”

The woman shook her head. “Maybe in the earliest few minutes after you crossed it’s boundaries,” she clarified in a sobering tone. “But for a long time now, the Wilderness has held you all firmly in its grip. When it goes, it’ll take you all with it.”

“How do you know so much about all this?” Lottie whispered. “Who are you? Did Laura Lee send you?”

The woman smiled sadly. “Oh, Laura Lee,” she said softly, her attention for a moment seeming to fixate elsewhere. She raised her voice as she continued, addressing Lottie’s questions. “I don’t have the time to tell you all that. But you need to act now.”

“Act?” Lottie echoed. “Act how? What do I need to do?”

A further thought struck her, something the woman said that had only just clicked. “And what do you mean ‘when’ the Wilderness goes?” she added quietly. “Don’t you mean ‘if’?”

The woman put her hands on Lottie’s shoulders and looked at her very intensely. “The Wilderness is going to detach from reality. There’s no stopping it. It is going to go and Jacques will come for all of you. But if you set the right events in motion now, then you can survive him.”

“How?”

“Love. He’s existed for so long now just as a composition of hate and hunger and greed. Love is pure and he is not; it is like a cancer to him.”

Lottie frowned. “Well that’s helpful,” she said sarcastically.

The woman took her hands off Lottie’s shoulders and shrugged apologetically. “I can only tell you what I know you’ll need to know,” she said cryptically. “I’m not an expert on this sort of thing; I never was, no matter what anyone says.”

“You still haven’t told me what I need to do,” Lottie reminded her.

“That’s right,” the woman clapped her hands together as she remembered. “Lisa’s always telling me how forgetful I am.”

“Lisa?”

“Never you mind,” the woman waved a hand at her dismissively. “Listen, there’s a cave I’m going to direct you to. Jackie is there. Tai is there.”

“Tai’s with Jackie?” Lottie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “And Rachel?”

“She’s not there right now, I’m pretty sure,” the woman mused. “But she will be soon. She’s been out.”

“In the rainstorm?” Lottie asked.

The woman looked almost wistful as she replied. “Rachel is a determined young woman.”

“So I need to go to this cave? How?”

“That, what was it, that Jackie-sense Laura Lee gave you once,” the woman reminded her. “I’m going to restore it, just long enough to get to the cave. It’ll lead you straight there and Tai will know the way back.”

“You’re not going to kiss me, are you?” Lottie blushed nervously. Looking the woman up and down, she didn’t think she’d entirely mind.

However, the woman only laughed and shook her head. “No need,” she said with a smile. “Tempting, but the idea strikes me as more than a little strange.”

She tapped the center of Lottie’s forehead and immediately, Lottie could feel it, even more powerfully than when Laura Lee had activated it. It was as if a fish-hook had gotten stuck in her soul and was tugging her in Jackie’s direction.

“How is it already working? I’m not even awake.”

“That is Jackie’s curse at the moment, she exists in two places at once,” the woman said sadly. “You know how to help her, though.”

“Will she still be a skeleton when the Wilderness does its thing?” Lottie asked curiously. “Or will she merge back with the rest of her and just be a normal ghost or whatever, like Laura Lee?”

“Which option do you think would cause her the most distress, do you think?” the woman asked her right back, a sorrow in her eyes that Lottie couldn’t decipher.

“The skeleton thing,” Lottie said quietly. The woman sighed and nodded.

“You should go,” the woman told her. “It was lovely to speak to you, my darling, but you have to go.”

Nothing happened for a short while before the woman leapt forward and wrapped Lottie up in her embrace.

“God, this is therapeutic in ways you couldn’t possibly understand,” the woman whispered, her voice slightly muffled.

“Why are you hugging me?” Lottie asked. “I’m not complaining, just, why?”

The woman drew back and looked at her fondly. “Because more people should have. Because I needed it. Because everyone should hug each other once in a while, provided they’re okay with that level of casually intimate touch.”

Lottie found herself nodding, as if everything made sense to her. “Right,” she said. “I should wake up now, then?”

“Yes,” the woman agreed. “But just one more thing.”

She leaned forward again and whispered into Lottie’s ear. “You are going to see Laura Lee again,” she promised. “Treasure every single moment with her.”

The woman leaned back once more and raised her left index finger. “And remember, love is key,” she added as she pressed her finger to the center of Lottie’s forehead once again.

“I’m going to see Laura Lee again,” Lottie murmured to herself, though there was no-one to hear her now but a floor full of sleeping girls. She’d woken the instant the woman had pressed a finger to her head.

Lottie got dressed quickly, noting that the rain had stopped. Unlike the last time she’d woken up in the middle of the night after a dream in which a woman she hadn’t expected to see had talked to her, told her to find Jackie, and given her a supernatural sense with which to do so, she knew she had to bring someone with her. Ever since she’d met Jackie again, there was someone she knew she had to reunite her with and it was to that someone’s bedroom door that she hurried to now.

Lottie opened the bedroom door, wincing at the creak, hoping not to wake anyone else. She really did not need any of the others awake for her second midnight jaunt; they’d only stop her.

“Shauna?” she whispered to the sleeping girl. Shauna was restless in her sleep; it shouldn’t be too hard to wake her up.

Shauna mumbled but didn’t totally stir. Oh, well.

“Shauna?” Lottie tried again, a little louder this time. She shook Shauna’s shoulder gently. “Shauna, wake up.”

“What is it?” Shauna grunted blearily. Lottie noticed she held a piece of paper tightly against her chest, but there was no time to examine it now.

“It’s Jackie,” Lottie explained quickly. “I know where she is, we just have to go out there to-”

Shauna’s eyes suddenly burned and Lottie wondered what she’d said wrong. But that only lasted for a moment before Shauna’s fist found her face and she was thrown to the ground by the force of the blow.

“Stop it,” Shauna cried. She looked up at the ceiling. “Please, let me wake up.”

“You’re not dreaming, Shauna,” Lottie sat up, rubbing her cheek gently. “I’m serious. Jackie is out there right now, I can take you straight to her-”

Shauna was off the bed in an instant, still holding on tightly to the piece of paper with one hand and sending the other hand crashing into Lottie’s mouth.

“Stop!” she shouted, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Just stop!”

Lottie’s ears were ringing; she supposed she really should’ve expected an unfavourable response but she didn’t want to give up.

“Shauna,” she whispered. “I’m telling the truth. I can take you to her-”

“Shut up!” Shauna screamed, each word accompanied by another punch. There was a passion behind them Lottie had rarely seen before, like each blow was a release for something that had built up for a long time. She could hear the others in the cabin waking up, could hear footsteps approaching.

Lottie spat blood onto the floor. “Jackie’s alive,” she insisted, before pausing for a moment. “Well, not totally herself, but she’s alive and you can save her.”

The sound that erupted from Shauna at that, the moment the words ‘you can save her’ slipped into her ears, was wordless and raw. It rattled Lottie deeply and she flinched in anticipation.

She didn’t feel another blow. When she looked back up again, Nat was holding back Shauna’s raised fist with all her strength. Isabella stood behind Lottie and was keeping anyone else from entering the bedroom, but couldn’t stop them looking. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like they could hear their words.

“What the fuck is going on?” Nat hissed.

Lottie ignored her, but took advantage of her restraining Shauna. “Jackie’s out there,” she continued plainly. “She’s alive, she’s out there and you can save her.”

“Jesus Christ,” Nat said under her breath. Shauna stopped struggling and just leaned back against the bed, wrapping her arms around herself.

“She’s gone,” Shauna whispered.

Lottie shook her head, a little painfully. She was somewhat dizzy but she continued. “She’s out there, right now.”

“Shut the fuck up, Lottie,” Nat snapped at her, as her arms seemed to debate if she should be holding Shauna back or hugging her. “Just shut up.”

“She’s gone,” Shauna sobbed. “I can’t save her.”

“Jackie’s-” Lottie began, but she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Stop,” Isabella whispered. “Shauna’s not ready to hear you right now.”

Lottie stood up slowly and Nat flashed Isabella a grateful look.

“This isn’t over,” Lottie promised. “Shauna needs-”

“Shauna needs some rest,” Nat interrupted, glaring at her. “Get out of here.”

“Come on,” Isabella said, more gently. “Let’s get your face looked at.”

Lottie stood her ground for a moment, swaying slightly, before accepting Isabella’s hand and following her out. Isabella closed the door behind her, leaving Nat and Shauna alone in the room.

Nat had never expected to find herself comforting Shauna Shipman, especially not since the night Jackie died. She’d looked at Shauna in the weeks since and seen only a monster. Maybe not an intentional one, maybe one that regretted its actions, but still one best avoided at all costs.

But as Shauna wept in her arms, Nat found she wasn’t sure she could think of her that way anymore.

It was easy to start hating someone, even for things far less impactful than accidentally getting your friend killed. And it was easy to maintain that hate, as long as you never meaningfully interacted with them. The memory of whatever they did would be all you need.

But it was hard to look someone in the eyes, sobbing over things they badly wished they could take back, who hated themselves more than you could ever hate them, and still find it in you to wish them ill. Shauna may contain multitudes but Nat reluctantly admitted to herself, finally, that just maybe that range didn’t include a monster.

“What’s that?” Nat whispered, as kindly as she could, when she noticed the paper Shauna was holding.

Shauna looked at her for a moment, eyes red from crying and unsure whether to open up to her. But it seemed whatever resistance she had to the idea crumbled as she released her grip on the page, letting it fall back on her palm so Nat could see it.

A stick figure woman in a blue dress with brown hair was holding hands with a stick figure woman in a green dress with blonde hair. They were surrounded by what Nat assumed were friends and family, but the two women in the middle of the picture looking almost absurdly happy drew most of her attention.

“It’s a wedding,” Shauna mumbled. “We were eight and we had to draw a wedding for school. This is what Jackie drew.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Nat as she took it in. Christ, these two.

“You’ve had this all this time?” Nat asked, to an immediate nod from Shauna. “Why do you have it, and why did you bring it to Nationals?”

“She gave it to me to hide it,” Shauna told her quietly. “Her mom hit her for it. You saw her right eye?”

Nat felt a cool anger seize her as she nodded. She’d never liked anything she’d heard about Jackie’s mom but this hit closer to home for her than anything else that woman had done that she knew about.

“I’ve held onto it ever since,” Shauna continued. “I’ve taken it everywhere. I want to be buried with it, when the time comes.”

“You really loved her,” Nat breathed.

Shauna almost laughed, though didn’t stop crying. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, I did. I do, even though she’s gone.”

They were silent for a moment, before Shauna added: “Not the way she thought I did, though. Not the way she loved me.”

Nat forced a straight face, simply raising an eyebrow. “Oh?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t just my best friend,” Shauna explained softly. She raised the wedding drawing as she continued, gesturing to it. “I wanted this. What you and Isabella have, what Tai and Van have.”

“Why didn’t you tell her that?” Nat asked, careful not to let anything slip into her tone.

“I’m not sure I knew until right now,” Shauna said, so faintly Nat had to lean in to hear her. “Or maybe I always knew it, I just didn’t figure it out. Not until it was far past too late.”

Shauna bent forward again, a fresh wave of tears claiming her as Nat held her.

Yeah. Nat definitely couldn’t hate her anymore. How do you hate someone this miserable over lost love?

Jackie and Shauna reuniting could still only be a bad thing. Right? Yeah. It was. She’d believed that so long now, she couldn’t just stop. But for just a moment, a delightfully freeing moment, she understood why Lottie felt so strongly about this.

Immediately after Lottie left the bedroom, the other Yellowjackets were crowding her, pestering her, asking her what happened, what did she say to Shauna, did her face need any help. Lottie dismissed them with a gesture, stalking between them back to where she slept. 

Well. There goes that option. She couldn’t bring herself to hate Shauna, or even be that annoyed with her, for this but god damn did it still hurt.

“The fuck happened down here?” asked Van, who’d only just made it down the ladder and exited the pantry, and Lottie realised she was never meant to bring Shauna.

Lottie glanced at the others, who were huddled around the bedroom door, trying to hear whatever was being said inside. Leaning forward, she whispered to Van, who was still pulling on a jacket. “I know where Jackie is.”

Van’s eyebrows raised. “Well, shit,” she said quietly. “How?”

“Long story, but I can track her again,” Lottie explained. “Just for tonight. I know she’s in a cave and I know we need to get to her.”

“Shouldn’t this wait?” Van asked. “In the morning, we can get Nat and Isabella together, get equipped, we’ll have good light and so on. I love her and I’m concerned for her but Jackie’s waited a few weeks, she can wait a few hours.”

“Tai’s there too,” Lottie told her, watching how her face instantly changed. “And we’ll all be in danger if we don’t act as soon as possible.”

It only took a moment for Van to nod. “Should’ve led with that,” she murmured, glancing at the others to make sure their attention was sufficiently distracted. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

“It shouldn’t be taking this long,” Lottie muttered.

Van slowed to a stop beside her as she stood, placing her hand against a tree and closing her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re lost,” Van said, unable to keep annoyance out of her tone. “I thought you were taking us straight to Tai, to Jackie, you-”

“I am,” Lottie whispered, trying to concentrate. “I can feel the pull towards Jackie but over the last hour, there’s been… distractions.”

“Distractions?” Van echoed, noting the way the sun was starting to peek through the treetops. They’d been out here quite a while by now.

Lottie made a sound of frustration as she opened her eyes and took her hand off the tree. “It’s like there’s a hook in my soul tugging me straight to Jackie,” she explained. “But there’s also a million smaller hooks, trying to send me a million different directions, and they keep increasing. We’re going the right way, I’m sure we are, but it’s tricky. Figuring which is the way we’re meant to go through all the diversions takes patience.”

Van frowned. “What does that mean? Like, is it Jacques messing with you or something?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lottie shook her head. “At least, not directly. But he’s doing something to the Wilderness, or going to do something, and I think all this is just, like, the aftermath of it, like the shockwave after an explosion.”

“The shockwave of something that hasn’t happened?” Van questioned, not disbelieving of her per se, just uncertain. “I don’t think that’s how time works.”

Lottie thought very carefully about the woman from her vision who had known so much about their present circumstances. “A lot of things work differently in the Wilderness,” she said slowly.

Van looked around at the trees, and the way they seemed to shift ever so slightly closer together, and nodded. “We need to get to our friends.”

Lottie nodded back. “Yeah.”

They continued on.

“Hey, Tai.”

Tai blinked herself awake under the weak sunlight and yawned. “Hey, Jackie,” she said softly as she got up and stretched.

“When are you heading back?” Jackie asked quietly, cutting quickly to the point.

Tai sighed. “Not until you agree to come with me,” she told her.

“But Van and the others, they’re probably worried about you,” Jackie pointed out.

“And that sucks,” Tai shrugged. “But you need to come back to the others, and if I leave by myself, I don’t trust you’ll still be here when I get back.”

“What about eating?” Jackie asked her. “You haven’t eaten for like at least a day.”

“I’m not hungry,” Tai lied, immediately betrayed by a loud growling from her stomach.

Jackie cocked her head to the side a little as she looked at her friend. Tai knew that if Jackie had any right now, she’d be raising an eyebrow at her.

“I’m not leaving without you,” Tai insisted firmly.

“When I’m like this?” Jackie asked, gesturing to herself.

“No-one’s going to hurt you,” Tai assured her. “Anyone who might knows they’d have to answer to Lottie or to Nat or to me or-”

She paused as a thought struck her and she half-smiled as she continued. “Or to Shauna,” she added. “And nobody wants Shauna on their back.”

Jackie’s jaw lowered, like she was about to make a point, but thought better at it. “Assuming Shauna would ever want to look at me again,” she said eventually, raising her hand to pre-empt any insistence from Tai that she indeed would. “I’m not sure that I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tai, I’m a skeleton,” Jackie said, sticking her fingers between her ribs. “I’m a walking nightmare.”

“You’re still you,” Tai said, trying to comfort her. “All your friends, anyone who loves you, will still just see you.”

“That’s not the point,” Jackie told her. “It’s not them, it’s me. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about brushing my hair or hugging myself and actually feeling like my arms have weight to them or eating something and feeling warm food fill my belly? I tried to kiss Lottie on the forehead and ended up just sort of pushing my teeth against her head.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Tai said, shaking her head.

“Tai, are you listening? I can’t-”

“No, I hear you,” Tai interrupted thoughtfully. “But if what you told me Lottie said is true, then if you and Shauna get alone together, probably would only take a few minutes at most with how she is right now, that’d get you back to normal. Bring you back all the way.”

“As if,” Jackie scoffed. “Only thing I’d get from being alone with Shauna is a reminder of how much she hates me.”

Tai rolled her eyes. “I know you genuinely believe it and all, but that routine’s getting old quick.”

Jackie shrugged and said nothing, walking away a few steps and turning her back to Tai so she was standing at the entrance to the cave and looking outside. Tai’s stomach growled again.

“You’re really not gonna go back, even to get something to eat, unless I come with you, huh?” Jackie observed quietly, with a fondness in her tone. “You care about people very stubbornly, you know that? You just don’t give up until you get what you think is best for your friends.”

It was Tai’s turn to shrug. “It’s been said,” she admitted, as she stepped up to stand right behind Jackie.

Jackie turned her head a little, as if scanning their surroundings. “You should’ve been captain,” she said softly. “Coach Martinez tried explaining it to me once, why you weren’t, but I think he was wrong.”

Tai put a hand on Jackie’s shoulder and shook her head. “He was right,” she said gently. “You kept people together. The team’s gone all to shit since you died, we’ve… done things we really shouldn’t have, things I didn’t stand up to stop, things you definitely would have.”

“That was already happening,” Jackie dismissed. “Standing up to stop you guys going weird is why I died.”

“It’s not your fault you were used to a world where people didn’t literally kill each other to survive,” Tai pointed out. “You tried to boost morale, to keep the team spirit going, and only failed when things you couldn’t possibly have predicted happened. You led us as best as anyone could out here, without losing your humanity and letting us become animals. You didn’t fail your team, Jackie. Your team failed you.”

“That feels kinda harsh on you guys,” Jackie replied, sounding almost overwhelmed by Tai’s speech. “Especially on you. I mean, you tried to stop me going outside and I shut you down-”

“I could’ve done more than say a few words,” Tai told her, with the assurance of someone who had gone over the scenario a hundred times in her head since Van had challenged her attempts to emotionally distance herself from it. “Letting you freeze was a mistake, and one that all of us made, even me, even Van, even Nat. But it’s one you never would have, if it had been anyone else out there, and that’s why you’re our captain.”

Jackie stood uncertainly, lost for words as she shifted her weight from one foot to another. “Thanks, Tai,” she said softly, after a couple minutes had passed. “I do still think you’re selling the team short though. I mean, mistakes happen, people get stressed, you’re all living desperately, etcetera.”

“I’m not saying we’re all awful,” Tai smiled. “I agree, we’ve mostly just made mistakes, as did you. I’m just saying we’d be doing better if we had our captain.”

Jackie turned and hugged her suddenly, catching Tai by surprise. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“We’ll go for a walk,” Jackie told her. “Not to the cabin, not yet. I just need to stretch my legs and there’s a nice clearing a very short walk away, which should be catching plenty of sun right about now.”

“What if Rachel comes back?”

“Anyone coming to the cave will hit that clearing first, anyway. Just hide if she comes; she really isn’t a fan of any of you.”

Well. Progress was progress. Tai nodded, and let Jackie lead her out of the cave.

Jacques watched carefully as the girls left the cave. He’d heard their obnoxiously saccharine conversation, knew they were heading for a clearing nearby that was close enough that they could easily run back inside the cave if there was trouble, but far enough way that if it weren’t for Jackie’s infernal dedication to her friend, this would be the perfect opportunity for Jacques to slip into that cave and complete his work while they were gone.

His eyes were trained on the back of Jackie’s skull as she passed his hiding place. He could just kill her, he supposed. Except he wasn’t sure if that would really help. It was very possible that her explicit wish that he not enter the cave without her permission, a desire the Wilderness itself had backed up based on the strength of her surety on the subject, would remain in place. And you couldn’t get permission from the dead around here, at least not without an annoying degree of effort.

Jacques had to admit, he was a little confused. He knew Jackie enough to be sure that she’d definitely been moved by Taissa’s words, but enough to leave the cave? To hint at returning to the cabin and all of her former friends? That couldn’t be right. This girl’s craving for the freedom of oblivion that only Jacques could provide her was second to none. Taylor was clearly playing at something, but what?

He would’ve been oddly proud of her skill at deception if there wasn’t a chance it might interfere with his goals. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised at her ability though. She’d kept the secret of her love for her best friend for an absurdly long time.

Jacques was just about to ready to accept that he couldn’t do anything at this juncture when-

Jacques?

Ah.

I’m here, Taylor.

The cave’s all yours.

Jacques briefly considered tearing Jackie limb from limb then, now that he had her permission for the cave, as payback for his earlier humiliation. But if he did that now, her spirit would just rejoin the other dead and a deal was a deal; he’d promised her an end. Besides, he really should get to work on that symbol before Goldman returned. Rachel would immediately aim to tear Crystal’s (or Kristen’s, whatever) head from her body and just for the moment, he still had need of all that.

So, then. No time like the present.

“I found their tracks,” Isabella reported, taking a seat next to Nat, who was gazing listlessly out the window she sat beside, away from the others. “We could go out after them right away if you wanted.”

“Good, yeah,” Nat murmured, more than a little distracted. She made no move to get up. “We should probably do that.”

Nat had stayed up with Shauna for a while last night and Isabella reasoned there was a chance she was just feeling tired, so she tried again. “So, we’ll go after Lottie and Van now, then?”

“Mmm, yeah.”

“And if Lottie was right, we’ll find Jackie with them. And I’d bet anything we’ll find Tai there too.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Isabella blinked. “I think they’re likely at the new airport Jacques set up. There’s a plane that can take us all back to Wiskayok coming in tomorrow.”

“That makes sense,” Nat replied, before her eyes seemed to sharpen and she turned to Isabella. “What?”

“Or,” Isabella continued in a deliberate tone. “We can talk about what’s on your mind.”

“There’s nothing on my mind,” Nat said gruffly. “Just worried about Van, is all.”

Isabella raised an eyebrow and Nat sighed in defeat.

“Okay, yeah,” Nat admitted, not meeting Isabella’s eye. “Yeah, maybe there’s something. But it’s going to make me sound awful. Like, really terrible.”

“Nat,” Isabella said firmly. “I don’t think there’s anything you could tell me that would make me think you’re a bad person.”

“Yeah well, give it a chance,” Nat muttered under her breath before continuing aloud. “It’s about Shauna.”

She glanced at Isabella expectantly, like she was waiting for her to chime in, but instead she just motioned for Nat to keep going. Nat took a deep breath.

“I don’t think I hate her anymore,” she admitted quietly. “Last night, after Lottie did, well, whatever the fuck it was she was trying to do, we just talked a while. And it was mostly about Jackie, and how much she misses her and so on. I held her while she poured her heart out and I just. I don’t know, I just don’t have it in me to hate her like I did. There’s nothing I could possibly do to her as some kind of punishment for that night they fought that would at all be worse than what she already does to herself over it every day in her own head.”

“That…” Isabella began hesitantly. “That doesn’t sound like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’ll get to the bad part,” Nat promised.

“Right,” Isabella said doubtfully. “So you don’t hate Shauna anymore.”

Nat nodded slowly.

“So do you think she and Jackie should see each other again?”

“No,” Nat answered instinctively, before her face twisted in confusion. “Maybe. Probably not. I don’t know.”

Isabella’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “That’s a change.”

“Look, I still have my reservations,” Nat insisted in frustration, though it seemed more aimed at herself than Isabella. “I still think there’s too high a chance she’d hurt Jackie. But I get it now.”

“Get what exactly?”

“What they have, and the way it’s hurting them to be apart. Fuck, I understand where Lottie’s coming from on this, do you know how messed up that means things are?”

Isabella put an arm around Nat’s shoulder as she continued, and Nat immediately leaned against her in response, without breaking her verbal stride. “What if Lottie’s right?” Nat whispered. “What if they should’ve reunited ages ago? I don’t think I even have it in me to hate her about this anymore either.”

“Sounds like a lot less hate all round,” Isabella offered.

“But that’s the bad part,” Nat mumbled. “Without the hate, what am I?”

Isabella took a moment to really look at her, taking in the red around her eyes. “What do you mean by that?” she asked carefully.

“I’m serious,” Nat said quietly. “The hate makes me me, I’ve always been angry at someone. Rage at people who’ve done me or people I care about wrong and constant loss of everyone who’s ever given a shit about me, that’s always been what I’m full of. Take out the rage and you just get loss and how am I supposed to go on like that?”

Isabella tried to find the right words to say to that, but failed. Nat smiled weakly. “I need to hate people to keep going,” she added bitterly. “Doesn’t exactly make me sound great, does it?”

“I still think you’re great,” Isabella replied immediately, giving Nat’s shoulder a squeeze. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”

Nat snorted. “That’s easy to say,” she said, in a voice full of pain and regret. “But I’ve thought about this for years. It adds up.”

“It doesn’t,” Isabella insisted, shaking her head. “You’re so much more than that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Didn’t you notice? That thing that cropped up a couple times in your little self-examination?”

Nat tilted her head to the side expectantly as she looked at Isabella, an unspoken request for elaboration.

“People you care about,” Isabella said softly. “You get angry because people you care about get hurt. You get sad because you lost people you care about and who cared about you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Nat scoffed. “Those feelings are still all about me and my selfish ass.”

“They’re really not,” Isabella countered, shaking her head slightly again. “Everything you do is for people you care for. Everything you feel is because something bad happened to them. Honestly, you could stand to be a little more selfish. You deserve to feel things for yourself sometimes.”

Nat said nothing, avoiding her eyes. Sensing the advantage, Isabella pressed on. “You’re not fueled by hate, Nat,” she said gently. “You’re so much better than that. You act out of love.”

“If I’m so loving,” Nat spat suddenly. “Then why do I keep losing people? Even my friends here. I lied to Jackie, I hurt her, and now she’s gone. I didn’t listen to Lottie last night and now Van’s gone too.”

“They’re not gone,” Isabella reminded her. “We have a pretty good lead on where both of them are right now.”

“I can’t face her,” Nat added with a whisper, sounding almost fearful. “I can’t see Jackie again, she’ll never forgive me.”

“She will,” Isabella told her firmly. “She’s too good to not.”

“She won’t,” Nat asserted with an abrupt fierceness. “And she shouldn’t. She and Van and everyone else will leave me behind like they’re supposed to. I can’t go on just for them.”

“Then go on for me,” Isabella said suddenly, surprising herself. Nat gazed up at her and Isabella caught a glimpse of the vulnerable little girl she knew resided deep inside, in the core of Nat that so rarely got to see the sun. “I don’t care what you say about yourself. I don’t care that I’m being selfish right now, just promise me you’ll keep going day after day, and never let yourself just stop.”

Nat was crying now, just a little, and Isabella wasn’t certain she even noticed. “Why?” she whispered, in a tone that suggested she knew the answer, but just couldn’t possibly believe it unless she heard it out loud. “Why would you want me to live? I haven’t, like, done anything to deserve-”

“I love you,” Isabella said, out loud for the first time.

The stream of words flowing from Nat’s lips dried up as the admission took immediate effect. “You love me?” Nat echoed, her voice trembling. “Really?”

Isabella nodded.

Nat drew a shaky breath. “Oh my God, I…” she trailed off, unsure how to take it in.

“I love you,” Isabella repeated, kissing the top of her head. “I care about you very very much. And I promise, you’re not going to lose me, no matter how hard you might try.”

She’d mixed her tone in those last few words with a note of teasing, a bit of levity in case Nat might need it, but Nat’s eyes widened, seemingly shaken at the suggestion she would ever try to lose Isabella.

“I promise,” Nat breathed. “You’ll never lose me. And you better not try.”

“I never would.”

“Neither would I.”

Nat buried herself then in Isabella’s chest, throwing her arms around the taller girl. Isabella stroked her hair gently when Nat looked up at her, one last important thing to say, one last leap to make.

“I love you, Bella,” she whispered.

Isabella felt stunned. Somehow, despite the closeness they’d shared, it had never occurred to her that Nat might feel the same way. She wasn’t sure she even deserved it but a promise had been made between them now and it was one Isabella found she had every intention of honouring.

Both of them spent a few precious seconds simply gazing at each other, overcome with emotion, before they both leaned forward, moving as one as they usually did, and kissed.

If Isabella was forced to rank such things, she’d easily rate this as the best moment of her life and it would cause her to blush a very deep crimson if she learned the same could be said for Nat.

God, Shauna hated them.

Well, not really, she had to admit. She was glad for them that they had each other and whatnot but God fucking damn, she could fill volumes with what she would give not to have to witness this right now.

Shauna was sitting outside her bedroom today, a rare thing. She’d expected to be going out with Nat and Isabella to search for Tai but they seemed a little otherwise distracted right now and she had to admit that she didn’t really know how to track without their help.

None of the other Yellowjackets sat particularly near her but the few that were inside right now instead of busying themselves in the surrounding area were still close by; the cabin was sizable, but still not quite big enough for anyone also interested in giving Isabella and Nat their distance to not be close together. Akilah, Gen and Melissa all smiled at the couple but otherwise left them to it.

For her part, Shauna sighed under her breath and went back into the bedroom.

She hadn’t heard any of what the discussion had been about, only seen the body language of its participants as it played out. Jackie was everything, the perfect girl as far as Shauna was concerned, but she couldn’t deny she was more than a little envious at how Nat had clearly brought up something serious that was distressing her, the two of them had talked it out, and Isabella had actually helped her? With the power of clear and honest communication? And then they’d kissed like they’d never kissed before, as if the experience had brought them closer together?

Good for them and all but this was kind of bullshit.

Why couldn’t she have ever been so open with Jackie? Maybe, if she’d chased down the feelings she’d sensed on the fringes of her mind instead of ignoring them even as they grew ever stronger, she could’ve talked to Jackie about them. Maybe, just maybe, Jackie might have even felt the same way. Maybe they could’ve been together the way Jackie’s eight-year-old self had drawn them, maybe, maybe, maybe-

Maybe Jackie could be alive.

Maybe Shauna wouldn’t be spending her days drenched in misery and sorrow.

Maybe Shauna could be seeing her laugh right now, hugging Jackie tightly as she smiled widely in her arms, instead of reverentially tracing the tears she’d left on the pages of Shauna’s journal.

There were a lot of maybes she considered, and each one felt like it took a long thick stick and beat her with it as they passed through her head.

It wasn’t long before Shauna was back in her daily routine, sitting on the bed and gazing out at the world through the window without really seeing it, her thoughts full of Jackie. They’d get her when they needed her, she knew, when it was time to pay the meat shed a visit. Until then, she may as well let the grief take her, as she had so often before now.

There was almost a comfort to its familiar embrace by now. The more it dulled her mind, the more she could avoid having to feel things. Shauna could practically feel herself very slowly growing numb, as if preparing for a lifetime of shambling like a zombie for the rest of her stay in this God-forsaken world. She knew that others, especially Tai, might have something to say about that, might try to steer her away from that path, but to be blunt, what was wrong with it? Why should she try to actually get something out of life anymore?

Without Jackie, what was the fucking point of any of it?

With a rock, Jacques inscribed a finishing touch onto the large symbol before him, causing the hook shape on the bottom to now form a complete circle, locking it all together.

Immediately, he felt different, as power he’d left behind when he took a physical body flooded back to him. Jacques didn’t strictly need this old broken corpse anymore. He’d be a more efficient hunter if he discarded it. But the temptation to experiment with it was an alluring one and he had all the time in the world now.

The world of the dead and the one the living had resided in were now one land, cut off from all the world surrounding them. It was his playground, his domain. All of it, his personal hunting ground and any Yellowjacket who remained here (living or dead, it didn’t matter anymore) was his prey, their fate secured by the inevitability of time.

Jacques stepped outside, taking in the dim sunlight that now shone with a slightly different tone. The effect was imperceptible to the naked eye but was felt inherently regardless, like an itch under the skin that just couldn’t be scratched.

With a thought, Jacques rearranged the muscles in Kristen’s body, making the legs more suited for sprinting. It annoyed him that he couldn’t simply make more muscles, as being forced to simply move and reshape the ones that he had on him left Kristen’s arms dangling uselessly, but it still got the job done. With a triumphant cry, he took off, running into the woods, feeling dangerous again. He wasn’t aiming for anywhere in particular, instead just picking a direction and charging off, enjoying the sensation.

He came to a stop at a random tree and set Kristen’s body back to normal, before sending her ribs extending out of her fingertips like freakish claws. With a grunt of effort, he jumped halfway up the tree and with his new appendages, climbed the rest of the way. So not just muscles, then. Bones too.

Jacques jumped down from the tree, distributing Kristen’s lungs to her feet to act as airbags. It didn’t totally work out for him, as they burst under the impact, but oh well. That’s what experimentation was all about, after all. And hey, he still had the raw material.

Jacques laughed out loud, more out of sheer thrill than anything else. He already had a dozen new methods of killing someone he couldn’t wait to try out, and still had the backing of the supernatural powers of the Wilderness he’d relied upon in the past. And even there, his mind raced, thinking of ways to build upon his talents.

They’d frustrated and annoyed him for months, but the Yellowjackets would certainly now be his. And in the end, they had proven themselves to be a gift, prompting his new discoveries about himself. Perhaps they’d been worth waiting for.

Jacques grinned. But that wait was now over.

He looked around, noticing properly for the first time that his run had taken him far away from the cave. He had a promise to keep. What better way to start this new chapter of his reign of terror than by devouring the soul of the girl who’d made it all possible?

Jacques could’ve simply slipped out of Kristen’s body, vanished, and made himself reappear right beside his target, snuffing her out in an instant. But he was loath to get rid of this thing, not when he was having so much fun.

So he smiled, and resolved to track Jackie Taylor down the old-fashioned way, walking lazily in the direction he’d last seen her.

Rachel was nearly back at the cave when she felt it. She was nearly a complete skeleton now, like Jackie though considerably less burned, and still with a few tattered flaps of skin determinedly hanging on and one single eyeball that was holding fast.

And then it came, rolling over the landscape in a disorienting wave.

It had happened. Jacques had done it.

Fuck.

Jackie.

Fuck.

Rachel ran.

Everyone was inside the cabin as Isabella and Nat addressed them, announcing they’d have to go out to find Lottie, Van and Tai, and that they didn’t know when they’d be back.

When all of a sudden, a strange feeling passed through all of them.

“The fuck was that?” Nat murmured, briefly looking around.

Gen held onto Melissa’s arm tightly and Melissa in turn used the back of her free hand to caress Gen’s cheek, trying to soothe her. Misty shivered, nearly jumping in surprise as Yumi put a comforting hand on her shoulder and tried to give her a comforting nod. Mari and Akilah shuffled near each other instinctively, though Isabella wasn’t sure if either of them realised it.

She felt a hand enter hers and looked down, discovering it was Nat’s. Nat gave her a smile that was aiming for reassurance, but betrayed a strong fear and unease. Nobody knew exactly what this feeling meant, but they all knew with an irrational certainty that it was bad.

Only Shauna seemed unbothered by it, apparently too wrapped up in her own little world of misery to notice.

Lottie’s eyes widened as she felt it.

“It’s happened,” she breathed, barely loud enough for Van to hear her.

“What has?” Van asked quickly. “What’s happened?”

Lottie looked at her and Van had to wonder briefly if she’d ever seen so much concentrated fear in someone’s face before. “Jacques,” Lottie answered, a little unhelpfully. “We’re all in danger, we have to keep moving.”

Lottie grabbed Van’s hand at that last word, pulling her along as she pressed forward. “No more distractions at least,” Lottie continued, not looking back. “We’re so close.”

Van took her hand back and followed Lottie closely as a strong sense of foreboding settled in her gut.

“Does the sun look different to you?” Kristen asked suddenly, holding on to little Jack carefully.

Laura Lee looked up. The light dappled through the treetops in some subtly different way she couldn’t pinpoint.

“It looks like…” Laura Lee trailed off, her brows furrowing in thought as she focused on something other than Lottie for the first time in a while. “It looks like the sun. The real sun. Almost.”

“Does that mean we’re back?” Kristen asked, glancing at Javi, who shrugged. “Like, back back? Like Jackie?”

“Not like Jackie,” Laura Lee shook her head. “I don’t think we’re alive again, but even if we were, we’re not like Jackie.”

“I felt something,” Kristen said excitedly.

“I felt something too but it didn’t feel like something positive,” Laura Lee told her.

“Did you feel something?” Kristen asked Javi, who shuddered and nodded. “I think it means we’re back.”

“You’re just being hopeful,” Laura Lee countered. “We need to be careful.”

Kristen rolled her eyes. “What’s wrong with a little hope?”

“Hi, everyone,” said Jacques, stepping into their little clearing. “Fancy seeing you here. Just further proof it worked, I suppose.”

Everybody froze where they were. They could all see it was him, though Laura Lee felt her stomach churn as she made out his spirit fitting awkwardly in Kristen’s battered dead body.

“The chances of us meeting like this must be ridiculously low,” he continued, before the eyes he was using lit up at the sight of Kristen, who looked about ready to faint. Jacques gestured to her, and then to himself. “Well, would you look at that? We’re wearing the same outfit. Oh, honey, it’s crazy how embarrassing this is, for both of us.”

“Leave her alone,” Laura Lee said, about as firmly as she could manage, which wasn’t very much.

Jacques’ gaze coolly switched over to her, and she wanted to curl up into a ball then and there. This was the first time they’d interacted since her trust in Lottie was shattered and for the first time, she was deeply, fundamentally terrified of him. Jacques laughed.

“What an intimidating figure you cut,” he drawled sarcastically, resting his hands on his hips. “Fortunately for you, you’re all already ghosts, so there isn’t as much satisfaction in devouring you as there would be in, say, devouring Taylor.”

“You’re after Jackie?” Kristen blurted out, her eyes wide. She took a nervous step back as Jacques, grinning like a shark, turned his attention over to her but still she seemed more confident than Laura Lee felt. Javi hid behind her. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”

Kristen hadn’t met Jacques before, only heard the stories, and boy did it show. Laura Lee without her faith would never consider standing up to him like this. Even Rachel, after the first time, would sooner run.

“Oh, I agree,” Jacques nodded. “But she’s been begging for the sweet release of oblivion for weeks now, and who am I to disappoint? Don’t worry, I’ll get to all of you in time.”

And with that, he wandered off. Laura Lee opened her arms and Kristen, still carrying Jack, and Javi all bundled into her embrace. She tried very hard not to let her terror show, but she knew it was a fruitless effort.

They were all well and truly fucked.

Tai watched Jackie carefully as they wandered the clearing, circling repeatedly around the outskirts just for the sake of walking.

Something was off about her gait, something just wasn’t right. Jackie hummed nonchalantly as she walked and while Tai had only known Jackie for a few short years, that definitely didn’t seem right. She was trying too hard to seem casual.

Tai did already consider that implying she might just suddenly be willing to come back to the cabin after all this time was, to say the least, unlikely, but she knew Jackie well enough that agreeing to come back just to make sure Tai ate was exactly the sort of thing she would do, putting it even above her own priorities.

She was about to open her mouth to say something, to ask directly what this weirdness was about, when Tai felt a wave of nausea hit her. She leaned her hand on a tree for support and wondered if she might have to throw up as the landscape around her seemed to shift in a million tiny ways she couldn’t quite identify.

However bad Tai thought she had it, Jackie had it way worse. She froze up, shaking for a few moments, and then collapsed. For a second, she looked just like a pile of old bones but as Tai watched in shock, they slowly came back together again into a coherent skeleton and sat up.

“Fuck,” Jackie murmured, sounding in pain.

“What was that?” Tai asked, as she reached out a hand and helped pull Jackie to her feet.

Jackie shook her head. “I don’t know, Jacques never said what it was he would be doing.”

Tai went still. “You’ve been talking to Jacques?” she asked quietly. “Cabin Guy? The creep who’s been-”

“Yeah,” Jackie said, folding her arms and looking anywhere but into Tai’s eyes. “Yeah, that guy. He had something he wanted to do in the cave and-”

“Oh my God,” Tai realised. “That’s why you came outside, it was just to give him time to do whatever he wanted.”

“It was to keep you safe from him,” Jackie corrected.

“You don’t think just keeping him from accomplishing his fucked-up goals would be keeping me safe?” Tai hissed. “Keep all of us safe? Whatever he’s done, there’s no way it’s good for us.”

“I know that,” Jackie whined. “But I’m confident in you guys, I know you can beat him. You’re unstoppable as a team.”

“But why even let him get this far-” Tai began, but then one stopped as one final piece of the puzzle fell into place. When she continued, her voice was low, in a place somewhere between angry and afraid. “What do you mean ‘you guys’? We’re unstoppable as a team, together, when we have you. I gave you a whole speech about it.”

“And it was a good speech,” Jackie nodded, suddenly sounding so very very tired. “But I can’t be part of this anymore, I just can’t. Jacques is going to give me what I want.”

“You want to die again.”

“More than that, Tai, I’ve died before. Jacques doesn’t just kill you; he, like, extra-kills you. Consumes your soul so you don’t feel anything anymore.”

Tai’s mind reeled. “You screwed us over just so you can die?”

“I didn’t screw you over,” Jackie insisted. “Lottie, Rachel, all of you, I know you can find a way to stop him.”

“You don’t know that,” Tai snapped. “You didn’t think about it at all-”

“Of course I didn’t,” Jackie muttered furiously, glaring at her. “How could I? I never wanted any of you in danger-”

“Bit late for that,” Tai reminded her. “You handed a man who wants to kill us all everything he could want, and we don’t have the first idea what he’s done with it.”

Something inside Jackie looked like it was close to breaking as she looked away, almost on the verge of just walking away from this conversation.

“You put the whole team in danger we don’t even understand,” Tai continued, frustration overflowing. “Me, Nat, Isabella, Van.”

Jackie flinched at the names, each one a friend she may as well have hand-delivered straight into the jaws of a monster. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but Tai wasn’t done.

“It’s not just those I named you put at risk, Jackie,” Tai added, her voice a little softer, but still very much edged. “You did this to Shauna, too.”

Jackie’s skull whipped round, her empty eye sockets boring straight into Tai, who held the gaze firmly. “Shauna,” Jackie whispered in horror. “I hurt Shauna.”

“She’s not hurt yet,” Tai reminded her, recognising that now might be a good time to take it down a few notches. Losing her cool over a bad mistake wasn’t going to help anyone. She held out her hand to Jackie. “Like you said, we’re unstoppable as a team. We can find a way to beat him.”

“I made her life worse, again,” Jackie continued softly, seemingly not even hearing Tai. Her voice raised in pitch the more she spoke. “I was going to let her die just so I could have some peace and I didn’t even let it cross my mind-.”

Tai sighed to herself and raised her arms placatingly. “You’ve been through a lot,” she said, trying to offer Jackie a lifeline. “We can talk about it after we get back to the cabin-”

“To the cabin?” Jackie cut in and laughed humourlessly. “With all the girls I’ve basically murdered?”

“You haven’t murdered anyone,” Tai asserted. “Look, Shauna’s been miserable for months, I know for a fact she’ll want to see you, you can face this together-”

“I’m the one who did that to her,” Jackie said, with a surety that chilled Tai.

“What, by dying?”

Jackie nodded. “I overshadowed her her whole life, I led her onto the team, onto the plane, into these woods, into misery and now into death.”

Jackie moved with an anxious energy that left Tai with the impression she was about to explode. Tai tried to take hold of her shoulders to steady her, but Jackie shrugged her off and took a few steps backward.

“Jackie, she needs you,” Tai said firmly, trying to insist the point, but Jackie shook her head with a fierce intensity.

“No, she needs you,” Jackie countered. “She needs the Yellowjackets, together you can find a way to stop him but not me, she can’t need me, Jacques is gonna come for me-”

“We won’t let that happen.”

“You won’t have a choice.”

Whatever dam Jackie’s mind had been holding back was about to burst its banks, Tai could see. “Please,” she said, as gently as she could. “Just take a deep breath, come back to the cabin-”

“Take a deep breath?” Jackie echoed, her voice sounding… fractured somehow, like a pane of glass that had been beaten and shattered.

“Okay, poor choice of words, I’ll admit,” Tai said quickly. “But just calm down-”

“Tai!”

Tai glimpsed a flash of ginger hair and suddenly she was being hugged from behind, nearly knocking the breath out of her.

“You’re safe,” Van whispered as she held on tightly to her.

“Hi, Jackie,” Lottie said, sounding a little stressed but still waving politely. She took half a step forward, only to stop when she saw Jackie take a sudden step back in response. Van continued holding on to Tai, who stroked her hair gently.

“Lottie, what’s happening?” Jackie asked quietly, fidgeting anxiously. “Do you know?”

“We’re all in danger,” Lottie answered promptly. “Jacques has separated the Wilderness from the real world, and it’s taken all of us with it, so that he can have forever to hunt us down and brutally murder us.”

Jackie whimpered and took another step back.

“Lottie thinks we can stop it,” Van said hurriedly.

Lottie nodded. “I know we can.”

“What happened to your face?” Tai asked, taking in the bruises and the dried blood. It didn’t look super serious, but was definitely still notable.

“Shauna happened,” Lottie sighed. “I tried to tell her that you were okay, Jackie, and that I knew where you were, that you two could be with each other again-”

“And that’s how she responded,” Jackie breathed, barely audible, suddenly sounding like she was about to cry. “Because after everything I’ve done to her, why wouldn’t she? She hates me.”

Lottie frowned. “No-” she began but Jackie was already a blur.

Tai saw the mental dam burst and tried to leap forward to grab her arm, but Van was still clutching her like she would never let go, so only succeeded in stumbling forward a couple of steps. By the time she looked up, Jackie was haring off through the trees. The way she was now, with no meat weighing down her bones, she might just be the fastest Yellowjacket in this forest. There was no catching her, and definitely not with this head start.

“Jackie!” Van called, but it was far too late.

“Where’s she going?” Lottie asked, sounding more than a little panicked.

“Can’t your Jackie-sense just tell you?” Van asked quickly. “We can always catch up to her-”

But Lottie was already shaking her head. “That only lasted until we found her again but now…”

She gestured hopelessly in the direction Jackie had gone before letting both her arm and the sentence fall.

“I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” Tai whispered. “Not really. I think she’s just getting… away.”

“And what the fuck do you guys think you’re doing here?”

Lottie, Tai and Van all turned round quickly, to see another skeleton enter the clearing from the opposite side. This one still wore some skin, here and there, and was covered liberally in mud. One good eye glared at them balefully from its place in the skull’s left eye socket as its owner stalked over to them angrily.

“And why did I get here just in time to see Jackie run away like she was trying to outrun the hounds of hell?” the skeleton demanded of them, stopping a few steps away from the small group. “What did you all do to her?”

Lottie rolled her eyes.

“We didn’t do anything to her,” Van said quickly.

“You mean besides eating her?” the skeleton snapped, hands on her hips. “Besides-”

“Oh my God, Rachel, shut up,” Lottie groaned. Van turned to Lottie in utter disbelief while Tai’s mind raced.

Rachel, God damn, she’d hardly waved once at the girl before they buried her. How long had she been out here alone?

“Excuse me?” Rachel scoffed. “Am I meant to act like eating her was no big deal?”

“Maybe you should’ve asked that earlier,” Lottie challenged. “I appreciate that you had to survive alone against Jacques for a while and all, but that also meant you haven’t known what it’s been like here. You think I wanted to eat one of my closest friends?”

The glare in Rachel’s eye weakened as she glanced elsewhere, saying nothing as Lottie continued. “I’ll be patient with Jackie, because she was going through so much even before she died and came back as a skeleton, and then learning you were eaten and lied to about it by your friends can’t have been easy.”

She flicked a frustrated glance at Van there, who looked about to protest before she thought better of it. Lottie gave her a moment to try, raising her eyebrows as if daring her to, before looking back to Rachel. “I’m not saying you don’t have reason to be upset and to find what we did disturbing but are you seriously going to stand there and continue to call us villains over it? After all the time you’ve had to think about it? If you were in our desperate situation, could you honestly say you never would?”

“It sounds like you’re just giving Jackie special treatment because she’s your friend,” Rachel said weakly, having completely lost the momentum of her dramatic entrance not two minutes earlier. “Laura Lee’s also been upset about it.”

Lottie’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s why she hasn’t been seeing me,” she muttered. “She has the right to feel whatever she feels about it.”

“And I don’t?” Rachel said quickly, seizing on the advantage Lottie’s weakness for Laura Lee gave her. Lottie hesitated, but before she could respond-

“You didn’t know any of us before you died,” Tai reasoned aloud, and all eyes turned to her. “That’s why it’s so easy to judge us like that.”

Rachel’s fire was snuffed in an instant. “I knew Yumi,” she corrected quietly. “I loved Yumi-”

“And how do you feel about what Yumi did?” Tai pressed. Rachel shifted uncomfortably.

“Is Yumi a monster to you?” Lottie asked, leaning forward, confidence regained. “I’d say she’s not. She’s tough. I like her. But she was frightened and starving and willing to get herself a little dirty to survive.”

“I avoided thinking about her,” Rachel admitted.

“Because if you did, you might start to think that she just did what she had to,” Lottie said, a little more gently than before. “Because you love her, so you’d try your hardest to understand her, and that might mean having to understand the rest of us.”

Rachel’s eye narrowed. “Let’s just leave Yumi out of this.”

“Fine,” Lottie agreed, holding out her hand. “So long as we work together. I know what’s happening here, I know we have a massive problem right now that we’re all facing.”

Rachel eyed the proffered hand suspiciously. “My only loyalty right now is to the dead. Jackie, Laura Lee, Kristen, Javi, Jackson. The rest of you can-”

“Kristen?” Van piped up, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Even after she, y’know?”

“It’s complicated,” Rachel glared at her. “She’s a good person.”

“And we’re not?” Tai challenged. “She’s just as guilty as all of us.”

“And are you really saying to leave Yumi behind?” Van added, shrugging as Rachel’s glare intensified. “I know you said to leave her out of this, but I think you’d really benefit from considering this more.”

“Guys,” Lottie’s voice cut through the bickering like a knife, just as Rachel was about to say something. They all went quiet. “Bigger problems right now. I agree her reasoning doesn’t make a lot of sense, and that she really should sit down and think about how she feels. It’s hard to break out of a stupid closed-off mindset you’ve forced yourself into-”

“Wow, I feel so respected as an individual.”

“-But now is not the time for that discussion. So come on. Work together on this? As a team?”

Rachel reached for her hand, but hesitated. “To do what though? We can’t fight him, believe me, I’ve tried.”

Lottie smiled. “You tell me all you know, and I’ll tell you all I know, and together I’m confident we can work something out to save us.”

“You really think we can?”

“I know it.”

Rachel took hold of Lottie’s outstretched hand, and they shook on it. “For starters, love will be key,” Lottie offered.

“Seriously?” Rachel groaned. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

“For now,” Lottie hummed, almost cheerily. “It’s a good place to start.”

“Right,” said Rachel, rolling her eye.

It took a lot of restraint from Tai to not do the same and she now wished she just had. Love is key? The fuck does that mean?

“So, we head back to the cabin now, right?” Tai asked. “Think up a plan?”

“What about Jackie?” Van asked. “Shouldn’t we get her?”

“She could be anywhere,” Lottie told her, casting a sad glance in the direction Jackie had run off in. “We can save her by finding a way to save all of us.”

“I agree about heading to the cabin,” Rachel sighed. “But we’ve got to pick up the dead first. We all need to be together now.”

A mix of excitement and anxiety glinted in Lottie’s eye but she simply nodded silently.

“Aren’t they in the other place?” Tai frowned. “The realm of the dead or whatever?”

Rachel shook her head. “It’s all one place now,” she said. “They’ll be here.”

Well then, Tai thought as they set out, following Rachel and Lottie’s lead. There were certainly going to be some awkward reunions coming up.

Tai took one final look back, as if she might see Jackie simply standing there, or peeking out from behind a tree. She felt a lump in her throat as she walked away, catching Van’s eye and seeing her own concern mirrored there.

She hoped Jackie was okay.

Jackie was the least okay she had ever felt in her life.

She ran, not to anywhere, but just away. She stumbled several times, running into trees and bushes, but she barely felt it. She just had to run, as if that might help her escape it all.

If Jackie had tear ducts, she would be crying now, leaving a stream of tears behind her so steady that she might well have made a new river through the forest.

Shauna. She’d done a lot to Shauna over the years but this might just take the cake.

All her friends were in danger too but right now, the only worry dominating her mind was Shauna.

Jackie tripped, fell and rolled down a small hill. When she came to a stop, she didn’t get up again, instead simply curled up into a ball and cried for a while. In her mind, at least.

Eventually, she stood up, turned and nearly ran straight into a wall of metal. Taking a few steps back and looking up, Jackie could see the writing higher up.

S.O.S. GONE TO LAKE →

The plane. It had crashed here oh so long ago now. Felt like a lifetime ago and things weren’t simpler then, not really, but the ways in which they weren’t felt easier to ignore.

Jackie’s bones had been brought here, after she’d died, after she’d been eaten.

This was where she’d woken up, after coming back from hell and finding that living in a world where Shauna hated her was still awful.

This was where Nat had found her, Nat who had gone on to lie to her.

She’d left here to hide in a mountain, then later in a cave, staying away from her friends out of fear they might hurt her only for her to in turn hurt them.

“Why couldn’t I have stayed dead?” Jackie whispered to herself.

Nat and Van had kept a secret, a massive one, hidden from everyone they cared about just to keep her safe. Laura Lee had personally stepped in to face Jacques, that first night she was dead, just to save her. Rachel had spent weeks digging herself out of a grave for her. Tai, Lottie, Isabella, they’d had nothing but her best interests at heart.

Everyone had bent over backwards for her, time and again, and this is how she’d ended up repaying them.

All because of her stupid love for Shauna, her girlish crush that she had thrown herself so wholeheartedly into that it had gotten her killed. And she’d spent all her time, both before and after her death, making Shauna’s life worse with every choice she made because not even dying could save Shauna from her.

Right now, Jackie hated herself with every fiber of her being.

A storm of feelings raged within her that she didn’t know how to stop so she just let recent history repeat itself.

Jackie raised the bones making up her hands to examine them and let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

Letting raw emotion guide her, she dropped to her knees beside the plane wreckage and, with as much gusto as the first time, the bones started screaming.

Shauna’s gaze was still downcast when she heard the cabin door open. If she’d been paying attention, she might’ve thought it odd, since no-one had actually left. She also might have noticed the way the other girls all started murmuring like crazy, but she was too deep in her own Jackie-related misery to really care.

It was only when Akilah poked her shoulder that she looked up.

“What?” she demanded, feeling only slightly sorry at the way the other girl flinched.

“Tai’s back,” Akilah muttered, before hurrying over to join the crowd gathering near the front door.

“Where have you been?” Mari demanded from some place near the front of the group. Shauna couldn’t really see, still sitting down. If Tai decided she wanted to talk to her, she’d come over and do so.

“Busy,” Lottie answered for her. Oh, so they were back too then. “But that’s not important right now.”

“There’s a lot we need to talk about,” Van told them. “But first, we have some… guests.”

Murmurs of excitement became shouts of surprise and shock and it was then that Shauna chose to stand, her curiosity getting the better of her. She still couldn’t see much.

Whoever entered the cabin certainly had Yumi’s attention as, with a cry of joy that was so unlike her usual cool exterior, she leapt forward and hugged one of them.

Misty seemed frozen in place at one of the mysterious guests, keeping her distance as the other girls surged forward. Isabella also didn’t move, eyes fixed on someone, and Nat stayed back with her, holding her hand.

Shauna made out a flash of blonde hair as someone tried to step away from the interested crowd, someone that Lottie stepped in front of protectively. She was now fully in view of Shauna, whose brain suddenly decided to allow her to pick up the names that were being babbled excitedly.

She rushed forward suddenly, pushing past Melissa and Gen roughly, so she could properly take stock of the new arrivals. The chatter died down, as everyone silently looked to Shauna.

Laura Lee, who Lottie now stood away from, the two of them not looking each other in the eyes.

Rachel, mostly a decrepit skeleton, identifiable only by Yumi’s reaction to her.

Kristen, carefully holding a very familiar bundle which demanded Shauna’s attention, but she found she had none spare to give.

Javi stood behind Kristen, very nearly holding her hand. Mari occasionally shot a glance his way, her face riddled with guilt.

And…

And that was it.

Shauna looked around, making sure it wasn’t possible she could’ve simply missed someone. As if Shauna wouldn’t have spotted her out in a crowd of a million. As if Shauna would even notice the rest of the group was present at all if she was here.

“Where’s Jackie?” she asked quietly. The heart-shaped amulet that hung from her neck suddenly felt a lot heavier.

No-one answered. Glances were exchanged.

“Where’s Jackie?” Shauna repeated, her voice much louder. She knew her voice sounded crazed but she didn’t care as she whipped round to everyone, hoping for someone, anyone, to look her in the eyes and give her an answer. “Where is she?”

“Not here,” Rachel told her firmly, stepping forward though careful not to dislodge Yumi’s newfound iron grip on her waist. She had only one eye remaining in its socket, and it narrowed in Shauna’s direction.

“Where are the coaches?” Misty asked. “And the pilot and the-”

“Gone,” Rachel interrupted, cutting her off. “Like, properly gone, they can’t come back. They’re not still around like us.”

“So you all get to come back and Jackie doesn’t?” Shauna asked sharply, as Isabella’s eyes widened a little at Rachel’s words. It definitely made sense. Why would Jackie ever want to see her murderer again?

Except Lottie was shaking her head. “Jackie’s not like the others,” she said gently. “She’s out there right now.”

“Where?” Shauna demanded.

Tai shrugged helplessly, clearly frustrated. “We don’t know.”

“Then I’ll go out-”

“No,” Rachel declared. “No-one’s going out until we have a plan.”

“Why do we need a plan?” Misty squeaked, still avoiding Kristen’s gaze. Kristen was looking at her distinctly not unkindly, so Shauna wasn’t sure what the problem was there.

“Jacques,” Lottie said simply, and unhelpfully.

“Dead guy from the attic,” Laura Lee explained, her quiet tone taking everyone by surprise. “He’s a monster.”

Shauna had always known her as someone who was, if you’d pardon the expression, full of life, for better or for worse. But now, as she glanced at the back of Lottie’s head with something approaching apprehension, Shauna couldn’t help wondering what had happened to her. She couldn’t put it down to just dying, as Rachel and Kristen certainly seemed themselves (as much as Shauna had ever known them, especially Rachel), but she supposed such a thing might affect everyone in different ways.

Mystery somewhat satisfactorily tackled, her mind snapped straight back to Jackie. Her recent dream, of the skeleton from the attic taking Jackie from right in front of her, filled her with fear.

“He wants her,” Shauna whispered.

Lottie looked at her curiously, before nodding slowly. “That he does.”

Jacques. Shauna had given him that name, at the seance. It had felt like the name just slipped out instinctively, without her having to think about it, but she’d just put that down to a previously-undiscovered knack for improv.

She shuddered.

“Why now?” Gen blurted out, blushing as everyone’s attention turned to her. “Like, what’s happening? How can I be sure I’m not dreaming?”

Rachel tore off one of the few remaining flaps of skin hanging from her arm and flicked it at Gen, who yelped and flung it off to the floor after it landed on her hand. Melissa hugged her a little tighter.

“Did you wake up?” Rachel drawled at her, while Yumi tried unsuccessfully to smother a smile. “No? You’re not dreaming.”

“They still deserve to know more,” Nat pointed out, unimpressed.

“We don’t have time,” Shauna whined. “Not if this guy is out after Jackie.”

“He knows where she is as much as we do,” Kristen offered. Javi nodded behind her.

“And we’ll all be able to help out more if we all know more about what it is we’ll be doing,” Van added. “Lottie, Rachel, I know you have a plan, but it’ll work better if we can understand the ins and outs.”

The Yellowjackets shared glances and nods, before looking to Rachel and Lottie expectantly. Shauna had thought before about how a lot of the girls around her now, for all their individual strengths, were somewhat easily led by a convincing enough leader. Teammates back from the dead? Some monster guy out there? All taken in their stride apparently. Only Gen had had a halfway-normal reaction but she too was now simply looking determined.

Shauna didn’t mind it so much right now. If it got them to helping Jackie faster, she’d accept just about anything.

“Okay, so,” Rachel began, with a sigh. “When you die here, you go to another place. Forest like this one, except he was there, ready to eat your soul if he caught you. And when that happened, that was it. Not just dead, but really gone.”

“And that’s what happened to Ben?” Misty asked quietly.

“Anyone who’s not here or Jackie,” Rachel nodded.

“How long were you avoiding him alone?” Yumi whispered, eyes wide.

“I don’t know,” Rachel answered dismissively. “Point is-”

“How. Long?”

“From the crash, until I died,” Laura Lee cut in. “Four, five months?”

“About that, yeah,” Rachel said. “It doesn’t matter-”

“It doesn’t matter?” Yumi echoed incredulously, letting go of her. “Rachel-”

“Guys, please,” Van interrupted. “I’m sorry, but drama later, explanation now.”

“Sorry,” Yumi muttered.

“Right,” said Rachel, a little too quickly. “Now, this guy, Jacques, he’s not the Wilderness. But he can influence it. He’s got it kind of under his control, using these symbols-”

“We know those symbols,” Mari added, her tone indicating she was trying to be helpful. “We see them everywhere.”

“How nice for you,” Rachel snapped. Akilah’s eyes flickered to Mari as she deflated, looking on the verge of going over there to hug her but ultimately deciding against it.

Rachel continued. “Anyway, he must have put them up when he was alive, then made sure he died with them surrounding him and now the Wilderness is like his pet.”

“It doesn’t always listen to him,” Lottie interjected softly.

“What?”

“He wanted it to kill Shauna, to teach Jackie a lesson,” Lottie told them. “Jackie made a sacrifice to it to beg it to not, and that worked. It refused Jacques’ command.”

“What sort of sacrifice?” Shauna asked quietly. She was suddenly aware her hands were trembling.

“For reasons I won’t go into now, Jackie came back as a skeleton,” Lottie said, looking firmly into Shauna’s eyes. “Instead of all the way. So she didn’t have blood to spill, but she did have bone.”

“She took a chunk out of her face for you, Shauna,” Nat said quietly, looking at the floor.

“She nearly just let Jacques take her instead of you,” Isabella added, giving Nat’s hand a squeeze. “But Lottie wouldn’t let her so she stabbed herself in the face to save you.”

“When was all this?” Shauna asked, her tone soft but still demanding, and mildly horrified.

“The Wilderness had still been promised a life,” Lottie continued, seemingly avoiding the question at first. “But it wouldn’t take you, so it took someone else. By the looks of things, I think it had nearly settled on Van but then…”

She trailed off and her eyes flicked over to the baby in Kristen’s arms. Shauna’s stomach lurched. Tai’s leg must have started to cramp or something ‘cos she suddenly shifted her weight uneasily.

“So Jackie got Jack killed?” Misty wondered aloud, almost staggering back under the force of the glares suddenly levied her way. “Not saying she would’ve liked it or anything, but it’s almost poetic.”

“She didn’t know,” Tai said fiercely. Nat looked at her strangely and she added: “She told me about it.”

“Can I hold him?” Shauna whispered to Kristen, who looked extremely apologetic as she shook her head.

“Rachel has her body but the rest of us?” Kristen said sadly, nodding at Laura Lee, Javi and Jackson. “We’re just ghosts. We can touch things, but not people. I’m sorry.”

Shauna just nodded glumly, accepting this was her lot in life. “Please,” she begged quietly. “Take care of him.”

Kristen smiled at her, so sadly and so kindly at the same time, and nodded.

“So, back to the topic at hand-” Rachel began but Lottie cut her off.

“No, this is important,” she said firmly. “The Wilderness is not Jacques’ to do with as he pleases. He uses symbols he thinks forces it to do his bidding but I don’t think it likes him one bit. His meddling with it is unnatural. I think, that’s why it let me- That’s why it’s allowed things to happen. It wants him gone.”

“Well, that’s great,” Rachel said sarcastically. “We can bond over that. But the point is, he’s made it his place now. Death forest and real forest, combined into one location that he can wander around and slaughter us in to his heart’s content.”

“And cut off from the rest of the world,” Lottie added. “But that’s hardly functionally any different, he already was keeping us here. Pretty sure he made the Wilderness crash us here too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t his first prey.”

“Is that how we can meet you now?” Melissa asked, her first words since the conversation began. “Because we’ve all kind of been shunted off into this magic dead world?”

Rachel opened her jaw to dismiss her but then tilted her head, conceding the point. “Yeah, basically.”

“There are six large symbols spread around the forest,” Lottie informed them. “They kept him away from those specific points while he was just a spirit but they’re the main source of his control over the Wilderness. Now he’s got a physical body, he went around to all of them and did something to them, probably an extra marking, to make all this happen.”

“It’s mine,” Kristen piped up, blushing under the attention. “It’s my body he’s using.”

Nat and Isabella glanced at each other.

“That’s horrible,” Misty said quickly, as if in reflex. “I really… I really don’t like that.”

Kristen looked at her, tried to smile reassuringly at her, but Misty was already looking away. If Shauna wasn’t otherwise distracted right now, she’d be very curious to know what was up there.

“Now we just need to mess with them,” Lottie continued confidently. “Scratch over them with a rock you find or something, just fuck them up.”

“What will that do?” Akilah asked.

“Stop his control of the Wilderness,” Rachel explained. “Put you all back where you belong, and hopefully free us dead too, to go wherever the dead are supposed to go, since I’m fairly sure it’s not this.”

“It may stop him right now,” Van said slowly. “But won’t we still be at the mercy of the Wilderness? It’s still a bad place.”

“No place is a bad place,” Lottie said firmly. “It’s the people in it.”

“Whatever happens, you’ll be better off without his additional influence,” Rachel added, glancing at Yumi.

“We’ll be?” Yumi echoed. “What about you, why don’t you all just… come back, like Jackie did?”

“That’s the thing, Jackie didn’t,” Laura Lee answered quietly. “It takes tremendous drive to do that, which she had, and she still only came back as a skeleton because of some… mental hang-ups. You would need to be fully committed to it and none of us want that.”

There was silence for a moment. Yumi stared, horrified, at Rachel, who avoided looking at her.

Kristen coughed nervously. “It’s been weeks since I, y’know, died,” she began, looking briefly at Misty. Mari followed the look and Shauna was sure she could see cogs turning. “And it took Jacques all that time to do this. Surely it’ll take us a while too, right?”

“Jacques was using a body that was not in great condition,” Rachel explained. “No offence. And he was also trying to keep out of sight for at least most of it. We don’t have to worry about that. All of them are a relatively short walk away, if you’re dedicated. We can finish this today.”

“Isn’t your body also, well, not so great?” Van asked, earning a glare from Rachel.

“I’m fine. I don’t have rotting muscles or rigor mortis to deal with.”

“What about staying out of sight?” Tai asked softly. “If Jacques sees us-”

“He’s after Jackie right now,” Rachel pointed out. “Laser-focused, according to Laura Lee. I don’t think he’d hurt us unless we got in his way while he was aiming for her.”

The Yellowjackets fell silent, not liking the sound of that.

“She’s your distraction?” Shauna asked, her voice thin.

“We will be getting in his way, right?” Nat growled. “We have the numbers, we can fuck with the symbols and with him.”

“We can’t fight him,” Laura Lee said, sounding almost annoyed.

“Not as a spirit, but he’s got a body we can hit now,” Van reminded them. “And that he apparently likes having so he’s probably still in it. Sorry, Kristen.”

“No, that’s fair,” Kristen smiled. “Hit him as hard as you can.”

“Plus, Jackie herself won’t be making it easy to get her,” Isabella added. Nat looked at her gratefully and nodded as she continued. “She’s one of the most athletic of any of you, she can give him a chase at least.”

Affirmative murmurs swept through the Yellowjackets. For the first time in a long while, they seemed to feel pride in their captain. Shauna only wished Jackie could be here to see it.

Tai didn’t join in the excitement though, and neither did Van or Lottie.

“She’s not going to run,” Tai said quietly, kicking the mood’s knees out from under it.

“What?” The word slipped out of Shauna’s lips like a knife as she stared hard at Tai.

Tai swallowed. “Jackie, she’s… she wants him to get her.”

Rachel looked at her strangely. “She told you this? Why?”

“She’s been through a lot,” Tai said hesitantly.

“Shauna,” Lottie addressed her, looking at her intensely. “She needs you.”

“I don’t think that’s the best idea-” Van began.

“It is,” Nat said softly, to the clear surprise of Van and Lottie. She nodded at Shauna with an unreadable look in her eye. Shauna hesitated a moment but then nodded back as Isabella kissed the top of Nat’s head gently.

Nat, Lottie and Shauna in complete agreement on something, especially something so important. The world really must be ending.

“What we have going for us is that he doesn’t know where she is-” Tai started to say but she was cut off by a terrible sound. One nearly everyone in this cabin had heard just once before, a week after their first venture into cannibalism.

It was a scream. Rage, pain, shame, grief and sorrow in equal measure blended into a noise that threatened to sear itself onto their souls.

It was also, to Shauna, unmistakably the scream of Jackie Taylor. She'd heard her weeks ago and known it was her despite it all, and she knew it again now.

It took the combined efforts of Tai, Van, Nat and Isabella to physically restrain her from running out there immediately.

“We still have more we need to figure out,” Tai insisted as she finally backed off.

“You figure it out,” Shauna spat. “Jackie needs me.”

“And I’ll take you to her,” Lottie agreed. “But first, just let me pick who’s going where.”

“Can’t we choose for ourselves?” Akilah asked.

Lottie shook her head. “You’ll probably avoid picking who you should. This place is more malleable when you’re dealing with strong emotion, so I’m going to pick your pairs for you, based on who I think will provide that.”

“I’ll deal with one on my own,” Laura Lee declared, still not looking firmly at Lottie.

“Laura Lee,” Lottie frowned, but Rachel put a hand on her shoulder before she could continue.

“Trust her,” Rachel said softly. “I do.”

Lottie still frowned, but nodded.

Frankly, Shauna couldn’t care less who went where. She’d tear out of here by herself right there and then if Nat and Tai didn’t still have firm hands on her shoulders.

But finally, progress was happening.

Shauna closed her eyes and focused on the chill air on her arms, the hard floor beneath her feet. She took in all the details she could so when she opened her eyes again and still saw girls she’d last seen dead, she knew she wasn’t dreaming.

It sunk in. Jackie was here. She was so close.

Shauna was going to see Jackie again and for the first time in her whole life, she finally knew what to tell her.

Nat smiled to herself as she looked around at her team, listening to Lottie divvy up roles, intent on ending their supernatural worries.

At the end of the day, it was as simple as saving a teammate who was in danger. They’d been divided on things before, turned on each other, kicked this very same teammate out into the cold once. But they all felt the fragile balance of life and death more keenly now, and were determined to not repeat any mistakes.

Jackie was in trouble. They would save her, and the rest of their team, in one fell swoop. As straightforward as it got. Nat glanced at each individual person in turn and finally, let the hate go. Mistakes were made. Never again.

Nat hoped she’d get the chance to run into Jacques at least once before his world came crumbling down around him. The Yellowjackets were onto him now, and if there was something she had restored her faith in, it was her team.

Buzz buzz, motherfucker.

Navigating the Wilderness in a physical body was a little trickier than Jacques remembered. Bringing the two halves of it together had disoriented him, and he was beginning to get a little genuinely frustrated at his lack of knowledge of where he was. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the Wilderness was deliberately messing with him. But that couldn’t be right. He was under no illusion that it loved him, but it was still his.

Jacques was on the verge of cheating, just slipping out of Kristen’s body and teleporting straight to Jackie, when he heard the scream.

Except it wasn’t just a scream. There was a message in it, like a code buried in a radar signal, one that he knew how to read.

Please. Please come kill me.

The scream lit up its owner like a beacon in the distance and Jacques smiled, stretching lips that weren’t his own.

Sure thing, Taylor.

He really was quite far away from her but no matter. She wasn’t moving, and he had a precise fix on her location. He could afford to walk.

Though if Jacques happened to run into anyone else in-between here and there, well, he couldn’t be blamed for just removing an obstacle from his path, how could he? He’d basically promised to kill Jackie first but there was no helping some people.

He found himself really hoping someone would try getting in his way, someone who would fight back. Jacques hadn’t gotten to enjoy killing a person in a long time.

Chapter Text

“Jackie, we’re meant to be studying,” Shauna said in an exasperated tone.

“We are,” Jackie insisted.

“You don’t look like you’re studying.”

“Maybe I just like listening to you talk.”

They were sixteen, in Shauna’s bedroom, with a test next week on… something. Trigonometry, maybe? Jackie genuinely could not remember, her thoughts firmly elsewhere.

Shauna sighed. “Have you written a single thing down?”

“I have so,” said Jackie, tilting her open notebook up so Shauna couldn’t see inside. “Lots of stuff. So many things.”

“It looked like you were just doodling circles or something,” Shauna argued, raising an eyebrow.

Jackie giggled and let the notebook slip a little. Before she could think of a counter to that, Shauna snatched the notebook from her grip. “Hey!” Jackie protested, but it was too late.

“What is this?” Shauna whispered, a thought that was perhaps meant to stay in her head.

There was nothing academic on the page, no equations, no facts, nothing that could even vaguely pass for studying. Instead, written in large decorated letters, was a name, surrounded by flowers and hearts:

Jackie S.

Jackie blushed. “It’s nothing,” she said quietly, avoiding Shauna’s gaze.

“Jackie S?” Shauna read aloud in disbelief. “But your last name is Taylor, what does the S even stand for- Oh.”

Jackie looked up quickly, her heart racing. Had Shauna figured it out? Without her having to admit it? Maybe Shauna might even feel the same-

Shauna’s lips were curling in barely-concealed disgust and Jackie felt a twinge of familiar pain in the scar by her right eye, Marilyn Taylor’s old but still effective handiwork.

“Sadecki?” Shauna breathed, and Jackie didn’t know whether she was more relieved or disappointed. “Jackie Sadecki?”

Jackie forced a laugh. “Yeah, that’s it,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “Can’t wait to have his name, y’know? And to have us be… linked forever like that.”

Shauna’s eyes seemed to search Jackie’s own intently, but whatever she was looking for, she didn’t seem to find it. With a sound of frustration, she tossed Jackie’s notebook back to her.

“Maybe we should study another day,” Shauna said quietly, packing up her own notebook. “Since you’re too distracted right now, thinking about him.”

For a moment, Jackie opened her mouth to argue, to correct the mistake, to tell Shauna everything she could feel boiling inside her. But then she felt her right eye twitch again, and she didn’t.

“Later, Shipman,” she mumbled, trying her hardest to sound cheery. She didn’t think she succeeded but Shauna didn’t seem to notice.

Shauna didn’t look up at her as she left, instead already reaching for a journal.

“I think that’s it,” Lottie breathed. “Good luck, everyone.”

Shauna exhaled as, finally, she’d be allowed to go after Jackie.

Laura Lee had one symbol to herself, as per her request. Gen and Melissa were picked to take on another, their feelings for each other making them an obvious pick. Kristen stood with Misty, who kept glancing uncomfortably at her, and Mari stood with Akilah, both of them looking like they’d rather be elsewhere.

Yumi and Rachel very nearly held each other’s hands and Isabella stood with Javi, looking uneasily at him every few seconds. Nat hadn’t been eager about being split from her girlfriend, but Lottie had insisted this was the best pair for the job.

“Are you sure these are the right pairs?” Akilah asked. “We can’t have anyone else?”

“That’s right,” Lottie nodded. “Trust me. It's about the emotional chemistry, I know what I'm doing.”

Lottie, Tai, Van and Nat were going with Shauna. Nat had the rifle, and she insisted Isabella take her spear, but Isabella had offered it to Van instead, reasoning they would be the ones heading into Jacques’ path. Besides, Javi kept eyeing the spear nervously and it probably wasn’t the best idea to bring it along for that alone.

After Rachel finished giving everyone directions to the symbols, she nodded to herself. “Alright then, let’s go.”

Shauna was out the door immediately. She didn’t run, knowing she’d have to pace herself, but she was still walking quickly.

“Meet back here when you’re done,” Tai ordered, before jogging to catch up.

Lottie cast one forlorn look at Laura Lee and followed, with Van and Nat bringing up the rear of the group. Shauna couldn’t care less that they were with her, honestly.

“You sure about this?” Van muttered, quietly enough that she probably thought only Nat could hear her.

Shauna glanced back, and caught Nat’s eye as she nodded. “Yeah,” Nat affirmed softly. “Yeah, I do.”

“Love is key,” Lottie said, with the air of someone who was trying to remind people of something, but the reference flew over Shauna’s head.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tai mumbled, rolling her eyes as she took hold of Shauna’s hand. “Come on.”

Jacques was still in tune enough with the Wilderness to tell that there was movement happening, and lots of it. Very purposeful, by the vibes of it.

He paused for a moment, wondering if that was anything he should be concerned about, before he refocused on Jackie’s light in the far distance, where her bones were waiting for him.

Nah.

Jacques was still master of his domain. He had nothing to fear from a bunch of frightened teenage girls. Let them scramble, they were probably just trying to run and hide somewhere.

He couldn’t wait to soak his hands in their blood. He’d spent decades sustaining himself on souls, and that had kept him going, but there was nothing quite so satisfying as a physical, personal kill.

The closest of the six large symbols that had to be dealt with was carved into the floor of a tree hollow. Isabella and Javi were both already familiar with it.

Isabella stood outside, keeping a lookout, while Javi scratched up the symbol with a loose stone he’d found. Almost immediately, she could feel the landscape change around her, the air feeling just a little less restrictive.

Glancing at the symbol, she saw Javi had just scratched a large X over it. Laura Lee had told her it didn’t matter exactly what change you made to the marking of it, just so long as your intention was to ruin it.

Then Isabella glanced at Javi.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

Javi looked at her, a little hesitantly. He seemed somewhat shy about her, and uncertain, as if he was yet to make up his mind about her. Isabella supposed she couldn’t really blame him.

“I wasn’t…” she continued, or at least started to. She swallowed. “I wasn’t good to you, growing up. I never listened to you. I never helped.”

Javi just watched her, still silent.

“And then I killed you.”

Isabella looked away, scanning the walls of the shelter Javi had stayed in for over two months, trying to find something else to focus on. She wasn’t sure when she started crying, but she knew it started small.

“That’s going to stick with me,” Isabella said quietly. “I can’t even… Nat thinks I shouldn’t beat myself up over it but I murdered my brother. I was a terrible brother to you, and then I killed you, and you’re still not even the person I feel most concerned about right now.”

“You weren’t a terrible brother.”

Javi’s voice hit Isabella’s ears like a train. She snapped her gaze back round to him, noticing he was standing a lot closer to her than before, and instinctively backed up a step.

“You weren’t a terrible brother,” Javi repeated. “You were a sister, my sister, and you were suffocating yourself. You weren’t you.”

Isabella’s legs wobbled, struggling to stay upright. She hadn’t seen her brother in a long time, hadn’t heard his voice for even longer, and she needed to sit down. “I was me when I killed you,” she reminded him, her voice hollow.

Javi shrugged. “It was dark,” he said. “You couldn’t see me, I knocked over Natalie…”

“How can you be so calm about this?” Isabella cried. “I killed you. You were scared.”

“You die, you get a new perspective on life,” Javi explained with a shrug. “I’m still scared. It was a shock to see you, and I didn’t like seeing that spear again. But I’m scared of Jacques, not you.”

Isabella sat on what passed for the bed, covering the lower half of her face with her hands.

“You said I’m not the person you feel most concerned about right now?” Javi continued with a sly smile. “Let me guess, Natalie?”

Isabella nodded wordlessly as Javi sat down next to him. “That’s a good thing,” he told her. “I’m dead, killed in an accident you can’t fix. She’s alive, she loves you, you love her. Seems straightforward to me.”

“How am I meant to just move on from you?” Isabella snapped, without any malice. “I can’t just… put you behind me. I don’t deserve that.”

“You do,” Javi said simply. “And so does Natalie. She deserves all of you, not the half of you that can drag yourself away from mourning me.”

“But how can you say that I deserve-”

“Because you care so much about having accidentally killed your brother that you’re literally arguing with his ghost when he’s trying to tell you it’s okay. You’re a good person, and you’d make a great sister. You deserve to live happily.”

Isabella almost laughed then, but held it in, smiling weakly instead. “When did you get so wise?”

“I was always a very wise boy,” Javi said with mock indignation, before his face resumed its earlier gravity. “And I’ve had a lot of time recently, to do not much other than think.”

“Right, because I killed you. And I can’t just-”

“Isabella,” Javi interrupted, and Isabella felt herself sob again, at hearing her brother say her name. “You didn’t. It was an accident. I’m gone. But Natalie is out there right now, alive and here for you, and in the path of danger. You should go to her.”

“And leave you?” Isabella questioned, like Javi was crazy. “I don’t know how much longer you’ll still be here, I should be spending every minute I can-”

“What, making it up to me or something?” Javi asked, raising his eyebrows. “Isabella, you need to let me go. You and her can be so beautiful together, but you need to let go of me.”

Isabella closed her eyes, fighting tears and trying to fight off the realisation that was settling in that her brother was right.

She then opened them again, shocked, as she felt Javi hugging her.

“I thought the ghosts couldn’t touch people,” Isabella whispered.

“We can’t,” Javi affirmed with a cheeky grin. “But we can touch things, like that jacket you’re wearing, if we really concentrate at it.”

Isabella laughed. “You always could pick out the finicky shit,” she smiled softly as she stood up.

For a few moments, brother and sister hugged each other tightly. A weight that Isabella had felt deep inside her for far too long lifted, and she felt free.

“Now,” Javi began, stepping back from the hug. He looked a little transparent, and Isabella suspected that concentrating on hugging her took more out of him than he let on. “Go to her. Your girlfriend.”

Isabella rolled her eyes fondly at his grin. “Oh, knock it off,” she said, joking and sad in equal measure.

Javi’s grin faded a little as he continued, serious like he was before. “You love her,” he said simply.

“I do,” Isabella smiled softly. “Goodbye, Javi.”

“Bye, sis,” Javi whispered, giving her a little wave.

With a deep breath, Isabella turned around, putting her brother behind her. She gave her head a quick shake and ran out into the forest toward her future, toward Nat, and, likely, toward Jacques.

“Could you do it?” Kristen asked apologetically. “I have my hands full with Jack here.”

Misty mumbled something vaguely affirmative that Kristen couldn’t hear, picked up a rock so tightly her knuckles nearly turned white and climbed down the ladder. They’d found the hatch where Rachel had said it would be but getting down into the small room below took some doing.

Kristen knew Misty had done her job when the world around her felt just that little bit different. Only a little, and only in the area immediately around her. Kristen wondered if that was just how it worked or if the Wilderness itself was deliberately minimising the obvious effects so that Jacques wouldn’t notice.

“We should go back,” Misty said quietly, climbing back up the ladder, having left the rock she’d used down there. Almost immediately, she started the walk back to the cabin.

“Wait,” Kristen said. “Can… can we talk?”

Misty stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “Okay,” she squeaked.

Kristen sighed. “Like, actually talk. We used to do so much of that but now you’ll barely look at me.”

“Do you… remember how you died?” Misty turned, eyebrows raising in interest.

“I remember falling backwards off that cliff, yeah,” Kristen confirmed, noting the way Misty shrank back as she did. “And I remember everything leading up to that.”

“So…” Misty said slowly. “I kind of assumed you wouldn’t want to talk to me after that.”

Kristen sat down on a fallen tree and patted it, gesturing for Misty to sit next to her. “C’mere.”

“I don’t know if I want to,” Misty replied.

“Please, Misty, I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Misty took a few hesitant steps toward the log before quickly scrambling the rest of the way. “Hi,” she said nervously.

Kristen smiled. “Hi.”

“Does the baby talk?” Misty asked suddenly.

“Not really,” Kristen told her, raising her eyebrows. “He’s just sort of a baby.”

Misty nodded. “Of course.”

Silence stretched out between them for several awkward minutes before Misty blurted out: “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“I was at first,” Kristen sighed. “Breaking the radio transmitter, just by sheer cause and effect, is the worst thing any of us have done out here. It isn’t possible to do worse; all of this has been because of that.”

“And then I threatened to kill you,” Misty reminded her quickly. “Which I wouldn’t have done! Honestly! Even if you hadn’t then fallen off the cliff.”

“I remember,” Kristen smiled wryly. In her arms, Jack made a little noise and she soothed him gently before resuming. “I think you would have. And that’s okay.”

“It is?” Misty asked, eyes wide.

Kristen chuckled. “Okay, maybe not totally fine,” she admitted. “But I remembered what you were like. You were lonely and needed connection to a degree you didn’t understand.”

“This feels very deep,” Misty observed.

“Laura Lee used to be really nice at talking people through their problems,” Kristen explained. “For like a day, before she found out Lottie didn’t tell her about eating people and that kind of made her depressed.”

“I see,” nodded Misty, adjusting her glasses. “So she knows about me? What I did?”

Kristen shook her head. “Just me. But it helped me realise just how alike we are. Sure, I would never want to sabotage our chance at rescue, but I’ve also never felt being wanted and appreciated so keenly after years of being ignored either.”

“So your theory is I destroyed the transmitter because I was lonely?” Misty scoffed.

“I think everything you’ve done is basically because of that,” Kristen nodded. “That first day, everyone suddenly wanted you around, like they never have before. I bet it was all new and exciting and overwhelming, and exactly the perfectly wrong moment for you to discover the device that might’ve taken you out of that situation.”

Misty sighed. “You got me,” she said, with a touch of forced levity, as she spread her arms in an exaggerated shrug. “So what now?”

“Now I want to give you some advice,” Kristen said, more seriously than she’d ever said anything else in her life.

“Is it about being dead?” Misty asked. “‘Cos ideally I won’t be using any of that for a while yet, and I might forget by then.”

“It’s about being alone,” Kristen said quietly. “You had me and that was making you better but it was only me. You thought you were losing me so you slipped back. You need friends, Misty, and I know that’s easier said than done-”

“It is,” Misty nodded. “But I’ve been making friends actually. In the last few weeks, people haven’t been mean to me as much as they used to, and a few of them actually talk with me. On purpose. Like I’ll be invited to friendly discussions just randomly. I think they felt sorry for me at first but lately, I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Kristen blinked, unable to explain why she felt almost disappointed. “Well, that’s good. Who is it, by the way? And what do you talk about?”

“This and that,” Misty answered casually, slipping easily into a less anxious state when talking about her friends. It really was doing her good. “Uh, Gen and Melissa. Yumi. Akilah. That group.”

“And Mari?” Kristen asked. “She’s close with Akilah, isn’t she?”

“Akilah hasn’t wanted to talk to her for a while, not since Javi died,” Misty told her. “So not Mari. I’d like to be her friend too, though.”

“Why weren’t they our friends?” Kristen blurted out suddenly. “Why did this all have to happen after I died?”

Misty shrank back a little and Kristen regretted the outburst immediately. “I’m sorry,” she added, starting to gently rock Jack as he started to cry. “I’m just frustrated.”

“Those couple days where Lottie disappeared and Shauna gave birth and we lost you, the baby and Javi,” Misty began, starting to shuffle a little closer to Kristen as she talked. “Things changed a lot after that. Dynamics shaken up.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Kristen sighed.

“But also I think if you hadn’t died, you’d still be my only friend,” Misty concluded thoughtfully.

Kristen looked at her carefully. “What do you mean? Because people wouldn’t want to be friends with you if it meant being friends with me too?”

“Absolutely not,” Misty said firmly, shaking her head emphatically. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met. What I learned from our friendship is a big part of why I think it’s easier for me to make friends with other people now. But if you were still alive, I would’ve avoided more friendships like that, I think. I wouldn’t have wanted to share you.”

“Share me?” Kristen echoed, blushing.

“I love you, Kristen,” Misty said frankly. “I know I do, even though I don’t think about it in the same way that Gen and Melissa or Tai and Van talk about their feelings for each other. I don’t know if I’ve really thought about the physical side of things at all like they all do but it’s still love. Van gets it, though doesn’t know the word for it. So yeah, I love you, and we both know I can get kinda crazy about that sort of thing. All of us do.”

“I don’t know if I feel the same,” Kristen said hesitantly. “I mean, I might, I think, but I haven’t really thought about it.”

“That’s okay,” Misty chirped. “There’ll be plenty of time for that when you come back to life and we can spend more time together.”

Kristen paused for a long moment. “When I come back to life?” she eventually echoed.

Misty nodded. “I know you were probably waiting to tell me when you knew you could,” she explained. “Sorry for ruining it. I assume you can’t do it until Jacques has left your old body.”

“Misty, I’m not coming back,” Kristen told her quietly.

“But-”

“When all six of the big symbols have been defaced like this one, the Wilderness is going to let us ghosts go, Rachel thinks. Wherever it is we’re meant to go. I’ll be going with them.”

“But what about me?” Misty asked incredulously, eyes wide. “How could you leave me behind?”

“I’ve accepted dying, Misty,” Kristen said softly. “And besides, Jack can’t come back, he doesn’t know how. I’ve gotten kinda fond of him and I basically promised Shauna I’d keep looking after him.”

“Then I could die too,” Misty offered quickly, looking around as if expecting to find something on the ground she could hurt herself with. “Wherever it is dead people go, I can go with you. And I’d be great with the baby, I’ve read books-”

Kristen put a hand on Misty’s shoulder, getting her attention back just by having it near her face. “Misty, you can’t die now,” Kristen told her. “Not now. You’re not like Yumi or Jackie, who knew their lives even if they didn’t act on them. You’ve only just started to really live. You deserve to grow to know what it’s like.”

“It’s not fair,” Misty whispered. “I want to live with you.”

“Live with your friends,” Kristen said. “The Yellowjackets. You’re one of them.”

“I’m their equipment manager,” Misty corrected.

“You’re one of them,” Kristen repeated firmly, rolling her eyes. “Live your life the way we all should, finding people who value you and sticking with them.”

Misty fell silent for a few seconds then suddenly hugged Kristen from the side, taking care not to disturb Jack, who had only a few minutes ago fell silent to Kristen’s rocking. Her touch just went straight through the other girl, so she settled for just leaning in very close. “I can’t convince you, can I?” she asked quietly.

“No.”

“Then I’ll live. For you. And for friends.”

Kristen smiled at her. “That’s the spirit.”

“Should we… should we head back to the cabin now?” Misty asked, drawing back. “Tai said to do that when we finish with our symbols.”

Kristen looked around for a moment as if expecting eavesdroppers. “Can I ask you for something selfish?”

“Anything,” Misty answered immediately, nodding eagerly.

“Either we’ll win, and I’m gonna fade,” Kristen explained. “Or we’ll lose, and we’ll have to go into hiding from Jacques. Can we just… stay here?”

Misty blinked. “Just you and me?” she clarified. “And the baby?”

“Yeah,” Kristen whispered. “Just us.”

“Okay,” Misty nodded.

So the two of them remained together, sitting on the log in silence and watching the sky. Kristen wasn’t certain, but she’s pretty sure at one point that Misty started to cry.

Shauna glanced back again at Van and Nat. It hadn’t taken long for Tai and Lottie to fill her in on everything that had been going on with Jackie since she came back and Shauna couldn’t help but think about all the time she’d missed. How many times had Jackie laughed that she hadn’t been there to see? How many times had she simply smiled, or made a dumb joke? How many times had she cried when Shauna wasn’t there for her?

How many times had she cried because of Shauna?

“Do you think they had the right idea?” Lottie asked her suddenly, noticing her glance toward the back of the group. “About keeping Jackie from you?”

“They thought they were doing what was best for Jackie,” Tai reminded them diplomatically, each word sounding very carefully selected.

“If they hadn’t kept Jackie a secret, we wouldn’t be here right now,” Lottie said quickly. “And she wouldn’t be out there now screaming into nothing and begging to die.”

“They thought Shauna would hurt her,” Tai argued, as she gestured widely at the surrounding area. “And they couldn’t possibly have known all of this would happen.”

“I understand their intentions,” Lottie sighed. “I get they meant well. But it’s frustrating.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Shauna said quietly, and they both fell silent. “I don’t know whether to be mad or not. I probably would have hurt her, but that was before I knew how I felt. Hell, not knowing how I felt is why it would have happened. It’s why it happened before.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe anyone would willingly hook up with Jeff Sadecki if they knew where their head was at,” Nat added. Van snickered.

The party came to a brief halt as Tai, Lottie and Shauna stopped, startled to find Van and Nat had gotten so close. The amusement in Nat’s face drained away as she sighed.

“I’m sorry, Shauna,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry to Jackie, but I can tell her that later.”

“I was… we were angry when she died,” Van added. “About how she died, why, all of it. When she came back…”

“It felt like a second chance,” Nat finished the sentence glumly, but holding Shauna’s gaze firmly.

“We’ve always lost people,” Van said quietly, eyeing Tai more than the person she was supposedly addressing. “Couldn’t do that one more time.”

After a silent moment, Shauna stepped forward and hugged them both, though her face remained impossible to read. Nat awkwardly patted her on the back while Van just accepted the embrace.

“Lottie,” Shauna said, as she drew back, grabbing the taller girl’s attention. “What will happen to the ghosts when the big symbols are gone?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Lottie mumbled, surprised at the question. “But I don’t think they’ll be around anymore. Jacques kept them around to hunt them, but I don’t know that the Wilderness will bother hanging onto them.”

“So this, now, was really our last opportunity to talk to them?” Shauna asked, following the logic.

Lottie nodded uncertainly.

“Go to her.”

Lottie blinked. Tai, in confusion, glanced at Van who mouthed the name weighing heavily on Lottie’s mind, that both she and Shauna weren’t saying out loud.

“She doesn’t want to see me,” Lottie said hesitantly. “And you need me here.”

“I have three other friends with me,” Shauna said softly. “And you may never get this chance again. Go.”

Lottie looked at Shauna like she’d just told her she’d won the lottery. Wiping away a single tear, she nodded gratefully and, with a rapidly-growing smile, ran off in the direction of the symbol Laura Lee had taken on.

“Didn’t Laura Lee say she wanted to be by herself?” Tai asked.

“And Jackie’s expecting a psycho murder ghost,” Nat shrugged. “None of us are the best judges of company right now.”

“You seem forgiving today,” Van said quietly, a question buried in the tone.

“Jackie would want me to be,” Shauna told them.

Nat grinned faintly. “I think she’s just interested in you being you, dude,” she said conspiratorially. “She knows how fucked you can be with people and she loves you anyway. Not that I don’t appreciate the new leaf you’re turning.”

“Knowing I love her gives me an outlet for some of all that feeling, I guess,” Shauna reasoned, but then shook her head. “She doesn’t love me, though. Not that way.”

“Oh my God,” Tai groaned, the sound slightly muffled by the way she buried her face in her hands for a few seconds. “You both are ridiculous.”

“What do you mean?”

“She means Jackie’s nuts about you,” Van filled in helpfully. “She told us she kissed you on her fifteenth birthday and she thought you hated it.”

“I didn’t,” Shauna whispered, more to herself than anyone else, the memory playing before her eyes again as if she had a projector in her head with that day lined up at all times. “I hated that it ended.”

“I’d say you should have told her that,” Nat said sympathetically. “Except you didn’t even realise that much, did you? Not ‘til last night.”

Shauna nodded.

“Everyone who has interacted with Jackie since she came back could tell you she loves you,” Tai told her. “The problem is that trying to convince her you don’t hate her in return is like trying to drill through a brick wall with a plastic spoon.”

“I can convince her,” Shauna mused, with a quiet confidence.

Van glanced around at the surrounding trees as they all picked up the pace again. “Let’s hope so,” she muttered.