Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

laura lee dies and she takes your heart with her.

she burns up quicker than you can process it. she burns up like a solar flare. (you always did compare her to the sun, but you meant it in terms of radiance, in terms of warmth. you didn't mean it like this .) instinctually, you stagger into the chilly waters of the lake, a scream tearing its way out of your throat. take me with you , you think, like you could make her hear you by sheer force of will alone, like you could follow her into the sky and the fire. you can't say it, though, you can't form any words at all. all you can do is scream and scream, until your throat is raw and red and someone has to come and pull you out of the water. (you can't remember who it is, later on. you also don't care, and you didn't back then, either. all you remember is you didn't want to go with whichever teammate was sent to fetch you, you didn't want to leave laura lee.)

everything feels so empty without her. each breath you take feels shaky and hollow. she was the one who supported you, who believed in you, who gave you something worth devoting your twisted soul to. and now she's gone and its like you're going through the motions, its like you're a broken wind-up toy staggering through its last cycle. except you have a feeling it won't be so simple, because nothing is, out here in the wild. because the future is pressing itself against the back of your mind like a dog with a bird carcass whining at your door, and you know this world is not done with you yet. if you have nothing left to give it, it will simply take control of your shattered husk and carry on like that. (you wonder, briefly, if it would let you go even if you were to die. would it leave you be or would it animate your corpse, make you the vessel for all its distorted divinity? you push the thought aside, and refuse to give it any more time, at least during waking hours. it still creeps into your sleep-addled, depraved musings.)

you never asked to be chosen by the wilderness, but then again, when it comes to godhood, choice has little to do with it. 

doomcoming reignites your adrenaline - its not enough to resurrect your shattered heart, but it's something, at least. you wear one of laura lee's dresses, cocoon yourself in the soft white fabric and try to pretend its one of her fierce hugs. she would have looked so pretty in it, you know, and now she'll never get the chance to. so you wear it for her, and you propose a toast in her name. you will not let her memory fade, not ever. you will not leave the love you have for her unspoken.

drunk on berry wine and power, and the terrible promise of sustenance and sacrifice (they will always go hand in hand, won't they?) to come, you don a crown of antlers. it fits so right on you, but it doesn't change the ache in the hollow of your ribs. it doesn't change the fact that you're half a set of twin flames and your match has been extinguished. you don the crown of antlers, but you cannot stop thinking about the fact that there should be a matching set perched halo-like atop laura lee's pretty blonde head. you cannot stop thinking about the fact that a prophet should not be without her preacher. 

one day later, while you're still in laura lee's dress, a bear bows at your feet and you drive a knife into its head. even later, you turn its heart into an altar and spill divine words from your lips as easy as breathing. you're in command of yourself for once, and you like it. you like the other girls looking at you with respect and eagerness, rather than with fear, too. it doesn't change the fact that you'd trade everything and anything - the bear, the girls, even your own power - to have laura lee back in your arms.

it's fitting that jackie is the first one to be consumed, you think. she was the team captain, she was the one who refused to adjust herself to the ways of survival. this is the best she can provide for her team now that she and all she stands for is obsolete, and through eating her, everyone else will learn to move forward, to leave behind the trappings of civilization and adapt to this new life. or at least, that's what the wilderness tells you. you don't know if you'd have thought it on your own, you don't know anything except you're so very hungry. you're hungry enough devour a girl that was once your friend, to devour a hunk of meat that was once a living, breathing person, just like... well, maybe not just like you, because you haven't felt like a proper person in such a long time. but jackie was a person, and now she's a meal, and you should be horrified by that. you should be, but you're not, because you're hungry, and because when you're in the wild, the line between person and prey is so easy to cross. the wilderness tells you this is right, your stomach roars in search of meat, and so you feast. it's that simple.

well, it's mostly that simple. for all of your girls save one, it is a matter of survival. but for shauna, shauna who loved and hated jackie in equal measure, who was so intwined with her that even the cold hands of death cannot cause a clean break between the two of them, it's far more than just a means of staving off starvation. for shauna, it's the only way she can hold jackie close, it's the only way she can possess her heart, by swallowing it down. it's i love you so much i want with me forever, i want to take you wherever i go, i want you inside of me . and as you watch shauna eat the girl she loves, something inside your empty chest cavity (empty since your heart burnt up like a solar flare) aches. 

there was nothing left to eat of laura lee, no way to put the girl you love inside of you and carry her around forever. you almost wish there was, so that you'd have something tangible to hold onto during the cold nights when the wilderness will not stop shouting in your mind, something more than a handful of ragged clothes and bittersweet memories. you almost wish it, but not quite. because if there was something of laura lee left to be eaten, you'd be expected to share it with the team, for the sake of surviving. and you don't want to share. you don't want to share one bit of laura lee, not with anybody in the world. she's yours and you're hers and not the team that did not consume her or the sky that did could treasure her as much as you do. you would have cherished her. you still do cherish her. but at the same time, you know and are grateful for the fact that death by fire was quick and bright, unlike the freezing and darkness and feasting that jackie was subjected to. you know it is because she was loved, too loved to be allowed to leave, because she was saintly. because she was too good to be eaten by any animal (even - maybe especially - humans) and so instead she went out in a joan-of-arc inspired blaze. you accept that she was never meant to become meat.

she was the best of all of you - meant to become stardust and nothing less.

you traipse through the wilderness that has become your home, knee deep through the snow drifts. it's freezing cold, you know that, but at the same time you don't really feel it. you don't feel anything but the empty pit in your stomach, the endless hole begging to be filled. you're so very ravenous these days - hungry for meat and for love alike. you hope to find the former, out here amongst the frozen wasteland. you watched the latter die before your eyes.

truth be told, you came out here because the risk of the hunt does not frighten you anymore. either you find sustenance and provide for your friends (your disciples, forever looking to you for answers) and prove your own authority - prove nat wrong - while your at it, or you die. maybe dying would seem like an awful alternative to some, but you don't see it that way. you're only alive now because your girls (and the wilderness) need you, because you're responsible for them, because you're scared of what will happen if you leave them alone. you're not alive for yourself, because how can you be, when you haven't felt like a person in months? when you never felt like a person to begin with? when the only time in your life you felt like a person, the only time you ever felt right was when you were in laura lee's arms, and laura lee is gone forever?

no, you're not afraid of dying. you're only afraid that without you to hold the yellowjackets and the wilderness together, they will proceed to tear each other apart.

everything is hazy and golden, like hair that you used to braid. the plane - crashing down, burning up - the bear - burnt and bloody in your hands - the cross necklace, it's all a terrible prelude. first you tremble, surrounded by objects long gone, and then you stumble down a hallway into delusion. you're in the food court of a shopping mall, and all the yellowjackets are there, but you can only focus on one of them. when she approaches you, she's every bit as radiant as you remember, and you want to cry. this must be heaven, because she is here, because you can see her again. she's so close, close enough to touch, and you want to, so bad, but you're scared. you went out into the snow because you had nothing left to fear, nothing left to lose, but now that she's here, you do.

"i think we need to get you out of here," laura lee says, in a tone so gentle it nearly cleaves you in two.

"but i just got here," you say. you love her, you love her so much, and the mere thought of leaving her makes you want to cry. "i don't, i don't want to..."

"i don't want to leave you," you tell her, and it's the truest thing have ever said, the truest thing you will ever say.

laura lee looks at you with her pretty blue eyes and there's such sympathy there. but her voice is firm, firm as her hands were when they dunked you down into the lake for your baptism. "lottie, if you don't get warm, you're gonna die. you have to go. go! go!"

she shoves you backwards with both hands, and you want to scream. you want to stay with her forever, but she's already gone, shoving you back into life, into the snow. you look up at the endless blue expanse of sky, the same color as laura lee's eyes, and a sob tears its way out of your throat. she had saved your life with her saintly hands yet again, she had proved herself your avenging angel. but you didn't want to be saved, you just wanted to be with her.

i don't want to leave you. it echoes in your head like a refrain, even though there's no one left to hear you. i don't want to leave you.

when you offer yourself up to shauna, with her bloody fists and unending rage, it is for one reason and one reason only. you let the others think that it is to protect them, to allow shauna to vent so that she can continue to provide her talents to the group. you hold your hands behind your back as blood runs down your face, and your disciples (they are your disciples, no matter how much you wish they were only your friends) watch on in horror and awe. they'll never know how selfish you truly are, how you step into the path of rage only in the hopes that if you spill enough blood, you'll finally get what you want. you'll finally go back to laura lee, and this time, you won't have to leave her. 

it doesn't work, and then its just you and your aching body and the emptiness of the attic. laura lee doesn't come for you, and the others seem fanatically set on keeping you alive. you tell them not to waste you, but they refuse to even consider the notion. you aren't like jackie, meant to be martyred and consumed all at once. you aren't like laura lee, either, too loved to let go of, too good to die on the ground where sinners still tread. you're not even a simple prophet anymore; you're their god, their wilderness in human skin, and everyone knows that gods do not die. everyone knows that gods are not allowed to die.

(you never asked to be raised onto this pedestal by the yellowjackets, but then again, when it comes to godhood, choice has little to do with it.)

you never asked for them to draw cards until one of them is marked for death. you never asked them to chase nat down, frothing at their mouths like beasts eager to tear out throats with their collective teeth. you certainly never asked them to watch as javi died, to butcher him and bite into his heart. misty claims that you started this, but she's wrong. this darkness, this hunger for human flesh, it's in every one of them. they wanted this. they did this. you're just the one they 'worship' and put their deeds in the name of, you're just the scapegoat god for all the wickedness they cannot accept they carry. they put all of their monstrosity in you, and the weight of being what they want is crushing.

so you lie.

you lie and claim the wilderness doesn't speak to you anymore. (as if it will ever stop, as if it can ever be separated from you.) you lie and claim it has chosen someone else, you lie and say that natalie's leadership is what it needs. you hope that with every lie you spill from your lips, they buy into it. you hope that nat, the hunter, the skeptic, can influence them towards survival rather than self destruction. you hope that she can contain the slaughter in a way that you and your empty soul never could. 

(you know even as you watch your girls take the bait and bow at her feet, that it will not be enough to save them. the dread in your stomach speaks of coming bloodshed, of more yellowjackets skinned and stewed. you know that even with natalie to turn to, they will never stop placing their burdens on your shoulders.)

within hours of attempting to forfeit responsibility for your own gain, coach burns the cabin to the ground. the others gap in horror as the flames rise up into the night, but you just laugh and laugh. it's an omen, you think, it's punishment for your mistake.

why couldn't laura lee have taken you away from that attic when she had the chance?

Chapter Text

that day, so many years ago, when laura lee turned to stardust above the baptismal lake, you screamed. you've been screaming nonstop inside ever since.

your father wants you to be fixed. he wants you to be normal. you disappoint him, of course, because you will always disappoint him. (you just don't particularly care about that anymore - you don't care about most things.) your mother says all the right, acceptable platitudes, but she's quick to agree with your father, to send you away. she looks at you with fear, her silent, sacrilegious daughter, who would carve her up for the sake of survival in a heartbeat. (it's no wonder they ship you halfway across the world. they're boring, ordinary people who cannot stand to have their reputations tarnished, to have the narrow confines of their worldviews challenged. the wilderness is something they cannot comprehend. you are something they cannot comprehend, you with your bloody hands and your broken heart, you with the shadow of antlers looming over you at all times. you are beyond them, you do not need them, and you do not particularly want them, either. locking you in the psych ward is the only method of control they have left.)

a whole other continent is enough distance for your parents to feel comfortable again, to forget about their insane child and go back to their pathetic lives. a whole other continent is not enough distance for you, in any way that counts. you still feel the pull of the wild tight, still hear it whispering in your ear. it will never let you go, you think, for what is not the first time and will not be the last. (and deep down you know that you will never let it go, either. same as you'll never let laura lee go. same as the wilderness never let laura lee go. you're all just holding on to each other, the prophet adorned in antlers, the priest anointed by flame, and it. a prism through which the cruel light of divinity shines through.)

you hear things, while you're in the psych ward. not from your parents - they rarely visit, they'd stop visiting entirely if they could do so and not look unfeeling - but from the staff and even from the fellow inpatients. (they tell you things, when you're so quiet. they bring you their stories, offerings for an altar, and you listen. what else is a god supposed to do but listen to the prayers of her acolytes?) it's from these strangers who talk that you hear what's going on in the lives of your yellowjackets. its from them that you hear about shauna marrying jeff and having a child. (taking on the life people assumed jackie would've lived. consuming jackie over and over again.) it's from them that you hear about tai's career and nat's stints in rehab, and everything else that your girls are doing to try and prove some sort of normalcy, some semblance of sanity. (as if they could ever be normal after what happened. as if they aren't every bit as crazy as you are.) they're tearing themselves apart out there, eating themselves now that they cannot eat each other.

you're worried about them. on the rare occasions that you do talk to the doctors, this is what you talk about. they sigh, try to steer the topic back to you. you almost pity them for their futile efforts - they have yet to realize that you're not a person, not really. (you don't think you were one even before the wilderness, back when you were a little rich girl scared of her own mind - you were just pretending to be one so that no one would realize just how hollow you were inside.) you try to tell one of the doctors, once and only once, how you've become (how you've always been) something else. she just shakes her head and tells you that you cannot keep deflecting to everyone's problems to avoid your own. she doesn't see that you aren't trying to deflect, that the love/hate your team has for each other is intimately connected to the horror and the hunger. she doesn't see that everyone else's problems are your problems. you're their prophet, their guide to the wilderness, you're the one who takes care of them. you're their god and you've learned by now that you always will be.

(you're their god and so you're locked in this place while they scapegoat you, put everything that happened out there in you name. they call you crazy so that they can feel sane by comparison. if a cult forms in the wilderness and no one is around to see it, did it really happen? if the cults leader is thrown in the looney bin and her disciples go free, does it mean they're absolved?)

laura lee didn't think you were crazy. laura lee didn't try to make you the arbiter of all her deeds. that's one thing you never tell anyone in the psych ward - between the fear before the crash and the emptiness afterwards, between two great stretches of loneliness as dark as a womb or a tomb (maybe they're one and the same; an abyss is an abyss no matter its purpose) was laura lee. you never felt like a person, except for that brief time when you did, when you were with laura lee.

you keep that - you keep laura lee - to yourself, though. you don't want to share any part of her, not even her memory.

"how do we cope with our failures," a young woman, one of your new acolytes, asks, and it stops you right in your tracks. somewhere in your head is the knowledge that her name is lisa, that she's come to camp green pine for guidance, for a way to accept herself. (they do say that those who cannot do, teach.) mostly, though, you're being thrown back to another time and another place, except no, that's not quite right either. that implies that you've left that time and place, and you haven't, not really. not in any way that counts.

"failure is inevitable," you say, distantly. "inevitable like scraping yourself, like shedding blood." (you've shed so much blood over the years, and it was (it isn't, it never will be) enough.) "failure comes with living life, same as smoke comes with fire." (you tried to shirk your responsibilities, you tried to step down from your pedestal, and the cabin burned.) "failure will occur, and that's okay - we will all disappoint ourselves sometimes, and we just have to accept that. feel it fully. learn from it." (you never pulled the queen card, no matter how much you wanted to. every time it felt like the hollowness in your heart was growing. every time you watched another one of your girls be hunted, and you wished you could take her place. but such a thing could never be possible. you are their god, and gods are not allowed to die.) "...and sometimes ...sometimes failure will stick with us, and that's okay too. some things can't be healed from. they can only be carried onward, lived with, our own personal ghosts-"

"charlotte?" lisa questions when you trail off. you're not seeing her, though. you're seeing tai howling above van's wolf-mangled body, misty yelling nat's name as she drags her away from certain death, shauna screaming when she discovers jackie's frozen corpse. most of all, you're seeing what you always see - the shadow of antlers, the glint of light against a baptismal lake, the terrible gold of a plane tearing itself apart in the middle of the sky.

"i'm fine, lisa," you reassure her. you smooth your face into a mask of serenity. like with the people at the psych ward, you tell no one at camp green pine about laura lee. they don't know that the purple of their robes comes from the flowers on laura's doomcoming dress, that the shampoo in the buildings is the same flowery scent that laura used, that the painting of joan of arc hung on the wall of your cabin is a constant reminder of laura, whose faith in god (whose faith in you) never waivered. they don't know that their girl-god is forever bound by love for a girl-ghost.

lisa wants to know how you cope with failure. you don't have the heart to tell her that you don't, not when it comes to your greatest failure. not when you spend every day hating yourself for letting that plane leave the ground with your heart inside of it.

travis dies, and you're there. of course you are. he might not be one of your girls, but he's still a disciple, still your responsibility. travis dies and it's your fault, because it always is. travis dies and it's the best thing to happen to you in years (you feel horrible for even thinking it, but its true) because you finally get to see laura lee again. 

she staggers out of the darkness and into the light, every bit as beautiful as the day she baptized you. you're on your knees (fitting, that you'd worship her like this) and you smile, smile so wide when you see her. how can you not smile? you love her so much, even after all these years. you'll never stop loving her.

then, just as quickly, she changes. she opens her mouth in a terrible shriek, she opens her mouth like an abyss about to swallow you whole. (you'd let her swallow you whole, if she wanted.) her body is jerking oddly, her skin turning grayish. laura lee rots before your eyes, and its like you're seventeen again - even though she never actually did, because there was nothing left to rot. nothing left for you to hold on to. there's just this ghost, who is screaming, and you're screaming too, just like you did that day when she combusted above the lake. there's just the faith she told you to have, the one certainty that you hold on to during the coldest of nights - that to know laura lee, even for such a short time, was better than not knowing her at all.

when you stop screaming, she's vanished, just as quickly as she came. travis is dead, and it's your fault, and yet all you can think of is the fact that she's gone again. gone to where you cannot follow. 

you rescue (technically kidnap, but that's a term meant for society, and you left that behind long ago) natalie, because of course you do. because she's one of your yellowjackets, and so you must look after her. you must save her, even from herself. and she's furious about it, of course. she's furious about travis's death too, and demands you tell her what really happened. you do, at least for the most part - you don't tell her about laura lee. laura lee is your ghost to keep, not hers.

where nat goes, misty soon follows, and then van, and tai, and shauna. a reunion for monsters wrapped in women's skin. they've all been falling apart, you can tell, they're so fucked up and they don't even know it. they're insane and playing at sanity. they're extraordinary and playing at normal. it'd break your heart, if your heart wasn't already broken. so instead you welcome them as best as you can, care for them like you've always cared for them. they claim to not want your help, but wanting and needing are two very different things, and while they may not want your help, they've always needed it. once again, their survival is in your hands, and you know, know even as you laugh with them, love them as best as your empty soul can bear to, that survival means sacrifice. survival means becoming the versions of themselves brutal enough to do what must be done. it means reconnecting them with what they've always been, what they always will be - the hunter and the healer, the butcher and the strategist and the storyteller. (and then there's you, the prophet, the priest, the god. the figure crowned in antlers, forever tied to the wilderness that you brought back with you.)

shedding blood from the palm of your hand is not (is never going to be) enough. you know what needs to be done.

"does a hunt that has no violence feed anyone?" 

no, it doesn't.

you've convinced yourself that it will finally, finally be you who draws the queen card. you've convinced yourself that you can give yourself to the girls (to the wilderness) this time, you can ensure their survival once and for all. and maybe, just maybe, you can finally rest, finally follow laura lee without having to leave her. (foolish girl, you should have learned from when you told them to eat you up the first time, in the dim attic of that long-burned cabin - you are no martyr, you are a god. gods are not allowed to die.)

the wilderness chooses nat. the wilderness chooses nat, and she dies. (dies in misty's arms, nonetheless - you think of shauna and jackie's corpse, you think of tai and van's brutalized body, you think of laura lee turning to ash overhead and of screaming that will never stop. you think that we are all destined to lose ourselves in love.)

nat is dead, and while every one of the girls blames themselves, for you its more than simple guilt. its the bone deep knowledge that its your fault, same as it was with travis. it's your fault because twenty five years ago, you tried (you failed) to pass the weight of the world on to nat's shoulders. in doing so, she became a queen, at least for a time. in doing so, you became a queenmaker, and this is where it lead. (one day, in history class, you learned about monarchies and divine right to rule. the king or queen was chosen by god to enforce divine rule on earth. you never would have thought that the bleach-blonde pothead you shared a soccer field with would become a modern monarch. you never would have thought that you'd be the one appointing her, the cruel god selfishly pulling her into your wild way of life.) nat is dead, because queens always die - jackie did, so long ago, and now natalie has followed her. queens die, and you, the queenmaker, the god, live on, knowing that you condemned everyone you were supposed to protect. knowing that its all your fault.

the wilderness chose natalie scatorccio. you chose natalie scatorccio. it's the same thing, in the end. 

years ago, you wondered if the wilderness would let you truly die. you're certain, now, that it wouldn't. (so now you have a new question to ponder; will you be there to watch every one of the yellowjackets die? will you be the last, a prophet without a congregation, a god with no disciples? it'd be almost fitting, in a sad sort of way. laura lee was the first to go, so of course you'd be the last.)

even in the darkest of times, survival is possible, though not without sacrifice. this is the truth you learned by living nineteen months in the wilderness, being raised to divinity by a cult, dining on the meat of your friends turned feasts. nat is dead, and that's a tragic, terrible thing, one that you blame yourself for, but her death is not without its purpose. van palmer, the storyteller, your most loyal acolyte, your dear friend, will live. will beat the odds like she always has. you know this, though you do not dare tell anyone. not yet. its your secret, for now, to smile about when everything else seems so bleak. you failed one friend but will see another saved. it's a harsh trade off, but everything about surviving is harsh.

speak of harsh, you've looked into the face of strength - a girl eager to prove herself, to protect her mother, willing to shoot first and think second. shauna's daughter (callie, you'll later learn) shot you with no hesitation, and you couldn't be more proud. she does not know you, but she's still bound to you, to the whole team, by the cruel blood running through her veins. she can't see it, and shauna can't see it, but you can. callie is powerful, she's a yellowjacket through and through. here is a girl who could make it through the winter, you think. here is a girl who can look into the face of all her mother has tried to turn away from.

tai thinks what you instigated was wicked, you can hear it in her voice when she says that you're going away again, back to that world of white coats and whiter pills. if you didn't care so much about her, you'd tell her that she helped to make this happen. you'd tell her that a god reflects the sins of its worshippers. but you care about her still, and you want to protect her, even when she's sending you away. so you keep quiet. none of them would understand, anyways. it's not that you (any of you, even the wilderness) is evil. you're just (you've always been) hungry.

as you're taken away, you look out at the lake one last time, the starlight reflecting off its surface. it looks so tranquil, and if you squint, you can almost pretend its a different lake in a different place and time. you can almost pretend that if you were to walk to its edge, she'd be waiting for you, ready to braid your hair and recite tales of saints. ready to make your dead heart beat again. then the ambulance starts moving and the moment is shattered. you're left with the knowledge that whatever comes next will not do what the girls (and your parents, and legions of medical professionals, and basically the whole fucking world except for one girl who loved you as you are-) want. you're left with what you've always been left with; yourself, in all your terrible divinity, and the grief you wear along with your infinitely heavy crown.

("you know there's no it, right? it was just us," shauna said during the hunt. she looked so angry, then. you could see the girl who had once beaten you to a bloody pulp shining through the prism of time.

"is there a difference?" you questioned back. she didn't answer. she didn't need to. you already know there's no difference. the wilderness is you and you are the wilderness. wherever this latest psych ward may be, whatever they may do, it will not change that.) 

you look at the floor, and see the shadow of antlers loom. 

at some point, you fall asleep and find yourself laying in the grass, under an infinite blue sky. laughter that you would know anywhere, laughter dearer to you than anything, rings out, and you sit up so quick. a voice that's still absolutely perfect after all these years says, "lottie."

you know that this will not last. you know that you will wake up alone, still screaming inside at a plane-turned-supernova to give you back your heart. you turn around anyways. you always do. (that's another constant - no matter how much time passes, no matter how futile it is, you never resist her, you always hope that you'll be allowed to stay. twenty five years ago, you told her you didn't want to leave her. it was the truest thing you ever said, then. it's still the truest thing you've ever said now.)

"laura lee."