Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Van was 11, she sat next to her mom on the couch and let out an involuntary yelp as Sarah Palmer screamed at a vision. It was loud enough to briefly rouse Vicky Palmer, who was still holding a bottle of vodka by the neck. 

She told herself she wasn’t going to watch the next episode but she did. Every Thursday night she was glued to the couch. She fell asleep in homeroom on Friday morning more often than not.

Most of the kids in school had parents that wouldn’t let them watch TV at 9:00 on a weeknight, which was lame. Plus, Van was pretty sure her classmates wouldn’t even like it. They didn’t like weird things, not the way she did.

She heard some teachers talking outside the teachers’ lounge one time. “God, that Lynch is a disturbed man. How do you even come up with some of that? I mean, there’s a midget and a giant,” Mrs. Brachman exclaimed. Mr. Lewis laughed at that, “Unexplained giants I can handle, but what about the murder? Think they’re ever going to tell us who really did it?”

Van cried when Agent Cooper held Mr. Palmer in the cell. She didn’t really understand what happened, not entirely, but felt bad for him anyway. 

She liked Cooper a lot. He was smart and nice and a good guy. She liked to drink coffee, too, after she filled mom’s mug every morning. All the dead girls made her sad. Van didn’t like to think about them very much.

Audrey made her blush, especially when she was at One Eyed Jack’s. Van tried to avert her gaze when the girls in the card outfits were on screen. She failed, fighting the funny feeling in her stomach as she kept watching. Van chewed at the inside of her cheek looking at Audrey in her black dress with her arms tied up. It was like nausea, but not really. She hoped Agent Cooper would save Audrey, and maybe kiss her.

Their woods didn’t look like her woods. Wiskayok had skinny trees with barren branches. Van barely saw trees anyway, since the Palmer house was crammed right next to the neighbors’ houses. She thought she’d like to see trees like that sometime.

Van had nightmares for a week after the last episode. She had hoped Cooper would win, no, had known he would win against evil. He was the good guy. BOB and the Black Lodge didn’t stand a chance. Except the trees turned red and Cooper lost his ring. 

She couldn’t shake the image of Cooper laughing into the mirror. There was Cooper and then there was the Cooper who was not Cooper. Van’s mom had broken a mirror, once, when she had too much to drink and stumbled into it. She wasn’t always herself either. 

A year later, Van saw the movie in theaters. She walked all the way to the indie movie theater in the next town over, bought a ticket for A League of Her Own (her favorite movie), and snuck in. It was weird, weirder than the show had been, and it made her feel kind of sick. She didn’t like blood. The sex stuff was gross, too. 

Laura seemed happy at the end, though, and Van thought she understood. 

Meanwhile.

Tai faints in the middle of her store. She says she’s been sleepwalking again. Van rips open the wrapper for a lollipop she liked when she was 14. She doesn’t think about the trees. She doesn’t think about all the dead girls.

They drive to Lottie’s compound. Van looks at Charlotte Matthews for the first time in 25 years and hears the wind like she’s 17. She can’t bring herself to leave.

The compound is familiar and strange all at once. It’s a bunch of cabins in the woods on a lake. The glyph is everywhere. Of course they would end up there. 

Van’s head hurts and her heart hurts but she still can’t bring herself to leave. She sips on tequila and pretends she doesn’t clutch the neck the way her mother did. The wind makes the trees seem like they’re breathing.

When you see me again, it won’t be me.

Tai kisses her for real. It’s not the Other Tai, violent and cold. It’s her Tai. The woman who’s not really hers anymore. Who’s been someone else’s for 15 years. Maybe it’s wrong, but something in Van loves that the other one, the one that takes over Tai’s body, belongs to her. She can’t explain how she knows it, but she does. 

There’s a ring on a rock. They’re kissing. There’s dirt under their fingernails. Van doesn’t think about how it feels like coming home. She doesn’t think about that.

She’s drunk. Shauna’s done some soul bonding with a goat and Natalie’s gone off the deep end. ‘Somehow,’ Van thinks, ‘Natalie’s the most unstable when she’s calm.’ It’s not like any of them are sane. They’re all sick. They’ve always been sick. At least since they came back. Something took root in them and stuck. 

I’ll see you again in 25 years.

It may have been longer than that. Misty’s been like this for as long as Van’s known her, which has been way too many years. Lottie, it turned out, has always been a little unwell. She’s a fucking cult leader now, just like she was at 17.

Van can’t bring herself to leave in the same way she can’t bring herself to call any of them insane. It’s complicated. It’s not something she understands. She’s okay with that. If she learned anything in the wilderness, it was how to be okay with not understanding things.

They’re all dancing and it’s like a memory of something that never happened. Or maybe it did. 

Van’s not leaving. The others aren’t leaving either, she made sure of that. She didn’t really know what she was doing when she threw Shauna’s car keys, but it felt right. They weren’t supposed to have secrets from each other.

Shauna comes apart at the seams like she always does. Jeff is a fucking idiot. Misty’s kind of a serial killer, not that Van’s surprised. Lottie’s convinced they’ve got to drink the Kool-Aid. That one is a bit of a shock. Plus, the tea didn’t seem like it’d taste like fruit punch. Van laughs. The air comes out of her lungs a little wrong.

I feel like I know her.

Lottie mourns all of them; who they’ve become. Van can’t remember smiling much after a few months in the wilderness. The girl who smiled was trapped on film in a trophy case in Wiskayok High. Afterward, it was just a reflex; it was just baring her teeth.

There’s something in the wind. It sounds like screaming. The trees are breathing. Van imagines Lottie in a straitjacket. She looks at Tai, who probably needs to be strapped in right next to Lottie. Hell, they could all use a trip to the hospital. She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want any of them to go. They made a promise.

The deck of cards slides right into her hands like it never left. She pulls and then pulls again. Blood and adrenaline pump through her heart in double time. Shauna pulls the queen. Everything stills. Van pulls a mask over her head. She takes a deep breath. Her blood runs cold.

It is happening again.

‘They made another season a few years ago, didn’t they?’ Van muses as she pulls out of the compound. Her headlights hit a dark road. She looks in the mirror behind her; the brake lights turn the trees red. She blinks it away. Tai’s eyes are closed. Her ring finger is bare. Van tries not to wonder which Tai will open her eyes next.

I’m fine.