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Suddenly, she’s waking up. Greeted by the weathered wood in the cabin, it’s winter and she’s hit with the fact that she feels different and yet the same, she was seventeen again. And it hit her with solid cold dread. It’s like every other nightmare of that day she’s ever had since returning to civilization. Except… sitting there, just beyond the windows, outside as the snow falls slowly, alive but in the last outfit she ever got to choose to wear, is Jackie.
She should do something, anything. Yet all she could manage to do was let out “Jackie…?” a broken whisper from a brittle young girl (not a woman, no she never moved on enough to grow into that), as she slammed the door open.
Jackie turns, and it’s been years since Shauna has seen her this way (at least in a way that her brain wasn't using to actively torture her). Her head tilts, honey blonde hair delicately shifting to one side, as her face stretches into a smile. Like a mirror reflecting a moment Shauna could never forget, (because it was of Jackie) a moment before Shauna had made one of the biggest mistakes of her life, etched into her retinas and sculpted into her brain. The same expression Jackie made as she unknowingly walked away like a goddess from her best friend (without returning Shauna’s words of love) and boyfriend, unaware they were both Judas. Jackie knows of that betrayal, and yet she was seemingly so at peace. Her big hazel eyes glimmering as she smiles (God she was actually smiling) at Shauna. She can’t believe what she’s seeing whether this was all a part of the same cruel game that the wilderness or the universe or whatever the fuck kept inflicting upon her. She knows she has to be dead or dying because there is no way this is the Jackie that usually manifests in between the mundanity of Shauna’s life. That Jackie is a shard, pieces of broken memories collaborated together of her best friend, tainted with the guilt and shame and everything in between, morphing it all into an apparition from the depths of Shauna’s fractured psyche. That Jackie was the one Shauna is sure she deserved to face every single day.
This one…. Kind with her actions more often than her words, lonely in the sort of way that didn't make sense to most (it hadn’t made sense to Shauna way back when), warm skin and bright eyes, and more than anything… alive. Or at least as much as whatever realm all this was allowed her to be. This one is more akin to what Jackie was and who she could be in moments that younger Shauna had ignored. The moments younger Shauna had forgotten as she blistered in petty sulfurous teenage jealousy. It’s the person Jackie should have gotten the chance to continue growing into… the one Shauna is ever more certain she never appreciated while she had her.
They were both kids, and they both made mistakes, and hurt the other more than they ever meant to. But Shauna’s mistakes, as she’s been reminded more and more of recently, kill. Jackie’s didn't (except herself, a traitorous murmur passed with). Jackie never deserved what she got. What the wilderness- what they did. And Shauna knows she herself doesn't deserve this Jackie, the Jackie that smiles at the person who left her for dead, who had forsaken her to the cold, and then consumed whatever was left.
The girl before her broke the silence surrounding them, “Hiya Shipman” she spoke, like an angel's whisper on the back of the chilled winds.
It spread like wildfire, the familiar usage of her last- her maiden name as a nickname, and just her voice. God. She could never forget that voice, a voice that even 25 years later passes through her ears and wraps around her heart like a vice, weaving its way through every nook and cranny, consuming (they always consumed one another) the emptiness that the other girl had left in her very being. She always did sound softer when speaking to Shauna.
(Echoes of 'we'll get through this togethers' and 'I love yous' dont sound hollow from those lips anymore, just bittersweet).
All of it was enough to break whatever chains had been holding her locked in place. She all but runs to her, reaching for her, aching for her. She stumbles and the snow bites at her legs, the sting feeling so real that it heartbreakingly reminds her of the reality of what happened in this cold Canadian forest many years ago. The way her knees, in one of the many horrifying moments of her life, dug and sliced through the white layer on the ground as she slid to this exact spot. Except this was different. Today she doesn't frantically brush away snow from her best friend's face, today she doesn't throw her around desperate for the movement to just wake her up, today she is not subjected to any of that. No, today, she hugs (dead but alive) Jackie tight and close (like she had in that shed with a very different Jackie so long ago), she feels so warm, and it shocks her to her core. So different, but Shauna supposes everything will be different after this. Jackie doesn’t even hesitate when she wraps her own arms around Shauna, and she couldn't help it, she cries. The tears like jagged icicles running down her face, leaving cold scorching trails down her ruddy cheeks, feeling ever more herself than she has in the decade she played the normal housewife. Cold, small and broken. She wonders if this is what Jackie felt when they left her out on her own that night, when no one bothered to bring her inside, when they (when Shauna) left her feeling unloved, unwanted and unworthy of life until it was taken from her in her sleep.
As if sensing the blizzard of her own spiral, this Jackie runs her warm (so warm) gentle hands down Shauna’s back as she holds her, and even through her baggy sleepwear, it feels like nirvana. Home.
Jackie has been a part of her, in one way or another, for almost her whole life. Whether that was the seventeen years they spent together alive and well, or the twenty-five years Shauna spent guilty and repentant as she mourned her. Jackie never truly left Shauna, where Shauna began it always ended in Jackie… with Jackie. This was fitting, and she was ready to rest with it.
With her.
To leave all this bullshit behind, the boy drama that never should have broken them apart, the jealousy that was petty and could’ve been easily fixed, the wilderness and the horrors that still to this day seem to follow those alive to face them, and the trauma and pain she’s never ever going to escape from in the land of the living.
She was ready to return to days of her and Jackie, warm in the sunlight as they drove down streets together singing to whatever was on the radio, where it felt like they would take on the world together and come out stronger instead of torn to pieces.
But then she thinks of Callie.
Callie who was, at heart, just like Shauna. Angry at herself and the world for every reason and no reason at all, lonely in the self-imposed way where you don't want too many people too close because you're afraid they'll leave anyway if they see what's there, petty for reasons she herself doesn't always understand and generally a sarcastic asshole to avoid actually talking about the root of issues. But in that same uncannily familiar vein, she’s a kid who loves with her whole soul and would do anything, even kill, for those she loved. The bullet she lodged in Lottie’s shoulder (in a moment that felt like it occurred decades ago as opposed to months ago) proved that. God they were so alike that it made her stomach turn… her little girl. She thinks of holding her for the first time (how terrified she was that she would break her like she’s sure she broke him-), she thinks of how often they hadn't gotten along (reminded of lost life twice over, a spunky popular teenage girl and a fragile infant born in hell), and she thinks of how they were finally starting to meet in the middle. She loves Callie, beyond everything, she loves her daughter more than anything in this world… even more than the girl she’s still sobbing in the arms of. But if this is what she thinks it is…
Shauna hopes that Callie can forgive her, for so many things, but she hopes in whatever part of her that still did, that Callie will forgive her for leaving this way. She wishes to whatever will listen, God of the dirt or the big man himself even, that Callie will turn out okay and not nearly as fucked up as her mother was. She’s sure (she isn't totally but a small part of her is so she runs with it) that she will, Jeff will look after her to make sure. So will Tai and Van, and hell even Misty fucking Quigley. Wistfully, she briefly wonders what Natalie would say about all this. Whether she’d call her selfish for abandoning the others this way, for not even fighting to stay alive, or if she’d say anything at all… Shauna hopes to see her again when she gets to wherever she’s going.
A soft hand pulls her back, only slightly, to gaze back into hazel green once more. “It’s time to go, Shauna.” Her eyes crease and her lips are a soft pout, her voice is soft and sad. Like she knows what Shauna is leaving behind and wishes she didn’t have to.
God, how she wishes Callie got to meet Jackie… she’s sure they would’ve loved each other more than they loved Shauna (though she’s sure neither of them would love the other more than Shauna herself loved them).
Shauna knows she should feel more regret, anger, bitterness, fear, any of those emotions are something she should be feeling tenfold as death itself stares at her with the eyes of her dead best friend. But she doesn’t. Those emotions have been swirling throughout her bloodstream since she was seventeen on her way to Nationals, maybe even before that. All she feels is a bout of peace that feels like a blanket of warmth in the slowly building swirls of snow on the wind. And while a part of her wishes she didn’t have to leave the others behind; Shauna thinks the rest of her, the forever selfish part of her, is fine with this. She thinks, for the first time, in such a long time… that she might finally be okay.
Shauna nods slowly at Jackie’s words, sniffling and shivering, her fingers reaching between them to play with the heart charm that rests on Jackie's clavicle. So many (horrible, horrifying) meanings behind that one little necklace, but one always stood out above the others for Shauna. It was the heart she and Jackie shared, and it felt nice to finally be at peace with it. She twirled it absentmindedly with one hand, the other resting on Jackie's cheek, never letting go of her. Never again.
“It’s gonna be alright, Shauna.” Jackie holds her tighter, she’s so warm. Shauna’s eyes close slowly as their foreheads touch and her hands fall to Jackie's shoulders. “I’m right here.”
The words carry her into unconsciousness, secure and happy in the warmth of her best friend. The snow whistles as it now blazes past, around and through them. Everything is white, and yet everything is warm.
Yeah, she’s gonna be okay now.