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There were times in the Wilderness, especially near the end, when it became hard to tell where Tai ended and Van started. For a while afterwards the lines between them remained blurred. They inhabited each other’s space, sticking so close it was as if they were trying to crawl into the other’s skin.
When the rescue crews find them, the survivors (what was left of them), had to be sedated to be airlifted out of the area. They’re holding hands, no longer afraid of what people would think, when the needles pierce their skin.
Van wakes up and, for the first time in months, she doesn’t have Tai by her side. The ground rumbles beneath her and a mechanical roar encompasses the room they’re in.
It takes her a moment to realise they’re in a plane, another to realise she doesn’t care and one more to slip out the strapping keeping her safely on the stretcher, blankets falling to the side. She stumbles, groggy, and looks around, burning with the desperate need to find Taissa.
Three steps later she has to lean on the next stretcher as the world tilts dangerously around her. Her scars ache something fierce and her eye feels like it’s burning in its socket. She looks at the stretcher’s occupant. Even in a drugged sleep, Natalie looks like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders.
She stares at the divide on Nat’s hair, where bleach blonde gives way to brown, until her head stops spinning so much. It’s easy enough to see that the next two beds, on the other side of the cabin, do not contain Tai. Hair too long (Lottie) and too curly (Misty).
She casts her gaze towards what she assumes is the front of the plane and finally spots the cropped curls she loves so much. She’s two steps closer to Tai when a door opens and man in a navy uniform with a red cross emblazoned on it steps through.
He makes a noise of alarm and sweeps through the room to stand in front of her. He tries talking to her, but Van’s mind is focused only on Tai, who’s so close and the view of whom this man is blocking.
He says something again and Van stares at him blankly before trying to get past him. He grabs her arm, gentle but firm. She freezes. Only Tai can touch her, only Tai who is lying the bed a few feet away can get away with grabbing her. She attacks him.
He yells and lets go, stepping back from her in shock and she takes the opportunity to slip past. She’s almost there, just shy of reaching Tai, when two arms wrap around her waist and pull her back, lifting her half off the ground.
She kicks and she screams and she thrashes and he yells and holds her tighter. Another person rushes into the room and she fights even harder. It’s animalistic but that is what they’d been reduced to out there, little more than animals, fighting for even the barest scrap of food. They’d been reduced to their base desires and Van’s most burning one would always be to have Tai close at hand.
More hands grab her, so she thrashes harder, gnashing her teeth at any limb unfortunate enough to get close. All her fighting is for nought. These two men have had the luxury of constant food, warm beds and hot showers. They had never had to ration their meals and boil their belts the way they had to do to survive. They would never know the taste of boiled pine needles.
They’d feasted, just the other night, Mari keeping them fed one last time. It was a good enough meal that they’d gone to bed with full bellies, a practically unheard of blessing. It wasn’t enough, it was never enough and now Van, nineteen months of the Wilderness later (not that she knew it) was powerless to stop these interlopers as they dragged her away from Tai, easily dodging her flailing as her limbs began to tire, unused to such vigorous activity after months of planning each move carefully to conserve energy.
One of the men has her in a bear hug now, arms down and at her sides where she can’t hit any of them. She thrashes again, more for the principle of it before the other man approaches with a gleaming needle. Tai, all she needs is Tai! Can’t they see, she’s right there! Her now weakly flailing limbs do little to deter him and the needle slides easily into the skin of her neck.
The sedative is quick-acting and it’s not long before the rest of fight has completely drained out of her, body becoming limp and unresponsive to the screaming commands of her mind. Her captor maintains his bear hug until she slumps completely in his grasp. The fog is already clouding her mind, eyes closing against her will as she tries desperately to keep sight of Tai.
His companion comes and lifts her legs and together they place her back on the stretcher she’d climbed off of mere minutes previously. Tai’s head disappears from view and Van mourns the loss of her view of her lover.
The men tuck a blanket around her before starting to resecure the straps she slipped out of. Van thinks how she only ever feels warm when Tai lies next to her.
The last thing she feels as she slips into oblivion is the tightening of restraints around her wrists.
Van wakes up to the beeping of heart monitors in the utter alienness of a modern hospital.
Her head aches, feeling entirely like it’s stuffed with cotton. The fluorescent lights leave imprints on the inside of her eyelids when she blinks. She groans.
“Oh, you’re awake!” Misty’s voice chirps from somewhere to her right. She groans again and looks over to the poodle haired girl. The movement takes more thought than it probably should.
Misty is sitting cross-legged on the bed next to Van, staring at her with a bright smile while she sips a juice box. An IV trails from her left arm to the stand next to her bed. Van doesn’t have to look to know there’s a similar one connected to her.
“You’re probably wondering what happened.”
Van just blinks at her.
“We got rescued! And then you apparently attacked the paramedics on the plane!” She sounds far too excited at that prospect. “You must have done a number on them because they’ve got you on a whole bunch of sedatives and antipsychotics. Not to mention those cuffs on you wrists and ankles. Don’t worry, the nurses said it’s just protocol, in case you try attacking someone else again. They’re so nice, I’m sure they’d let you out if you asked. One of them gave me this juice box, she wouldn’t let me take one for you though. I think she said something about the doctors wanting to talk to you when you wake up?”
Misty stops to take a breath and Van takes her chance. Unpeeling her tongue from the roof of her mouth she manages to croak out: “How long… sleep… for?” Her words come out jumbled, her tongue feeling clunky and too big for her mouth.
Misty stares at her for a long moment before comprehension finally lights her features, “Oh, how long were you asleep for?”
Van nods slowly, the careful movement still managing to send a spike of pain through her head that aches more with every second she’s awake.
“Well, I’ve been up for a day. So I think maybe two for you? The nurses said you’d be out for a little longer because they had to give you some really strong stuff—”
“Tai?” Van interrupts Misty with her next burning question.
“The others are in different rooms. Taissa is with Shauna just down the hall and Nat and Lottie are together in the room across from us. They put me with you, it’s just like a sleepover, isn’t it? This is so fun, we should do one when we get back home.”
Van tunes Misty out, turning her face back to the ceiling and closing her eyes against the pain the bright lights induces. She gives her restraints an experimental tug, but they hold fast. She tugs again, hoping they’ll just come loose so she can just get to Tai but there’s no give. She starts to panic.
What if Tai starts to sleepwalk? What if the Other takes her place and Van isn’t there to protect her? What if Tai wakes up and thinks Van abandoned her?
The last thought terrifies her the most and she begins to tug harder, thrashing around in attempt to get the restraints to loosen.
The heart monitor starts beeping loud and erratically. It’s only when Misty calls out to her that Van realises she’s crying.
“Van, it’s okay, we’ve been rescued now, there’s nothing to worry about!” Misty slips off her bed and pads over to Van’s, IV pole trailing behind as she tries futilely to calm the redhead. Van only thrashes harder when Misty touches her arm. The heart monitor beeps faster.
“Get the fuck off of me!” Her voice cracks halfway through the sentence, throat is too dry, tongue too clumsy to give the words the venom she intended.
The door opens and a nurse half runs, half walks to them.
“What’s going on here?”
“Van just started crying out of nowhere! We were having such a nice conversation—”
“Misty, could you please go back to your own bed, hon. I’ll help your friend here, okay?”
“Okay.” Misty acquiesces easily enough and soon the nurse replaces Misty at Van’s bedside.
“Vanessa, sweetie, it’s alright. You’re safe now. You’re in a hospital. Could you tell me what’s wrong?”
The nurse’s perfume is sickly sweet, overpowering in a way that only makes Van’s headache worse.
She opens her mouth, to ask for Tai, when a lance of white-hot pain shooting through her temple has her blacking out. When she comes to, the nurse is administering something through her IV and she can feel the fog creeping up on her again.
She wants Tai. Tai, who held Van’s head in her lap and massaged her scalp whenever she got a particularly bad migraine. Tai, who would hold chunks of ice to her temple to soothe the pain, uncaring of the way it made her own fingers stiff and numb. This nurse, with her smooth hands and pink nails, couldn’t hold a spark to the bonfire that was Taissa.
Her tongue grows unresponsive as the cocktail of medication takes effect, but she fights it, musters enough energy to choke out “Tai, please, I need Taissa” before the fog washes over her completely.
When she wakes again, her thoughts come slow, like slogging uphill through fresh snow. There’s a hand in hers and Van knows it’s Tai’s without a doubt. She knows every callous, every wrinkle and scar lining Tai’s hands. She’d know Tai’s hands blind and deaf just by the way they fit into hers, the way Tai’s fingers wrap around her own.
Van looks to the side and sees Tai sleeping in a hospital bed that’s been pushed right against hers, railings pulled down so that it makes one bed. Both her hands are holding tight onto the closest of Van’s restrained arms.
For the first time since the rescue crews plucked them from the Wilderness, the world stabilises beneath her. Van watches Tai for a long while, wishing she could reach over and smooth the frown lines on her forehead.
At one point, the same nurse who called her sweetie ambles in to check on them. She starts when she realises Van is awake.
“How are you feeling, sweetie?”
Her head hurts like a bitch but she keeps that observation to herself.
“Alright. A bit floaty.”
“That’ll be the meds.”
“Yeah.”
She returns her gaze to Taissa.
The nurse is almost out the door when Van speaks again.
“Thank you.”
“For what, hon?”
Van doesn’t answer, flicking her gaze briefly up to the nurse’s before looking back down at Tai.
“Oh, that,” She waves her hand dismissively, “It was no problem. I think it helped the both of you. That’s the calmest her heart’s been since you all got here. You rest up well now, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”
Van never sees her again, but when she wakes up the next morning, the restraints are gone, and Taissa is in her arms. She sends her silent thanks to the angel of a nurse.
They fly the survivors back to Wiskayok. This time they don’t sedate them, but they do pump each of them full of enough anti-anxiety medication that it has about the same effect. The security guard in charge of them warns that there’s a whole flock of reporters waiting outside.
“It’ll be loud. It’ll be bright. I want you guys to just walk. Single file. Don’t stop for any of them. Don’t talk to any of them. Your only job is to get to the plane.” He’s been one of the only people so far not to treat any of them with pity. Van appreciates it. He strides to the door. Stops. Turns around. Appraises them. “Pull your hoods up when you get out there. No matter what anyone says, no one has a right to pry.” He disappears.
The others pull their hoods up immediately, simply to make up for the lack of anything else to do. Van adjusts hers, making sure it’s far enough forward to cover her scars and when she isn’t satisfied by that, she pulls her hair forward, letting it fall in front of her face. Tai grabs her hand, and they sit like that until a woman with lipstick on her teeth and the overly happy preschool teacher voice appears at the door.
“Are you guys ready?”
“Yes!” Misty cheers.
No one else responds. Her smile drops a little before she continues, “We’re ready for you. Let’s go.”
Each of them has a guard assigned to them. They wait outside and each move to their assigned charge as soon as they walk through the door.
Walking through the crowd of reporters constitutes Van’s own personal hell. The flashing lights and shouting aggravate her already nasty headache. She keeps her head down, eyes focussed only on Tai’s feet in front of her, determined to make it to the plane in the shortest amount of time possible. Someone grabs her arm, and she flinches away, shaking them off violently. The reporter stares at her wide-eyed when he hears her growl. Her escort puts himself between them and ushers her along.
Lottie’s the last on the plane and her scream shocks the reporters into silence. The others all stare wide-eyed when Van throws her head back, cackling with laughter that bubbles up unbidden. Lottie enters the cabin blank faced, staring at nothing and takes her seat. Van’s almost hysterical now.
“Don’t you get it?” She crows, “This,” She gestures vaguely, “This is our lives now. This is it!”
Even Tai’s at a loss on how to react. The flight attendant watches from the bulkhead, concerned.
“Van,” Shauna tries, “Van, there’s people watching.”
“Who gives a fuck?” She yanks her hood down, brushes her hair behind her ears, gestures violently to her scars, “They’re going to stare anyway! May as well give them something else to talk about.”
She dissolves into another fit of laughter. The flight attendant hastily turns away, pretending to reorder a stack of magazines. She can feel the others exchanging looks, but she doesn’t care. They don’t get it. None of them bear the grizzly proof of their ordeal on their faces. Soon enough, they’ll fade out of the public interest. Van will be getting questions about her scars for as long as she lives.
Eventually she calms enough to swipe the tears from her eyes. She sits up straight, tilts her head back against the seat. She sighs.
“It’s such bullshit.”
None of them can argue with that.
The flight back is utterly uneventful, but they all still let out sighs of relief when the plane lands. Van doesn’t let go of her death grip on Taissa’s hand because the only way her fingers were going to unlock would be if she pried them open one by one. Taissa looks to be of much the same opinion.
There are reporters there as well, but Wiskayok’s airport has barricades up, far away enough that the reporters’ shouts are mostly stolen by the wind. Someone’s hung a crudely painted banner stating Welcome home, Yellowjackets! They all pretend not to see it as they walk past.
A minibus waits to take them to them to the hospital. It looks painfully similar to the one they used to use to travel to soccer games. They all automatically file into the seats they always used to occupy. The empty spaces stare at them accusingly.
Another preppy lady, this time without lipstick on her teeth but with the same preschool teacher voice joins them on the bus. She introduces herself as Ms Mackey and tells them their families are waiting for them at the hospital. Van barely holds back a scoff. Nat doesn’t bother.
They’re led to a conference room. The door opens and six families immediately stand to attention. Van and Nat enter last, trailing at Taissa’s heels. There are shouts of joy, crying, hugging. Someone starts wailing. It takes Van a moment to clock that it’s Mrs Taylor, staring at Shauna who shakes her head and hides her face in her mother’s shoulder. She and Nat share a look. A man in a business suit who must be Mr Taylor promptly drags her out the room.
(Van learns later that Mrs Taylor refused to believe Jackie was dead. She insisted they were lying, insisted that her Jackie was still alive. It was only when Shauna walked in, alone, that she truly realised her daughter was gone.)
Travis is clutching his mother, sobbing apologies as she embraces him just as tight, tears of own trailing down her face.
Lottie’s mother has her arms wrapped around an unreciprocating daughter, who’s staring at a spot on the wall, while her father clasps her shoulder, staring at her as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
Misty is locked in her parents embrace, happy tears streaming down all their faces and Van knows Nat’s thinking the same when she wonders how Misty fucking Quigley of all people had such normal, perfect parents.
Shauna’s mother finally lets her go and her father jumps in to hug her tight as well.
Tai’s hardly visible through pile of her family on top of her. Her brother, who had been thirteen and just shy of a growth spurt when they left, had shot up, almost taller than Tai herself. He sobs into her shoulder as her mother clutches her other side and her father has them all wrapped in his arms. Van and Nat make themselves comfortable leaning against the wall. They both tended to operate on the same principles when it came to family: expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.
Ms Mackey looks at them sadly, “I’m really sorry. I tried to find your families, but I just couldn’t get in touch with anyone.”
They both shrug.
“It’s probably better that you didn’t.”
She doesn’t have a response for that, so she leaves the room, likely to go tell her employers about what a good Samaritan she was, reuniting those poor girls with their families.
Just as they’re both coming to the mutual decision to get the fuck out of that room and find somewhere with a little less crying, someone calls Van’s name and Taissa appears in front of her.
She grabs Van’s hand and drags her to her family. Out of the corner of her eye Van sees Nat slip out the door. Tai brings her to a stop and Van barely has a moment to process before Mrs Turner engulfs her in a hug. The woman smells like Tai used to, in the days when they still had shampoo and soap, and she melts into it. When she finally pulls back, Mrs Turner cups her unscarred cheek and forces her to make eye contact.
“I am so happy to see you. They’re going to keep you girls at the hospital a few days but when they release you, you’re coming to stay with us, got it?”
Van smiles wetly, choked up at the thought of Tai’s family wanting her home with them, “Got it.”
“Good.”
She pulls away completely and is quickly replaced by Jason, Tai’s brother. He’s taller than her now but still hugs her the way he did when he was twelve and she let him score against her (not that he ever knew it).
“Welcome back, Van.” His voice is octaves deeper than what she remembers it to be.
“Well, somebody’s balls finally dropped.” The comment flies out her mouth before she thinks twice about it and she stiffens, realising Tai’s parents are right there and definitely heard her. Her fear turns out to be short lived as the whole family bursts into laughter. Jason squeezes her tighter before releasing her.
“I missed you.”
“I missed you too, squirt.” He chuckles at that and before Van knows it Mr Turner is hugging her as well.
It’s short but when he draws away, he’s smiling as he says, “It’s good to see you, Van.”
The first genuine smile she’s made in a long time tugs at her lips and she finds that she truly means it when she says it’s good to see him too.
Van is popular with the medical staff. They run all sorts of tests on all of them, but Van gets ten times more than the rest of the survivors. It’s the scars, those and the permanent headache she wished Tai never told them about. When she asks them why she needs a third MRI in two days, the doctor insists that they’re being thorough. One of the nurses tells her honestly the next day that it’s a miracle she’s alive and that the doctors are trying to make sense of exactly how she survived.
(She doesn’t tell them how it was Tai who called her back but the ghostly spectres of the Wilderness who let her return, knowing she’d contribute more to their ranks alive than she would dead. She’s already on antipsychotics, she doesn’t need to add a psych ward to her list of problems.)
Considering the number of tests they’re running, it’s surprising that it takes Van having a seizure for them to actually do anything about her permanent migraine.
She doesn’t realise she’s had one until after, when Tai’s clinging to her, sobbing, while the medical staff bustle around her, poking, prodding, checking and rechecking. They’ve long since learned that it’s easier for all involved if they just work around Tai as best as they can.
Van’s barely processed what just happened before they’re whisking her away for another round of tests. This time they find what they’re looking for.
The prognosis is that they have to operate. Van protests, she has no way to pay for it. She’d blown her meagre savings on new gloves for Nationals, so long ago now, and is certain that whatever money was leftover had long since been spent by her mother, not that any of it would have been enough to cover even a quarter of the costs.
The doctor smiles, the same pitying way that everybody who’s not one of Them, smiles at her nowadays, and assures her it’s already been paid for. She still hesitates, Van Palmer had never like accepting other’s charity.
His smile turns conspiring, “Would it help if I told you Mr Matthews is paying?”
It doesn’t.
“It was his shitty money that bought that shitty plane. What makes you think I want the doctors he’s paying for to operate on me?”
“And if I told you we’re charging double what we normally would for a surgery we were planning to do pro bono? Matthews hasn’t apologised once, may has well make his pockets hurt for the pain he caused you girls.”
Well, that changes things.
Van has the surgery.
The offer to bring in a plastic surgeon as well, to see what they can do about the scarring on her face. She thinks of Tai, carrying her dying self through the forest, holding them both up when she stumbled and fell so that she wouldn’t choke on her own blood. She thinks of a red-hot needle in Akilah’s steady hands, stitching her face together as she screamed through her teeth. Akilah, who had later that night begged her forgiveness for the pain she caused her, unable to go to sleep despite saving Van’s life. Akilah, who died by Van’s own hand, eyes wide and terrified as the knife slit her throat, Queen of Hearts held in between now-limp fingers. Akilah, who’s only permanent mark in the world lived on Van’s face.
She declines anything that has to do with reducing the scarring.
The op goes well. The anaesthetist jokes that he’ll have to double up on anaesthetic after her stunt on the plane and later pays a visit to her recovery room to tell Van he’d actually had to do just that.
She has to wear a bandage patch over her eye for two days. Vicky Palmer is predictably a no show despite being Van’s primary emergency contact. The Turners are there to pick her up instead.
Van rides in the back with Tai, head pillowed in her lap as Tai draws her hand through Van’s hair. (It’s not really anyone’s business if the next time Van picks up a form it has her home address as the Turner Residence, primary emergency contact: Mary-Anne Turner.)
That night they choke down their prescribed nutrient shakes and both manage a couple bites of the plainest spaghetti Mrs Turner could bring herself to make. It’s still too rich but neither of them care. They pick their way through the salad on the table as well, using teamwork to discard the olives on Jason’s plate when he’s not looking.
They retire after dinner. Mrs Turner makes sure Van takes the correct dose of painkillers and antibiotics then kisses them each on the cheek before joining Mr Turner to watch the evening news.
They shower together and afterwards Tai washes Van’s hair in the sink, making sure not a speck of water lands on the bandage over her eye. They change into pyjamas. The concept of ‘my clothes’ and ‘your clothes’ had long since been lost to them both. Anything that fit would be worn but at least now they had the luxury of picking the comfiest things to wear.
They pull comforters, pillows and blankets off the too-soft bed, arranging them on the floor in the way both of them like.
Just about the only thing she misses about the Wilderness is her evenings with Tai, when they would spend ages on the floor of the attic discussing anything and everything that came to mind. Their evenings now were quiet, but she cherished them all the same.
Van doesn’t know that they’ll spend the next five years always talking but never saying anything and twenty years after that not talking at all.
For now, she has Tai in her arms, curled up in their blanket nest. Central heating keeps them warm, the blankets keep them even warmer. A cricket chirps outside. A car drives by. It’s a soundtrack Van never thought she’d hear again. Tai’s heart beats in time with hers. Van allows herself to hope that one day things might be okay.