Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A frantic energy scraped itself over the edges of the woods. Time, despite itself, was closing inwards like a circle completed. Antlers brushed against the bark of the trees and the girls passed through clearings as they paced, fingers touching branches and moss, blind to the sensation.

Something was coming. Their world was on the verge of changing yet again. The survivors couldn’t help but adjust ever so slightly, setting flames to the alter so it could devour the evidence whole. Parts of their history were given back into nothing and they watched the churning black smoke lift higher, the slate wiping itself clean. The pit, a labour of survival, was slowly turned back to regular earth.

They each undid their sins, unaware of something old curling itself into the wind shifting through the woods. A slight engine whined in the distance but no one was listening for it yet. Only The Wild knew what string of fate was being threaded through the trails and lake, the hallowed space on the verge of being cracked open. It bristled and transformed itself, diving through layers of moss and roots, making trees rock and back and forth, making the ground hum an incoherent lullaby.

The wildness always knew what was wild. And, despite itself and its confines, it wanted more. It hungered like carrion drawn to an easy meal splayed out.

A girl was cradled within darkness. Her bones were safest where they had been discarded. No light touched the broken fingers pressed tight to her chest and no more fire could thaw out the stiffness of death. The resting place was both tomb and cell, something tucked away beneath a blanket and layers of dirt.

Pain couldn’t be felt within death. Her body, ruined and cracked open, was numb to sensation of anything. She couldn’t hear the footsteps of the other girls roaming the upper world and no branch could catch at her skin or hair from where she rested, wrapped tight in a blanket. Death itself wasn't a refuge of safety. Only her place of rest was, untouched and unblemished, given back to the dirt with a handful of smooth river stones sitting like a crown above. 

The Wild stroked the curve of her spine with a single finger as it considered. So many bodies had been fed into its home. It could taste the ink of their individual stories mouldering away, their voices echoing around the wind and trees like afterthoughts. There were options for The Wild but it pressed tight to it's chosen one alone, picking apart a lock only it could see or feel. And slowly that lock fell apart, yielding to a touch. 

The ground tasted wet and of rot, less of any ink. A hand jerked as The Wild managed to sigh out with contentment. Let the girls play their games, it thought. A true God couldn’t be replicated with masks and robes.

Fingers clenched into a fist as it pushed against the blanket turned shroud. The woods had a ruthlessly thoughtful quality to it in its ability to grow renewed in the space where things died. Trees fell daily and their bodies turned soft by consequence, forming layers of new ecosystems as life grew around and over it. The remains of an animal could be consumed by another. Life and death were partners in a dance, each familiar with the routine of crossing over into each other’s rhythms.

The Wild couldn’t be any different.

The body suddenly choked for air and twisted as it tried to escape the confines of its burial. Skin stitched itself across bones from nothing. The soft dirt churned as desperate hands clawed upwards. Above, in another world, a helicopter swung itself around, blades cutting against wind, the force of it an intrusion on the land.

Some of the girls screamed. The others stayed silent and watchful. They each had ashes smeared across their hands and faces. It was a dark replacement for the blood they had worn daily since they began their descent into The Wild.

It watched as the girl fought against the darkness. She died so quickly from being weak, from succumbing into cold and exhaustion. The Wild was curious was strength she had secreted away by choice. Her body jerked and worked at the stiff layers of soil like a swimmer desperate to come up for air, hand finally touching daylight as the helicopter thumped down feather light by the waters of the lake.

Sap bled from the trees. Bones, elsewhere, crunched sympathetically.

The body pushed itself up and gasped, lungs inflating again and heart pounding away. Living required a chorus of movement and thought. The Wild left a long cut down the girl’s sternum to mark where she had been stitched and mended back together again, leaving a small fragment tucked into bones and body, a smaller shadow to coexist within her shadow.

Life and death were familiar partners, after all.

One girl fell to her knees as men began swarming the sacred space. They went in and out of clearings, dragging duffle bags and kits for triage with them, boots stomping into the soft ground. Their feeble graves were barely recognizable after time. One man flung open the door to the burned-out house and checked the outlines of rooms, blissfully ignorant to what had stood and existed once before.

Girls, like sheep, were herded. They went passively and without feeling. The world beyond the woods seemed like a blur of sound and movement and they weren’t there yet. The helicopter itself was merely a new avenue unlocked and they shuffled forward obediently, casting away their wild skins and forming a line.

The Wild’s girl, however, squinted up at the sun. Birds flew overhead and she tracked their movements, wings cutting into air, small bodies barely visible from where she laid naked beneath a blanket and layers of dirt. Her fingernails were black from digging her way up from her grave and she tasted the grit between her teeth. She looked at the sun like she wanted to see through it, to see what darkness hid on the other side.

Voices were shouting. She forced her hands to move once again and push herself up, body resuming movement again.

They were going to leave. The men had found their catch of girls and were prepared for lift off. Each one was tucked away beneath heavy blankets and prepared for the awful sensation of flight again, clumsy compared to the birds and their natural abilities. The final girl staggered out from the bushes like a snake shedding its skin. “I’m here,” Jackie said, voice raspy from silence and screaming. “I’m still here.”

The world waited for her this time. And The Wild, tucked within the girl, was waiting for the world.

Chapter Text

Jackie doesn’t get the luxury of the full story. The survivors of Flight 2525 were whisked away into individual rooms at the rescue center before stories could be pinned down with matching details, leaving Jackie nothing but white walls and a plain ceiling for companionship.

She knows, though, basic elements. And elements to some were like keys in a lock. An unknown amount of time had passed that she missed and Jackie had been the one to dig herself up out of the ground.

She was dead and now she was alive again. That math sat bitterly against her tongue and made her heart race thinking about it. The other girls had bristled in their silence in the helicopter, sketching out an invisible line between them and her. Jackie knew that she stood somewhere opposite from the others, that each girl was looking into the eyes of a monster. But no one could point a finger and say anything without sounding crazy, so they opted for the bliss of syrupy silence, shuddering beneath rescue blankets, grimy and ruined from their time spent in the wild.

The only person who mattered wasn’t there. That detail, that element, was a knife lodged between ribs. She felt that pain every time she breathed, lungs scraping against an unseen blade.

Their bodies were propped up onto wheelchairs and fed into the rescue center, Canadian flag snapping against the wind, each girl vanishing down the rabbit hole of medical chaos. Lotte’s tranquil stare met Jackie’s before she was hurried into a room, door slamming shut loud enough that it echoed inside her ears.

“Can’t believe any of them made it,” a woman practically cooed as she dropped a bundle of folded fabric down onto the hospital bed. Jackie’s little cousin -who, truthfully, might not be so little anymore- had a fondness for bugs and collected them inside wooden display boxes with their wings pinned wide. She felt like one of his moths, something transparent and colourless, stretched out for somebody else to view. “Strong little girls, right? I don’t think I’d last a minute without my espresso maker.”

Everyone was moving. Some man was plucking at pages on a clipboard and monitors were being wheeled around. A redhaired nurse dropped down to tug at the blanket guarding Jackie’s body with a pitiful smile and Jackie started screaming murder in response, refusing to stop until someone negotiated her down to a pair of basic scrubs instead of the hospital gown. She didn’t know where her favorite converse shoes were or what happened to the few things she had after the crash, but the flimsy fabric designed to make her body accessible sent ice water racing through her veins, a fear so bitter it tasted like grave dirt against her tongue.

Scrubs gave her an illusion of control.

Needles pricked her skin and she tumbled into cycles of sleep, dreamless and full of dreams, unaware of the people cycling through to check hourly on vitals, Jackie’s heart ticking away on the monitor like any other living, breathing girl’s.

Time slowly eased through. The tubes and wires began to vanish, carefully, and she spent more time awake with coherence. Trees waved at her from beyond a narrow window, the wind toying against the pines.

Her craving for sweetness left her crying against the stiff hospital pillow. She could think of nothing else, stuck dreaming about vending machines lining the walls. She remembered the forbidden French fries dipped in vanilla milkshakes post winning games, the little bag of sour gummy worms Lotte kept in her locker. Natalie sometimes had to be bribed into rallying for the cause with a package of licorice, the red kind that peeled apart into tiny strings. Jackie remembered dropping an armful of discounted chocolate boxes on Shauna’s bed the day after Valentines because her best friend in the entire world loved chocolate, loved the kind that came wrapped in separate foils and were positioned in neat rows. Jackie’s desire consumed her. She thought about it every hour she was awake, every hour that she was aware of being awake.

The nurses, however, resisted her begging. Meals were introduced on a careful cycle; cups of thin broth, tiny clumps of rice, tasteless oatmeal so watery it tasted like tears… Jackie managed to work her way through whatever was offered, obedient and pliant.

She knew that there were worse things to eat.

Geese swung around in the blue sky beyond her window and Jackie rolled onto her side to feign sleep, listening as her door was pushed open and a pair of nurses slipped through with their squeaky shoes and patterned scrubs. Nobody was talking to her but their mouths ran wild whenever they thought she was unconscious. And that was workable, Jackie thought. She didn’t have an ally in the room to work with. 

“—that Helen woman is a real pill,” the first said, voice dripping with scorn. “Can’t stand the way she talks.”

“Those suits aren’t doing her any favours,” said the second, shifting over the scan the chart left hanging on a hook. “I thought designer was supposed to look good.”

“Guess that’ll be it, though. If she’s setting up shop here.”

“What?”

“Helen’s processing them, or whatever. Asking the questions,” the woman hissed out. “Won’t be long until they’re taking them away.”

Jackie kept very still as a hand smoothed the blanket up over her shoulder. “I feel bad about them. Poor kids. Some of them, though? They give me the creeps, you know?”

“Fucking Misty. Linda drew the short end of the straw and has to deal with her this week.”

“Yikes. Guess we’re buying Linda drinks Friday.”

“Janie still won’t come back to work,” the voice said as it drifted away from Jackie’s bed. “Her jaw is definitely broken. I can’t believe that punch… kind of thing you only see in movies, right? Just wild.”

The door clicked open. “I just don’t understand how she managed to get to that fire lookout station by herself. I mean, sure, she had a rifle. But I don’t think I’d be brave enough to go on alone.”

“Hey, brave is crazy, right?”

The sky was empty when Jackie opened her eyes. The blueness of it left an ache inside her bones, horizon buried beneath the sprawl of woods across the parking lot. She examined the lines of her palms and tried to focus on the dismal facts, fingers touching the scars on her knees from where she scraped them learning how to ride a bike, the way her ring finger was slightly crooked from where it had been broken. Her body was the same, complete with tiny histories, and Jackie knew that outline from years of slowly growing up inside it.

Something old and something borrowed, she imagined. And, she thought, trailing her fingers along the scar across her sternum-

Something new.

Jackie was rolled into a breakroom converted into an interrogation room with a blanket draped across her lap. Her original blanket that she had unearthed herself in was long gone, vanished into the depths of the rescue center to be thoughtlessly discarded. All she had was an uncomfortable replacement, stiff and creased from starch.

It made her skin itch.

A woman was sitting at a table with paperwork laid out neatly like a deck of tarot cards ready to be read. “Hello, Jaqueline.”

Jack, she thought. “Jackie,” she corrected instead, managing a thin smile in response.

“I’m Morgan Helen. I apologize for not meeting with you sooner,” she said, fingers drumming restlessly against a printed photo of the team line up. “We’ve been trying to tidy up this whole situation.”

Jackie felt like they should have been sitting in a coffee shop somewhere else. The nurse who wheeled her in vanished, leaving her to fidget in the wheelchair, fingers spasming against the blanket covering her legs. “Tidy up?”

“Understand,” Morgan clarified. “Would you like a drink? Something to start with?”

Vending machines were lit up on the other side of the room like pinball machines in an arcade. Jackie’s head jerked up automatically and Morgan gave her a sympathetic smile, pulling out a dollar bill and standing up to feed it into the slot. A can of coke dropped down and she returned with, victorious as any hunter coming home with a fresh kill.

Her fingers were trembling, weak things. Morgan popped the tab for her and handed it over easily. Jackie forced herself to sip slowly, to savour the contents of the can but the full sweetness of the drunk it her like a bullet to the brain. Her hands clutched it like a vice. “What’s the deal here? Why haven’t we gone home yet? When are we going home? Why hasn’t anyone told us what is happening?”

“The paperwork to transport you girls home is almost finished. This… this isn’t crossing the border for a shopping trip, Jackie. You girls went through something physically and mentally traumatic. There’s a process to handling this.”

Morgan’s designer suit was ugly. Jackie leaned back in her chair and considered the flat grey colour. “Where are our parents?”

“We need to know the story before you all start talking. You'll be brought home when we're ready to finish the process. Everybody is very excited to see your girls again, though. You'll be celebrities in that hometown of yours. But... I need information. I need to be able to explain what happened out there.”

“What?”

“What exactly did you do to survive?” Morgan asked, eyes narrowing a fraction.

I died, Jackie thought. But that wasn’t the right answer. She set her drink down onto the table and tucked her hair neatly behind her ears, forcing an easier smile that showed no teeth. “What do you think I did?”

The woman leaned forward. “There are impressions of teeth marks on bones recovered from the site where you were found. There’s evidence, Jackie. I just need to know what it means.”

Her scar down her chest stung. Jackie rubbed at it with her hand. “I didn’t do anything,” she said easily. “People died. We were in our own world out there waiting for someone to find us.”

“You survivors have a future. But… if people start talking about it? You’ll have a hard time leaving this all behind. I'm on your side, Jackie. I'm not trying to turn anyone into a villain. Laws... they don't apply to life or death situations. But I need to package this up so everybody leaves here with the right idea."

“You can tell you people that Nat hunted game out in the woods,” Jackie scorned. Her façade of a smile fell away. “We drank water from the lake. We rationed the food from the plane. We’re girls, Helen. What do you think we could do out there?” Teeth marks on bones... her own bones ached in response. 

“You want me to tell the media that you were all just girls?”

“We came together and collaborated for our best chances.”

Lies were as sweet as the Coke.

“I think you’re feeding me a line of bullshit,” Morgan said. “I think if we kept digging, we would find more questions in need of answering.”

“Then stop digging,” Jackie challenged her. “We got through with the holy power of lip gloss and hair scrunchies.”

The Yellowjackets played every game with a desire to win that could only be described as bloodthirsty and yet their town tried undermining their accomplishments to favour the boys’ team that was riddled with losses and failures. Jackie bent over backwards to line up her team to play to every advantage and worked twice as hard as Phillip, the boys’ team captain, but never got the credit for it. Coach Bill had even told her to her face that he only viewed her as a success for her social standing, never mind the work layered out behind the scenes.

It wouldn’t be hard for the world to view them as lucky survivors. Jackie’s fingernails were clean again. The evidence of having dug herself out of a grave no longer existed.

Damn the others, she thought.

“Most of you will be transported out of here by Friday,” Morgan said, voice cool. She looked unimpressed as she shuffled her paperwork into a neat stack. The little illusion of tarot cards vanished, future already dealt out and picked. “Just keep sticking to this script and maybe you’ll fool the press. Good luck, Jaqueline."

Jackie kept the can of coke like a reward as a nameless nurse wheeled her out of the room. The coolness of the metal was reassuring against her hand, a balm to the fire building up inside her bones. Doors were kept open and she watched, silent as a God, for the faces of her old friends to flash by.

And, when nighttime loomed with darkness and shadows, Jackie pried herself up from the bed by herself, wobbling as she hiked the long distance of the hallway. Misty’s laugh warbled out from behind thin walls and Jackie was quick to duck around the corner when a pair of doctors swept by in matching white coats, footsteps echoing as they vanished for midnight coffee. It wasn't a real hospital with constant movement per every hour but there was enough threat of being caught that it made her tense with caution, uneasy on clean white floors and breathing air that had a peculiar taste against her tongue. 

A nurse was face down on a binder at the station in the hallway asleep and Jackie forced her pace to a slow creep, unwilling to ruin her progress by waking up the lone guard. Basic elements kept snapping around in her mind, teeth scraping into a lock. She was dead and alive again and somehow Nat walked all the way through the wilderness alone to get them help. She knew so little but the plain facts guided her, kept her going three doors further from nurses' station. 

Her hand twisted the metal door knob and it swung open. A light had been left on and her fingers flicked at it, automatically, plunging the room into the reassuring weight of darkness. Mercurial white hair was visible across the pillow and Jackie waited for her eyes to adjust, faint light coming in through the window, feeling the knife pulling out slightly from her ribs.

“I know you’re awake. The Sleeping Beauty act isn’t fooling me.”

Nat opened her eyes. She said nothing.

A clipboard was hanging from the hook on the wall and Jackie peered at it without comprehending any of the numbers or acronyms. It was senseless to anyone lacking time spent in med school, an internship, and a residency, but Jackie saw that ‘unresponsive’ was scribbled out by a frustrated hand and it matched the scores of red ink marked down the edges of the page.

She frowned at the summary of her Nat that she couldn’t translate.

“You’re going to have to rally, Scatorccio. Get a handle on your goddamned shit before these people decide to keep you long term.”

That’s what Helen meant, after all. Most of the girls were ready for transport but Nat was the one pinned down by restraints, mute and unwilling. Nat’s eyes tracked her as she moved across the room to perch uneasily on the edge of the bed. Jackie opted to press her hands together so she wouldn’t risk touching something that looked so brittle, so liable to crumbling at soft handling.

“The team is going home,” Jackie continued, uneasy in the silence. Misty’s laugh wasn’t audible in this room. “You have to get yourself ready. Beg them to let you go home, promise that you’ll get with the fucking program. I don't care how you do it, but you have to be with us when they start lining us up for the next plane out of here.”

Silence had its own language. Nat’s fingers curled uneasily and she was a hunter with watchful eyes, waiting to see what was coming. Jackie chanced what she trusted and slowly tugged the one restraint loose, freeing Nat’s right hand. They did not lace fingers together or touch palms. And, she thought with bitter relief, Nat didn’t try to break her jaw with her fist.

Small, tender mercies.

Jackie exhaled and refused to yield.

“I can’t wait for you if you’re stuck in this place, Nat. Stop assaulting nurses. Stop giving them reasons to think you’ve got to stay here for observation.”

Something in Nat’s clenched jaw ticked. She shut her eyes and yielded a nod.

Jackie still didn’t have the luxury of a full story. But she knew the critical elements. Something awful had happened and Nat left the group for a risky chance of getting help.  

Nat left the group and took the only gun that they had.

That element was crucial somehow.

Chapter Text

The first Yellowjacket appearance in public was naturally an absolute shit show. 

Given how much the ensemble of surviving Yellowjackets acted like feral cats, Jackie wasn’t surprised by Morgan’s clear dread from where she stood guard at the door at the Rescue Center. “Ready?” She offered bleakly, casting a considering glance over their wrangled group. Each one of them was scrubbed clean and wearing bland search and rescue hoodies and sweats. “Is everyone feeling—”

“You want us to ride a plane back home? That’s the best idea you’ve got?” Van piped up from where her hands were shoved deep into the pocket of her hoodie. The SAR logo was visible across her shoulder in white stitching. In another life, they would be returning victorious from a soccer game, tired and satisfied, ready to meet a flock of parents at the school’s parking lot. But in this life they were shuffled around uneasily, twitchy from the knowledge of people waiting, no satisfaction felt. 

Misty giggled, breathy and nervous, standing up on her tiptoes to peer at the gathering mass of media in the parking lot. “What could happen this time?”

“This plane is perfectly safe and the weather conditions are good for flying,” Morgan cut in. She refused to look at Misty which was technically a sound choice for dealing with Misty in general. Eye contact usually encouraged conversation. Jackie used to make a point of keeping her vision focused an inch above the girl’s head during practices, anything to keep from getting sucked into the vortex of Misty’s awkwardness. 

Nat sat alone from the others with her hands braced on her knees like she needed the pressure to keep from exploding into sharpnel. Her dark eyes kept watching the room, flicking from their group to medical staff, always returning focus on Jackie with an unreadable expression. Somehow she had bypassed every single medical professional’s suggestion of a longer recovery time to be with them and it showed in the tension across her shoulders.

If Jackie wasn’t worried about fucking up the tense illusion of calm complacency, she would have taken the empty seat beside her. 

But guilt was a strong emotion that demanded to be felt. Nat’s too pale and too thin, Jackie thought. Which technically meant everyone in their group but Jackie always had her own personal biases. Maybe it wasn’t fair to have pushed her to be ready for their grand exit, maybe she needed more time—

Nat rolled the sleeves of her SAR hoodie up and revealed the dark marks around her wrists from fighting against restraints. Jackie let that train of thought die unspoken. 

“Time to rock and roll, people. They’ll be trying to ask you questions but it’ll be easier to stay quiet. They’re looking for grabby headlines, anything that’ll catch you off guard.”

Morgan was big on forming lines. It was like preparing to jog into a pep rally with the music blasting. The doors swung open and they stormed out with their heads bent and hoods drawn, girls swarming the parked vans with the tinted windows while cameras snapped photo after photo. 

“Ladies, ladies! Slow down!” A man called, waving his hand to get Lotte’s attention. She stumbled into the door Shauna yanked open and they tumbled for seats, hands shielding their faces like mute little dolls, half blind and half deaf. “Come on! A little face time, huh? Get your story out—”

Morgan slammed the door shut, securing them in a tight bubble. Jackie looked around and saw Misty making faces through the glass, utterly unseen by the photographers. They were inside an aquarium and somehow outside of it; prey and and predator bunched up together so tight nobody could breathe properly. “Jesus,” Morgan huffed. “Fucking vultures. Imagine doing that for your career.”

The marigold coloured sun looked dark from the tint. Morgan pressed the car forward and the scenery began the blur as the woman picked up speed, a convoy of cars racing asphalt to a small private airfield tucked behind pine and maple trees, a ribbon of a creek cutting the space with a neat babble of water on stones. 

A private plane sat on the tarmac. It was white and plain; a loaded weapon ready to be fired. “I used to love flying. My parents would always take me to the coast for holidays,” Jackie said into the stifling silence. “It was always a big deal for them getting the tickets ready.”

And the luggage, she recalled. Her mother kept a set of traveling luggage that was burgundy coloured. The night before a trip was practically like Christmas Eve, running through checklists and plans, reviewing the details until every bit was committed to memory.

“Think you’ll like this flight home?” Morgan asked, killing the engine. 

“No.”

They ambled briefly around the stretch of pavement to force the stiffness from their limbs. Morgan, their professional minder for the last few hours of their journey vanished to go over plans with a few onboard doctors and flight staff. “We already crashed once,” Misty started, expression faltering. “Can’t happen twice, right?”

“Laura Lee’s plane exploded,” Taissa rebuked lightly. “I don’t think luck gets any better the third time.”

“What about the helicopter?”

“That was a helicopter, not a plane. Doesn’t officially count.”

Van sneered lightly at the ground beneath her feet. “Time to rock and roll,” she said, mimicking Morgan. “Wasn’t very rock and roll when we fucking crashed.”

“Actually it was pretty rock and roll. I think when you bury the captain of the plane it qualifies as punk,” Jackie said for Nat’s sake because she was standing in absolute silence. The laces on her boots were fuzzy from where they were fraying and she had different shoe laces tied around her ankles. Pink, Jackie realized. Just like the laces from her missing converse shoes. 

That was a trick, she dimly recalled, to keep ticks off of her bare skin. They weren’t in the woods anymore but Nat was still dressing for the muted dangers, still uneasy. 

They were alone for the first time with each other and their crimes. Taissa flung her thin arms around Jackie and clung tight, forcing out a delighted laugh for anyone watching from afar. “Why the hell are you alive?” She hissed into her ear. “What are you?”

Jackie held on as tight as Taissa did. “Surprise. Didn’t you miss me?”

Fingernails bit through the material of her sweater. She resisted the urge to flinch. Taissa leaned back and forced herself to look Jackie in the eye. “I’m the reason you were resting in peace, bitch.”

Truth, but not quite. Jackie was an empty book missing a story but she knew a half lie and a half truth just as much as she knew a liar and a truth teller. “Do you mean that?”

Taissa let her go as if burned. She looked away. Van’s mouth tugged to one side with something like sympathy in her expression. They fizzled with nervous energy except for Nat who placidly took a gingerbread man cookie from her sweater pocket and tore the legs off, content to scatter the crumbs at their feet. 

Christmas, she thought idly. It was a lucky thing that the cold hadn’t set in so quickly this year. Jackie might not have managed to claw her way through frozen ground as easily. 

Lotte tipped back on her heels. “We’ll have to go back. We have to go home.”

“Don’t be fucking crazy,” Taissa sniped automatically, translating to: don’t sound fucking crazy in front of other people.  

Because they all knew what home Lotte was referring to. 

Jackie refused to look at Shauna but she felt the girl’s stare like deadweight across her shoulders. 

The sky was perfectly clear of any storm but she tasted ozone like a mouthful of ashes, something awful brewing in the distance. They had seen plenty of blue skies on the days when awful things happened out in the wild. Morgan’s prophetic weather statement meant nothing. 

Terrible things could still happen. 

And, Jackie thought with reassuring steadiness, terrible things would happen. 

The door of the plane slid open and they staggered up the steps uneasily. They aren’t the same girls who boarded the first plane together; hungry for a win on the playing field, group bigger with people were dead and gone—

She died. Jackie died. Jackie was dead. 

Her breathing grew fainter and she turned her hands into fists, nails biting skin, old and new pain burning down the scar along her chest. Morgan lightly prodded her forward and she nearly swung her fist at the woman’s face in response. “Pick a seat,” the woman offered. “They’re all the same.”

So many seats for such a small return. Jackie picked blindly and wiped blood from her palms against her knees. 

They should have been drugged for this. One by one the girls filed in and took their positions, gazing around uneasily. Lotte tried for the empty seat beside Nat but the girl in response resorted to smashing her head against the wall which gave her the luxury of looking absolutely insane and regaining a lack of a seat partner. Lotte fled for safety on the opposite side of aisle, expression utterly wounded. 

In a different world it would have been Shauna beside Jackie. They would have pressed their heads together and dozed, bubbly and fuzzy from illicit drugs swiped out of her mother’s cabinet. 

Jackie used to have a best friend and the reassuring comfort that there was always someone who would catch her if she stumbled. They were a duo, stronger as a team, friends who had each other regardless of what was happening in the world. 

But Shauna’s face was flushed with fear and guilt. And Jackie was a grudge reborn. 

They had nothing but love and hate between them now. And that wasn’t so entirely different from life and death.

The door slammed shut. Slowly the plane tugged into motion, rolling forward hard enough that it jolted Jackie back into her seat, Taissa shrieking in response. She closed her eyes when the wheels bumped up off the ground, engine whining as it strained against gravity and rational thought, wings catching an air current and drifting higher—

Someone had set a fire. 

Her body remembered that much, at least. Jackie’s lungs struggled as if they were burning up from the inside out. Her hand mechanically lift to her chest and felt for the steady pulse of a heartbeat pounding away. The rise and fall of her own chest was a sweet torture within itself, dazzling miracle that she couldn’t properly understand. 

She was burning up— but before the fire… something else had been done. 

Morgan sat near the front of the plane and flipped through the pages of a business magazine, seemingly bored with the image of a man standing on the cover with his arms crossed. The rest of the group were alert and painfully aware to the sensation of sitting in the sky, hurdling across the distance like an arrow shot or bullet fired. 

Shauna clutched a paper bag like she was going to be sick.. And, Jackie realized blearily, no baby. 

Nat twisted from where she sat like she was suddenly aware that the group was behind her, checking them from her position. Her expression was empty like someone pulled a plug and drained everything out of her but she was still calculating space and distance, an antsy desire to separate herself further. 

When Jackie tried to meet her gaze, Nat whirled around, vanishing beyond her sight. 

A hostess awkwardly pushed a cart down the aisle, plying them with tentatively approved beverages and food items. Misty was the only one who took up to offer of a jello cup and pointedly slurped loudly on a spoonful of it, grinning around her fear by being absolutely obnoxious. 

The woman blanched at the red staining Misty’s teeth and quickly rattled off, vanishing for the tiny kitchenette on the opposite end of the plane to hide. 

Jackie felt like a violin string scraped wrong by the bow playing it. Something was wrong because she was alive and Nat was a million miles away. 

Lotte knotted the strings of her hoodie with nervous, twitchy fingers. Her dark head twisted side to side but resolutely refused to glance out the window, did not lean to peer at the rippling ground below. Jackie, despite herself, did. Greenery stretched wide. Untouched land punctured with swells of hills and rocky ridges, trees jutting up in thick clusters. 

She could practically smell the pine needles and feel the wind stirring from the northern rocks. Her fingertips brushed the leather seat and it was like sitting upright inside a coffin beneath the shadow of a marigold coloured sun. A bottled storm waiting to split open. 

It wasn’t right. 

And, just like that, the plane rattled. 

Jackie’s hands dug into the leather armrests and she couldn’t breathe. 

Trees, she thought. She could practically feel their branches catching at the plane. The scraping of their arms against wings.

Someone was screaming and it wasn’t her, her teeth were clenched together so she had the privilege of swallowing her own scream down. 

Air seemed to swell against the plane and it bucked from it’s path. 

She couldn’t hit the ground again. There was nobody to catch her this time. 

The fire had burned and blistered skin from her bones—

The cold had taken everything from her—

Shauna’s hand touched her shoulder, featherlight, before dipping lower—

Van was suddenly beside her and was fumbling to latch together her seatbelt while the air hostess shrieked at her from the front. “If this fucking plane is on fire you don’t leave me behind again,” she demanded hotly, coppery hair falling in her face like a mask. And, truthfully, maybe the captain should’ve gone down the wreck. 

Their fingers laced together. “I saved— you— from the last— one,” Jackie bit out. 

But something eased from around her chest. The plane slowly levelled itself out and their path became smooth again, air warm and buttery. “Just a bit of turbulence, folks,” a man’s voice buzzed from the intercom. “Nothing at all to worry about.”

Jackie dragged in a deep breath. It felt like vines had wound around her like a vice and were slowly receding back. Her finger bones threatened to crack beneath Van’s forceful grip but the pain centred her back down. 

It was a luxury feeling anything, technically. She recalled the sensation of dirt sliding across her skin as she forced her way to the surface, nails digging into the blanket while she choked for air. This was a better pain the endure. The hand touching her was warm and desperate, clutching so tight it couldn’t be separated. 

Van’s white face grimaced towards where Morgan was sitting and Jackie would have killed for a smile again. “Three for three.”

“You’re on fire,” Jackie managed to say. 

Her mouth twitched into something warm. “Bitch.”

She squeezed the girl’s hand and breathed easier. 

“This’ll be easy. Talk to some people, act like this was just a really unfun Girl Guides’ experience,” Taissa said into her reflection, dabbing Vaseline across her prominent cheekbones to manufacture glowing skin. Somehow she bullied nurses into giving her nail polish and a file so she could buff her claws into something neat and polished, resuming girlhood in a few quick fixes. 

“What badges did you earn this year?” Van sniped lovingly, elbows knocking elbows, eyeing herself in the same mirror hanging from the wall. 

And these were the girls Jackie remembered from before; dancing half naked around a locker room, being tough when they wanted to scream, shoulders thrown back and posture immaculate beneath the watchful eye of the world waiting for a soft spot to attack. Banter, even if hollowed out and a pure habit, to keep a laugh from dying. 

“You’re alive,” Shauna murmured at Jackie’s shoulder. “You’re alive and you’re here… I went out for you that morning. I was going to say sorry.”

Jackie tucked away her own soft spots so nobody could reach them. Her gaze locked itself an inch from Shauna’s face, a cold refusal to properly acknowledge her. “I died because you locked me out of our one and only shelter. Are you sorry for that, Shipman? Is that what you wanted to apologize for?” She breathed out, confessing the raw truth in a statement full of hate. I died, I died, I died. “Or are you sorry because you screwed my boyfriend? And that you were so stupid that you got knocked up? Come on, Shauna. No glove, no love,” she sneered, mockingly. 

What’s the worst thing that could happen to a girl who was already hurt? Jackie still had the taste of grave dirt lingering in her mouth. 

But something happened, Jackie realized. It was like thorns beneath the skin, a body containing memories, a shadow blotting out the sun. A hand, a hand, a hand that touched…

She whirled on Shauna but the doors swung open, the sound of an eager audience spilling out. Feet stomped from the hotel conference centre. Hands smacked hands, voices rising up in a senseless whistle. “Alright, ladies. Time to meet your admirers,” Morgan said, thrusting out index cards to each girl, carefully typed speech scripted across the lines. They were being pushed and prodded for grand entry and the moment slipped through her fingertips. "This is your moment to shine like diamonds, right? Pressure does great things to us all. Don't screw it up."

Nat took her cards mechanically and looked blankly at the words. Idiot, Jackie thought to Morgan out of loyalty to Nat. The girl stuffed them in her pocket like they didn’t exist. A bruise blossomed along Nat’s forehead, partially vanishing into her hairline, from her previous show boarding the plane.

The remaining Yellowjackets were being processed for public consumption. Everyone was eager to know how the airline would try to avoid the incoming lawsuit while knowing lawsuits were definitely being filed against said airline. They were clean and tidied, visually repping the gear of their supposed saviours, and ready with a pre-approved speech typed by Morgan’s hand. 

They were supposed to gush about getting lucky with the right mushrooms and boiling pine needles for tea. Nobody was going to touch the grislier subject. 

Everyone already knew. They just didn’t know how deep it went. 

Blank slates, bright futures. 

Together they filed slowly out into the open, cameras flashing bright enough to turn her vision white. Pain burst straight straight through her skull and she tasted the ash. It was like having a nail driven into her head, she thought, looking at the ground beneath her feet to avoid the harsh bursts of light. The applause was so loud it seemed to travel through the marble floor itself and she could feel it pounding at the bottom of her shoes.

Someone helped push them in a neat line to share the attention but allowing a spotlight to linger on Taissa. Jackie didn’t care about the theft of it. She could barely stand upright, braced together by sharp pain rippling down her bones. It was easier to float between Shauna and Nat. 

People were wearing blue and yellow. She barely recognized the significance of the colours, focused on the prey at her side. “What exactly did you do to my body?” Jackie asked softly. She had a moment because she was alive and so her hands clenched around it, unwilling to let it rest. More cameras snapped impatiently. Shauna leaned away, face blanching, stuck in place by Yellowjackets and attention. “What did you do to me?”

Their parents were probably sitting together in the crowd. 

“—simply had to come together as a family,” Taissa pledged, unaware, into a microphone. They were all standing like mute statues behind her. “The minute we hit that ground… we had to come together in order to survive. We needed to be strong together to stand as one.”

“Nothing,” said Shauna, eyes flicking around at their audience. And Jackie knew Shauna, knew what Shauna looked like when she stole coolers from her mom’s stash, filled out a page in a slam book in school, tucked secrets away in her journal… 

Guilty. 

Her scar throbbed in a line of pain. The cameras kept chattered, clicking like triggers being pulled, gun chambers sliding back and ready to burst. “My body,” Jackie tried again. It was like sliding her finger along an edge of broken glass to find the end of the damage. “Why did you touch me? Why did you think you could own me?”

Shauna said nothing but her face morphed into raw panic. That silence was an answer within itself. 

Nat, apparently listening and watching, slid soundlessly between her and Shauna, one arm coming up against Shauna’s chest and shoving hard. It sent the girl back a couple steps and someone gasped, shocked by the triangle of damage playing out. 

More photos flashed.

Shauna couldn’t recover her footing. Taissa half twisted to see what was brewing and clutched the microphone tighter. “It was impossible to go it alone,” she parroted loudly to their audience. “Together? Our weaknesses were our strengths.”

Nat struck again, fist coming up fast, forcing Shauna down to the ground with a cry. And with people rushing to break up the scene, Nat threw herself straight into the chaos, determined to deal out punishment in the limited seconds she had left. She clambered on top of Shauna and fixed both hands to her neck, clearly intent on choking the life from the girl by the sheer force of her rage. 

“And when we were strong, we were able to endure!” Taissa practically shrieked wide eyed into the face of civility and destruction. 

Shauna yanked at Nat’s hair but it was a waste of energy. 

Nat was simply beyond feeling anything but anger. 

People screamed. The audience was like a wave cresting higher and they were all ready to drown beneath it. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Taissa suddenly spat out, frustrated, dropping her index card and the microphone. It thumped and screeched from the impact and she stormed away, cutting a hard line through the audience for the exit doors.

Nat’s mouth split into a smile. Her teeth showed. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she rasped, speaking for the first time. 

A man tackled Nat off of Shauna. Index cards went sliding away, unused and wasted. Jackie could feel flames as she watched Nat struggled against the weight of a grown man, howling and enraged, nails trying to rake down his face. “Get off of her!” Jackie shrieked, grabbing his collar and pulling as hard as she could manage, half choking him in the process. Limbs were tangled together. Nat tripped over her own boots trying to get back upright, fists coming up to protect her face from the next opponent. 

Shauna gasped for air and relief, as helpless as a fish caught on the bank of a river. 

Van was at her elbow and helped bully the man off of Nat and Nat flinched away like she couldn’t stand the idea of being helped or touched. 

The other girls looked numb. They were indifferent to the violence, unfeeling to the sight of one of their own dying beneath the other’s hand. 

Jackie’s own heart, however, beat easily again. 

Chapter Text

“What?” Nat hissed, finally picking up after the fifth ring. “What the fuck?”

“Nat?”

“Jesus Christ. I’m hanging up.”

“I got it wrong, right? I said that you didn’t give a shit what people think about you. But— your face,” Jackie said quickly, in a rush in case the girl wasn’t bluffing about hanging up the phone. Guilt chewed at her bones. “You’re bothered by the stuff people say.”

Nat’s face twitched, barely, when Jackie announced her proclamation of why she appreciated Nat Scatorccio as a person and it had kept her awake, frustratingly unable to drop off into a quick sleep for an early morning wake up call.  

Static buzzed softly. Jackie twisted the phone cord around her finger like a ring and tucked her knees closer to her chest. Nat’s sigh was barely audible amongst the bad connection and swollen moonlight pouring in through the window. “Yeah, I give a shit. Of course I give a shit. I always care.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t get emotional on me now, Taylor.”

“Whatever. I’m still sorry,” Jackie repeated, for the sake of saying it. People were still talking about the horrible story, floating different versions of it around school. Someone took red paint and wrote ‘father killer’ across Nat’s locker and the girl ran laps around the soccer field in the dark while the rest of the team scrubbed it off, unseen and silent. “I think you’re a really strong person. I think you’re stronger than everybody in this sad little town.”

More silence poured out. Nat wasn’t used to apologies. Jackie tries to picture the other girl across the bed from her but couldn’t. She doesn’t quite fit the curated aesthetic of floral bedsheets and frosting shades of pink and cream that Jackie’s mother has layered across the room. Nat was hard edges, blurry eyeliner smeared across the back of her hand. “We’re cool,” she eventually broke it, voice a whisper from her end of the phone line. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You should sleep. Big trip, big game. Something about a full eight hours?” 

“Do you even know how late it is? I just got home. Actually, how the fuck are you even calling me, anyways? When did you figure out how to teleport?”

“What?”

“Jeff’s little love mobile was parked and a’rockin’ down on fifth street,” Nat half sneered and half joked. “Shouldn’t you be finishing off right now?”

Bitterness flooded her mouth. “You saw— what are you telling me right now?” Jackie demanded. She’s sober now. It’s long after midnight and they have a plane to catch in the morning, but her world is starting to crumble at the edges. Jeff’s van had gum wrappers scattered across the floor. She once saw a bubblegum flavoured chapstick sitting in the cupholder but he said it was his little cousin’s, just like the hair elastic from the week before… 

“Shit,” Nat said. “You weren’t there, were you?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“I’m sorry. I was trying to be funny. But… fuck.” 

The midnight hour had a peculiar magic to it. Jackie tipped backwards and fell into a nest of pillows, cradling the phone a little softer. “You’re taking a cab, right? To get to the bus tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, don’t. I’m taking my mom’s car,” Jackie decided, striking out on her own for the first time. Because she wasn’t stupid. Fifth street was a dark little one way patch with half the street lights blown. Jeff would’ve turned down it for a quick detour before dropping Shauna off two blocks further. “I’ll pick you up, yeah? Have your shit ready to go. You better be waiting for me because I will leave you behind if I don’t see you.”

Wintery pale light streamed through lace curtains. Jackie woke up slowly and leisurely, body stretching out beneath the covers of her bed. Time had gone on but she was in a tiny bubble of uninterrupted space; her bedroom the mausoleum of the girl her parents tried so hard to make. Half the time growing up she wasn’t sure if the room was the prop to the narrative or if she was the doll in question, something to be arranged and positioned just so. 

And apparently, dead or alive, the room had gone untouched. Jackie rolled over and saw a pile of unfinished homework assignments stacked up beside the nightstand, purple gel pen sitting guard from where she last left it. So many dreams were half started and lacking their finishes and all of them haunted the corners of her bedroom. 

A ghost of Chanel No. 5 perfume was imprinted on her pillows. She sat up very slowly and peeled herself from floral patterned sheets and duvet, padding across the floor before pausing at the window. It had snowed. The whole world outside was invisible beneath powdery white snow. 

A spike of fear shot through her chest. Her blood ran ice cold. 

Winter had been the thing to kill her properly the first time. 

Jackie remembered rubbing flakes of snow away from her eyes, kicking the door when her hands went numb. Pleading for someone to open up. And, when that failed, sinking down to the wooden steps and trying to wait. 

The naked trees stood guard solemnly at the edges of their yard. Needle like branches lifted in the direction of her bedroom, grey and almost lifeless. Their neighbours across the street like hanging metal buckets from the maples whenever winter began to thaw, collecting sap from their end of town. And for the donation of two of the maple trees growing up, her parents were given a glass bottle of finished syrup; rich and sweet, locally bled. 

Somehow the sun was still rising. The seasons would keep turning, the trees would keep growing. Jackie could survive this winter. She would live for spring, wherever it was. 

Branches trembled as if in response, scraping against the chilled air and grey sky. 

Parts of the house had been altered in her absence. The bathroom was redone in black marble instead of white. Some of the fake plants had been switched for taller and skinnier versions of their previous falsehoods, plastic leaves dust free. Her mother even industriously switched the vintage green couch from the living room for something smaller and cream coloured, original piece vanishing into the basement where all unwanted furniture went to rot. Jackie eyed the small and big changes as she trailed down the stairwell, hand firmly on the railing, and found her mother crying over baskets left in the foyer. 

“Oh, darling. You’re up,” Janet’s head snapped up as if caught redhanded doing something she shouldn’t. She started fussing with bundles of lilies and roses. “I wasn’t sure if I should wake you or not… you just seemed so tired.”

The public spectacle had ended badly and the girls were each shoved in their families directions, churned out like bullets fired before any of them had the chance to try and kill anyone else. Nat vanished beneath the wave of people and Jackie had slumped over in the backseat of her parents’ car, a child again, dizzy and exhausted. Sleep unblemished by a rotation of medical staff prodding her was similar to the concept of a coma and she shuffled down the remaining steps blearily. 

Frost clung to the windows of the door. It made the space feel grey and washed out, a reflection of the sky outside. “What’s all this?”

Her mother dabbed carefully at her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “Gifts, I suppose. They’ve been pouring in ever since we got the list… the reporters weren’t supposed to publish the names,” she faltered, glancing at Jackie. “The community has been very supportive ever since the plane went missing. Things just… keep showing up.”

Like boxes of chocolate and bottles of champagne. 

Offerings overflowed. 

Tiny cards stuck out of bundles of flowers, bright and splashy with colour. Jackie could imagine the flowers and fruit left out of sympathy in the beginning when no plane landed and nobody knew what happened. 

Her mother bustled towards the formal dining room with her arms full and Jackie dutifully followed, half numb to the experience of standing in fuzzy socks and her hair slicked back from luxurious amounts of conditioner. “I know the school wants to unveil the new memorial now that you’re back. It’ll be good to see everyone in the right setting.”

“New memorial?”

Hands faltered in their work. “Well, they had to amend it. Now that we know who died out there.”

Her mother’s eyes were red. 

It was easier to avoid that subject by rustling through one of the baskets, plucking out a bar of milk chocolate folded in a bright red wrapper. 

“Should you—”

“What? Is this not helpful for my goal weight? Is this not on the chart?” Jackie verbally jabbed as she snapped off a piece. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her as she slid into one of the stiff chairs, peeling the wrapper further back, delighting in her treat. “Didn’t I earn this?”

“Of course, darling. But you need to be careful—”

The raw sweetness made her mouth feel less like it was stuffed with cotton. “Just let me have this,” Jackie said flatly, feeling the sting of tears starting in her own eyes. “Please.”

Her mother walked away but returned with a bottle of unflavoured sparkling water, her version of a cold soda, and broke the seal for her. “Don’t make yourself sick,” she said gently. “I don’t want you getting sick.”

Fingers touched her hair softly. Jackie half remembered sleeping restlessly in her old bed and feeling someone combing through her hair, a body coiled up behind her. Her mouth turned into a tight smile and the chocolate tasted watery and of salt against her tongue. 

Whistling shattered the soft quietness of the dining room. The awkward formal nature of the long table was ruined by the mound of sweets and plastic wrapped confectionery, curling ribbons dangling from baskets. Jackie tugged at a dark green strip of velvet and stashed it in her pocket for later. “It’s looking like Christmas Day out there,” her father greeted, arms invisible from where he carried boxes. “You see all those businesses? You’ll have to start writing thank you cards.”

“I don’t think she needs—”

Her father cut her mother off mid sentence, as blunt as a hammer swinging down. “It’s polite, Janet. People are being kind. Jaqueline needs to be kind back. After that… meet and greet disaster, everybody needs to know that our daughter is normal. That she isn’t one of the crazy ones.”

“Those girls are under extreme stress. They aren’t bad… we’ve had them here before. Don’t you remember?”

“Didn’t we lose silver that time they came over for a movie?” 

“No, Henry. The cleaner misplaced it. Remember? Those pieces are in the box with the rest of the set,” Janet sighed, an old argument on rotation for the millionth time. Jackie remembered hosting a slumber party to improve morale post finals because everyone was snapping at each other and on the verge of committing a spree of murders. Pizza had been ordered and her mother fidgeted the entire night in the kitchen with the meal plan she had curated for Jackie, anxiously touching it like Jackie needed the physical reminder that she had one job. 

And that was to be perfect. 

They watched Sixteen Candles and knocked back cans of coke, laughing until three in the morning until Jackie’s father came storming down the steps, wide awake and irritated. And then they ditched the house, tiptoeing down the lawn and across the street, lobbing rolls of toilet paper at their mutual trigonometry’s teacher’s house. 

And that night, despite everything Jackie was and ever could be, was perfect. They had been alive and happy, a laugh that never stopped, Nat sleeping on one end of the living room with Lottie and Shauna sprawled between them. 

After everyone went home, trudging into the awful grimace of a rising sun, her parents found that pieces were missing a set brought into the house by some dead relative’s will. And Jackie never once suspected Nat. Not even when her father was ready to call the police, not even when her mother was yanking open cabinets in hopes of finding it in the wrong place. Which, as the story went, it had. Bernadette left the finished set of dining spoons with the serving spoons, temporarily vanishing the set from view. 

Jackie bit off another square of chocolate restlessly, vanishing that memory completely. Most of those girls were dead. They weren’t ever hosting another team spirit night again. 

“You’ll have to pick up my suit for the ceremony. I left at Winston’s for cleaning.”

“Yes, dear,” Janet sighed. “I’ll have Bernadette bring in some new vases. People will see if we start tossing flowers out.”

“God, this place looks like a funeral home.”

“Henry.”

“What? This is, what? Four dozen bouquets for three bottles of champagne? We’re celebrating. Save the flowers for the others.”

Janet plucked out a dead rose from a bunch and tossed it towards the centre of the table. “That isn’t kind, Henry. Those poor families… they could have been us.”

Yes, it should have, Jackie thought. She plucked up the dead rose and rolled it between fingers. “What’s in the boxes?” She interrupted the flow of bleak and chipper conversation. 

Henry obliged and slid them across the surface of the table in her direction and Jackie caught one before it toppled over the edge, dead rose discarded. A designer sports logo marked the side and she pried the lid off to reveal brand new running shoes in bright blue and yellow. “Nice kicks,” he praised. “I bet you’ll have more just like them coming in.”

Her old number was stitched into the side. 

She tugged them onto her feet and frowned at the perfect fit, fuzzy socks visible. They weren’t her old converse shoes, perfectly broken in and worn to her liking, but they were new. And Jackie wasn’t the same person anymore. 

“You’re looking pale, Jackie. Maybe you should go rest for a bit. I could bring down blankets to the couch,” her mother offered carefully, an old sick day treat. “There’s a fire on right now. It’ll make the room cozy.”

Why was she alive? Why was it her and not one of the others?

“I’m good.”

Rubbing at her scar was her new nervous tic. Laura Lee used to rattle around the beads of her rosary and count off her favourite saints and the motion reminded her of the dead girl, a sickening awareness. “Want me to open up the boxes? Keep an inventory so you can write out your thank you notes?” Henry added, drawing back slightly. Concern bloomed and edged out casual bickering. “Less you have to think about that way.”

“Sure.” Jackie discarded her unfinished chocolate bar next to a bright pink rose sitting on the table. “Maybe I’ll just go for a walk.”

“Yes. You should get some fresh air. You’ve been in hospital for so long… I always feel like people come out of those places sicker than when they first go in,” Janet chattered easily, sweeping away to fetch Jackie’s neglected jacket, because of course it still hung in the closet. “It’ll be good to get some sunlight. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, of course. It isn’t good to overstrain yourself, darling.”

Her mother, like champagne and flavourless sparkling water, fizzed away. She was always a do-er. She baked casseroles for other families, organized raffle tickets for the school, manned bake sale tables, guarded cash boxes, arranged and perfected their home so it shone like a jewel. If she knew how to sew, Janet Taylor would have taken a needle and thread to mend the damage ruining Jackie herself. 

Jackie followed slowly and met her by the door, forcing her arms through the sleeves of the old designer coat. She forced herself to smile as she fumbled for the buttons, avoiding her mother’s red eyes. “Thanks, mom.” 

“Of course,” Janet said easily, quickly. She threaded a cashmere scarf around Jackie’s neck loosely and it carried a whisper of Channel No. 5 perfume, soft as the roses on the tables. “Will you be alright? I should come with you. I can, actually—”

“I’ll be back. I need some quiet. I think I remember my way around the neighbourhood.”

After all, Jackie thought, she and Shauna learned how to ride bikes along the street. When she was eight she used to collect magazines from the mailbox at the end of the drive way, she used chalk to colour in flowers on the pavement. She knew Bernie from two doors down practised taxidermy in the workshop in his backyard, Brook had a drum set in her parents’ garage, the Millers hosted an annual yard sale where Shauna fawned over hardback copies of feminist literature. She knew her home. She had imagined it, every day, remembering the tiny little details that made it a cluster of homes on a street surrounded by more streets and homes. 

“I just want you to be careful. Don’t talk to anyone, Jackie. And money, there’s money,” she breathed out, yanking a handful of cash and change from her wallet and stuffing it into Jackie’s coat pocket. “Whatever you need, just come home.”

She hugged her mother tight. “I’ll be back.” 

“I’m still waiting, Jackie. I was waiting for a phone call explaining that your plane was late. I was waiting for your bus to show up, for somebody to say the driver got lost on the way to the airport,” Janet murmured into her hair. “It… it wasn’t always fair here. I know that. But I love you. I love you so much that I fail you sometimes.” 

Or maybe Jackie was the one who failed people. Maybe she was the problem. Maybe they were always left waiting for her, knowing she wasn’t measuring up right. “I’m okay,” said Jackie carefully. “I’m coming home again.” 

Her mother’s mouth, perfectly coloured in with designer lipstick, smiled. “Key’s under the pot on the porch.”

Snow crunched beneath her new running shoes and Jackie felt the chill. Presumably an old pair of sheepskin boots were lurking away in a closet somewhere but she pushed across the yard, forcing her feet to keep moving. Shauna’s car would usually be idling away by the curb but that Shauna was dead to her now. 

And current Shauna was probably sporting a nasty line of bruises around her throat. Hopefully she was smart enough to keep her distance. 

A van drifted in her wake and Jackie frowned, twisting back to see a dark tinted windshield. It had been sitting at one end across from her parents’ house and now it rolled silently after her, a shark scenting blood. 

She quickstepped her way through the darkening street and cut into town. One diner was half abandoned despite the late afternoon hour and Jackie yanked her jacket inside out, pulling the scarf up over her hair like a shield. There was as second exit out back where the girls used to share cigarettes after milkshakes and she stormed through the cluttered section of tables, head bent and deaf to her name cried out from a few of the patrons. 

Jackie worked efficiently. She bought cat eyed sunglasses from one boutique, stiff and silent as the cashier tried to chat, scanned streets twice before crossing, evaded glances by melting into the background. She didn’t bother to waste time by looking for Nat. Jackie knew there wasn’t a chance in the world that Nat would step foot inside her mother’s double wide again. And, truthfully, Nat was a hunter. When she was ready she would come for Jackie herself. 

Which would hopefully be soon, Jackie considered. She wanted to catch hold of Nat and make sure she was alive and living also. Nobody looked after Nat. It would be something to see some kind of life from the unknown variable. 

Newspapers were plastered across storefronts. A few showed grainy images of the Yellowjackets being herded from the rescue centre, Morgan invisible, and a better photo of their line up in the hotel conference centre before hell broke loose. Jackie slowed to look at them. Town pride was dolled up and in full motion, flashes of team Yellowjacket colour splayed everywhere. 

How many people had to die so they could be here? Why was it just her returning from the dead?

A tiny photo was taped up on Nat specifically. ‘Brave girl hiked solo for rescue efforts’ was text written in bold ink, the girl’s face yanked down with a hood drawn. She looked translucent in black and white. 

She traced the harsh slant of Nat’s shoulders with her eyes and frowned when she saw another face peering out at her through the reflection of the glass. “Hi, Lottie.”

“Hello.”

She always forgot what a virtual giantess Lottie was until they were standing side by side. “You’re wondering how she did it, right? Made it all the way from point A to point B?”

Jackie’s hands felt dry. She couldn’t stuff them inside her pockets because her jacket was inside out. “I’m wondering why she did it,” she clarified stiffly. The tiny version of Nat looked like prey caught on camera. “You wanna fill me in?”

“I could try but what’s the point? You’re going to want her story more. Anything I can say won’t be enough.”

“Morgan says we shouldn’t been seen together in public. We’re supposed to keep separate.”

“I think it doesn’t really matter. We’re all in this together. Morgan doesn’t really get it, but that’s fine, she wasn’t with us when we were there. Our hearts are in the same place.”

She tipped her head to the side, considering the girl. “What exactly do you want, Lottie?”

Lottie’s eyes look black as pitch in the wintery street. She lifted one finger and touched Jackie carefully, tapping her collarbone. “You’re not one of us, Jackie. But you’re… something. Someone chose you.”

A faint line of pain throbbed down her scar in response. Jackie didn’t flinch and she didn’t touch the evidence of it. “That’s a bullshit answer.”

“I want to understand you,” said Lottie easily. “You’re the most terrifying thing in this town. Except… the wilderness chose Nat first. If it came down between you both… I don’t know. One is easier than two. Multiples means indecision, chaos for picking a side.”

Jackie inhaled sharply. “If you think I’m terrifying? Don’t fucking try me. We’re not playing your weird little games anymore. This is the real world, Lottie. Stay away from Nat. Don’t go near her.”

She wiggled her fingers teasingly in her direction. “Scary, scary.”

“Go take your meds,” Jackie snapped, stalking away. Her feet stomped powdery snow and the slow building of slush collecting along the sideways. 

“She didn’t, you know. She didn’t… have a role in that particular meal,” Lottie called generously at her shadow. “But Nat doesn’t have clean hands.”

Jackie was a storm cloud that wanted to hit something. Her nails pricked her palms and she left town, left familiar streets, left everything she knew in favour of the bush growing up outside town limits. Night, dark and unyielding, laid down as a thick blanket. A few houses glowed like lighthouses in the distance. 

Her jacket barely warded off the chill from the wind. It kept rattling, restless, through the dense brush. The sidewalk ended abruptly for gravel and she kicked stray stones as she walked. 

She wanted answers. 

A cherry red truck flew by where Jackie walked and suddenly cut to the curb, gravel flying in a furious spray. The brake lights glowed, turning snow into the colour of blood, illuminating the shape of the driver dropping down and snatching out a rifle from the seat. 

Jackie politely stood still and gave Nat time to storm towards her, engine rattling in the truck still, gun popping up against her shoulder like a familiar cut in the darkness. Her breath caught the air like a cloud of smoke. 

“How’d you get the wheels?”

Nat stopped just feet away, locked around the gun. “Are you real?” 

“Don’t I look real?” Jackie tried, hands lifted in the air like a half apology for being there at all. One foot, however, edged back slightly in a clear signal that Nat was ready to turn and run. Any amusement dropped away instantly from Jackie. “It’s me.”

Jackie’s hands twitched and she fought the urge to step forward and swallow distance. Dark circles lined Nat’s eyes and they were free falling straight from the sky with their feet planted on the ground. She was so close that it hurt. Her heart blistered from unseen fire. 

Nat’s breathing was even and careful. She held the gun easily, propped against her shoulder with one finger on the trigger, safety clicked off. But nothing about Nat was relaxed. Her eyes were cold and merciless and space a hard line sketched out. Snow swirled down around them both. “You’re in my fucking head, Jack. What the hell did I do to you? You left me. You— left— me.”

Jackie felt nothing as she gazed down the barrel of the gun. Nat edged a little closer and she waited patiently. “Would you like me on my knees?”

“What is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“I buried you. I put you in the fucking ground. Whatever— whatever I had left of you,” Nat snapped, face pale and livid in the cool darkness. “You can’t be real.”

“I can prove it,” Jackie offered tentatively. She watched as Nat silently debated the odds before lowering the gun. Her knuckles, she realized, were stained violet and blue. The gun settled at her side in exchange for a switchblade from her pocket, snapping it out and extending blade first, because of course Nat never shied away from showing her claws. 

Jackie took it and cut quickly across her palm. A fast, shallow score that turned bright red with blood, a strange miracle that made no sense. She lived and breathed and somehow was bleeding, strange little party tricks with no answer as to how. “Happy? Is this enough—”

The gun dropped and Nat slammed into her hard enough that it hurt. Her hand skimmed Jackie’s jaw quickly before winding into her hair, lips pressing tight to lips. Her arms were shaking, Jackie realized, trying so hard to hold without ever letting go. She kissed back, easily, grinning into it. Jackie wanted to promise she was alive again but Nat wouldn’t let her, wouldn’t let the moment end. 

Blood dripped from her hand down Nat’s back. The girl didn’t mind. The violence softened ever so slightly, desperate and raw, hearts beating in sync. 

The knife lost itself to the darkness and they were standing on the middle of a road, somehow together, fates stitched with the same peculiar thread. 

Chapter Text

It was the easiest decision in the end to let Jackie drive Nat’s truck. It was an elderly thing, flecked with rust and prone to rattling at the slightest touch of the gas pedal, and Jackie clutched the wheel with both hands while Nat simply stared at her from the passenger seat, unwilling to look away. “It isn’t insured,” Nat warned neutrally. “Don’t take a nose dive into a ditch because I’m fucked if I have to call somebody.”

“Why don’t you have insurance?” Jackie snapped, gaze flicking over the energy drinks crumpled up and scattered over the floor of the passenger seat, the soft bulk of a sleeping bag folded up in the bed of the truck. Nat’s gun was carefully stowed away behind the seats because Jackie refused to drive around with the girl holding it. “How’d you get this anyways?”

“O’Rileys was generous,” Nat said dryly, referring to a local mechanic shop. “And my mom wasn’t exactly excited I came home.”

“They gave you a truck? I just got running shoes.”

“It’s a fossil,” she said dismissively but with a hint of fondness, dark eyes still pinned to Jackie’s face. They kept going out of town for the next nearest town, somewhere with breathing room, somewhere eyes wouldn’t be watching as Nat skimmed her fingers over Jackie’s knees, gently touched her shoulder as if checking that the girl was physically corporeal and warm to feel. “They would’ve tossed it for scrap if they didn’t have a charity project to take it.”

Jackie shivered slightly. A car flew by in the opposite direction, bright lights vanishing within seconds. 

Nat automatically cranked the heat up and it roused up in a wave of obedience. A tiny little pine freshener dangled from the mirror and the chemical fragrance of a the forest stirred from dry heat circling around the truck. Jackie breathed in deep and let the scent of home fill her lungs. 

Stars scattered overhead. She cruised under their guidance, racing along asphalt with all the pieces lining up once. Bits of civilization dotted the rural landscape; roads connecting with other roads, telephone wires stretched between poles, red blinking lights of the occasional airplane passing overhead, barns and houses, pieces of living where before they only had nothing. Jackie obediently slowed when she hit the limits of the town and turned left, parking in a gravel lot. 

They didn’t fiddle with the radio to chew up the silence. Jackie merely waited.

“How exactly did this happen?” Nat finally dared to ask, hands gripping her knees tight. Her knuckles blanched white in the darkness. “You were dead and gone, Jack.”

“I died. I remember dying. And then I was just… digging my way back up. I couldn’t breathe. I just… started being alive again. All I knew was that I was below ground and I couldn’t stay there— I’d die again, suffocating probably, if I didn’t force a way through.”

It was impossible to forget spitting out a mouthful of dirt, of peeling layers of it back just to escape her tomb. 

Nat was silent for several seconds before she twisted, scrabbling with the door handle and half tipping herself straight out of the truck before Jackie managed to catch her arm. She was dry heaving, stomach empty of anything that could be brought up again, and tears were streaming down her face. “Hey, Nat. You’re fine. Come on,” said Jackie softly, pulling white hair back with one hand to keep it out of her face. “This is okay. We’re okay.”

“I put you in that ground,” Nat rasped out miserably. “I wanted to protect whatever I had left of you. And you dug yourself out— alone.”

She flinched when Jackie pressed her mouth to her trembling shoulder and sealed a kiss to a sliver of exposed skin. Death had robbed Jackie of Nat and left the other with nothing but abandonment. “I know.”

Nat struggled to breathe. She brought both hands up and yanked at her hair, grasping for air. “You— died,” she struggled, fighting against the panic. “Gone.”

Jackie pulled her back. Despite Nat’s stiffness she eventually yielded, coming to rest against Jackie as she placed her hand across her chest, pointedly breathing in deep as a demonstration. “I can wait. I’m waiting, Nat. Just breathe. In and out, yeah?”

Pine scented air haunted both of them. And, she realized, the bitter tang of salt. 

This town was unblemished, Jackie thought miserably. Nothing bad happened to it. These people didn’t drop straight from the sky and crash through the unknown. They all got to live their ordinary jobs and finish their half started dreams. Nat curled herself into Jackie’s collar of her coat, hands fisting in the fabric. “You were my purpose,” she whispered into material and hair, terror and rage one plain element. “You— all I had — just one thing—”

Her voice splintered off. Jackie caught her hand and pried it loose, examining the marks darkening across her knuckles. “You don’t have to say it, you know. Pull yourself together, Scatorccio. Your shit’s starting to look scary,” she tried teasing, softly sweeping her thumb across Nat’s cheekbone to brush aside tears. “You didn’t survive everything just to fall off of the face of the earth, right?”

Jackie had plenty of memories from when she was alive. And she had strange flashes of happenings from after her death. And this version of Natalie Scatorccio was the result of her absence, the result of returning alone and finding nothing waiting for her. 

Nat very slowly met her eyes. “I can’t survive five minutes without—”

“You’re not ruining your life just to make it through five fucking minutes, Natalie,” Jackie warned, tone shifting to ice. “We’re not wasting any of this. You’re not getting high to cope with the fact that you deserve to be alive.”

Her silence was pointed but Jackie refused to budge. Nat was braced like she might suddenly shove her away but she knew better. Nat rarely caused the hurt unless provoked. 

Or, in Shauna’s case, spurred on by the idea of retribution. 

And rarely did she rally that force for her own wellbeing. Jackie was safest with Nat and perhaps that went the other way as well. Someone had to care. And Jackie’s heart bled with the desire to care. 

Eventually the harsh set to Nat’s mouth softened a fraction. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t get emotional on me now.”

They were replaying familiar steps, a pulse of a dance jumping through them both. “I’m still sorry,” Nat replicated history. “Jesus, I thought you were a fucking ghost.”

“Flesh and blood, apparently.”

Nat forced a wan smile before glancing down to their fingers knotted together. “What exactly are you doing now?”

“I’m getting it right. We’re getting it right,” she stressed carefully, tugging the keys free from the ignition and sliding down. “C’mon. You look half starved and I’ve got cash.”

It took effort walking side by side. Nat’s hand brushed Jackie’s lower back as she yanked the door open, gently propelling her forward. Jackie, in turn, caught one of the belt loops on the girl’s jeans, tugging close. They orbited each other’s suns, they revolved around the same motions. Twin stars split from the same pathway of light, a gravitational pull that threaded them in tight. A woman at a table frowned and she didn’t know if it was from recognition of their faces or the closeness of their bodies, irregular strangers jutting up awkwardly in a place of stationary lives. 

Jackie yanked her scarf loose and wound it gently around Nat’s throat, gently tucking bleached white hair beneath it from the woman’s sight. “You want to look at the menu?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to guess?”

“Take your best shot, Taylor,” Nat commanded dryly, fingers fidgeting with the soft ends of the scarf in absence of Jackie’s own hands. Her face looked harsh beneath the gritty bright lights and Jackie wanted to sigh at the absence of a coat or gloves, at the bruises forming along her forearm. 

The problem, she knew, was that Nat returned to nothing. She didn’t have a set of parents keeping everything she ever had in a box just in case. Her own mother, the one piece of blood connecting her to something, wouldn’t even speak in interviews. Nobody was taking care of Nat. 

She gave the menu board a frustrated once over, painfully aware of Nat’s stare watching her as she drifted along the counter, skipping anything with meat in favour of two strawberry milkshakes and fries to be split. “Do you mind if I make a phone call?” Jackie said, head bent as she scooped her change back from the cashier’s hand. 

“Yeah, sure. Are you from around here?”

“We’re not local,” she said briskly, side stepping a little display of wrapped fudge and chocolate bars for the local band in favour of the phone fastened to the wall away from the counters and tables. 

It required a dollar to make a call. She patiently fed coins into the slot and dialled a number she knew by heart, receiver itself cradled between her shoulder and ear. It rang twice before it was picked up, her mother’s anxiously thin voice bursting across the line. “Jackie?”

“Mom. Hi, sorry. I got… I’m catching up with somebody. I should’ve called sooner.”

Nat’s expression remained neutral as she waited for their order. But her fingers, Jackie noted, twisted painfully against one another in the absence of her own hand. 

“I was getting worried, darling. It’s so late.”

She forced her mouth into smiling to trick her voice into sounding lighthearted. “It’s Jeff, mom.” 

“Oh. Well, I guess. You’ll be home tonight?”

“I’ll be home tonight.”

Janet rattled off a teary goodbye and Jackie let the call die. She plucked up their order as it came out and led Nat to a table in the corner of the diner, legs knotting together beneath the surface. “What is this?” Nat practically sighed at the display of food, slumping forward as she jabbed a straw free from the wrapper. 

“Happiness. Sugar, a little bit of salt. Kind of like you, you know?”

“Funny.”

“I’m absolutely hysterical.”

The Yellowjackets had left the rescue centre with pages and pages of medically directed meal plans. Jackie wasn’t sure where milkshakes and fries sat on that list but she figured it was a safe place to start. Milkshakes probably meant calcium, she thought idly as she dipped one fry into her milkshake pointedly, silently encouraging Nat into following the action. There had to be some nutritional value to it. 

Neither of them were doing well. But they had the luxury of pairing together in a strange world, astronauts touching down for oxygen for the first time in a life time. Her running shoe bumped against a black boot and they were the same, despite all of it. 

Nat yanked her into the shadows beneath the nearest tree, hand pressed tight to Jackie’s mouth as bark bit into shoulders. Shauna’s footsteps circled restlessly the slope above vanishing backdown towards the lake, half girl and half vulture. “She’s been following you the entire way here.”

“What? You stalking me now?” Jackie grinned back, tugging Nat’s hand away from her mouth.

“Thought you’d get lost. Buddy system, right?”

“Buddy system usually involves handholding.” 

Teeth nipped at her throat lightly before drawing back. “I’m not her, you know. I can’t be… her. If you’re picking someone and you’re looking for an easy replacement—”

Shauna kept dragging her nest of bedding beside where Jackie slept every night. She kept dogging at her heels, a shadow that wouldn’t rest. Shauna was suffocating Jackie and Jackie didn’t know how to pry the arms away from her neck, how to separate herself from their conjoined status. If Jackie’s heart was beating, Shauna seemed to silently expect blood to flow through their veins like a circle, one person crafted from two lives. 

“I can’t be with someone who hurts me just because she loves me,” Jackie said carefully, each word a shard of broken glass to be spat up. “Thinks she loves me, anyways.”

“I can’t be Jeff either.” 

“You don’t trust much, do you?”

Nat stiffened and parroted back Jackie’s words. “I can’t be with someone who’ll hurt me. I’m not a game.”

Jeff had been handsome. He had shone white gold. His parents vacationed in the same places her parents vacationed. He was the perfect match that the stars in the sky should have foretold from the very beginning. But she was all wrong. And she wanted what felt right.

“If we go back— if a rescue team finds us tomorrow,” Jackie forced herself to say, straightening her shoulders and looking at Nat like a solider preparing for battle. “I don’t want to keep doing the same shitty things on repeat. We could’ve died. We might actually die,” she amended. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.”

“Shit. That’s a pretty high stakes deal.”

“Yeah, well. You’re a heartbreaker, right?”

Nat’s boot nudged Jackie’s converse softly. “We can stop if you want. I don’t kiss and tell.”

Jackie had done everything right. She had hauled Shauna from a burning plane because that was the decent thing to do. She helped ration food, picked through belongings to assemble the best items for their survival. And now she wanted what felt right. What made her heart skip a beat.

She offered herself on a silver platter for Nat Scatorccio. 

“You’re not sleeping in your fucking truck,” Jackie snapped, shoving Nat out from her seat. “It’s cold. You don’t even have a jacket.”

Nat mechanically dropped down from the truck with a scowl. “I don’t have a home—”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she warned. “Look.”

The Taylor house was lit up despite the hour. Light poured out of the windows. “Your parents won’t like you bringing home a stray.” 

“Jeff could climb up to my bedroom window and he was an idiot. I’m positive you’ll manage just fine.”

“Oh, well. If that’s the bar I have to meet,” Nat sneered mockingly as she sized up the height. “Which window?”

“The one with lace curtains. It’ll be unlocked,” Jackie said. Old Jackie had left it accessible for a rendezvous with Jeff. And her room hadn’t been altered in the slightest since her vanishing and death. New Jackie appreciated the rule breaking habits from the past. “Don’t break your neck.”

Nat drifted soundlessly across the yard, feet soft in the snow and leaving half prints that wouldn’t take long for the falling snow flakes to fill. It was barely a challenge, Jackie realized, of hauling her way up the brick work, lifting onto the narrow bit of roofing jutting out. She watched as the girl quietly balanced her way towards the window and pried it open, tipping straight through with a sarcastic flourish. 

Jackie followed a longer, more ordinary route. The door was unlocked and she hung her jacket automatically on the hanger in the closet, toeing off shoes before finding her parents sitting stiffly in silence in front of a muted television. 

Henry jolted at the sight of her. “You’re home,” he said with an audible thread of relief in his voice. “You’re home,” he said again, softer. 

“Hi.”

“There’s dinner on the counter. Small portions,” Janet perked up. “You shouldn’t make yourself sick, Jackie. Your stomach won’t be used to it.”

Flowers were everywhere. They sat perched in crystal vases and cluttered half the surfaces. Jackie inhaled deeply and smelt the soft fragrance of it all, tiny blossoms out of place with the season. “I had something small when I was out. No big deal.”

“Memorial’s tomorrow.”

“I’ll get a ride.”

“We should go as a family,” Janet tried tentatively, half wounded already.

“Nat doesn’t have a family,” Jackie said flatly, unwilling to draw back. Someday she would have to fight a bigger fight. “She can’t go alone.”

“That girl is insane,” Henry sneered, jabbing at the remote for the television and flicking through channels. “I appreciate what she did for you and the other girls… but she nearly killed your best friend. Little Shauna Shipman… I remember the pair of you running around the halls here, half in and half out of each other’s shadows.”

Jackie swallowed bitterly as she shook her head. “Do you know how far she would’ve walked? Alone? Just to get help. Nat could’ve died trying.”

Why, her heart screamed in silence, why why why? Why did she leave the group? Why did she take the only gun? Why was leaving her only option?

“She’s a fighter,” Janet appraised carefully, half reading the situation. “Everyone is in a delicate state these days. It’s only naturally you want to support a friend.”

Her heart seemed permanently bound to Nat Scatorccio. 

“I’m tired. I’ll talk to you in the morning,” Jackie decided firmly. Boundaries had to be established. She wasn’t the same girl that once lived in this house. Whoever she was going to be, there was no going backwards. 

She wasn’t dead in a grave. 

“Goodnight, darling.” Janet’s head bowed as she examined her hands cradled in her lap, older than Jackie remembered her being or ever imagined her looking. 

Age was a funny thing. Her parents looked so young and happy in old photographs when she was just born. And then she grew up and they looked less of either. 

Jackie drifted quietly back to her bedroom and Nat automatically shoved her deckchair beneath the handle, preventing anyone else from entering the space. “We’ve got a memorial tomorrow,” Jackie said softly. “Think you’re up to it?”

“Are you going?”

“Yeah.”

Nat’s fingers ran through Jackie’s hair, slowly twisting the length through. “I’ll be there.”

A soccer trophy glittered on her desk. In a different life there might have been a second one, something to complete the array of medals hanging off of hooks. And, behind it, sat a potted aloe vera plant long dead. Neglect had withered the green spikes and turned it to a husk of something. The dirt was probably rotten, Jackie thought critically of it, doomed by her vanishing.

It was a good thing Jackie’s desire for greenery had ended with one castoff from her mother’s collection. 

“You can’t try and kill Shauna again. Not in public, at least.”

Nat whirled away, point of contact vanishing quickly. “She should’ve known better. I should’ve know what she was doing. But Shauna? I’ll make sure I even that out. If I see her, I'll kill her.”

A strange memory tugged at Jackie’s bones. Voices were screaming, an awful whip in the night sky. Flames devoured… the sensation of vanishing slowly, peeling back beneath layers of heat—

No, Jackie thought. She firmly closed the door to that particular scene of horror. Clinically she knew her body had been partially burned before consumed. She didn’t need to recall the exact feeling. But something tugged back, restlessly, driving her deeper. 

“Give me something to aim for,” Nat’s voice hissed from darkness. “Take one step and I’ll shoot.”

More fire poured off of the carcass. Orange heat melted snow, softened the ground itself. Jackie could taste the powdered ash and black smoke churning into the frosted air. It was bitter, unending. “You’re wasting—”

Nat laughed raggedly. “You want a sacrifice, right? Here’s your fucking sacrifice. Here’s your divine waste.”

Fire ate layers of skin and flesh. It cleaned the meat from the bones. Blood turned to nothing. 

She snapped back, head pounding. Nat’s eyes narrowed from across the slight distance, girlhood bedroom a minefield between where they stood. “Are you okay?”

Jackie flexed her hands slowly, uncomfortable between memory and present. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” she clarified, disliking Nat’s unreadable expression. “I’m still here,” she said uselessly. She didn’t know if there was an exact timeline to her second chance of life, if after a certain stretch of days or months she might burn up into nothing, or what lurked beyond the unknown. 

Shooting stars were just dying stars on their last legs. 

She didn’t want to die again. She didn’t want Nat to be alone again. 

Nat sat uneasily on the edge of Jackie’s bed and pushed her hands against her knees. She remembered this, Jackie knew, how Nat often forced her hands and feet to be still. Her mind was wired to move constantly, to think constantly. Classrooms bored her. And Nat was careful to keep her restless tendencies to herself to avoid creating notice. 

The soccer field, though, was the one place Nat got to move freely. She didn’t have to suppress the parts that made her complete. 

And, Jackie realized bitterly, the woods. Nat adapted to the movements of the trees, the pace of the hills. She was a natural fit for the wildness. Half frantic and half contemplative, her dark gaze reading the space for a sign of anything. 

“Are you mad that I died?” She made herself ask. 

“Livid.”

“Oh.”

“And—” Nat looked away, expression like ice. “I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

It was regret, Jackie knew, that brought up anger so easily. She was hiding behind it like a shield, refusing to give anything that might be hurt again. 

But if Jackie was just a reckless shooting star on the verge of dying, she wasn’t wasting a moment of her freefall. 

“What happened? What happened to you after I—”

“No,” said Nat savagely, cutting Jackie off. “I’m not talking about that. I’ll give you anything that you want, but not— I can’t give you that.”

A moonlit breezed pushed against the glass of her windows, rattling softly. Jackie could almost see the terror in Nat’s glare. “Anything I want?”

She nodded stiffly, looking half trapped in the shrine of the girl that Jackie used to be. They weren’t pinning each other against trees anymore, recklessly chasing pleasure in patches of raw sunlight. But Jackie still wanted what she loved, what she had been missing in the abyss of nothing. 

Jackie spoke forcefully, leaving no hint of softness that might make the other girl turn and flee. “I want you, Nat.” 

“Still?”

“Stay.”

Smuggling Jeff into her bedroom had felt like checking off boxes on a to do list, trying to manufacture an experience that she didn’t really feel. Nat, in contrast, was like thawing ice. They reached for each other at the same time, bodies tumbling from the force of their demands, wild fire slamming into glacial ice. Jackie kissed Nat like she was drowning. Jackie kissed Nat like she was waking up for the first time. They hit the bed together and pushed to get closer, frantic in their hasty silence. 

A jerky nod signalled the removal of excess clothing. A black plain shirt landed on the floor along with battered boots. Jackie brushed her fingers along the delicate arch of Nat’s spine, skimming old scars and history with familiar knowledge, careful to leave no pain behind in the motion. 

“God, you’re pretty.”

“Don’t be such a girl,” Nat bit back, nipping at her throat softly with teeth, carefully leaving a hint of a mark. She tugged restlessly at Jackie’s shirt and pulled it off before halting, freezing up at the sight of—

Oh, Jackie realized. “Souvenir,” she summed up weakly. 

“What the hell does this mean?” Nat demanded softly, tension coiled up like a snake waiting to strike.

She looked like she wanted to shadow box with death. 

“I don’t know,” said Jackie thinly, crossing her arms to guard herself. “It was like… my skin got stitched together here. I woke up with it. I think it’s the reason I’m alive again.”

Nat’s hard expression faded instantly. She laid a pale hand over the scar with reverence. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said carefully. Honesty sounded brittle in the midnight air. She slid a finger down the length of the scar and it was Jackie’s undoing, dismantling her armour and letting Nat take full advantage, blood burning with desperation. 

Her mouth left a constellation of kisses across Jackie’s sternum. And then she dipped lower, hand touching the curve of a hip, mouth making a feast of a body splayed out. 

Mercurial white hair spilled over Jackie’s stomach and she wound it back with her own hand, tugging carefully to reposition and twist, catching Nat on her back and pinned by her own legs; hunter caught in a trap devised of Jackie’s own creation. “I wasn’t finished,” Nat warned her with frostiness, writhing when Jackie’s fingers brushed low. “You weren’t finished.”

“I know, Nat. You’re a giver,” Jackie teased. “But we’ve got all night.”

“I’m going to wait for you. I’m not going to leave you alone.”

The aloe vera slowly stretched itself back to life, green shoots soft and swollen. Time, despite death, had left no real impression on it. 

Chapter Text

“I found a couple extra blankets,” Shauna said, stepping around Jackie’s feet awkwardly. The porch was soft with rot and she was sitting hunched by the steps, knees drawn up to her chest as she peered at the suddenly larger world. 

A lake, shelter. They were beyond tiny limits of the plane crash site and gazing into the new frontier together, numb to the confining horizon. 

“Great,” she said blankly. “Thanks.”

Shauna set them down carefully. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, okay? I have no idea what’s right or wrong out here. I was just following my gut so that we… wouldn’t die of thirst. I don’t know about you, but— I’m really scared. They should’ve come for us by now, right? What if they’re never going to?”

The distant lake looked cold. Waves shivered as they hit the shoreline in steady beats. Light scattered off of the surface and turned the depths white and silver. Her bones ached with the desire to sink beneath it, to tuck herself into the catch of a current and transform to reflected sunlight. Shauna plucked nervously at the sleeve of her shirt and Jackie watched, silent and hollowed out, frozen with the realization that she had already lost her best friend in the world. 

There was no unknowing the truth. 

Jackie pulled one of the blankets free from the pile. They had the faint scent of pine pressed to the rough material and she inhaled deeply. “Come here,” she made herself offer. One arm stretched out to invite the other girl to lean into her shoulder. Shauna was half of Jackie’s heart, Shauna was half of Jackie’s childhood, Shauna was half of Jackie’s planned future. “The worst is behind us, okay?” She lied carefully, giving them both some kind of mercy. “We survived a fucking plane crash. We’re gonna be fine.”

Shauna went to take her hand but Jackie shifted slightly, pulling back before fingers could lace together. 

“Are we okay?”

“Yeah. Things are just different.” 

Thousands of tiny white moths suddenly peeled themselves up from across the lake like a curtain taking flight at the same moment. Their wings hit air and they were the froth in the sky, tiny bodies fading away, leaving nothing but the swollen black water. 

Sunlight, she realized, was vanished. It was a lake of blood and ink, something colourless. The moths no longer shielded the truth from anyone. 

Shauna’s elbow slammed into Jackie’s stomach and she yanked away blindly from the impact, gasping for air and trying to avoid a second hit. Light, different light, poured through the bedroom windows. She was half drowned by her own consciousness and watched dazed as Nat fought against the trappings of blankets and tumbled face first to the floor, crying out. 

It was a dream, Jackie realized mutely. Shauna wasn’t beside her at all. They were in her childhood bedroom and lifetimes away from the wild. 

“No, no,” Nat half moaned, wild with fear, fists in front of her face and shaking. “No. I can’t— I don’t want to feel it.”

Jackie hit the ground on her knees with one blanket around her like a cloak. “Hey. You’re fine,” she hissed, snapping fingers impatiently as she tried to rouse Nat back to the normal side of insanity. “You need to be quiet.”

She stared at Jackie wide eyed. “Why is this happening?” 

Because they fell straight out of the heavens together. 

“Remember last night? My parents don’t know you’re here.”

“I remember— you,” Nat’s voice splintered into a sob. “Always you.”

“I’m right here,” Jackie tried, softening. “It’s me. You know me better than anybody else, Nat. This isn’t fake. This isn’t something you’ve made up. We’re going to be fine.”

“You’re dead,” Nat contradicted, voice faint in the raw morning light. “You died.”

“And I came back.”

She could have been an oil painting of a battle field, Jackie thought distantly. Something bloody and wounded, wrapped up in a golden frame of light. Nat, she imagined, would have a gun and a knife drawn, something that combined recklessness and valiance together. A painter would have to understand how to lengthen her shadow to properly carve out Nat’s real presence, and that she needed to be in motion even when pressed beneath layers of colours. 

Jackie held one hand out in offering and Nat flinched back before tentatively reaching out, fingers skimming her wrist to feel bones beneath skin, a faint pulse fluttering away. “You came back?” Nat asked, half dazed as she examined proof by touch. 

The blanket slipped down from her shoulder and revealed that curious scar. “Better?” 

Nat stared at Jackie like she was trying to take in every detail. “I missed you. I missed you so much, Jack.”

“Jackie?”

“Fuck,” she hissed, lunging for where a shirt had been tossed from the night before. “This is not good. Shit, shit, shit—”

Clothes went on awkwardly. Jackie nearly tripped over her own feet as she yanked a pair of sweatpants up properly, fumbling for the drawstring. 

“Jackie, darling?”

The door jiggled against the chair bracing it closed. Jackie spun around and glared at Nat as the girl yanked her shirt on over her head, white blonde hair popping up with a disgruntled expression. “You have to get out,” she hissed, kicking a pair of boots closer for Nat. “And knock on the front door.”

“Oh, no. That’s not happening,” Nat muttered back, fumbling to get her jeans on. “Nope. I’ll—”

“Nat.”

The door jiggled a little harder. “Jackie? Darling? Why is this locked?” Her mother’s voice sounded shrill. 

Jackie jabbed her finger mutely at the sweater on the floor and Nat gave her a withering glare back, laces half knotted on her boots, complying only when she wasn’t going to budge on the matter. The old hoodie would give her a bit of warmth in the morning chill, which according to a quick glance out the window, was frostier and more snow covered than the day before. 

Her own hands shook slightly as the window was pried open and a lash of cool air flooded through. Nat took her exit gracefully and pushed it back down behind her, vanishing from view in a few quick movements.

She would be back. Nat was coming back. Jackie refused to submit for a panic attack. They didn’t need words to make promises. She released a slow breath before tugging the chair free, awkwardly forcing it away as the door kept rattling from her mother’s determined hand. 

Janet stood white faced. “I heard you screaming. I thought you were hurt,” she said, eyes flicking around the room before returning to Jackie’s face. Had Nat been screaming? What kind of things haunted her sleep that she cried from it? “And the door was locked.”

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Her shirt was on backwards and she felt the tag scratching against her collarbone, guilt practically evident in the chaos left behind. The blankets of the bed were half on the floor and one sock was half visible from where it lay. Her hands, she thought, must have been bright red. She had delighted in mapping out Nat’s body with a series of touches, reacquainting herself with familiar territory and now the supposed crime must be visible in the morning light. 

And, Jackie thought with satisfaction, she loved that particular crime. 

“I had a dream. Just a bad one,” she said. 

“This shouldn’t be locked.”

“Okay.”

“If you’re hurt and the door is locked, I can’t get to you.”

“Okay.”

It was like being back in her old life. Jackie had survived a plane crashed, died of exposure, and resumed life inside her own grave but felt three inches high beneath her mother’s nervous stare. 

There had to be a plan, she thought miserably. Whatever she was alive for, something had to be done in order to live. 

Jackie loved girls. Jackie loved a girl. And what was the point of having a heart to love with if she had to bottle it up and pretend it didn’t exist?

Whatever her mother wanted to say died the minute loud knocking echoed through the house. She spun for it automatically before faltering, catching one hand on the door. “I’m glad you’re home again,” Janet said towards the lace curtains and duvet cover, all the components carefully picked and curated for Jackie. And, Jackie realized, they all had purposes again. Her room had been left untouched and unbothered, a door waiting for her own hand to open it again. 

She yanked blindly for a black dress hanging in the closet and threw it on. It was short at her knees, slightly outgrown, and made her look half invisible in the mirror’s reflection. 

White blonde hair was barely visible through the privacy glass of the door. Janet opened the door cautiously and peered at the slight form of Nat standing on the doorstep, truck keys in hand. “You’re Nat,” Janet said uneasily, as if she hadn’t met the girl dozens of times before the plane crash. 

“I’m Nat,” she agreed quietly. Her shoulders were drawn back and posture iron straight, a silent resolve etched across the set of her mouth. “Jackie home?”

She stepped into view. “I told Nat I’d go with her for the memorial,” Jackie reminded Janet. 

“And she’s wearing that?” Janet whispered to Jackie, half turned in her direction and fully audible to both girls. “Doesn’t she have proper clothes?”

Nat stayed silent. Janet heaved a sigh and flung the door open wider, allowing permission to enter the house. “We have work to do, girls. Go to the kitchen. I’ll… sort something out.”

They obediently migrated into the landscape of granite countertops and metallic coloured appliances. Nat was a pale shadow lingering at Jackie’s heels, barely separate. “Have you even gone home yet?” Jackie asked as she slid onto a bar stool and toyed with the petals of a tiger lily, fresh bunch clumped together in a plain vase. Apparently the kitchen was the dumping ground of flowers because they lined the counter like some kind of alter. The house was at full capacity for floral arrangements. 

Something about Nat seemed frozen. “Not really. Stopped by for the gun,” she said carefully as if weighing each word in her mind. The nightmare was gone but Nat was still waking up, uncomfortable with her own vulnerabilities. She circled the room before pausing at the fridge. “What’s this?”

She was pointing at the note pinned to the fridge with two magnets. It, like everything else of Jackie’s, had been frozen in place. Her name was etched across the top in her mother’s looping script with a list of dates and allotted numbers running down the side. “Oh. That’s called ‘maintaining goal weight for optimal success’. It’s basically bullshit.”

“I’d feed a dog more,” Nat said in a low voice. She plucked the old diet plan down and held it in her hands carefully. It was amazingly contradictory to the other list hanging beside it, the one sent home from the hospital for regaining appetite and nutrition. “You lived like this?”

You might have been stronger if you weren’t half starved from the beginning went unvoiced. Jackie still heard the sting of it in the silence.

“Yeah.” Jackie couldn’t justify it. She didn’t want to try. 

Nat ripped the paper in jagged halves before tossing them into the garbage can hidden beneath the sink. 

Heels clacked impatiently down the hall and Janet sailed into view with dresses slung over one arm and a tiny jar that rattled. “You’re not very big,” she murmured, squinting at where Nat stood. “We’ll have to make adjustments.”

It was kindness, Jackie realized, when Nat pressed her lips into a flat line and took the burden of dresses into a side room to get changed. Janet seemed immune to the force of Nat’s tempered silence, quickly laying out two bowls of plain oatmeal with matching cups of orange juice during their wait. A handful of pills were rationed out evenly. 

Pills for iron and calcium. Pills for vitamins. Pills to make up for everything that they were missing. Jackie knocked them back without protest before Nat returned to the room, dwarfed in an old black dress she had once worn to an uncle’s funeral four years prior. They were both hollow looking from starvation but Jackie had the pristine advantage of a couple inches to give her some height. 

Janet pursed her lips and judged. “It’ll have to do. People will be watching,” she said to Jackie as she unscrewed the lid to a jar and plucked out a handful of pins. “It’s best to put on a good face.”

Nat stiffened when Janet moved behind her and smoothed down the material across her shoulders. It seemed to cost her something to hold still and allow her mother to work, gently pinning fabric to benefit Nat’s shape. Her boots, battered and practically falling apart from months of survival, looked obscene in a delightful way with the black dress. 

“My mom likes a project,” Jackie said carefully, hoping to thaw Nat’s mouth back into something close to a smile. “It’s a good thing she doesn’t know how to sew. You’d be her personal pin cushion.”

“I know how to sew,” Janet murmured as she manipulated the loose folds around Nat’s waist into proper alignment. “I had a lovely mending basket for when you were growing up.”

“Yeah. You’d put anything in it that needed fixing. I just always outgrew it before you ever got around to mending something.”

“Well, that was the unfortunate consequence of a growing girl.”

“Almost like you planned for that or something.”

Janet laughed. It wasn’t a familiar sound Jackie wasn’t used to hearing. “She’ll need a proper coat. The pins are visible otherwise. Make sure you both eat,” she said, speaking around Nat to look at Jackie. “Small meals scattered throughout the day will allow you to regain full strength.”

She vanished in a subtle wave of Channel No. 5 perfume and they were alone again, brief bubble of space uninterrupted. Some of the flowers looked brighter in the morning light, Jackie realized. Bursts of pinks and streaks of red, open faces leaning towards the window behind her. One of the cards pinned to a cluster of sunflowers was marked with ‘happy your survived’ and several exclamation marks. 

What would have been written, Jackie wondered silently, if she stayed dead? Sorry you couldn’t make it? Sorry you were weak? Sorry that you survived a plane falling from the sky just to die later?

“Is this all going to shatter?” Nat asked, rolling one pill across the counter with her finger. “Because it doesn’t feel real.”

The sunlight pouring through the windows at their backs felt real. It left a streak of warmth against her shoulder. Nat’s hair was illuminated by the light; plain white burnished with ivory and hints of violet. “I know. But it is. It has to be real.”

She flipped her hand over to reveal the cut scoring through fate lines across her palm. Nat started to reach for her before heels clicked back, loud as any alarm bell shrieking, and her mother sailed through the room unbothered and unaware of the scene she was breaking up. A coat was dropped onto the counter beside Nat’s elbow. “Your father will be there, Jackie. He’s meeting with somebody this morning to discuss the settlement prospects.”

“What settlement?”

“From the plane crash, darling. There’s always money to be dealt with when things like this happen,” Janet said. “I’d imagine you’ll each walk away with enough to start a brilliant future. Each of your girls went through something awful.”

Money. In a different life they would have been at that soccer game and scouts would have been watching Nat demolish the goalie with her agility and precision. Jackie would have taken off for college, would have gone on living her predetermined life with all the pieces already laid out. But now some faceless company might cough up money to justify surviving. 

Nat went to deposit their finished bowls in the sink and Janet shook her head. “The maid will tidy up. No need to fuss, dear.”

“Ready?” She asked thinly, looking at Jackie with a questioning gaze. Ready to pick me? Or is this easier? she seemed to ask silently and without judgement. 

Jackie wondered if Nat knew how to love anyone without leaving an exit door wide open for somebody else’s convenience. She nodded silently, refusing to budge an inch even as she dropped down to her feet and led them both out of the house. 

The hedges trembled beneath heavy layers of snow. It softened their edges, made the visible green more vibrant. 

“I dream about vending machines and chocolate bars,” Jackie said, breaking the silence. She wasn’t driving to the memorial. Nat was unwilling to allow that control slip from her grip. “And planes crashing. Winter. Shauna. I sometimes think I’m underground—”

Nat’s hands clenched around the steering wheel as she drove through the steady pace of traffic, cars and people drawing in tight to the park space by the school. They could see the bleachers from the soccer team, Jackie realized, just beyond the trees. They were so close to where everything started. 

“And sometimes the dreams aren’t so bad,” she finished, turning her face away from the wooden bleachers, the familiar space. Occasionally she replayed through old memories in her sleep; of girls playing soccer on the field, of girls laughing in the locker room, of girls grinning with their teeth after claiming victory, of girls that they used to be. 

She parked on the side of the road behind a white van and killed the engine with a harsh twist of the keys. People were dressed in black with formal wool coats. A few obvious clusters of attendees twisted and turned like they were trying to keep tabs on where the surviving Yellowjackets were. One hand, Jackie saw, pointed in their direction. 

“Fucking vultures,” Nat sneered, tipping her head back and shutting her eyes. “There was a photographer, you know. He tried taking a picture of me back in the centre. It was… I don’t know, actually. Maybe you were already in the building. Maybe it was before. I was tired, I guess. Spent all that time being sober out there and they drugged me until I couldn’t see straight.”

A story. Jackie kept her hands folded carefully in her lap to avoid spooking Nat. “Oh?”

“People said it was a hoax at first. That I was crazy. I think he just wanted something to sell a magazine. I woke up and he was in the doorway trying to get this photo… I would’ve killed him if they hadn’t stopped me.”

“I’d have killed him myself,” Jackie said dryly. “He’s a creep.”

“I keep forgetting that I’m not supposed to hurt people anymore.”

They were still drenched in their nightmares. “Is that what you dream about? Hurting people?”

Nat’s eyes opened. “All the time.” 

There was a flash of movement from within the crowd. Morgan was clearly herding Yellowjackets. Chairs were stationed in neat little rows before a monument that was clearly under curtain for the grand review. The front rows were marked off with black ribbons. Jackie shoved a hand blindly into her pocket and pulled out a green ribbon and yanking Nat’s wrist out to knot it carefully around. “I’m still with you, idiot.”

“Oh, ride or die?”

She smirked at the fragile attempt of a jerk before frowning again. “What happened to that guy’s camera? Did he get any—”

“I tried using his camera to smash his face in. There wasn’t anything left of it after they pulled me off.”

“Amazing. I might’ve tried something sexier, like garrotting with a wire?”

Nat gave a bark of laughter. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Morgan rapped her knuckles impatiently against the window of the truck and the amusement faded instantly, bright eyed mirth tucked away beneath a mask. “Ladies. Are you joining us today?”

They slowly withdrew from the calmness of the truck to gaze up at their handler. Morgan’s plain suit looked awkwardly hemmed. “We need a clean procedure today. No antics and no hysterics. You got lucky that no charges were pressed, Natalie. I can’t hand out second and third chances here.”

More index cards were passed out. Nat’s hand clenched around them tight. “Totally ready for a good time,” she said in a tight voice. “No issues.”

Shauna was slumped over in her chair with a bright red scarf visible around her neck. 

“Do not become my issue,” Morgan clarified. “I want resolution here. People only see what we put in front of them.”

Silence was Nat’s answer and they allowed themselves to be ushered into their seats, conveniently opposite to where Shauna was seated, uncomfortably aware of the eyes settling over their backs. “Don’t talk to them,” Jackie said softly, the back of her hand brushing the side of Nat’s leg. “Just me. Fuck the script.”

Taissa looked partially mutinous as she came through the crowd with her hair pulled back by a black band. “They couldn’t have waited for spring? It’s fucking cold.”

“I want a vacation,” Van agreed quietly, half whispering in Taissa’s ear. “Are there seriously photographers for this?”

“Make sure you smile.”

“Smile?”

“You see media? They see your future. Give them something good so they don’t make you look crazy.”

The trees surrounded the parking looked heavy with snow. Their branches seemed to slump beneath the weight. Jackie tried to keep her mind detached from the snow on the ground and the chill in the wind. But an awful thought sprang into her mind, scuffing her boot against the snow and hardened ground, feeling that density of winter sinking straight through—

“Hello. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today,” Morgan’s voice floated serenely across the assembled audience. “This community has gone through so much.”

Voices softly murmured in agreement. Jackie squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on the slight weight of her jacket, scarf knotted twice around her throat. She was warm. She was safe. 

A wind brushed her face. 

“Originally this memorial was designed to mourn and celebrate our losses. Every individual was a personal loss for this town and for their families, something that was—"

“Not— jealous of you, Jackie.” 

So much darkness. Her thin sweater wasn’t enough to ward off the coldness coming in with the night. 

“—sorry for you.”

Jackie was supposed to be waiting. She said something but was deaf to her own voice. Bright white light burst across her vision and the taste of iron flooded her mouth—

Applause burst up. Jackie swallowed back the taste of blood and mechanically put her hands together, numb to the motions. A red curtain dropped and revealed a granite cross with names etched across the surface. A revised list of names, she realized. 

Her mind felt like it was full of static and she was trying to tune into the right channel. Tiny bits of pieces jumped back and forth, incoherent as the message dissolved into nothing. A blonde girl stooped to despite a wreath at the base of the cross and she realized that it was Allie; aggressively unlikeable Allie, Allie with her bones exposed on the soccer field, Allie with her stupid luck. 

Taissa’s head bent a fraction on an inch. 

A few families drew forward to drop bundles of flowers and wreathes alongside her offering. She was so focused on watching Allie walk away with the slightest of a limp that she missed the process, half dazed and near drunk from the frost of winter, and Shauna was suddenly leaning into the microphone looking like a deer pinned by headlights. 

“I’ll never forget the crash,” she said softly. Someone cried in response, a sob bursting up from no where. “It felt like my entire world ended.” 

The red scarf looked like blood around her throat. The red curtain from the cross looked like blood on the ground. 

“But maybe I was lucky. I couldn’t have survived it without my best friend. I wasn’t alone out there.” 

There was damage tucked beneath Jackie’s skin. A whole narrative was carved into literal stone and yet it failed to tell the true story. 

“I survived winter because of Jackie Taylor.”

Something was wrong. Splinters of the porch broke beneath her hands and she tipped sideways, desperate and half blind, into the nest of shadows. Snow glossed over her skin and hair like a shroud. 

She was so cold that it burned like fire. 

Shauna vanished. Lottie rotated in, followed by Misty. Nat appeared to be a sharp as a razor blade, attention honed on the dark hair girl with the red scarf. Her hands clenched automatically into fists and icy temper radiated. 

Morgan was clearly trying to keep working the angle of ‘they were just girls’ to the media and crowd. Flickers of camera work burst from the backend of the audience and every so often bits of light sparked from the flash. Misty gave a fairly clinical testimony to her time taking the babysitter’s first aid course twice in her ability at providing triage that had some audience members murmuring curiously, Van silent and refusing to move from her seat, and the other girls working through stiff bits of writing. 

They were strong enough to survive, the moral went, by sheer luck. 

Taissa grinned in direction of the cameras with her chin tilted up. 

She paused, midway through her speech, as if sensing a flurry of motion from their media companions. Her practised smile hid teeth. 

Jackie tried to wait. Jackie tried to stay. 

But it wasn’t enough. She died in the end. 

Nat stood up sharply. Her feet carried her to the microphone and she gazed through the stone, through the names, through the people. She looked untouchable on her own, glacial ice unwilling to thaw. 

But then her stare settled on Jackie, a bone hook catching on something soft. “There’ll be good days and bad ones. We survived because we didn’t die. And we’ll always miss the ones who did,” she said almost tonelessly, if not for the slight catch barely audible to Jackie’s own ears. 

Morgan’s face, half visible from where she stood to the side, blanched as Nat went off script. 

“I— I went looking for signs. I started walking and kept going because I thought I’d find something. I wanted to find my way home again.” 

Hands touched the body. “God damnit, Jack. Wake up. Open your fucking eyes. You bitch— don’t you dare leave me here. Wake up!”

Ice shrieked at her. Fingers combed through her hair and swept snow away from face. The sky cried overhead. 

Winter swore savagely even as arms wound themselves around the body to hold, around the tiny bit of Jackie Taylor that was left to linger. Their hearts were so close but only one sat silent and unmoving. 

Dead, dead, dead—

Nat’s voice rose slightly in volume. “I think we brought something back with us. And I don’t know what that means, but we’re here today because that something brought us together. I dug graves— every single loss meant something to us. And  I’m always going to remember what it was like digging that space, knowing what I was laying down.”

Silence stretched out before it shattered. People stood and applauded, faceless and ignorant to the true meaning tucked beneath Nat’s words. She stood braced at the microphone like she expected the worst and flinched back when she realized she had their acceptance. 

She walked mutely back to her seat with her hands in her pockets and head bent. 

It was magic, Jackie considered, how public opinion had shifted so dramatically. Ex burn out was the hero that walked through wilderness just to save her friends. Headlines had a way of transforming anyone good and bad. 

Jackie gritted her teeth and took up her place at the microphone, wall of dead to her spine, teammates gazing up at her in silence. Her world seemed like it was in attendance. Jeff was five rows back from where Shauna was sitting, terse and grim, and her parents sat stiffly with the other parents. This could have been a high school graduation. This could have been the awards night following a soccer championship. 

This could have been easier. 

But, selfish by nature, Jackie didn’t want to yield the few things she still had left. Hope was marigold coloured like the sun and flowers and she clung to that warm colour. 

Nat watched her. Nat was still watching her. 

She could pay the price of what it all cost. She looked at the index cards in her hands and the words meant nothing. Jackie repeated the script written by Morgan’s careful hand, a monologue about team leadership and lessons learned about endurance. 

“I’m grateful that I get to be here today.”

People gathered together in solemn clusters, half gazing towards the new memorial and the other half towards the surviving few. Jackie met their stares pointedly even as she tugged at the scarf around her neck. 

“We’ll need a photo of the girls,” her father muttered as he pulled out a camera from his pocket. “Something to remember this day by.”

Her mother’s face tinted red. “Henry, this isn’t a celebration. I don’t think we should be doing this right here.”

“Nonsense. My daughter is alive. I want a photo of her,” Henry said briskly, fidgeting with buttons. “Shauna! Yes, stand together.”

Nat was pointedly out of the frame but she kept watch, stuck at Janet’s side as Shauna awkwardly shuffled into Jackie’s arm. Laura Lee’s parents ambled by slowly and stiffly on their way to deposit a cluster of flowers to the cross and Jackie felt horrible shame burn through her. Your daughter gave us an idea of a God, she wanted to tell them. Your daughter managed to touch the sky and never came back down. Your daughter should’ve made it.  

Hundreds of photos existed of Shauna and Jackie paired together. This version was stilted and awkwardly positioned, small beneath the looming granite cross. 

“I think we should talk,” Shauna murmured, voice a whisper beneath the crowd. 

“No.”

“Please, Jackie. You don’t know how hard it was without you.”

Jackie retreated back to the stiff enclosure of her parents and Nat, Shauna somewhere at her back. She returned to her position just in time to catch her mother’s approving smile, clearly satisfied with her handiwork. “You spoke well,” Janet decided with a crisp tone, giving Nat a once over. “And you looked alright.”

She fidgeted with something in her coat pocket. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t see your mother. I thought she might attend this event.”

“Yeah, well. She’s not really thrilled with any of this.”

Janet’s gaze moved over the wreathes heaped over the slight platform of the granite cross. Silk ribbons rustled in the wind. “A pity. I think it’s so important for the families to come together. It must have hit her hard, dear. Your mother kept so… stoic. I admire her strength.”

She fastened her hand on Nat’s wrist and pulled slightly. “I think we’re supposed to go and visit Nat’s mom today. She doesn’t do great with crowds, right?”

“I don’t think—”

“Doesn’t she live in an unsafe neighbourhood?” Janet’s voice cut Nat off. “Maybe another time, Jackie. You must be tired.”

“Nope. I’m feeling great actually,” Jackie smiled. “And I would hate to let down a commitment I made.”

Nat’s scowl could burn through glass. 

“You won’t be long, will you?”

“Just a quick little visit,” Jackie said in agreement, lying. And then before Janet could layer in another argument, she hauled Nat through the crowd like it was a sea of blood and she was the knife cutting through it. 

Nat’s patience burned thin the minute they got to the shelter of the truck, keenly avoiding Morgan’s frustrated expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t recall scheduling a sit down catch up with my mother,” Nat said savagely. “I’m actually pretty sure she’s disappointed that I came home at all so a fucking tea party isn’t really in the books.”

“You buried me.”

She flinched back slightly. “What?”

“You buried me. I died in the cold. I remember the snow falling down from the sky and how tired I was,” Jackie said, forcing the words out before she could reconsider it. “And I know you put me in the ground because I dug my way up again.”

Regret cut across Nat’s face before she smothered it beneath a wave of blankness. “Don’t, Jack.”

“The ground would’ve been hard, right? Frozen solid. It was cold when I died and you had to wait—” Jackie bit back the gory details, her body sitting in miserable wait, Shauna playing strange games before hungry mouths split her open. “You buried me in the winter. I remember it. But how were you able to put me in the ground, Nat?”

Chapter Text

Nat’s silence was practically a scream. 

They left the memorial site and vanished into traffic. Nat’s hands strangled the steering wheel as she wrenched the truck into motion, shifting along the steady little side streets that cut along their small town. Despite their absence from it, the bones that they knew so intimately were unchanged. Suburbs still loomed, the businesses were almost all the same. A few facelifts were scattered, one house demolished, and lives utterly set to continue on the same course as always.

Everything, despite tiny changes, was the same in the end. 

Jackie's face reflected against the window and there was a transparency to it that showed the trees across the ditch. Houses thinned out as they cleared the limit’s of the town and she tried to separate the outline of her face from the arms of the trees flashing by as Nat slowly picked up speed, outrunning the memorial behind them. 

Hot air blew up from the vents automatically but she still felt cold to her soul. “I don’t understand how you could’ve dug through frozen ground to bury me,” Jackie started uneasily. “I get these… flashes? I think my body remembers so things but I don’t have enough for a full picture yet—”

“Stop.”

It felt like if Jackie simply talked enough, she could unlock the answers she needed. She had always been like this, awkwardly chattering on when Shauna hit moody patches, or whenever her mother got brittle with silence. “And I can’t do this, Nat. I think I need to know what I missed. I need to know what happened to you and to everyone. Like Travis, the rest of the team—”

“Please, stop.”

“It was my body. I need to know what happened to it.”

Nat’s foot stomped down on the brake and the truck screamed as it halted, fishtailing just slightly from the force of the abrupt stop. Empty asphalt stretched out before them like a ribbon and she wondered what loomed on the other side of that distance, what kind of future was sitting unseen. “Stop, Jackie. I’m asking you to stop.”

Jackie looked at Nat properly and saw it written in her face, flinching from it. 

She was frozen with rage and devastation. Grief was a noose around Nat’s throat and ghosts of the wild still haunted her eyes. Her knuckles were white as frost from where they were locked around the wheel, jaw clenched. Jackie had died during the harsh beginning of winter but Nat never truly thawed from that season. She was ice and frost bound together and it should’ve terrified Jackie to see the coldness looking back at her. 

“Give me something,” Jackie offered and bargained, tentatively cracking ice back. "Please."

“I told you that I couldn’t— that’s not something I can just open up and give you,” Nat struggled to get the words out, stiff as a feral cat spooked by an extended hand. “That story isn’t a good one.”

Nat was always softer than she looked. And, in perfect contrast, Jackie was harder. She crushed her own heartstrings ruthlessly beneath her heel. “It’s part of my story. I need to know what I’m missing and you’re the only person that can give me that.”

The sky was a bleak gun metal grey. She couldn’t imagine flying through that colour, sitting up in the clouds suspended by engineering and air currents. She couldn’t imagine trusting that harsh coloured space with her life again. 

“You…”

She glanced at Nat and saw that she’d frozen in her seat, hands still clenched around the wheel like an anchor. “You never woke up. We couldn’t dig you a grave so it was just something we were waiting for… try and survive winter, see whatever bullshit came with spring. And I wanted to give you flowers,” Nat’s voice fumbled for the history, uncertain as threads wove together. “I was going to put you down with flowers so it wouldn’t be so dark. And I was being selfish, I know, leaving you in a fucking shed while I waited… I kept trying to hunt but it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t anything left— and the others were so hungry, Jack. Travis and I didn’t know what was happening until we smelled the smoke—”

An echo of that moment rattled through Jackie’s mind. All she could taste was the powdery grey of spent ashes. 

“I came back late and you were dead. And I was gone again when they started—” Nat cut herself off roughly, eyes squeezing tight. “Bad things happened to you because you were the one waiting for me. If I had just been faster or tried harder… it might’ve been different. I knew I had to let you rest. I’m sorry it took so long. I’m sorry I kept missing everything. I was so fucking useless when you needed me and all I could do was bury the pieces I was left with. It was colder when I buried you but I made sure you had a blanket so you wouldn’t have to feel it. I made sure nothing else could hurt you again. And there weren’t any flowers but I left the stones so you’d have a marker, those stupid little rocks from the creek,” she forced out, half breathless. “I wanted to make it better for you.”

She heard the scraping of a shovel through dirt like a distant thought. “You were going to give me flowers?” Jackie managed to say in a watery, mostly coherent voice. 

“Yeah.”

Flowers, Jackie imagined. With the exception of the recent flowers delivered to her parents’ house in honour of her being alive, nobody had ever given Jackie Taylor flowers before in her entire life. It was a strange detail to fixate on but it stuck at her heart like a knife all the same. 

“I don’t even know what flowers you like.”

Nat caught her hand in hers and squeezed tight. “Yellow ones. Some people brought flowers for my dad’s funeral. Red ones, mostly. But some white and pink, I guess. But no yellow.”

Spindly little buttercups used to grow up beneath the bleachers surrounded the manicured soccer field. They had been like bright little splashes of sunshine, barely seen from the playing field itself. Jackie couldn’t help but think of them in comparison to Nat.

“Pretty.”

“And you like roses,” Nat said easily, knowing without having to ask. “I would’ve left you roses, Jack. I would’ve left them for you every day that you were gone.”

She shifted through the snatches of memory from after her death and tried to make sense of everything. Nat had magically managed to split the ground apart despite it’s frozen state to make a safe place for Jackie’s body. Details had been peeled away from the confession and she was selfish enough that she nearly asked for more. 

“It was hard. Half my mind was gone after you died. It got bad and I got worse.”

Lottie’s whiplike taunt cracked through Jackie. ‘But Nat doesn’t have clean hands.’ 

But did it matter? Could anyone have survived the brutal edges of the wild without cutting themselves raw in the process? 

It was difficult to believe that were even in the same place again with each other. “We left the woods behind. We’re never going back to that shit storm. We’re never even stepping foot in another plane, Nat. Things are different now.”

Turbulence on the way home was enough to cement the fact that Jackie was living with her feet planted on the ground. 

A sharp wail of a siren burst up from the distance behind them and Nat heaved out a sigh, relinquishing the brake in order to pull the truck over to the gravel curb as signalled before shutting down the engine. “Don’t lose your shit, Taylor.”

“What?”

Cherry red and blue lights burst as the police cruiser pulled in behind them. An officer in uniform stepped out slowly and walked towards the window Nat manually rolled down. Any vulnerability was wiped away and her mood shifted instantly, watching the man with a careful gaze. “License and registration?”

Nat summoned a thin smile. “I think I’m lacking the paperwork.”

A flicker of surprise casted over the man’s face as he looked up from the pad of paper in his hand. “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t actually have a license,” she clarified while swiping loose strands of white blonde hair away from her face. Nat, to Jackie’s horror, seemed almost cheerful at facing down her lack of paperwork. “Or the registration part.”

“What—”

“You’re local, right? We actually just left that memorial in town. Jackie Taylor and I needed to show up and be there,” Nat continued easily, laying out false charm like she was lining up a target with her gun. “You heard about that?”

“Jesus Christ,” Jackie swore under her breath as the man bent lower, obviously peering into the cab to look closer at their faces. “You’re going to hell, Nat”

Content to ignore her, Nat lowered her voice conspiringly. “It was kind of a big deal for the survivors to show up and talk.”

“And you don’t have a valid license?” The man managed to say, lowering the ticket book all together. 

“I didn’t really have access to a driver’s education course out there.”

“And the registration—”

“I still need to figure that part out.”

He looked flustered. “I can give you a pass this time— just once, though. But you can’t be driving around without these things.”

“We’ll get it figured out,” Jackie cut in, leaning over Nat to smile winningly up at the officer.

But he didn’t leave. His face tinted red as he fumbled with his pen. “Could I get you two to sign something? My sister was really into what happened… any articles written she cut out for this scrapbook.”

Jackie managed to restrain her wince. “Totally”

He tore off a ticket and offered it to them on the backside to sign. Nat moved the pen mechanically in a jagged motion without really committing her name to anything and Jackie’s script was lace like in contrast. “I can’t believe you’re driving this thing without a license,” she said with exasperation while they watched the man slip back into the cruiser and depart. 

“I told you I didn’t have insurance,” Nat said blithely. “Did you really think I had the rest of the paperwork?”

They were still dressed in the awkward skins of grief, either slightly outgrown or partially held together by pins. “Where’s you stuff? You can’t just be figuring your shit out with only a gun and a sleeping bag.”

“I don’t know.”

Jackie shot her a look. The window rolled up quickly and Nat started up the truck again, forcing the heat to resume. “Did your mom—”

“She wouldn’t let me in the place. After we got back and I tried to kill Shauna in front of an audience, they took us to a hospital. Some bullshit about making sure her throat wasn’t going to collapse or something,” Nat said, flicking a glance Jackie’s way to read her reaction. “And my mom had to meet me there. She wasn’t happy I was back.”

“How could she not be happy?”

The desperate part of Jackie’s mind only settled in the rescue centre when she heard the nurses talking about someone with a broken jaw. It set her world right again just knowing Nat was within reach. 

“Despite what you might believe, Jack, most people don’t actually like me.”

“Fuck her. You know what? No. This isn’t okay. Let me drive— no, I’m driving.”

A quick argument was settled when Jackie yanked off her seatbelt and jumped out of the truck, stoically stomping to the other side and jabbing a finger at Nat’s hip to make her move over. 

“You don’t actually know where my mom’s trailer park is, right?” Nat grinned smugly from the passenger seat. “Not really your neck of the woods.”

Jackie executed a flawless three point turn that would’ve had her old driving instructor weeping and gunned it back down the strip they came from, turning off for the nearest gravel road. It was a strange magic that most gravel or dirt lanes always turned to the trailer park. She followed it and managed to navigate beneath the blurry grey sky to the park, wide and forlorn looking. “I’m sorry. This is right, yeah?”

Her smirk melted away but she squinted at the one double wide parked on the edge of the plot of land. “She isn’t here.”

“Good. Because I’d kill her,” Jackie decided, getting out. “Come on, Scatorccio. We’re getting your stuff.”

Because something needed to be there. She couldn’t believe that Nat’s own mother could dump every scrap of Nat into the garbage in her absence. Jackie wasn't leaving a single part of her Nat behind.

“This is a shit idea.”

“Can you unlock the door?”

“With what key?”

Jackie rolled her eyes and shrugged. Nat huffed in response as shoved a hand in her pocket and pulled something out. “Is that—”

“Don’t.” The card slipped away back into her pocket in favour of a plastic bank card. “Stole this from Shauna’s mom when we were in the hospital. Figured it would be handy,” Nat informed her casually as she slid it into the slight gap between the door and the frame, wiggling as she worked to catch the bar deadlocking it. “But I didn’t think I’d be using this to break into my mom’s place.”

“Shut up. You look hot,” Jackie praised, standing so she shielded Nat from anyone watching. But the trailer yard looked scrubby even with the covering of snow, neglected space rotting beneath the cold. No one was peering out through the windows. Nobody was expecting Nat to return to her roots. 

“What? You gonna be my alibi for when I get arrested for real?”

Jackie’s hand touched Nat’s hip as she jerked the lock back. “I’d tell the truth for you.”

“Alibis are never honest.”

She ducked slightly and sealed a kiss to Nat’s neck. “I’ll be the standout.”

The door swung open and showed dingy nicotine stained walls and a ragged looking carpet. “After you, princess.” Nat held an arm out with a flourish, clearly laying out a challenge. 

The double wide wasn’t a place where yellow flowers could live. Jackie’s gaze darted everywhere and tried to find thumbprints of Nat in the rough interior. A couch was held together with duct tape and there was a wedding photo of a couple sitting on a shelf. Beer bottles grew up across every surface like a garden of amber coloured glass and she walked carefully to avoid knocking them over. 

Cigarette smoke lingered in the air. It felt like she was drifting through the wake of a ghost. 

Jackie followed her own instincts and found a tiny bedroom at the end of one narrow hallway. It was colder there and she pushed the door open slowly, revealing the skeleton of a bedroom beneath layers of dust and cobwebs, boxes cluttering up the floor. “This is?”

Nat hovered at her side with a small, bitter smile. “That’s it.”

She dropped down to look at a box full of cassette tapes. “What do you want? We can’t leave it here.”

“I don’t know,” Nat admitted. “I didn’t plan on getting any of this back.”

Jackie wondered if Nat meant the contents of her bedroom or herself. 

She snapped her fingers for a cotton tote bag hanging off the knob of a closet. “Give me that. We’ll start with the easy stuff.” Like music. Nat loved music. She shoved handfuls of cassettes into the bag carefully and watched as Nat drifted soundlessly despite her heavy boots, inspecting what was left.

Posters hung from the wall. A few dried flowers hung upside down with twine. The bed was unmade and looked stiff from age and neglect, a barely visible shadow of a sleeping girl pressed into the crumpled sheets. 

It’s a realm of Nat that Jackie wanted to savour. The bottle of black nail polish was dried out like a bone in the earth and she wanted to crack it open, to see more and more pieces of what she didn’t know. 

She collected a soft hoodie from beneath the bed and shoved it into a second bag that magically appeared at her need. “You should take this one out,” Jackie commanded, falling into an easy routine. It was like assigning laps to the girls on the team. “I’ll keep filling.”

“You just want to go through my sock drawer.”

“I can’t do it with you lurking over my shoulder. Super creepy that way.”

Nat’s soft laugh echoed in the stiff, abandoned place and it warmed Jackie slightly to hear it. Half the boxes contained excess things for storage and had nothing at all to do with Nat. She skimmed through the contents and lingered where she could, touching homework assignments left blank, Nat’s collection of pink detention slips, a few spent lighters, and the prideful blue ribbon of soccer medals. 

Janet must’ve battled cobwebs herself, Jackie realized. Her room was always waiting for her to come back to. It was the opposite of this place. 

One photo was half hidden beneath an empty carton of cigarettes. She teased it out and felt grief slam into her chest at the row of Yellowjacket faces lined up neatly, girls with their arms locked around each other, beaming at another hard won victory. 

They were all so happy. 

They were all so alive. 

She didn’t know if Nat would want a reminder of girls like Lottie but she tucked it away carefully regardless, pressing it between layers of clothing plucked from the closet for safety.

Foot steps echoed down the hallway, Nat purposely walking loudly. “What else?”

“This. Go.” 

“God, you’re a slave driver.” 

“Come back when you’re finished,” Jackie said with false primness. Nat departed with a finger in salute but obedient to her task. “Thanks!” She shouted at the retreating back and faint grin. 

It didn’t take long for her to return again. “Am I missing anything?” She asked quietly, hesitating from where she stood. 

Nat shook her head, slight amusement fading. “No. Nothing,” she said, slipping arms around Jackie’s waist and drawing her close. “Only really care about you.”

“Yeah?”

She touched and tangled her fingers in Jackie’s hair. “Always, Jack.”

Their jagged edges lined up together so easily. Jackie pushed into Nat slightly and held tighter. “It’s mutual, you know. Goes both ways.” 

Kissing Nat was like embracing razor edged steel. But she always softened quickly, warming by a slight touch skimming along her jaw, of brushing knuckles against skin. Jackie liked learning the tricks it took to thaw Nat out enough that there could be enough warmth for two people alone. 

But a door shutting sent ice slamming back into place. They jumped apart as if scalded. Mothers, Jackie realized, could sometimes be a bloodstain in your own veins. They were something to endured to minimize the damage.

Nat looked panicked. 

It was a younger version of herself that shoved Jackie into the closet, silently snapping the door in place and preventing Vera from catching sight. Jackie consented with grimly, peering through the narrow slats at the grey stained room and the two people locked into place, Nat’s arm slightly extended as if ready to block Vera from charging her. 

“Thought I told you to stay gone,” Vera drawled, voice rattling with a smoker’s cough. Jackie remembered the woman’s face from exactly one game. She had drank from a flask the entire time, oblivious to the crowd cheering for Nat’s vicious winning score that nailed their success. “I didn’t want to see you here. You weren't supposed... I don't wanna be coming back and finding out you've been around.”

“I wanted my things.”

“They ain’t yours to take.”

There was a deflated soccer ball next to Jackie’s foot. A bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. More unfinished and never started assignments for class. “Call the fucking police then,” Nat challenged hotly. “If you want to get into a pissing match about property.”

Vera’s face, fully visible and not a thing at all like Nat’s, twisted. “This isn’t your home, Natalie. Take your shit and get out."

“I won’t come back again.”

“Yeah? You’ve got a better place to be?”

”I’m not your problem. I don’t want anything from you,” Nat promised in a low voice. 

Vera coughed. “One of those other girls… they could’ve been something, you know. Heard about 'em all over the news.”

There was a pause of silence and temper billowed up inside Jackie’s chest until all she could taste as the white ashes and heat of it it. 

“I know that."

“But it had to be you, right?” Vera continued roughly. “Of anything that could’ve survived that, it would’ve been you. You pulled a fucking gun on your own father—”

“He was hurting you,” Nat snapped back on reflex. “He wasn’t going to stop hurting us. And maybe you should've done something, you know? So it wasn’t just on me?”

Her hands clenched tight into fists. The darkness folded around Jackie’s body and she kept watching, stuck and utterly focused, burning in her miserable silence. 

Vera scoffed. “You always ruined things, Natalie. You always had to go and make him mad. You think he wasn’t a good man? You were his daughter. Everything that made that man the way he was? It’s all there inside your damned little heart. You won't be any better than you think he was.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you.” 

Nat’s mother struck her hard across the face and Jackie felt the impact of it herself, heat burning at her cheek. She was furious, hands shoving the closet door back open, ready to fight against something. 

A mirror hung crookedly from a hook on the wall. Jackie caught a glimpse of her own expression in the tiny glass and didn’t recognize her own face looking back. 

She stepped in front of Nat and it was her turn to stand with arms extended like a shield drawn out. Vera rattled out something but Jackie was deaf to it, utterly detached from the words soaked in dislike and cheap beer. Her mouth curled into a smile that she couldn’t feel and she caught Vera’s shoulder with one hand and squeezed hard to prevent her from leaving.

Rage tasted like blood on Jackie’s tongue. Her bones ached and she was simply hooked on the moment, on the easy prey lined up in front of her. She was awake and alive, and there was something that needed to be done.

Something broke inside her chest and Jackie vanished completely beneath the wild of it all. 

Chapter Text

The Wild stood in a small space and considered her prey. The woman kept twisting and thrashing beneath her grip but couldn’t free herself. It was aggravating, she thought, tangling fingers through limp hair and wrenching hard. 

The prey released a bark of a scream, wounded by the sensation of hurting. 

“—off of her!”

Skin could be peeled off of bones. Bones could be splintered, reduced to chalky remains. Everything could go back to blood and earth. The Wild breathed in remnants of smoke and a lingering bitterness of salt. She closed her eyes and thought beyond the temporary ruin, seeking dampness of soil and sun warmed stones. 

It took effort reorienting her position in the world. She wasn’t reading the knotted tree roots anymore, wasn’t ghosting along the soft fur of moss growing over bark. The air was different, she acknowledged, hollowed out and lacking the richness of what she knew most intimately. 

So much could be discovered. So much was waiting for her still.

“Jack! You have to stop—”

The prey pushed at her feebly. She wasn’t used to feeling fear like this. Not a natural predator, The Wild mused, but something familiar with the art of taking. Tears glinted in her eyes. 

Salt, so much salt. 

Someone touched her trembling arm but she was indifferent to the touch. The Wild turned and shoved hard, driving the body down onto the floor hard enough to keep it there. 

A wind shivered through the space like a loyal pet. It touched her face and carried a copper tang of blood with it. 

She stiffened. The room flickered and dipped into darkness just as a wave of panic crested high enough, suddenly unlocking the small door that Jackie was trapped behind. Her hand was choking Vera and it took effort to pry her own fingers free, to let the woman drop down onto her knees with a ragged gasp, like a half drowned sailor slumping across dry land. 

A memory of teeth flayed her body apart. Jackie could feel it, could feel blood dripping down her sternum from where the scar had opened up somehow. It plastered the material of her dress to her skin. 

Jackie was going to be sick. Her throat burned with a silent scream not yet given. 

Movement from behind made her turn around and she saw Nat on the floor of the bedroom, hand cupping the side of her face, blood streaming down regardless. “Are you—” Nat started before breaking off, dark eyes unreadable. 

Nat flinched automatically when she tried to touch her. Jackie forced her way through the motion like she was diving through water in December, hands reaching out regardless for the other girl to accept. 

And she did, slowly, with blood as red as anything Jackie had ever seen before. 

Jackie barely allowed herself to breathe as she hauled Nat up, one arm slung around her to manage the slight burden of weight. Her own hands had pushed Nat hard enough that she cracked her face off of the wooden chair abandoned by the desk. Her own hands had caused the damage and brought the storm. 

She was never going to be clean of this blood. 

“You’re going to be fine,” Jackie promised, abandoning the trailer and Vera without a backwards glance, focus spent of the rusted red truck parked out front like a light house. Nat’s feet were dragging across the snow. “I’m going to get you help. I’m going to fix this. I won’t do this to you ever again, okay?”

The grey sky was darker. How much time had passed since the memorial? It seemed heavy with the weight of an impending snowfall. 

Nat vanished into the truck and slumped against the window. Blood smeared against the glass from where she leaned. Jackie went for the driver’s seat but hesitated, looking down. The collar of her dress dipped low enough that it showed the top inch of her newly opened scar, hurt and bloodied, and flowers. 

Flowers were sprouting up from the scar. 

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

Her body was a graveyard. Jackie was capable of nothing but ruin. Something had summoned her from beyond the grave and Jackie wasn’t herself anymore. 

She had lost herself to something darker and it welded her like a puppet. And now she was standing in the rubble of the aftermath, ruined beyond any ability to mend. 

Numb fingers yanked out the tiny white flowers. They crumbled to dust, vanishing. It left her with nothing but the pain of having felt it. 

Vera’s cry warbled out from the double wide and Jackie flung herself up into the driver’s seat, unwilling to hear it. The hospital was in the middle of the town and she started for it automatically, desperate to get there fast. 

She couldn’t trust herself. Something was trapped inside her body and she couldn’t allow another person to be hurt by it again. 

She couldn’t let Nat be the consequence again. 

Cheap artificial pine scent rose up and she tasted bile. “I’m so sorry,” Jackie breathed into the steering wheel and headlights, narrowly avoiding clipping a pair of boys running across the street. 

“It wasn’t you.”

“It was.”

“That wasn’t you,” Nat managed, pressing a hand tighter to the cut across her face. “I know you, Jack. And that wasn’t it.”

Her faith was like driving a nail through Jackie’s palm. She gripped the wheel tighter. 

Nat knew her so well but this part of Jackie was unknown. It had been hungry for blood. 

They fell silent as the drive stretched out. Jackie saw the gas station flick by, the tiny connivence store where she and Shauna shoplifted mauve coloured lipsticks once, the diner where they got after-game milkshakes. 

And then, finally, the hospital. It sat box like and cold looking in the middle of a parking lot. Jackie knew a garden grew at the one side in the spring and summer, with a path carved out in the shape of a heart. 

“Where are we going?” Nat murmured, sitting up to look over the half full parking lot. “What are we doing here?”

“You’re hurt,” Jackie said, killing the engine. “I’m getting you help.”

This wasn’t like being stranded out in the wild with only Misty to rely on for medical care. She was going to bring Nat somewhere safe. Somewhere people could help mend the damage Jackie had caused. 

They were halfway to the emergency room doors when Nat suddenly pieced together what wasn’t being said. “You have to stay, you can’t just go— you can’t leave me here,” Nat forced the words out as she froze up. “Promise me, Jack. I need you. I need you to stay with me.”

Jackie was strong enough that she was able to force deadweight along, strong enough to manage when her own heart was shattering into nothing inside her chest. 

She stayed silent. 

“Jackie!”

Doors slid open automatically and a blast of warm air hit their faces. Nat cried louder when people swarmed them, drawn by the pair with blood on their skin, desperate to investigate the damage already done. “I found her on the street,” Jackie said to a woman in pale pink scrubs. Her hand slid keys into Nat’s coat pocket like a magician relinquishing their tricks. “Something— happened.”

“Don’t!” Nat snapped. 

The woman caught Nat’s arm before she could wrench free. “Hon, can you tell me your name?” 

Natalie, Jackie thought automatically. Nat, because her parents never cut it down with affection. 

“You’re okay but I need you to settle down, yeah? We can fix this.”

“She’ll need stitches,” another nurse murmured, peering at the cut. It was a line of red across Nat’s cheekbone and the guilt of it left a matching version across Jackie’s heart. 

Her feet moved away. Nat tried to grab her but Jackie was beyond anyone’s reach. “Get off of me!” Nat screamed. “Don’t fucking touch me— Jackie!”

More people were moving towards Nat. Something was done to kill the temper and the girl fell silent with pliancy, slumping against the woman in pink scrubs. Jackie looked back to see betrayal painted in crimson across Nat’s face before truly committing to the motion of leaving, stumbling blind across the asphalt until her feet hit sidewalk, somehow navigating home. 

Grey sky turned black. Snow swirled down and she barely felt it on her skin.

Lights from cars sliced the darkness briefly and it disoriented her slightly. 

Police cruisers were parked outside her parents’ house. One of the lights flickered on soundlessly, blinking red and blue like a heart pulsing. She tripped coming up the step and pushed the door open with numb hands. 

“Jaqueline!”

Hands touched her face. Her mother’s face peered at her intently. “We thought something happened to you, darling. It got so late.”

Jackie shuddered. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she admitted, gaze flicking from Janet’s cashmere sweater to the decorative candles piled up everywhere, police officers in uniform standing by the fireplace. “I just don’t get it.”

“What happened?” Janet whispered. Her mouth looked pale without lipstick. “You’re covered in blood.”

Henry coughed awkwardly from where he stood with a nest of officers. Jackie looked through him to the mantle and saw framed photographs arranged like a timeline of her entire life from start to finish. It ended awkwardly with a picture of her and Shauna in uniform on the edge of a soccer field, a ball propped beneath one foot. 

There wasn’t another photograph after that one because Jackie was dead. The timeline was frozen.

She tipped sideways and Janet’s grip on her slid away. “Jackie!” She cried out in stunned horror. 

Darkness flooded her vision. The rest fell away completely. 

Chapter Text

Jackie was barely visible from how deep she managed to burrow down into the blankets, hair sticking out like a timid banner suggesting that she was physically present despite the appearance of a rumpled sleeping pallet. Nat knocked her foot very gently against where she imagined Jackie’s spine to be and watched the form shift at the contact. 

Something was mumbled back at her. Nat tried nudging her again. “Jackie. Up and at ‘em or something.”

It might have been easier to jab a sleeping bear with a sharp stick. “I’m so cold,” Jackie muttered back, barely coherent, twisting to look at her. “And I have cramps.”

Nat couldn’t entirely swallow her grin of delight at the other girl’s sleepy state. “No shit. We literally all have cramps. Our periods synced up.”

Because what was worse than plummeting down from the sky and watching Misty run around with a hatchet giving out medical advice? Of course they synced up together, trapped on the same doomsday clock from hell. 

Jackie yanked the blanket up to her face and spat out a miserable, somewhat audible curse that Nat was mildly impressed by. 

“Come on.”

“Why?”

The question stopped her. “What?”

“I want five more minutes,” Jackie said, sticking on hand out from the blankets and wiggling fingers in her vague direction. “And you fucking owe me, Scatorccio.”

“I owe you? How the fuck do I owe you?”

Her head popped up, expression utterly disgruntled, hair sliding free from her yellow scrunchie. “Remember that time you showed up for practise hung over?”

That technically had happened not just once but three separate times. “No.”

“Coach Bill was pissed because you didn’t even have your uniform but I told him that you were super sick from the flu, which I only knew about because I was the one who dropped off cold and flu medication the night before since I cared so much about your delicate immune system? And he believed me so he let you go home to sleep it off without benching you from the next game?”

Fuck. “Yeah.”

“You owe me. Time to pay up.”

Nat scoffed at the hand still extended in her direction. “Seriously?”

“I’m not laughing.”

She exhaled sharply and took the hand carefully, clambering down resignedly and taking her place curled against Jackie's back. “This is pathetic, Taylor.”

“Literally every survival manual ever printed has gone into utter raptures about sharing body heat. Think warm thoughts,” Jackie demanded, shifting slightly as she got comfortable again. “Like, really warm thoughts.”

Nat had to smother a strange sense of satisfaction she felt when Jackie touched her hand tighter, bodies fitting against one another like books on a shelf. 

It was nice, she realized suddenly, lying alone with Jackie. A bit of sunlight seemed to melt against her hair and it smelled like roses from her designer shampoo and conditioner set salvaged from the plane. She could waste the morning. What was the harm in sleeping for a bit longer? 

Her arms were empty, Nat realized, dream and memory dissolving into nothing. She breathed in the sharp bite of disinfectant and there were no roses left. She yanked herself up and squinted around the spinning room, trying to find where Jackie had gone. 

She was missing Jackie. Nat was always missing her Jack. 

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Morgan said dryly from where she was seated on a wooden chair in the corner of the room, firmly beyond hitting range. “You planning on staying awake?”

“Fuck you,” Nat said automatically. 

The woman simply flipped a page of her magazine in response, content in settling back and resuming her position of ease. People were in the hallway and the silence of the room was at odds with the bustle of the hospital. She gently brought her hand up to her face and felt a stiff bandage covering up what might’ve been stitches. 

Morgan’s curly hair was half contained by a large hair clip. She seemed so unbothered that it made Nat irate in response. “Why are you here?” She demanded, voice flat like a pool of gasoline. 

“My number was on your file and you didn’t have anyone else who wanted to come.”

It was dark out. Nat felt like someone had taken dry ice to her skin. “What happened to me?”

“What do you remember?”

Jackie. Always, forever Jackie. 

Nat’s memory was patchy, though. She struggled against the syrupy coating of sedation and tried unspooling consequences from choices. Jackie left her at the hospital and someone injected her with something that made Nat’s body drop. They had gone to the hospital because she was hurt, because someone hurt her—

Jackie tried to kill Nat’s mother. And, worse, it hadn’t been Jackie.

“Nothing,” Nat lied, wishing to retreat somewhere safe and private. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve got nine stitches holding your face together.”

“Great.”

“I’m going to level with you, Natalie. I don’t really give a shit what happened to you. That isn’t really my job, yeah? I just need to know if you’re going to keep this up,” Morgan said, flipping another page of her glossy magazine to inspect some article or photo spread. “You’re so close, you know? People actually like you. I’m not sure why, but they’re ready to eat your story up.”

She forced down the urge to gag at the choice of words. “So?”

“You’re a hero. For some reason you left the safety of numbers to walk hundreds of miles alone just to get help. The other girls said you hunted for them, that you’re the reason why they had food to eat—”

Nat had done that for them. She had done so much because of them. 

“—and then you brought everybody home. This story was a tragedy until you changed it.”

Her mouth curved into a faint smile. “You think this isn’t still a tragedy?”

“Everybody knows about you. But now you get to write your own future. What the hell do you even want? To get high? To pickle your still-developing brain in cheap booze? Come on, Natalie. You’re wasting your chance.”

Disaster and disappointment was the closest thing Nat ever had to a religion. She prayed at an alter of wasted chances. 

“What exactly do you think I should be doing?”

Morgan looked pleased that Nat was verbally responding. Their brief interaction at the rescue centre had been strictly one sided and Nat hadn’t even fallen for the woman’s trick of offering a soda to bypass the strict meal plan to hit at her craving for sugar. She had sat silent for CPS workers before when the school called them in. People like Morgan weren’t safe to trust. 

The magazine was rolled up and stowed away in a leather purse. “I think you should get your shit together and get out of this town. You’re free. For a limited time, you’ve got every single door open. Schools? All you have to do is apply. People want you to talk on their shows. You’re a hot topic, Nat. Hometown hero and all, but you have to get the fuck out of this place.”

“You trying to run me out of this town?”

“I’m trying to save your life.”

“I don’t need you for anything,” Nat sneered, straightening her shoulders and curling hands into fists. “And I didn’t ask you for help.”

“You have nobody, Natalie. And you’re going to hit rock bottom some day.”

“Keep talking and I’ll shoot you.”

Clothes were bundled up and sitting on a low table across from the bed. Nat could only assume her keys for the truck were tucked away within the folds of the fabric. And, with her truck, meant her gun. She was always safest with her finger on the trigger. 

Morgan laughed and the sound grated against her nerves. “They want to keep you for observation, kid. Something about you trying to use an IV stand like a javelin against somebody?”

Nat didn’t remember that but could easily picture trying it. She didn’t like strangers touching her. “I’m not staying,” she snapped, yanking stiff bedsheets aside to swing her legs around. “You can’t make me.”

“I left my card in the pocket of the coat. Use it when you find that bottom, yeah?”

She saluted the vanishing woman with a finger and tore the flimsy gown off to make a hasty scramble for the black dress. It was an old one of Jackie’s and still held together by stiff pins that miraculously hadn’t fallen out in her struggle. A quick glimpse in the mirror showed Nat’s pale face with eyes like coal glaring out. 

Her head was spinning. She nearly toppled over shoving her feet into her boots. Jackie was gone again and Nat was left to scrape together the pieces with nothing to show for it.

People were talking in the corridor. Nat sulked by the doorway and waited until they thinned out, medical professionals departing for various rooms and responsibilities, risking it by darting out and immediately swinging left for the marked stairwell. It wouldn’t take long for someone to find her abandoned hospital gown left on the floor or the pieces of her hospital ID bracelet she ripped off with her teeth. It was better to retreat while she still had the upper hand. 

Nat still remembered fleeing from people running after her before. The memory tasted like salt and she forced it back down, detaching herself from what was already done. She nearly tripped going down the stairs before she hit the ground level without entirely face planting and she ducked out a back exit, running across the parking lot for the safety of a town in the middle of the night. 

The truck was still sitting, presumably, in the parking lot. Nat could return for it later when it was safer and people weren’t looking for her anymore. 

Which, admittedly was few people. Jackie was gone. Her mind replayed Jackie’s slow walk out of the hospital on loop, girl pale faced and cold with determination, barely hesitating at the door. 

She crossed a street without looking. The cold tore through her thin jacket and Nat touched the stiff business card in her pocket along with the bank card and worn playing card. Three items, three raw components of past, present, and future all sitting within hand’s reach. 

The playing card, however, she toyed with. Nat ran her thumb over one rounded corner and walked blind. The wind blew sharply and she walked against it, eyes watering from the force of it. The other girls got to go home again and Nat didn’t have that luxury waiting for her. 

Nobody cared where she went. Her mother was disappointed that she endured all of it to return like an unlucky penny, a ghost haunting memorials and carefully edited articles, unchanged and the same as always. 

A gunshot echoed in her mind. Her father’s face, half ruined and half preserved. Nat turned down a side street and practically ran, feet hitting the pavement like a drum, desperate to outrun her demons. 

And, she knew, herself. 

She charged through the trees and slammed her fist against every one that stood in her way. They did not yield and her bones ached. Nat punched harder. She ran faster. Bushes scraped against her knees but she refused to falter from her chosen direction. 

Blood streamed down her hand. 

Again and again she lashed out, feral hunting dog starved for the hunt, fist catching the wilderness springing up in their tiny hometown. 

She only stopped when the trees vanished and her legs nearly collapsed from her desperate charge, building towering up overhead. The bell tower glistened beneath the coating of frost and starlight and she moved automatically for it, shaky feet managing the five short steps to the door, tugging desperatly at something unlocked. 

A church was a shitty refuge, Nat knew, but it was just as good as a burned out shack in the woods. Scatorccios only went to church when someone died and she hadn’t stepped foot inside the building since her father’s closed casket funeral. She hadn’t forgotten the powdery scent of lilies rotting in glass vases around the cheap casket, the stiff expressions of extended family members gathered for the occasion. And, she recalled carefully, the flask of cheap vanilla flavoured whisky in her great-aunt’s purse that she swiped for later as a miserable reward. 

Pews stretched out and Nat ghosted her hands along them, blood marking wood, feeling the tiny placards marking deceased members. 

“That’s— ah, that’s Laura Lee’s.”

She whirled around to see a man standing by the door. His trench coat looked stiff beneath darkness. 

“Her family had it donated— they weren’t sure if she survived or not, but two months after you girls went missing… they wanted to honour her faith.”

Nat didn’t bother trying to read the name etched in the metal. Her finger felt the coldness of it, frozen sunshine Laura Lee had flown so high to meet. “What?” She scowled at the figure cutting through the shadows. She wanted to be alone to nurse her own wounds and hurts in absolute privacy. Jackie wouldn’t be leaving a window open for her again and she didn’t have a mother who wanted her alive. 

A cold, dark church was the best place of refuge Nat had left. To hell with whatever future Morgan was dreamy up for her. 

He came forward slowly. Streetlights shone through the stained glass and illuminated the sharp angle of his face. Lottie’s father. “I saw you coming up the steps… I didn’t want to bother you, Natalia.”

“Natalie,” she corrected automatically. Her name often got lost amongst the souvenir keychains with versions of Natalia’s, Natasha’s, and Natalie’s. It was reflex to claim her variation of the same name. 

She slid into the pew to push space between him and her and he followed, carefully, taking a moment to make a sign to the Holy Mother. He then automatically flipped for the wooden slat to bring it down in order to kneel with hands clasped, lips mouthing along a stiff prayer and plea. 

Nat watched him silently. He looked at her with slight confusion. “Would you care to pray?”

“I don’t get on my knees for anyone. Not even a God,” Nat warned him. 

He sat back down on the pew. “I remember your hair darker. You girls would play and my assistant took pictures from the games,” Malcom said carefully, speaking directly to the cross. “Lottie liked being part of a team. She was happier then.”

She quietly bit back her desire to tell Malcom that his daughter was insane. The cross above their heads was occupied with a carved Jesus frozen in his agony, minutes from dying and days from resurrecting himself. Nat wondered how it was possible to pull oneself from beyond the grave and come back like everything was normal again. 

“I started coming after the plane— I know what everyone was saying. Fuck,” Malcom whispered, head tipping back. “I would’ve said it, you know? My money funded that plane. Life insurance… I get why they were talking about it like that, like I could’ve done that.”

Nat imagined that she was holding a gun and the safety was off. “It was a shitty plane that went off course,” she said forcefully, hands gripping the pew in front of her like she was going to fly into pieces otherwise. “Right?”

“I got the call that you girls never landed. I thought my heart was going to give out.”

She missed Morgan. Her blunt tact was easier to tolerate than Malcom’s morose tone. She didn't have comfort to spare anyone. “Yeah. It sucked for us.” 

“Lottie isn’t the same. She isn’t sleeping and won’t tell us anything. I thought she was dead and now she’s alive, but she might as well be dead again. My daughter didn’t come back.”

Her lungs ached for a cigarette. 

“Lottie’s Lottie. What do you want me to say?”

Malcom looked at her. His green eyes looked shadowed with sleepless nights. “I want to know what happened to her.”

Everyone wanted pieces of a story. Nat’s hands ached, bloodied and pale, clutching at the pew for support. “Your daughter fell in love with a boy,” she sneered automatically. “Lottie had Travis. She had it all figured out but then she lost everything.”

The wilderness chose Nat over Lottie. And she tolerated it. 

Some things were just never forgivable in the end. 

Did the girls bury Travis? Nat’s head ached trying to think about it and forget it all at the same time. “Lottie’s a bitch,” she continued, spine like iron as she gazed at Malcom, challenging him to defy her. “Lottie tried to kill me. Your daughter? She won’t ever be the same again.”

He nodded quietly like he already knew it. “I light candles here every night for her.”

Lottie laced her own blood in their tea like she had the corner on weird religious-woodsy witch rituals figured out. Nat figured the girl would appreciate that pious sentiment done in her name. “Save your matches.”

“What exactly did I bring back into my home?”

She needed a gun. She needed a wall to put her back against. 

“I told you. Lottie’s Lottie,” Nat said carefully. She wasn’t the Antler Queen anymore. She wasn’t the chosen herald of the wilderness anymore. That title wasn’t Lottie’s anymore. “She’s exactly what she is.”

His fingers fidgeted with the buttons of his cuffs even as he stared into her eyes. “And are you any safer?”

“No.”

Malcom looked disappointed. He gathered himself back up to his feet and slowly exited the pew bench before pausing, hand placed overtop of Laura Lee’s name. “Did Lottie kill that boy? Travis?”

The church was so clean and untouched and in comparison Nat was a slaughterhouse waiting to ruin. “She didn’t have to,” she said, looking at the unlit candles by the alter and the undead man carved from wood above. “I killed him.”

He left quietly and with so many regrets that Nat could feel them from where she sat. The door thudded shut and it echoed the great space. Cold devestation crept over her. 

Nat was exhausted from loneliness. It gnawed at her bones and demanded to be felt. The blood on her hands was drying into something darker. She quietly ambled deeper into the church and found a tiny little closet off to the side to curl up on the floor, half numb by the sheer sensation of feeling grief, and closed herself into the mercy of the darkness. 

She had no where else to go and she couldn’t go backwards. Jackie dying simply took the better half of who Nat was and ever could be and dragged it straight down to the grave with her remains. And this Jackie, a pipe dream and a miracle, didn’t want her. 

Nat had failed her already. Jackie was smart, she was saving herself from a second lifetime of misery, aware that Nat wasn’t going to be enough in the end. And she couldn’t hate her for that choice of life preservation. 

Travis was dead. Their friends were dead. Jackie had died and come back—

It hadn’t been Jackie choking the life from Nat’s mother. 

Jackie’s return to life defied ordinary laws of mortality. She wasn’t a figurehead of a church coming back after three days but something was beneath her skin, clearly, giving her the ability to live and breathe again, a normal girl mended… Nat sat up slowly and pressed her hands to her mouth as she fought to process the chaos spilling out everywhere. 

“It was like… my skin got stitched together here. I woke up with it. I think it’s the reason I’m alive again.”

She had touched the scar running down Jackie’s chest herself. Nat had practically worshipped that particular mark with her mouth and hands, forever in love with whatever it was that made Jackie real again. 

Jackie, as strong as she was, wasn’t a real challenge for Vera. Nat had been knocked around by her mother enough to know the woman’s sturdy strength. Jackie was half starved and at the disadvantage for at least five inches in height. But Jackie had pinned Vera so easily, contained her by hand on her throat. 

And Nat had to batter Shauna first before methodically choking her to circumvent her own physical limitations. 

She shoved herself back up to her feet for another feet and slammed out into the dark, abandoned church. Jackie could leave her behind but Nat would keep going anyways, doing whatever it took to make amends. 

She had failed already. She wouldn’t again. 

Cold wind greeted her and she snarled into it, half wild and feverish with her own rage. Misty’s parents lived a convenient three streets down from the church and Nat found the door to bash her hand against it, refusing to stop until the occupants were properly roused. 

Misty slid the dead lock back and opened up with an expectant expression. “Hi. Wow, you look awful. What are we doing?”

Her parents were barely visible shadows hovering in the stairwell. 

“I need you for something.”

“Oh my gosh, amazing. I love it.” Only Misty would be enthusiastic at seeing Nat in the middle of the night. It made her feel an ounce of guilt to use the girl as a pawn. “I’m totally in.”

“We’re going to hold a seance.”

Her wide smile faltered, shrinking. 

Nat pulled out a card from her pocket and held it between bloodied fingers to show the Jack of Hearts. "I want to get some answers from someone."

Chapter Text

“Stop watching me.”

“I’m not even looking at you!”

Nat opened her eyes and saw Misty’s wide eye stare from where she was bent over her bed, curly hair sticking up everywhere. Misty’s parents had awkwardly arranged for an inflatable mattress and it sat in the middle of Misty’s bedroom, a strange museum for the pieces of her life from before. 

Apparently the Quigley’s didn’t take well to conducting a seance in the middle of the night. She had been ushered through and forced to sip at a mug full of warmed milk and cinnamon while Misty’s parents awkwardly dragged out a pump and mattress set from the garage, putting up temporary lodgings in the narrow space between Misty’s bed and dresser. 

They were practically giddy at the idea of hosting a friend for Misty.

And, bitterly, Nat had crashed hard as a result. 

Someone was clattering around in the kitchen and polka music blared from a radio. Nat sat herself up and rubbed at her eyes. “I can literally feel your stare.” 

It was like tiny ants crawling over her skin. She resisted the urge to shudder. 

Misty flipped forward, nearly face planting off of the floor, and yanked at things beneath her bed. A piece of fabric hung like a curtain from the mattress and guarded the mess but Nat caught a glimpse of shoe boxes crammed alongside dust bunnies. “Hold on,” she muttered, shoulder half dislocating as she sought out something in particular before finding success, one athletic shoe box sliding out in the end. 

“What exactly do you keep under there?” Nat inquired, frowning at the dusty box. 

Misty shrugged. “Only the basics.”

The basics apparently meant a collection of old, dated glasses, a jar of pennies, a dried up tube of coconut flavoured lipgloss, tiny pots of blue glitter eye shadow, balls of twine, tea lights, taller beeswax candles, small bags of birdseed, and a red Swiss Army knife. It was such a strange assortment jumbled together that it looked perfectly ordinary in Misty’s hands. The rest of her room was the exact same mess. Nat spotted yellow and blue bound books stacked on milk crates, collages cut from magazines pinned to the walls, and a strange collection of coke bottles filled with even more coins. 

And, she realized, a fire extinguisher was half visible from beneath her bed. Dust made the red duller. Misty was prepared for a variety of emergencies, ranging from coin related to literal fire.  

“So I’m thinking a seance is a terrible idea.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Yeah, well. Risky is risky. And I’m not sure that I love us poking angry supernatural entities for the sake of satisfying curiosity.”

Nat cracked an unpleasant smile. “You’re not a cat. What are you scared about?”

“Oh, you know. Walls bleeding. Talking in tongues. Terrible stuff happening to terrible people. It tends to go around in circles,” Misty said serenely, plucking out the candles and twine. “I’m think we need a softer approach.”

She watched silently as Misty set up two candles with twine connecting them. She knotted each end so it couldn’t slip any lower from the candles and keeping the string taunt, wedging them into old holders on her desk. “You got a light?”

There were a few matchstick books displayed on the dresser. Nat snatched one up and tossed it in Misty’s direction, curious at the display. “This’ll work?”

“Please. I respect blood and bone. This? I don’t know. I used to make little puppets of girls from school and stab them with needles. Never did anything. We're gambling here. That card mean something to Jackie?”

It meant something to Nat. It was the one thing she truly had from the woods, something that was from before Jackie’s death and after it. “It’s connected,” Nat said roughly, laying it down flat on the desk. 

Misty struck a match and lit each wick carefully, shaking it out when she was finished. Flames curled up in sync, orange heat building slightly as it flickered. 

Tiny beads of wax dripped down as it burned further. Misty frowned. “I’m not an expert… but this isn’t supposed to be like this,” she said, nose wrinkling. “Like, vampire effect, right? Bad energy on one end, whatever. Maybe I read the manual wrong. Hold on—”

She rolled beneath the bed and shoved items back and forth, clearly seeking something. Dust streaked her face and hair when she emerged and her glasses were sitting on a strange angle, disoriented from her hunt. “I mowed my nana’s lawn for two months to save up for this.”

It was a book. The cover was purple and the pages looked yellow. “Wow. I would’ve sprung for a six pack.”

Misty ignored her and jabbed her finger on a paragraph, clearly pleased. “See? Read this.”

Nat frowned. “Just tell me what it says. Is this working or not?”

“You’re supposed to be thinking about Jackie. You’re not letting her go or anything, but try focusing on the energy?”

Jackie’s second life was a gift coming straight from the wilderness. Nat couldn’t deny that, couldn’t pretend that they really escaped their hell. She didn’t want to let her ago, didn’t even know how to process letting her go.  

She looked at the two candles burning in sync and frowned at their flames, flexing the stiffness from her hand out. The problem with desperation, she thought, was that Nat kept getting everything wrong in the end, no matter how hard she tried. 

It would have been easier to hit something. 

They really were shifting through darkness for the illusion of an answer. All of their problems seemed pointlessly unsolvable. 

Misty started chattering off awkwardly in the background, shuffling paperbacks and tangled cords of Christmas lights, torn between nervousness and giddy excitement. This, Nat realized, was the closest thing to a sleep over experience Misty ever had. Minus the months of sleeping side by side in the woods, this presumably ticked off all the boxes. She ignored her and hoped she’d leave. 

It was easier to feel anger. If Nat was angry, she was practically untouchable. But the hurt was undeniable. It rose up, cold as ice, and demanded to be felt. Jackie left her twice now, gone and still leaving, always out of reach. She sat on the wooden chair at the desk and gazed into the twin flames, one hand pressing over her mouth as she tried to calm her breathing. 

The Jack of Hearts stared up at the ceiling. It had been folded once and a crease broke through the centre of it, two versions of the same person divided by a line. 

“Is it working?” Misty hissed, crouched on the floor beside her. Her glasses reflected the fire. “What do you see?”

Dried blood flaked off from her fist like fish scales. Nat refused to respond. Maybe, and horribly, they had simply killed enough to satisfy the cruel hunger of the wilderness and earned something back? Maybe Jackie was a trick of the light, star dust and madness? It defied logic. Nat had buried the body herself, had set the fire and burned at winter… A body didn’t just spring back to life and crawl free from a grave. 

The rest of their team had all had lives to miss when they were out in the woods after the plane crash but Nat always knew there was nothing for her to come back to. 

She only ever had Jackie. 

“Go fish.”

“This is solitaire.”

“So? Make it a two player game. Solo is boring. It’s lonely,” Jackie said, rolling her eyes as she flopped down beside her on the floor. Rain was dripping down from the ceilings into the few metal pots spread around. “Don’t be such a loner, Nat.”

Nat silently swept up the cards and started shuffling, quickly working through the deck with a casual snap of her wrist, flashing them up in a quick arc before dealing them out. “Happy?”

“Oh, totally. This is the dream.” 

“Any nines?”

Jackie tossed her a card and frowned. “So are you and Travis a thing yet or no?”

“Please. Misogyny isn’t hot,” Nat said, tucking her cards closer to her chest. The rain had come down hard enough that she and Travis opted to give up their plans to track game through the northern edge of the plane wreck and he vanished in favour for Lottie’s time. “He’s not my type.”

Travis had secretly stretched out tarp between some of the trees to create a slanted roof and she imagined the pair were down in his hiding spot, fending off the chill with some of the spare candles in favour of being alone from the others. 

They were in the middle of no where and yet tripping over each other for scraps of privacy. She couldn’t hate him for carving a tiny refuge out for himself. 

Jackie adjusted her hand slightly and smirked. “A five?”

“Fuck you,” Nat said pleasantly, giving it up. 

She slapped down the pair and gave a smug grin. 

Misty and Crystal were talking softly. Their voices bled into the rain falling against and through the house. Little drops pinged against the metal pots like tiny heartbeats. “How’s it with you and her?”

Saying Shauna’s name seemed forbidden. The girl was presumably off with her journal somewhere and was thankfully out of sight. Nat was giving her a wide berth for the most part to avoid the tension but she still felt it, uncomfortable dislike burning in the back of her mouth whenever she saw Shauna looking at Jackie. 

And, truthfully, whenever Jackie was staring at Shauna. 

A candle burned on a metal plate beside Nat’s foot. Wax dripped down in thick veins, pooling around the surface. She watched the flame instead of meeting Jackie’s eyes. 

“I don’t know. Not great? Could be better? Maybe it would be better if she didn’t sleep with my boyfriend, actually. Actually it kind of sucks knowing she’s basically Wonder Woman out here. Like… she’s got this all figured out and I’m just not there.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Any eights?”

“Nope. Go fish.”

Thunder rumbled. Nat felt the sound of it against her bones like a cat purring. “Sorry you got hurt.”

Jackie’s mouth quirked into a bitter smile. “Thanks. Can I ask you a question?”

“Depends.”

“Your hair… are you seriously touching up your roots out here?”

She nearly threw down her cards. “Piss off.”

“Is that why you keep ducking off? Gotta keep that pristine shade of white-white?” 

Jackie looked pleased at having a secret vanity to exploit and Nat fought the urge to yank up the hood of her sweater. “Does it matter? Don’t you apply lipgloss every morning like a religion?”

“It’s happy flavoured,” Jackie said, plucking it out from her pocket and tossing towards Nat. “I share, you know.”

Nat scoffed at the clear tube of lip gloss. “Happy flavoured?”

“Smores. I got it on sale.” 

“Did you hit your head when I wasn’t looking?”

Jackie’s mouth looked especially smug and notably glossy. “Don’t be an asshole. Try some. We’ll get through this hell by the holy power of lip gloss and hair scrunchies. It’ll blow everybody’s mind when we get back home.”

It was the closest Nat would ever get to kissing Jackie Taylor. “What? This the new war paint?” She said afterwards, handing it back. “But yeah. We’ve got nothing better to do out here so I’ve been fixing the roots. Just... something.” Everyone had their private rituals. Van's toe nails were still painted bright red, Tai liberated her satin pillowcase from her luggage, and the other girls carefully managed routines to maintain sanity. It staved off some of the boredom. "I don't like the roots when they start showing."

Starvation would slow down hair growth. The technical detail popped into her mind like shrapnel. Starvation would ruin their bodies and mind, thin their herd out into nothing. 

The group were dependent on one gun. It wasn’t good math for their future.  

“I like it.”

Nat lowered her cards tentatively. “I wasn’t doing it for anyone. Just habit, I guess.”

“Why’d you start?” Jackie asked her, head tilting slightly. She was always watching, Nat realized, carefully surveying the group. “Seems like a commitment.”

Uncertainty cut through her. Her cards were expressionless numbers. “Any Jacks?”

She sighed, loosening a card from her hand. A Jack of Hearts. Nat set it separate from the rest of her cards. “I don’t look like my mom,” she admitted. “Didn’t really love the whole process of looking into a mirror and seeing my dad’s face. Hair makes it easier to separate him from me.”

Jackie laid down her hand flat on the ground, face up to reveal the contents. She said nothing and it was tolerable, Nat realized, the soft blanket of silence without a lash of judgement. Maybe they both knew variations of warpaint and the reasons for guarding themselves. 

“You done playing?”

“Yeah.”

Nat offered her the cards. “Go nuts with solitaire, Taylor.”

“I’m not really interested in playing it solo,” Jackie told her, leaning back on her hands and smiling faintly. “Are you?”

“I don’t think this is working,” Misty whispered into Nat’s ear. “Literally nothing has happened.”

Nat went cold. She pulled the knife out from her pocket and flipped the blade out, slicing straight through the twine connecting the candles cleanly. “Maybe this is bullshit and doesn’t actually work.”

“Your aggression is noted.”

She didn’t know what she was doing. It would have been satisfying to grab Misty and shake her hard, rattling the craziness around her smooth skull. “You’ve got to have a better fucking idea—”

Heat billowed up. Nat twisted back and saw the twin candles burning down faster, orange flame practically white as it melted down to the quick. The two candles unraveled, bleeding wax before finally dying, transformed into nothing at the same time. 

Misty prodded her finger into the hot wax gingerly. “That’s different. Do you think that’s a good sign?”

Her hand went down on the playing card and she slipped it away out of sight. “Your candles just died. That’s probably a really shitty sign.”

“Are the walls bleeding?”

“Not yet.”

“Great,” Misty sighed, stretching a hand out for the pink piggy bank on her desk. She rattled it and listened for the sound of coins clattering around. “What exactly is the difference between her and us?”

Jackie was sunlight and fire. Nat and everyone else alive was merely flesh and blood. There wasn’t a single comparison to be made. “You want a list?” Nat sneered halfheartedly as she got up and went for her boots, tugging them onto her feet. Misty might not get back her loan of sweats and shirt, she thought to herself grimly, double knotting the laces for luck.

Misty frowned and tipped a piggy bank upside down, unplugging the rubber stopped and freeing some of the wadded up cash.  “Let’s get milkshakes. I always thought that place on the corner of Brook Street looked so cute, and it might be nice, right? We could start there and talk about options. Oh! Did you ever go shopping at Clara’s?”

She bit back her urge to reject the offer. Misty would have killed her once and cannibalized her body. If she wanted to toss her meagre lifesavings away for a milkshake, Nat would take it. 

She was owed something. 

“We’re not sisters of the eternal flame,” Nat said, warning Misty. “I need a person and you qualify as a person. That’s all this is.”

Misty winced, coins across her lap and the bed. “We could be friends, though. I mean, we’ve gone through life changing events together. That has to mean something, right? Like, maybe not best friends, but maybe friends-friends?”

“Let’s get a milkshake.”

Chapter Text

“Coffee. Black.”

“Really?” Misty asked, looking put out. “That’s so boring.”

People were talking. Her skin itched with the desire to get her back against a wall. “Fine. Something with chocolate. I don’t care,” she said, ignoring the lacy script of the menu board and slipping away to snag a tiny table at the back. Oil paintings were hanging around and showed pastel versions of their town in various seasons. Nat looked at one version of snow covered woods and tasted bile. The snow drifts were tinted lavender and grey branches caught in a stiff line, rigidly shaped by a brush and some unseen hand. 

Her hood was up over her hair and she slouched lower. Across the cafe was a self serve station with a bulletin board plastered in posters and cut out articles. Their glorious return was pinned up in thumbtacks and Nat didn’t want anyone recognizing her from where she was sitting. Misty, similarly, had shoved her corkscrew curls beneath an old skiing toque and shoved a scarf up around her throat, masking half her face. 

Maybe no one was watching. Maybe the world was watching. Nat just felt safer unseen in the shadows where no one could get to her. 

It was cold enough that they had aborted their intentions for milkshakes in favour of the warm atmosphere practically pouring out of the local coffee shop. She busied herself by watching the movement of the fellow patrons and where Misty was standing with her hands braced on the counter. 

The door bell jangled as a crowd of women stumble through. They were blandishly identical in their dark wool coats and red scarves, stomping the snow from their boots and flocking to the one large unoccupied table near the middle of the room. Someone snapped their fingers for the attention of the girl working the espresso machine in a demand for a pot of coffee and they were all shrill voices, vaguely bird like, slipping out matching copies of books from their leather handbags. 

Janet, Nat realized in dull horror, was with them. Jackie’s mother had pinned her blonde hair back from her face and it made her look tired. Dark circles lined her eyes, a match for the pair haunting Nat’s own. She clasped her book tightly and watched silently as a pot of coffee was delivered to the table with an assortment of white mugs, mute to the entire affair. 

Had this been Janet Taylor’s life ever since the plane crash? Was she always stuck sitting at tables waiting for something to be said or done, still caught in a moment that hadn’t ended for any of them? Nat was half in the wilderness despite everything. One foot was stuck on Jackie’s grave, the other still marching grimly on like a solider for battle. 

Janet’s head tilted slightly. A soft expression flickered across her face as she recognized Nat. But Misty breezed over with two cups of coffee in her hands, sunny smile pasted across her face. “I got you a super serious Miss Double Shot Mocha with chocolate whip,” she announced, sliding her offering over without spilling a drop. “Should we do nicknames? Miss Double Shot—”

“Misty.”

“Right, no nicknames.”

“You tamper with this any?”

“No,” Misty sighed. “You’re not being much fun.”

“I’m not a fun person. And you’ve got a reputation.”

Misty pried the lid off her drink and sipped at it serenely. Caramel was drizzled across the swirl of whip cream and Nat could smell cinnamon and vanilla from it. “I mean, yeah. You’ve definitely got your own reputation figured out. You did try to kill us.”

Nat rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. The warmth from the cup soothed the aching in her hands. “Seems like that was the kind of thing that went in circles back there.” Nat was like any animal. She tended to bite back when provoked. 

It took effort not to look back at the painting hanging from the wall. It was bad enough still living inside the pit of winter. They didn’t need reminders of their old hell dressed up in a golden frame with a price tag clinging to it. She focused on ignoring it. 

“So. Question.”

“What?”

“You’re acting like this is a bad thing.”

Janet didn’t even know that Jackie died out there. She was sitting in her group of friends, half numb and half raw, still going to through the awkward motions of living. “Am I?”

“Yeah. Like, is this actually a doom and gloom situation? You get your best friend back. That’s kind of a win, right?” Misty asked. She tugged at the scarf from around her throat and pulled it off, coiling it in her lap like a snake. “Should you be looking a gift horse in the mouth?”

“She’s not my best friend.”

She perked up slightly, eye brows lifting. “Oh?”

Jackie’s mother was in the room. Nat felt a wave of guilt rising up. “I loved her. I love her.” 

“Tai so owes me money,” Misty said, half chirping. “I knew it! Like, everyone thought it was her and Shauna—”

“Keep your voice down,” Nat warned her. “It doesn’t even matter. So shut up about it, yeah?”

Misty wilted slightly. Her glasses were slipping down her nose. “What does it matter, Nat? You’ve got a whole happy ending right here.”

“Is it a happy ending?” She challenged bleakly. “Do you know what we brought back with us?”

“Boundless optimism,” Misty said, parroting Morgan’s cheesy narrative. “A sense of reliability. An appreciation for hot water straight out of the tap.”

But Misty rolled her eyes, tone turned clipped. Morgan’s speech writing had grated on everyone’s nerves. It dulled their story down into manageable portions, glossy and plastic wrapped. It took away from what they had actually seen and survived. 

It sounded like a musical without the songs. 

“I have to know if Jackie’s still Jackie,” Nat said softly. “So she doesn’t have to be scared of what we don’t know.”

A shadow strolled up to their shadow reeking of Parisian perfume. One of Janet’s book club ladies had splintered off to stand with her hands clasped together like some biblical judge or mythical harpy. “Aren’t you Vera’s girl?” The woman asked lightly, eyes bright with some kind of intention. “I thought you might be. You have your father’s eyes.”

They were attracting stares. Her skin itched at the feeling of people suddenly openly watching, the attention pinned directly on her. Nat sullenly tugged back her hood and leaned back in her chair, gifting the stranger the full weight of her father’s stare. 

Silence, however, was bait. “I knew Vera from school. I meant to check in on her… see how she was holding up with everything. So much tragedy for one family, I know. It must have been awful to endure alone.”

Designer heels clicked over and Janet was a pale, frosty shadow tugging at the woman’s arm with intention. “I think we’re about ready to start discussing character features. Joan has finally finished regaling us about her kitchen renovations.”

“I was just making Natalie’s acquaintance. Her mother and I were friends, you know.”

It was difficult to imagine her mother as someone who wasn’t her mother. Vera once had an entire life before she got shackled to Ted Scatorccio. 

“This is Nat,” Janet corrected stiffly as she plucked an invisible piece of lint from her sleeve. “And… Misty, yes?”

Misty perked up. “Yes. Hello. You have extraordinary cheekbones, you know?”

Both women went silent briefly. Nat barely resisted the urge to smile with her teeth. Their audience was shifting uneasily and they were all locked into place, Misty serene and vocal with her thoughts. But Janet rallied somehow, bypassing the statement itself to return her focus on Nat. “Will we be seeing you around the house soon? I’m sure Jackie would be delighted if you would stop by.”

She tried to translate what that meant. Janet was the kind of women to toss out handfuls of fake invitations daily, but maybe it meant Jackie was in her own pit of misery. “I’ll try,” Nat managed, softening a grand total of one inch. 

She would have to return the loan of a dress no matter what. It wouldn’t be difficult to cram it in the mailbox off the street to strike that particular deed from her check list. 

Janet’s mouth twitched. She tapped her cheek lightly with two fingers, a mirror to where Nat’s cheekbone was lined with black stitches. “If we don’t return to the group, Joan will start filling in the silence.”

“I was hoping that you would be willing to chat for a bit,” the original woman said, clearly disappointed. Janet’s white hand tightened on the woman’s arm. “Everyone is so curious how you managed to find help—”

Janet gave an elegantly poised yank that drew away the woman back to her herd of identical women with their identical books. 

The barista running the steam wand off of the espresso machine made their onlookers jump. Misty’s eyebrows drew up and she leaned back slightly, mimicking Nat’s stance. “Gosh. It’s like being stuck under vultures circling, right?” She asked loudly while yanking the hat off her head. Static made her hair look slightly wilder, eyes slightly magnified by her glasses. 

“Basically the exact same experience,” Nat agreed dryly. 

An older man blanched nearby, half choking on his coffee. In another universe, Nat and the rest of the Yellowjackets were still playing soccer together, unaware of what grief felt like. 

But in this universe, Nat had nothing. 

Nothing except Misty for bizarre companionship. 

Nat downed her coffee quickly and didn’t feel the burn. “Ready?” 

Misty pouted but sealed the lid back to her cup and gave a nod. They left together with half the town watching and the bell jangled shrilly before they stepped into the wind. “Where now?” Misty finally asked as she followed Nat down the streets. 

She said nothing. She just kept walking until she found a phone booth. “Got some change?” 

“Who are we calling?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you calling in a hit on somebody?”

“I have a fucking gun, Misty. Why would I need to hire somebody to place a hit?”

“Sometimes it’s nice to keep clean hands.”

Nat merely thrust out one hand, clean and bloodied, and waiting for Misty to deposit a handful of small change into her palm. She ducked into the phone booth and snapped the door shut behind her before the other girl could jam herself in. The phone book was torn out but she didn’t need it. Nat once made it a habit to memorize numbers and they uselessly buzzed around her brain, relentlessly trapped inside her skull. She fed coins through the slot and plucked up the receiver, pressing the buttons until she heard the soothing buzz of the phone ringing. 

Someone picked up. A familiar voice managed a greeting. Nat dropped the receiver back onto the hook and ended the call before repeating the exact same process, earning a frustrated response. 

She slammed it down and exited the booth. Misty pushed her glasses back up her nose and frowned at her. “You done?”

“You’ll know the I’m done.”

Midnight was always the magic hour. 

She could feel it in her bones as that magic pulled her and Misty across the soccer field together, tiny shadows beneath a sea of darkness. 

Nat carried her gun and Misty hauled a large bag of required supplies, awkwardly stepping across and through the dense snowdrifts. They had spent the afternoon whittling away minutes, half watching a movie in the Quigley house while Misty’s parents bustled back and forth uneasily, picking up Nat’s truck from the hospital parking lot and blatantly shredding up the five tickets stuck beneath a wiper. Nat spent a blessed five minutes alone in the washroom to use a stolen eyeliner to shade around her eyes like a poor substitute for lipgloss and warpaint, resolve like ice in her veins. 

Misty shivered. It didn’t matter how warmly they dressed, the chill set right into their bones. Bleachers framed the field and they walked straight through their old ghosts. 

“Here?” Misty asked pointlessly, standing at the direct centre of the field. 

She closed her eyes and imagined the soccer field in a different season. A chase of adrenaline making her run faster, the other girls bouncing together and spreading out, different lives living in different places. But it was just dead space with nothing left to give. “Yup. Good as place as any, right?”

“I don’t know French. So... if you start talking French?”

“Good. We’re not going to Paris.”

Misty dropped her bag of subtly supplies and knelt, rummaging through what she had gathered for the night. A tarp was stretched across the snow, feeble protection from the dampness as they sat down, and then she plucked out an Ouija board to place down on top of it. 

Candles were scattered next. Tiny tea lights in glass jars, each one carefully lit with a match. 

Their light rivalled the frigid moon. 

“Technically I don’t actually know how to do this,” Misty admitted. “This was more Lottie’s thing.”

“You played along with her, right? You weren’t taking notes?” Nat fired back with irritation. She wanted the shake answers from something. The coldness made her hands ache slightly and she didn’t have a single other idea to figuring out if Jackie was safe. “We’ll do this until we get it right.”

“I didn’t exactly pack a bible,” Misty frowned at her. “If you start going demented, I will take a rock to your head.”

Nat bravely refrained from rolling her eyes. She stole the knife out of her pocket and cut shallowly across her palm like a mirror to Jackie’s hand. A tiny thread of scarlet bloomed from where the knife cut. She then swiped at her forehead with that blood, marking her brow. 

She extended the knife blade first to Misty and watched her replicate the cut, dabbing at her forehead with her blood. “Technically this makes us blood sisters. Same blood on the same knife and stuff,” Misty informed her, seating herself comfortably and positioning the planchette on the board. “So no take backs.”

The candles flickered nervously. Nat kept her hands feather light on the planchette and watched Misty’s fingers to judge the pressure being applied. She cracked a smile. “Would we have won nationals?” Nat tested the waters. 

Nothing. 

Wind pushed at the snow and it slid across the bleachers in a dull whisper. 

The planchette shifted. “Nope,” Misty read out, sighing. “I think that’s false, actually. We were totally ready to win.”

“At least we’re staying consistent.”

“Oh! Let me try. Was Ben my one true love?” 

It didn’t move. Nat held back brutal honesty and listened to the night itself, stars burning overhead, darkness a muffled veil on the world. The light from the candles made the blood on Misty’s face look black as tar. 

They repositioned the planchette back to the center. Nat’s heart felt frozen. “Did Jackie Taylor die?”

The piece began moving in circles around the board while never landing on anything. Misty gasped and her eyes went wide, snapping up to Nat’s. “Are you pushing?” She hissed, panicking. 

“Are you?” Nat shot back. “It’s moving by itself.”

Finally and slowly it gravitated towards one end of the board before stopping. “Yes,” Misty said, admitting the truth to the cold night. “Jackie died.”

The gun was within easy reach. She had to focus on it to pull herself away from the memory of digging the grave. 

Light reflected in Misty’s glasses. She huffed and twitched her shoulders, repositioning the planchette to the middle starting point. “Is Jackie Taylor still alive?”

It moved to yes instantly. 

Nat wondered what Misty saw when she looked at her. 

“So we’ve clarified the really important thing. That’s great. And nothing bad has happened!”

“How is Jackie Taylor alive again?” Nat demanded hoarsely, lifting her chin. “How the fuck did she come back to life?”

It started pulling along the alphabet etched out in formal script. Misty started reading it out, awkwardly keeping up to the movement. “D-I-V- oh, divide! What does that mean?”

The question promoted no movement. 

“Is she safe?” 

Nothing. 

“Answer me, damnit. Is Jackie safe?”

It slowly moved. “B-A-L-A-N-C-E.” 

“This isn’t making any sense.”

“The board is broken,” Nat glared. “It’s bullshit.”

“You’re asking questions the spirits don’t know. Look, let me try.” Misty coughed, clearing her throat. “Should I get a pet bird? Should I name it Caligula? I feel like that’s a good name for a bird.”

It shifted over to yes in agreement. 

“I’ll fucking kill you— what the fuck, Misty?” Nat snapped, leaning forward and pushing down on the planchette slightly to ease her desire to hold someone beneath water until they drowned. “Is Jackie Taylor safe? She’s dead and alive but is she safe? Fuck, I’ll set you on fire,” she swore to nobody and anything. “Give me a fucking answer.”

The candles blew out. She could taste the smoke from where it curled up in the air like an afterthought. 

“I think they’re done answering us,” Misty staged whispered. “Wanna call it? We can go back to my place and do face masks. Oh! Do you like musicals? We could totally listen to some tapes.”

“No.”

“You tried, Nat.” Misty eased back slightly in the darkness. “I’m not stupid. I know how hard you tried out there.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Nobody was enough.”

“We’re trying again. Where are the fucking matches?” 

“Nat. This’ll turn you crazy. You need to just let it go. Sleep, eat some good food. I don’t know. Maybe you need to move on. You did everything you could to protect her.”

“I’m not finished. We’re not done with this,” Nat seethed. “You don’t know what I will do when I lose her again.”

Nat hadn’t factored the consequence of surviving. She was so tired. She felt the ghost of the antler crown weighing her down, bending her spine and forcing her head to bow slightly. 

Smoke in the air just wasn’t enough. She wanted a fire to rage bright enough that the sun turned red like blood. 

And, truthfully, she wanted absolution for her own heart. 

You remember me, Nat thought to the night air and darkness. You’ve seen what I am willing to do. 

Ben was dead. Travis was dead. Javi was dead. 

Despite not believing in anything, Nat was exhausted from begging unyielding gods for scraps of mercy. 

Now she knew how to cut deep enough to scrape a knife against bones. Now she knew how to shoot without hesitation, safety clipped off. 

Eerie blue light burst from the distance like an invitation. Nat’s face twisted in fury and she snatched up her gun, staggering to her feet and marching towards it. 

Chapter Text

Nat and Misty had both ceased being people, remaining only as shadows. A blue flame flickered along in the distance like a beacon and they chased after it, blind to everything else in the world. They stumbled through the higher snowdrifts and one flame exhausted itself just to form a second burst further away, half leading and half toying. 

The moon was hanging high in the sky by the time traces of civilization faded completely. They were far enough away from the realm of asphalt roads and tidied sidewalks, not a single home in sight to burn the night away. Nat stumbled over ice crusted snow and nearly dropped the rifle, Misty scrambling behind her in her footsteps. 

She couldn’t stop. Somehow, despite everything, Nat was being reward for taking a sharp knife and rousing the unseen into being seen. 

Snow crunched beneath feet. Divide, Nat thought. Balance. She let the night drag her along further. The only sounds audible was Misty’s quick breath, their feet stamping in near tandem. 

Blue flashed again. 

Blue vanished again. 

Blue reappeared. 

History was pulling her backwards and forwards. A branch scraped against her arm and her mind flooded with the sound of a bee hive buzzing furiously. 

The moon froze in the sky with it’s pearly sheen. “I actually liked it out there at first,” Misty’s voice managed to admit from Nat’s shadow, quiet and confessional. “I mean, it sucked. I really thought somebody would’ve found us after a couple weeks… but it was nice being seen. I got to have a purpose, right? I saved people. I got everything organized. I did that, you know? For the first time in my life… people were looking at me, like actually seeing me as a person. And that was so cool.”

Long grass crouched up through the snow. It whispered softly, shifting and bending, reciting something in a language without words. The blue light ahead radiated coldness. Nat drew closer to it and it extinguished. Seconds later another blue light sprung to life. 

Maybe Nat and Misty were being led into nothing. It could be some kind of trap, another show of cruelty from the wilderness. 

Bees buzzed. An echo of Lottie’s terrified panting and French mumblings filled Nat’s skull and circled around, frenzied hysteria bubbling up from the past. 

Misty’s confessional wasn’t finished. She staggered along in Nat’s footprints, dainty compared to her heavier tread. “People were supposed to look for us. People spend their entire lives looking for lost people. I thought we’d all go home and it would be different. Everyone would get to like me this time.”

Her chattering teeth and trembling voice sounded smaller beneath the arch of dark, thorny tree branches. 

It didn’t matter how far they were from the wilderness. They were still stuck there, still waiting for someone to free them. 

"Misty?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

“No.”

“Come on. Please? It’ll be fun,” Jackie attempted. She flipped the pages of the book casually and cleared her throat dramatically, brows furrowing. “We can totally do shitty voices to go with it.”

“How about you just imagine watching television right now?” Nat shot down, yanking her boot laces tighter. “I’ll play cards with you if you’re really that bored.”

“Isn’t this what they did in the vintage days? Take turns reading passages out loud? I’m trying to be rustic.”

Nat didn’t even look at the book. Jackie had casually plucked it from Shauna’s suitcase and ran off with it earlier, provoking the other girl into a nervous fit where she unpacked and repacked five times before giving up, stalking off to cut a rabbit up with a knife for helpful stress management. 

She didn’t have any interest in it. The red cover reminded her of blood anyways. 

“Jackie? Let it go. Go find Laura Lee or someone else. I don't care.”

“Are you seriously mad?” 

“Yeah, you’re pissing me off.”

The book snapped shut. “Shit, sorry. Didn’t realize I was pushing your buttons.”

“Whatever,” Nat muttered, struggling to knot her laces up. But her vision was suddenly blurry and the laces slipped through her fingers, knot collapsing into nothing. “Just leave it alone.”

“Nat. Natalie,” Jackie tried, voice firm even when it shrank down slightly. “If you’re actually pissed? I’m sorry.”

The lake looked like glass with the way sunlight struck the surface of it. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You look like you’re gonna cry, so yeah, it probably does matter.”

“You can’t make me cry, Taylor.” She managed a thin laugh and looked at Jackie properly. Her hair looked brighter after the summer sun. Strands of cinnamon and bronze mixed with the brown, softening the colour until it was like molten curls, autumn bright. Her mouth looked like happiness with a trace of lipgloss. “Don’t blow your ego up for nothing.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re as hard as nails. You knock back a six pack for breakfast and make us all look like we’re not even trying,” Jackie said, rolling her eyes. “Total Amazon warrior stalking the wild. Yeah, I’m impressed.”

Was she? Nat liked the idea that she could impress Jackie. So few things rarely made that cut. And it was harder without a soccer field to show off on.

Van was barely visible in the water below. She dove beneath the waves and resurfaced, red hair slicked back. Some of the others had gathered along the edges, aggressively scrubbing their hair clean with shampoo, desperate to be clean in a land full of dirt and grit. “What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you get out of this place?” Nat asked her, focusing her attention on the people far below and trying not to think about how Jackie’s hair smelled like roses from whatever she used. 

Jackie’s mouth quirked up. “Drag your sorry asses back for nationals. We still have to come back with gold, right?” The joke was stiff. Everyone was getting into the habit of staring into the flames of a cooking fire at night and debating what they missed the most. Coffee for Tai. Lottie missed a washing machine and dryer combo. Van wanted good weed and a cold beer. Ben wanted his foot back. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to want anymore,” she said, soft like a confession. “I had it all figured out. School, I guess. Maybe get a coke? Like, not diet. I would so cut off my left hand for a regular, non diet coke right now.”

Stiff pearls, awkward dinner parties. Nat tried to picture Jackie's predetermined life but she came from a different place than Jackie did. The last winter her father was alive he forgot to pay bills and they spent two months freezing before her mother managed to pawn enough cheap jewellery to pay off what was owed. Nat crawled into bed wearing layers of clothing for weeks, shivering and trying so hard to keep herself warm alone. 

“Fuck school. Go traveling instead,” she said roughly, swallowing back the yearning for dreams. “All the cool kids are doing it.”

“What? Go backpacking through the wild alone? Rough it out in the sticks? Maybe cook some deer meat over a fire? Maybe I'm already cool.”

“Funny. Yeah, that’s actually hilarious. Good job, Taylor.”

“Your appreciation is everything I have ever wanted.”

“If I had known it would be that easy…” Nat trailed off. 

Jackie didn’t seem inclined to pick up her half of the joke. She looked at Nat thoughtfully. “What are you scared of the most?”

Birds trilled from the branches. Travis had set off with Lottie, plainly enchanted by her long dark hair and brilliant eyes. The pair wouldn’t be back until dark. “Seriously?”

“Dead serious.”

“I’m fucking scared shitless of a teacher wanting me to read something out,” Nat said, mouth turning into a sardonic smile. “Freaks me out whenever they pull out Shakespeare.”

“What? You allergic to that guy? He's, like, super dead. You've got nothing to worry about.”

“Sure.”

Jackie went still, clearly still processing. “You don’t read, right?”

“Yeah, not really my thing. I’m dyslexic. It doesn't work up here,” Nat said, tapping her forehead with her middle finger. 

“Oh. Well now I feel like a total asshole.”

“Don’t worry. I only think you’re a bit of an asshole.” 

Her shoe nudged Nat’s boot softly. “See, I would’ve said something like a plane crash for my biggest fear personally. Or something about being stranded in the fucking woods for an unknown amount of time.”

“I’m an original,” Nat said dryly, searching Jackie for any sign of mockery. But Jackie merely reached out carefully, fingers lacing with fingers, smiling. “And you’re not the actual worst.”

“High praise.”

“I’ve got nothing but praise for you.”

Jackie tugged on her hand like an invitation. “Yeah?”

They were alone in their own bubble of space. Nat trusted it, trusted the signs, trusted Jackie’s mouth lined with happiness and leaned into it; offering something that Jackie met in return. 

Roses, Nat thought. Pure roses all the way down.

The final blue light turned into nothing. Darkness sank around them in awful streaks of shadows and Nat held still as she watched. The trees stood like silent sentinels around them. 

She refused to blink. It felt like the night had its own eyes and they were staring at each other; hunter and predator locked into their respective places. 

But what did that make her? Nat’s metamorphosis had taken her from prey and into something bigger, be it a hunter or a predator. Both were elements to her history and both meant something different. 

There was still blood on her forehead. Her palm itched and stung from where she cut. “Well?” Nat demanded to the emptiness. “Are you going to talk? That’s what this is about, right? You didn’t lead us here to give us nothing.”

Branches bowed overhead. A slight tremor rumbled up through the ground like a memory of a thunderstorm bottled up. It shouldn’t be this easy, she thought.

"I wouldn't tell you if you broke my heart," Nat said. Red and gold coloured leaves scratched at the sky overhead. "So if this is some kind of fucked up game? I'm not playing."

"Your opinion of me is pretty shit."

"Don't take it personal."

The sound of the woods coming alive buried itself deep inside Nat’s bones. She tasted pine needles and caught the tang of a cooking fire at the back of her throat. One deep breath came out from the sky and the wind howled in response, sweeping snow straight towards where they stood together before slamming straight up over their heads in a wave.

Nat refused to marvel at the unknown shaping itself for her. Gods and spirits liked admiration and turned cruel because of it. She stared down at what she didn’t understand, finger curling around the trigger a fraction tighter. 

Give me something, the wilderness seemed to demand. The wind kept raging and toying, building itself up into something beyond any ordinary limit of sanity. Tree branches snapped beneath the pressure like bones. 

“Is this normal?” Misty’s voice dipped into a whisper, eyes flashing from behind her round frames. 

“Fuck if I know.”

Nat sealed a kiss to the back of Jackie’s neck and lingered. The air had an awful coldness to it and it made the other girls lethargic and half stunned by the shock of it. “Don’t forget about me,” she commanded the other girl, arm slipping around Jackie’s waist and holding briefly. One of the candles was lit in the attic and a pale coloured moth swirled around it, wings fluttering like heartbeats. “You’ve got two days before I’m back.”

“Don’t go.”

They adjusted and Nat kissed her properly, deeper. Jackie’s hand came up and palmed the back of her skull, nails rasping at her scalp. “Can’t stay.”

She touched Jackie’s cheek and pretended she couldn’t see or feel the hollowness forming. They were all struggling. That one deer dragged back had been writhing with worms and maggots, utterly spoiled and was left to rot out in the woods unseen. “I’m going to wait for you. The minute you’re back? I’m not going to leave you alone.”

“Counting on that.”

“You taking enough supplies? Are you going to be warm enough?”

“We’ll manage. The cold should be pretty decent incentive to shoot something fast.” 

“Wow. Here I thought I was the incentive.” 

She kissed Jackie’s smug smile. “Stay safe, Jack.” Nat carried matches in her pocket and spare bullets. She kept the Jack of Hearts card tucked over her own heart, pinned in place so it was practically part of her skin. 

She held tight to her weapon against the night and more blue fire burst from the branches overhead, the trees brilliant with flames that didn’t devour. 

Misty tipped her head back. “Holy shit.”

“You wanna stop with the games?” She challenged. The ground was still vibrating with tremors and Nat stepped forward, closer to the tree, and it was like walking across the spine of a thunderstorm. “I’ll knock your teeth out.”

“Nat! Seriously! Be cool?” Misty pleaded, trying to grab her arm but Nat was beyond her reach. The blue fire radiated coldness. It bit into her bones and demanded to be felt. 

The wilderness knew that Misty wasn’t quite the hunter or predator that it desired. Her breathing was too quick, audible over the sounds of the branches bending and bowing above. 

And that was fine. Whatever Nat was, she would be enough this time. It led her here for something.

The wind flattened out to nothing but snow billowed up, swirling and forming a flash of a leg and an arm, a body slowly shaping itself from nothing. She watched and refused to back an inch as it pulled itself upright. Air swirled around the shape of it, teeth like bone shards peering out from it’s mouth. Two dark stones formed eyes. 

You wished to break two plains open, it’s voice jabbed inside Nat’s skull. She winced beneath the pressure of it. You take your hands and wrench something from nothing.

It felt like she had the pressure of the sky resting on her shoulders. Her legs were trembling beneath the sudden weight of it. They crowned you and turned you into a God. Why don’t you understand your place?

“I’m not a fucking God,” Said Nat through gritted teeth. Blood was starting to drip down from her nose. “They turned me into a shrine. There’s a difference and you know it.”

The spirit snapped bloodied teeth inches from her face. I had shrines. Dozens, hundreds. But time stole them from me. Burrowed sacred hearts beneath rock and dirt. They forgot what I could do. What shrine are you to celebrate nothing?

“Jackie—”

Dead and gone, just to come back. 

The voice practically sang at her with no voice at all. Nat kept her gun upright and directed at the spirit, clinging to it. It was a form of salvation. 

Perhaps… a sacred heart beneath rock and dirt? Oh, she tasted so bitter. I don't sit in her shadow but I know. Of course I know. Such hunger to live that I can feel, even here. Bitter, bitter.

It took sincere effort to keep herself from shooting. Her finger was locked on the trigger and the safety was clicked back. “Is she safe? What the fuck is she?”

Blue flame burned brilliant and the spirit twirled, trembling and shuddering, clinging to it’s form. She was waiting. Oh, how she waited. Bones to dirt, ashes to ashes. It pulled hands together and a small blue light burst there, cradled awkwardly, and Nat watched as the light swelled in size before turning to nothing but a whisper of smoke. 

“Divide? Balance? I don’t understand—”

You spilled so much blood and fed what sat there. You are tolerated, Antler Queen. Nothing more.

Nat translated that to her standing on thin, cracking ice. More blood was streaming down from her nose and her mouth tasted metallic. “I’ll make you a deal,” she tried. It froze, frost spreading where skin should be, head tilted to the side like it was considering her. “I’ll give you a secret if you answer one question.”

She had to be quick. The scabs on her knuckles were tearing open. “I can’t leave without knowing,” Nat added like a warning. “So play ball or you’ll be here until sunrise.”

It wailed loud in response. Nat heard nails racking across a chalkboard inside her mind and jolted from the sensation. Blood. I want blood. I don’t want your foul secrets—

That was a shame. Nat had so many secrets tucked away, awful little stories that made up her entire history. She cut the wilderness off by dropping the gun to her feet in favour of her knife and flicking the blade out just to cut along her hand. She used the opposite palm this time, mirroring the first cut. It bled quickly and stars dotted her vision. It felt like she was a set of scales restored to proper balance, bleeding and hurting in equal amounts. “Here. You want blood?”

I can’t settle for this. It isn’t enough.

“You said you wanted blood. I gave you blood. You didn’t fucking set a limit to how much you wanted.”

It shrieked again, recoiling and shuddering. Ice splintered down to Nat’s feet. What, oh what, do you want? What secrets do you pry from woods? What must you know? What will satisfy you the most? 

Her blood dripped down into the snow and turned dark. 

She had a thousand questions bundled up inside her and none of them felt good enough. Bone teeth snapped at her with resentment. “Why did Jackie come back?” Nat finally asked. 

Even small lives are worth something.  

The woods fell still and a smile stretched itself wide across Nat’s lips. She held the knife in one hand and with the other she formed a fist, thumb curling protectively to hold the shape. Nat was a hunter. She knew all about the soft, delicate things that hid beneath skin. 

Jackie was worth something. 

Despite the fact that the creature was mostly faceless, it managed to direct a glare of scorn at Nat before tumbling away, collapsing into the snow itself and vanishing from sight. The blue fire went with it. 

“Bless your heart!” Misty called out to the unknown, her voice dripping in makeshift southern honey. She slipped forward and yanked Nat’s arm around her boney shoulders to take some of the weight, timing it perfectly before her legs buckled completely. “So I’m pretty sure that’s the last time you can piss off the supernatural. I think this technically burns that bridge.”

“She’s worth something,” Nat mumbled, head lolling back to see the cold moon light. Invisible bees crawled over her skin. “Did you hear?”

Misty was struggling beneath the weight of her bag of thrown together seance gear and trying to pick up Nat’s gun without actually dropping Nat. “What?”

“Something… something that’s worth something,” she struggled for coherency. Blood was thick in her mouth. “That’s valuable, right?”

“I don’t even know where we are. Did it give you a map? A compass? We should’ve made a trail of breadcrumbs. That would’ve been so smart.” Her voice trailed off beneath the buzzing.

“You don’t kill something with value,” Nat finished through clenched teeth and with bright eyes, gazing into the shadows that lingered around them. "Something with worth? You keep it alive."

It took effort to keep from dragging her feet. Travis had tapped his hand against the airplane as they passed through that graveyard and they were deeper in the unknown, slowly following the rough shape of a game trail. Twice they peeled apart and split for different sections, quietly ghosting over the cold landscapes, lingering over faint scratch marks from antlers on trees or anything resembling tracks in the ground. Every time, though, Travis instinctively found her. 

They liked their games. Back when the woods had proper game they made a process of keeping score per each kill, the satisfaction that came with building up their personal reputations. Lottie's face lit up when Travis was the one dealing with the kill slung over his shoulder personally like some Messiah trekking out of the trees, gunpowder lingering in the air behind him. But with no game to shoot and tally up? Their amusement shifted. Nat would climb up the slight slope and dart down a twisted passage, practically invisible. 

And Travis would find her every time within minutes. If Jackie knew Nat's heart, Travis knew her brain. He knew how she read the land and how she moved within it, tracking her down with absolute ease. 

She tipped her head back and saw grey sky overhead. It swirled above her restlessly, heavy with clouds. Snow was coming. And, with snow, meant winter. 

Nat lifted her hand to touch the edge of the Jack of Hearts card. 'What are you scared of the most?' she imagined weakly, gazing at bad prospects and terrible yields. 

Losing one person. 

It was funny how quickly a person could change when they found their purpose. 

Chapter Text

Nat slowly bled into consciousness. The perils of knowing no home was that she was always waking up somewhere strange and alone, half numb to the fear that came with that sensation. 

Apparently her collapse triggered Misty’s industrious survival habits. A tiny and incredibly smoky fire burned from beneath the trees, branches dispersing some of the smoke to prevent their location from being seen by anyone, and throwing off just enough heat to keep her sturdy lean-to warm. The tarp was repurposed from their seance to forming a hasty shelter stretched across sturdy branches and Nat sat up to find the other girl kneeling in the harsh daylight, nibbling at a piece of jerky. 

Hey eyes met Nat like a challenge as she tore off a piece with her teeth. “What?”

“Jerky? Really?”

“I think what you mean to say is ‘good morning, Misty! Thank you so much for all your help in contacting the spirits and keeping us from freezing to death’, right?” Misty dropped her a mimic of Nat’s lower tone for her regular voice. “What a beautiful day, right?”

“Yeah, sure. Something like that,” Nat said, stretching her arms out and working the tension free from her shoulders. “Where are we?”

Misty hitched her shoulders up. “You passed out. I dragged you, like, ten feet before giving up. Had all this stuff in my bag.”

The trees were unrecognizable. A plain grey sky stood overhead and their branches scraped at the slate coloured clouds. A tiny saucepan was melting down snow into drinking water over the fire and Nat crept towards it while rubbing her hands together, fending off that chill. “Why did you bring all of this?”

“Why’d you bring a gun?”

“In case I wanted to shoot something.” Like spirits or gods. 

“Well, I like surviving. And I like being prepared. Want some?” Misty offered her the bag of jerky and Nat’s stomach twisted in response. She shook her head and Misty vanished it inside her pocket. “I have literally no idea where we are. I was hoping you had it all figured out inside your head.”

Maybe that was the reason why Misty had kept Nat warm and safe. 

“We’ll pick a direction and walk,” Nat decided briskly. The wind covered up their prior tracks but she was skilled with the motion of walking until she hit some illusion of civilization. They were probably seated on some old farmland long overgrown and fed back to the wilderness, just within range of their town’s limits. 

Dried blood was crusted to the backs of her hands. She frowned at it before bending and scooping up snow, rubbing clean what she could. A touch of the red lingered, though, beneath skin like a defiant streak that couldn’t be undone. 

“I thought you were dying, you know.” Misty’s bleak voice was barely audible over the crackling wood. It looked like she had ripped up roots with some kind of hatchet to start the fire and was burning bundles of branches. The wetness of the wood made the smoke denser like a veil of liquid night. “You were bleeding like something came undone.” 

“I’m still alive. Unfortunately, right?” 

“I might not be your best friend, Nat, but you’re my best friend. I wouldn’t want to see you die.”

The tone shifted. Nat looked at Misty and saw the paleness to her face, the exhaustion rimming her eyes in shadows. Her voice had the same heat as the fire itself, drawing up into flames. 

Loyalty made Nat uneasy. The wilderness had turned her into a hunting dog and the rest of the Yellowjackets into her own band of hunters. But Misty was kneeling towards the source of the heat itself, vulnerability plain in her empty hands. “And I didn’t think your were a shrine, you know. I was hoping you’d be an answer. And I wanted to go home,” Misty continued, eyes fixed to anywhere but Nat. “We were playing games that we didn’t know the rules to.”

Nat dropped down beside Misty, partially defeated. Her jacket fit loosely around her shoulders. “Yeah?”

“It’s scary being back.” Misty tapped her forehead with a finger. “I’m still there and nobody can know that.”

“It sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Jackie always pulled the team together. She rejected messy politics as a whole and refused to stoop down to Tai’s plotting. Nat could practically feel Jackie jabbing her spine with a finger in silent reprimand. “You can do whatever you want, Misty. This is the real world.”

Nat wasn’t a nice person but she was repaying favour. Jackie had hovered over her bed like some undead grudge and laid down a demand to pull herself together and be with the rest of their group to go home. If she hadn't given her something to move towards, Nat might have spent the rest of her life rotting in those restraints, demented by her memories and rage. Nobody else would have come back for her.

Misty looked at her with wide eyes behind wider frames. “Finish high school, I guess.”

“Fuck off,” Nat sneered automatically. “You really want to waste time going back to high school? You chopped off Ben’s leg. You’re not sitting in trigonometry for a semester.”

“You’re supposed to finish high school to start the next part. That’s how it works. You go to college and get a job and all the rom-coms follow a very specific formula—”

Hell on earth suited Misty. Nat couldn’t picture her in a pastel coloured film with happy endings wrapped up tight by a bow. Whatever future Misty had? It would be highly organized with a touch of grit and blood to it. “You survived a plane crash in the middle of no where. People can make an exception. You weren’t squatting out there thinking you’d go back to sitting in a classroom, right?”

Misty’s mouth trembled as she tried to restrain herself from smiling. “Do you remember Becky?”

“Who?”

“Becky.” She rolled her eyes when Nat didn’t recognize the name. “Becky Norwood? You know, the girl who ran her mouth all over school? She had Robbie tape used condoms to my locker. I hated her. She’d call my house just to laugh at me.” 

She vaguely remembered a girl with dark hair and large eyes. Nat frowned. “And?”

“I wanted to come back and kill her.”

“No. I’m not paying your bail.” Nat needed to slam the door shut on the idea before Misty started actively plotting on it. The seance bag apparently doubled as a survival bag. She didn’t know if Misty had a murder bag already assembled or not. 

“Fine. I want to do something that’ll really mess her up at least. Something so she knows to never fuck with me again,” Misty decided. 

Nat tried to gauge if Misty meant psychologically or physically. Did it matter? Becky was nobody to Nat. “You wanna put the fear into her? We can do that. I’ll help you if you help me.”

Fire cackled and Misty’s eyes gleamed hawkishly. “Deal.”

Some people had the illusion that rabbits hibernated over the course of the winter. But hunger kept them awake and moving, shuffling over the landscape in near invisibility, relentlessly awake for it. 

And Nat always knew the wilderness better than most people did.

Nat led Misty back to the highway and took a hard left, following the ditch until the trees thinned out to a field. Spirits didn't need to guide her this time.

Snowdrifts crusted up the slopes in the distance. By the afternoon enough sunlight burned through the grey coverage that the back of Nat’s neck felt warm as she bent down, positioning herself in a comfortable range. 

Farmland sat in strange pockets between wilderness and urban spaces. She straddled that edge uneasily, gun in hand, squinting at nothing. Misty thoughtfully tapped her hand and offered sunglasses silently, noticing the strain from the white light burning back at them. “What are we doing?” She staged whispered, crouching low enough to keep balance without toppling over. “Is this part of the plan?”

Travis would have understood instantly from their positioning and stayed silent with agreement. Nat felt an uneasiness that came with missing him. “It’s cold. That hill is south-facing. See the thickets over there?” 

Hunting was a form of math. She just needed to add up the natural elements and watched for the answer to come into fruition. 

“I still don’t get it.”

“Misty?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll shoot you if you don’t shut up.”

She mimed that she was zipping up her mouth by trailing her middle finger across her lips. 

The wilderness had given her enough opportunity to accelerate her hunting skills. She and Travis made a sport out of it, plotting down sections to come back with a higher yield, cocky enough to keep score. 

They glutted themselves on their kills to the point that they ran interference to prevent the other person from shooting their shot just to maintain their lead. Maybe they turned the wilderness into something trivial and that was why it had spoiled itself in the end, leaving them with empty woods and spoiled game. 

But this kill? 

Nat hungered for it. She wouldn’t waste the bullet. 

Sunlight slowly ate away at the snow and frost. The distant trees dripped, snow turning to slush at the roots. And eventually the open space provided her opportunity as a rabbit scampered along the ridge of brush, sensing open space and the bright heat forming against the hill. 

All living things, Nat knew, wanted to be fulfilled and warm. The rabbit was no different. 

She tracked it through the scope of her gun. It edged awkwardly into plain sight. No wind pushed at her face and she measured the lines carefully, half numb. 

And then Nat pulled back on the trigger. A brief light flashed from gunpowder igniting and the rabbit was thrown backwards, blessed by a clean shot. 

Misty burst into gleeful applause, hopping up and scampering for Nat’s rabbit like any hunting dog would. Her springy curls bounced as she returned, face rosy and merry. “That was so cool! You barely thought about it. Just like shooting fish in a barrel, right?”

The rabbit was limp in her grip. Nat took it from her and shoved it blindly into Misty’s seance bag. “That’s step one. We’re gonna need to make some calls. You still in?”

Shauna’s mother knew everyone. It was the luxury of living in a small town where everyone tangled up together. Misty knocked sharply at the front door with Beverly’s bank card clasped in her hand and an apologetic smile pasted across her face while Nat hopped the back fence to the yard beyond sight, half listening as the woman opened her door up wide. 

Everyone had a habit of locking their front doors while leaving the back door open for access. Nat jiggled at the sliding door and it obeyed her demand, allowing her to slip through. She wiped snow off her boots on the rug before ghosting through a dining room and kitchen, darting up the stairwell. 

Misty’s mouth curled up victoriously as she kept Beverly posted to the door. No one would want to invite Misty into their home and no one could shut the door on a Yellowjackets survivor. 

She kept Beverly in semi-hospital limbo while Nat cracked open the domestic sphere unseen. The ploy was the hang onto Beverly's bank card until the very last minute while wrangling Beckie's address out of the woman who kept everybody beneath her thumb, especially girls Shauna went to school with. 

Photos of Shauna were posted along the stairwell at various ages. Her toothy smile mellowed into something softer and half unfinished, dark eyes burning out from the film itself. A nail stood at the end of the timeline like it was waiting for a new instalment, like Beverly had permission to continue her bragging of her daughter’s life by adding a new photograph. 

What would it be? Shauna with her throat plum coloured by Nat’s hands? Shauna from the newspaper photos, disoriented and lost amongst civilization again? Or maybe Beverly was simply waiting for the right moment, something that fit a cookie cutter life the right way. Graduation, a wedding? 

Beverly was a single parent and Shauna wasn’t home. Nat had called three times to check, hanging onto the line without saying a word, waiting out Beverly’s irritation. She neatly bypassed the guard to the house and crept into Shauna’s bedroom silently. 

Blood dripped down on the floor. 

Photos of the saints were plastered across the walls. Their eyes watched Nat as she flipped back covers from the bed before splaying out her rabbit amongst the checkered sheets. Her knife tugged into the skin of it and she yanked down, cutting through the belly in a straight line. Blood streamed out, wet and dark. 

Glassy eyes stared through her and met the saints without flinching. 

Nat knew exactly where she ended and Jackie began. Or, truthfully and bitterly, where Jackie ended and Nat began. 

She didn’t bother reading Shauna’s room. The falsehoods hung everywhere like trophies, ranging from an outgrown friendship bracelet that was a perfect match to something Jackie wore on occasion before the crash, to the soccer posters on display over the desk. Nothing was authentic. But Nat lingered, half ghost and half wraith, over a framed picture of her Jackie with Shauna. 

Their faces were pressed together tight and freckles dotted their noses evenly, a perfect match caught on film by light pressing down. Nat scooped it up to inspect and frowned when her fingers pressed against the loose back of the frame, curiosity sparked. 

She flipped it over. She pried back the tiny prongs and bent the back away, a second photograph tucked away unseen. 

Jackie’s expression was frozen in sleep. Hair spilled out across the pillow and the blankets dipped low enough to reveal collarbones and pale skin, blissfully unaware. She was asleep where the rabbit was dead, space unaware to the blood stain seeping through the mattress. The body would eventually turn stiff and ruin the private space as effective as anything else Nat could have done. Shauna provoked a hunter and Nat was simply returning the passion with a single piece to begin with. 

Shauna might have rendered down Nat's trophies but she was the one to have taken each shot, hauling their bodies back to the cabin. She was familiar with the blood that came with something living and dead. 

Nat tucked the photograph into her pocket and returned the frame to where it had been as if it had never been touched in the first place. 

It took effort to swallow down rage. Her hands felt dirty and ruined. She abandoned the room without breaking anything and her finger touched the nail in the wall as she passed it, retracing her steps,  briskly waving towards Misty from where she was practically half leaning through the doorway against Beverly’s wishes. 

The house was still standing and utterly ruined. Jackie would be the ghost haunting it forever and Nat would be the wraith making punishment be felt. Despite Jackie leaving her, some things never changed. 

“I want to see Jackie.”

Henry’s face was sour looking. She suddenly understood how Misty felt with her feet planted on the doorstep, stuck by a door and someone gazing out. “Who are you?” He asked, giving her a hard look. 

Nat’s brow lifted a fraction. She didn’t back an inch. “You’re daughter is very smart. That implies that you have some intelligence.”

His face turned scarlet. “I don’t want you coming here again. You’re a danger to ordinary people.”

He tried to shove the door shut but she caught it, kicking her boot into the gap before it could close. “I’m asking to see Jackie,” Nat managed to say through gritted teeth. “And I won’t leave until I see her.”

She needed a different memory of Jackie inside her head. Not one dead, not one leaving her. 

Nat was inherently selfish. She had survived for the sake of living when she shouldn’t have. Her decisions saw others die in her place. 

Invisible bees crawled over her skin, humming in absolute judgement. 

“I’ll call the police.”

“Do it.”

Henry tried pushing harder on the door but she barely felt the pressure of it. The Taylor house looked like a castle so she tried to stand herself up like a fortress in contrast to it. It was hard, though, being weighed down with her own failures. 

“What? Are you looking for money? Some kind of charity?” Henry tried, looking for a gap in her armour to jab a knife through. “What exactly are you wanting, Natalie?”

“Jackie.”

Always and forever, Jackie. 

“Henry?”

“I’m dealing with something,” he said stiffly, eyes still fastened to Nat. “Let me handle this.”

But Janet was her own silent force, refusing to submit. She peered over his shoulder and grimaced at the sight of Nat on her own doorstep, face still stitched together. “How delightful,” she managed to say. “You’re looking for Jackie?”

“Jaqueline is resting.”

“Nonsense, dear. She’s been awake since noon.” 

“She’s recovering,” Henry attempted, chipping away beneath Nat’s relentless stare and Janet’s relentless needling. “My daughter doesn’t need visitors.”

But Janet, apparently tired with the standoff, turned towards the stairwell and cupped one hand to her mouth, calling up for Jackie. She plucked nervously at her pearl necklace at the sound of footsteps responding, a girl trudging down from her tower sanctuary. “She’ll be delighted to see a friend. Jackie’s been so quiet,” Janet said conspiringly, speaking at Nat’s stitched and through Henry. 

She didn’t seem to want to look at either one of them. 

Jackie slowly came into view. Her grey face was gaunt with exhaustion. 

Her eyes looked straight through her audience, refusing to hook. 

Nat’s heart twisted painfully in response. 

“We’re going somewhere.” She jangled the truck keys. Misty was safely tucked back inside the Quigley household, overcome with joy from ruining someone. Nat had called in a favour with the local butcher for a bucket of pig’s blood -which, she assumed, Morgan would eventually find out about- and they had come up behind Beckie Norwood in the dark to drop it over her, shrieking like banshees as the girl howled. 

Misty was still savouring the memory, curled up beneath blankets in bed with a pristine smile. 

Some people thought hate was bad for the soul but Nat knew better than anyone that sometimes festering hatred kept a person warm. Misty needn’t fear a cold snap anymore. The thought of her revenge would warm her straight down to her bones. 

“Jaqueline doesn’t need to go joy riding with this girl. You saw her choke someone, right? Everyone knows she’s unhinged,” Henry snapped at Janet, face turning a darker red. “They’ll think poorly of our daughter.”

“People have actually been quite enthusiastic about Nat’s speech at the memorial. I was certainly touched by her sincerity. Besides,” Janet sniffed slightly. “nobody will see them together. It’s dark enough out.” 

Henry turned on his heel and stormed away, cursing at Janet as he vanished. 

Janet wavered there like a pale candle flame. “Take a jacket, darling. I’d hate if you were cold.”

Jackie obediently turned and yanked out a coat from the closet, jamming her arms through the sleeves without fully processing it. There was something blank in her expression that hurt Nat the most. 

Nat pressed her keys into Jackie’s hand and felt her take them, fingers clenching around the feeble offering. They drifted over the pathway to where her rusty truck was sitting in perfect wait, the bed clean from any blood that sloshed out from the bucket. 

“Where am I going?” Jackie’s voice was hollowed out. 

“Fuck if I care.” Maybe the next town would be kinder, would be far enough to push back at Nat’s sins before they caught up properly to her. “Just drive, Taylor.”

Yielding control meant giving something up. But Jackie half clung to to the steering wheel and Nat was happy to part with it for the moment. 

“Are you okay?” Jackie’s voice cracked on the words, eyes glued to the road illuminated by dim headlights. “Did they fix it?”

Nat refused to touch the stitches across her cheekbone. They looked like black train tracks stuck in her skin. “Yeah. They fixed it.”

Jackie’s mouth didn’t smile. 

She went to turn on the heat but Jackie silently refused, blocking her access to the dial by shielding it with her hand. Cold rattled through the windows and up through the floor of the truck. 

Nat didn’t know how to gauge this damage. It wasn’t like punching a wall until bones broke and the pain was evident.

It was strange fate when Jackie pulled into an empty parking lot by the snow covered soccer field. Nat tried to picture what she and Misty must have looked like from the distance, awkwardly bent across an ouija board with tea lights burning. Jackie yanked the keys from the ignition and slipped from the truck, ambling towards and beneath the bleachers, a strange place where snow didn’t collect properly. 

Nat followed her faithfully like a shadow. 

“You look like shit,” she baited loosely. Jackie stopped and faced her slowly, eyes glittering from where tears were starting. “Like, what the fuck? Have you even been sleeping?”

“You can’t be around me.”

“You don’t get to stop living.”

“You can’t be around me,” Jackie repeated, louder. Her voice was coloured with an unusual streak of viciousness. “You aren’t safe with me.”

Maybe this was the life they were doomed for. Maybe if Jackie was the sun itself, Nat would need to be content with being the moon. Destined to touch only on rare occasions, eclipses that blacked out the rest of the world, but otherwise stuck in unholy rotation. 

But Nat’s desperate, shredded heart was greedy. It refused to submit to failure. “Do you know how much I’ve changed since you died?”

“I’m not the same.”

“I know. I think you’re different because you came back with something else.”

"Something is wrong with my head!" Jackie snapped, colouring with a temper inherited by a father. Nat knew the sensation of that heritage well. "I'm broken inside. I didn't come back right and nothing is going to be good ever again. I'm not the same person you knew, Nat. I'm not safe. Just let me protect you, damnit!"

"You're worth something, you asshole. I don't have all the answers for you but I know whatever is playing games? It doesn't want you to die," Nat sneered back roughly, braving a step forward. She used to hide beneath the bleachers to skip English class sometimes and get high. This was familiar territory for her. "This won't be the thing that kills you."

"How the fuck do you even know?"

"Because Misty and I hosted a seance and made sure that you were safe."

Jackie recoiled like Nat dropped a venomous snake at her feet. "What?"

"You don't know what it was like losing you the first time. I wasn't letting something take you from me again. And I don't have a textbook definition to how this all happened but your life is worth something. You're not broken. That's the dumbest shit you've ever said, Taylor. Did you think I wouldn't try and do something?" Nat would have gambled with the devil just to give Jackie concrete odds. 

Jackie flinched. “I nearly killed your mom. I would’ve. I don’t think I could have stopped if you hadn’t— if I hadn’t put you on the ground.”

Had Jackie abandoned her in an effort to protect her? Nat didn't know how to translate that love. 

“My mom was a shit parent. I wouldn’t have cared if you killed her.” Nat laid down one ruthless card across the memory of violence. “She’s nobody’s loss.”

“I have to leave you. I am afraid that it’ll happen again. I am afraid that’ll happen again and I’ll never come back. I am afraid that it’ll happen again and I’ll hurt you worse. You’re my loss, Nat. You’re the loss I’ll feel forever.”

Nat bit back her unimpressed scowl. “I figured out how to live with that wilderness, you know. You… you died, Jack. I hunted. I learned how to track the shape of it. Whatever you are? I don’t give a shit. I lost you once and I’ll take whatever pieces are left. Just stop with this bullshit.”

“You’re not taking this seriously. This? This isn’t safe. I can’t let you get”

“You’re afraid. Whatever, that’s cool. I’m not, though. You’re the one thing in this world that I’m not going to fear.” Love had many faces. Nat trusted that they were all Jackie’s. 

Slanted light poured through the gaps overhead. It illuminated Jackie's pale hands as she yanked at her jacket and the buttons of her shirt, unfeeling layers to show skin. The scar across her chest was red and healing, plainly visible. "I think I'm a bottle. Something else is inside me. And when it takes over? We both start dying."

Divide and balance. Two candles burning in sync with each other when bound by twine. Nat processed the healing damage slowly, patiently drawing close and seeing the place where Jackie was stitched together. "Does it hurt?"

"Less," Jackie admitted, softer. Her fingers drew up to graze along Nat's cheek. "It was bleeding at first."

The mark kept her alive. Jackie was a miracle of a girl, living and breathing, and tethered to a fine line. 

One answer summoned more questions. Nat didn't imagine the spirits would be inclined for another interrogation. She had felt what it must have been like to be unmade. Their cold shoulder was frigid with hostility, moody gods tempered by the wilderness alone. 

"You won't lose me, Jack. Whatever hell I end up in? I'll crawl through it with blood on my hands to get back to you and I don't give a shit how you receive me. You're my greatest and worst loss.  You've had my heart since the beginning and I won't take it back. I don't want it back." The Jack of Hearts was a sharp as a knife in her pocket, as blunt as any fist thrown. 

"Death is pretty fucking final," Jackie scorned her, frigid as frost. "Death is somewhere I can't get you back."

"The end is less final than we ever imagined." 

"I can't see you die by my own hand."

Nat's mouth twitched into a bitter expression. "I was gone and you died. Losing you again? I won't tolerate it."

Shooting a rabbit was nothing. Nat would unload a bullet through the next spirit she pried up between two plains. 

Jackie sagged slightly and Nat met her, careful and with demand, mouth pressing against her throat to leave a kiss. She wanted to spend the rest of her life lost in this space, lost with this one girl. 

The sky was half unseen. The darkness was half felt. Jackie's possessive hands trailed along Nat's body, pulling her tighter until releasing, switching to focusing at skin beneath clothing. "I'm torturing Shauna," Nat confessed to the mouth consuming her whole. "I'm going to ruin her."

Fingers pulled at her. Jackie's retreat of numbness shattered beneath the demand to feel and be felt. "Okay," She agreed. 

Nat tumbled apart and Jackie assembled her back together again just to preform the same trick twice. Her control was a net that knotted around them both, equally snared in the same place. There wasn't any god in girlhood except for Jackie. She could devote herself to an entire religion if it meant that the blood of Jackie Taylor still ran warm. It was a savage delight she found in warm skin and desperate heartbeats.

She tasted bitterness at Jackie's throat from her perfume. Roses and pepper, she thought. Soft and dark. Nat twisted and they were both on the ground, pinning Jackie as easily as she allowed, possessively taking delight in unraveling her match. 

The scar, though. She tenderly kissed along it, savouring the life it tolerated. 

Whatever destruction came with Jackie? Nat would find the mercy in having both. 

"I'm never going to let you go again," Nat told Jackie as solemn as any vow. "I'm never going to let you die again."

Jackie trembled through a wave of pleasure, half drowning on the delight of it. Yellow flowers were sprouting up beneath them, Nat realized, bright and small. 

Buttercups. 

They looked like tiny snatches of sunlight forming amongst green grass that seemed to wake up beneath Jackie's delight. "I won't let you die, either." Jackie managed to say back. Her hand guided Nat's face back up properly. "Never."

They laid on their backs on a bed of yellow flowers and with fragments of a sky suspended above them. Jackie's hair was dark in contrast to Nat's brightness like a match divined from a deck of saints. 

"I still need to know," Jackie confessed. Her fingers clenched around Nat's tighter. "You have to tell me. No more running."

The moon was beyond their reach. "I don't know if I can." Her voice was raspy and choked. Flowers tickled at their arms and skin. 

Jackie rolled her head to the side and locked eyes with Nat. "It happened to us, Nat. But I don't know any of it. And I have a right to this story."

Nat breathed out slowly. They were cradled in the heart of the town itself, far away from the reach of the wilderness. Her fingers slipped from Jackie's hand and trailed down towards her wrist to measure out her pulse by habit, relief in the flutter that responded to a body stuck living. And then she began, carefully, spitting out broken shards of words from inside her chest.

Chapter Text

Grief was everywhere. 

The trees seemed to radiate an awful greyness that matched what Nat felt inside her own bones. The world was half dead and she walked through it, breathed through it, lived through it. 

Half dead, the world and everything that was left, and Nat was stuck fully living. 

She paced through the woods while cradling the rifle, boots snapping branches, feet following the paths set through the trees and brush. Occasionally she would see the odd marker of a fellow teammate in the wilderness, stray hairs caught on naked branches or prints left in fresh snow, the ghost of chemical fragrance catching in the wind. 

It didn’t matter how far she wandered. The path always curved back towards hell. 

A few stray flakes drifted down from the trees above. Nat numbly extended one bloodied hand and watched as one fell into her palm, lasting for a mere second before melting from the heat of her skin. If she was younger she might’ve tipped her head back and stuck out her tongue to try and catch one. If she was younger and stupider she might’ve looked at the snow and seen anything but a quick death waiting for everybody that was left. They couldn't cancel the school bus out in the woods. No one was giving them a free day to enjoy. Snow merely meant cold and cold meant dying. 

And Jackie was already dead. 

Going back to the cabin meant going back to Jackie’s body. 

Nat leaned deeper into the wilderness, fingertips grazing the silvery bark of birch trees that trembled, chasing down one route that led into thorns and vines. Bits and pieces of her passageway caught at her clothes and skin, scraping against the gun. 

She could barely feel it. 

A bird screeched. The call reverberating off of faceless trees, sound spinning around in the cold air before fading back into silence. Everything else within the wilderness was gone and vanished, migrating for warmer pastures else where, seasonally confined to their motions. Her gun was a meaningless ornament to haul around. Everyone knew she wasn’t coming back victorious. 

She had left once to hunt and came back to Jackie’s dead body sitting in the meat shed. 

She had left once to hunt and came back to her group bent over Jackie’s broken body and ripping off pieces to satisfy their own hunger. 

Nat didn’t know what she was returning to this time. 

Bad things always came in sets of threes. 

Bullet clinked like teeth inside her pockets. 

“Hey.”

Nat didn’t turn to greet Travis. She pushed a little deeper. “What?” She barely recognized her own voice. It was thin to her own ears, raw and exposed. “What do you want?”

His feet broke through the snow to catch up. “It’ll be dark soon. I was worried. Everybody is getting worried.”

“Right.”

“Natalie. Stop for a minute.” 

She obeyed. More snow swirled down over head and caught in Travis’s hair like bits of lace. “What?”

He looked mildly horrified by the state of her hands. “What did you do? Punch a tree?”

“Yeah.” Technically Nat had punched several trees but confessing to one sounded marginally saner than admitting the true number. “It got in my way.”

“Alright, tough guy. Wouldn’t want to try and brawl with you anytime soon,” Travis attempted, mouth curling up in a weak smile. “They’ve been waiting for you to come back. Ben doesn’t want you out here after dark alone.”

“Right. Well, if Ben wants to fucking hop out here and tell me that himself…”

Travis led her slightly deeper into the woods where a creek ran through the rocks. The surface was thick with frost and snow but ran freely, splashing across slick rocks. Nat bent down and dipped her waters into it, scrubbing the blood from her knuckles while he watched. “I’m gonna be honest here, Nat. You look insane.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“I know that. You know that. But you’re not looking at a mirror right now and seeing what I see.” 

Nat looked down into the cold water and saw a vague outline of her face. It was her father’s reflection, warped by time and her own skin, a living memory wavering in the current. For the first time in her life, Nat almost understood her mother. They were twins of the same kind of hurt, stunted by their own survival. “I see enough.”

He sat down on a rock and folded his hands awkwardly. “Are we pretending that you weren’t in love with her?”

She scrubbed a little harder at where a bruise was forming. “Jackie’s dead. It doesn’t matter.” 

“It matters.” 

“Don’t be a pussy. I’m not talking about my feelings,” Nat sneered at her hands and reflection. “Jackie’s dead and there isn’t any point in any of this anymore. You wanna talk? Go ahead. Get a free therapy session from Misty or somebody else. Just leave me out of it.”

But Travis, even seated, was a train barrelling along tracks. He couldn’t stop prodding at raw wounds for the sake of cleaning them. “She died of hypothermia. There wasn’t anything that you could’ve done to stop that.” 

“Hypothermia doesn’t leave bruises.”

“So, what? You’re gonna hang out here until you see something to shoot?”

“Sure.” 

“Nat.” 

She looked at him. He didn’t flinch. “Why are you out here?” Nat asked him, patience running thin. 

“Believe it or not, we’re friends. I’m trying to do this thing where I support you when you’re going through something,” Travis said. “You were there for me when my dad died. I’m here for you. Call it the circle of grief or whatever, be bitchy. I don’t give a shit.”

“What? We’re best friends now? One plane crash really cemented this bond, huh?”

“Totally. You want a friendship bracelet? I can get on those.” 

Nat smiled despite herself and hated herself for it. “Yeah. I want a bracelet.” 

“Great. It’ll be top priority.” 

It was getting darker. Shadows stained the sky and made the woods look deeper. “Go back, Travis. I’ll come back eventually. I just need more time out here.” 

“How much time?”

“Travis.”

“Right. Got it. You’ll be back when you’re ready,” Travis said, standing up slowly. “Here. Lottie wanted me to give you this—”

Nat shook her head at the sight of a flask coming out of his coat pocket. “What is that?”

“Boiled pine needles.” 

“And?”

His nose wrinkled slightly, a barely smothered grimace. “Lottie’s blood.” 

“Yeah, no. Your girlfriend is crazy, but I’m not drinking her blood. She can call it fair trade and organic all she wants or however the fuck she wants to label it, but I’m not part of her cult.”

“Nat. Don’t be a dick. She’s… she’s trying to make this all work for everybody.”

“Lottie wants us to believe she’s a divine church and it’s bullshit.”

“It helps believing in something.”

“All churches are just four walls and a roof. I hope to God I’m never desperate enough to go looking for shelter in one.”

“You’re being an asshole.” Travis frowned at her, neatly drawing a line between Nat and his girlfriend. “Seriously, stop. I’m not fighting about this.”

“I’m not asking you to pick a side,” Nat warned him. Except she was. Nat wanted Travis to recognize the crazy for what it was and to call it by it’s name. Charlotte Matthews was crazy. Designer luggage and silk pyjamas didn’t subtract from the insanity. 

Travis’ eyes were black as pitch. She had needled through his sympathy and found a short fuse on the other side. “I know what you’re thinking. But you can’t play executioner out here. You’re not a judge and you’re not the official hangman for this team. You don’t… you can’t make that call.”

Nat found the words go fuck yourself in her mouth and tasted the acid sharpness of them, longing to spit the demand out. 

But she held tight to that poison, unwilling to release it to anyone but herself. Grieving left her angry, all that love with no where to go, and it was exhausting to hurt others instead of her real target.

Herself.

“I’ll see you later,” Nat said, stalking towards the line of trees. “Bye.”

“Ben said we have to be a team out here. You can’t just be the Lone Ranger by yourself!” Travis called at her retreating back, frustration and worry braided together. Water splashed across rocks and then she was gone, storming through the wilderness, barely able to keep upright beneath her own anger. 

Did Travis care out of the sake of friendship or was it primarily due to the fact that she possessed the only gun? How selfish did love run?

She plunged deeper into the unknown. Ice cracked and the wilderness sung an awful song, snow falling from branches and a cold wind stirring, all life ruined by the season. 

And finally it felt like she was as far as she could manage, legs folding down, body collapsing to the ground in a tangle. Snow brushed her face and she cried, ruined by her own heart, stuck in the landscape that she couldn’t exist in. Winter stole grace from the wilderness and she had nothing left to give it. 

The air was so cold that it smothered her lungs. 

More birds cried. The sound was dizzying and it was loud enough that her own sobs were soundless beneath it. 

But then something rippled. Nat could feel the movement before she saw it, gun automatically pulling up against her shoulder, watching as a doe picked her way through the snow, long legs soundless, gleaming like bronze beneath the darkness. 

The gun was cold in her bare hands and she took careful, steadying breaths as she focused. 

Parts of Jackie were jumbled up inside Nat’s head still. She couldn’t forget anything, was stuck shifting through left over details and information like puzzle pieces that had no place anymore. Jackie liked strawberry ice cream best but would settle for chocolate, the kickback of a gun spooked her, she liked the ritual of reading magazines and keeping them in a box to cut up later, and loved roses best of all the flowers. 

Jackie just wanted to be loved the way she loved other people. 

‘I’m going to wait for you. The minute you’re back? I’m not going to leave you alone.’

The doe paused. It turned, twisting, peering through the wilderness. 

Nat wondered if it could see her. If it could see the danger in her hands, the way she was nothing but a girl made up by teeth and claws. She tightened one finger around the trigger, waiting, before finally pulling it. 

The force of it rocked back into her shoulder, bruising the skin. Gunpowder lit up. Her prey dropped to the ground. 

Blood was always the result of all Nat’s efforts. 

She scrambled up and stumbled towards it with feverish hope. The fur was warm to her touch. Death ruined it but it was soft still, not completely gone. It would be difficult to manage without Travis but Nat gritted her teeth, peeling off her jacket and knotting it around the kill like a rope. Another season and the doe might’ve been larger in size, more of a challenge to drag back across snow and ice, her feet struggling to keep from slipping. 

Unfamiliar trees eventually turned familiar. Her lonely path merged into the well trodden ones of earlier. 

The problem with hunting while starving was that it required energy. Nat had been burning herself out for days amongst the wilderness, unwilling to yield her chore. She struggled to keep her breathing even as her tugged at her burden, forcing it along even as branches and bushes reached for it, tried to cling to the fur and blood. 

Nat was weak despite herself. 

But a deer… a deer would give them all life for weeks. They could drain her victory of its blood, render the body down into pieces, fulfilling an appetite. 

It was a singular mercy. Jackie was dead but they were all doomed to keep living. Food would sustain them longer, keep them marching down their dark road. 

Orange light poured from the cabin. She faltered at the sight of it, torn between her group and the ruined remains of Jackie’s body. 

They had betrayed her by cannibalizing Jackie. Nat returned with Travis just in time to see blood dripping from their faces and hands, each person painted crimson in the crime. 

The image was stuck inside her skull. Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs like it was on the verge of wrenching itself into halves, trapped beneath her memories and grief. Nat couldn’t forget her father’s ruined face and now she couldn’t forget Jackie’s ruined body. 

It was all so endless. 

Nat knew they were never escaping their hell. The wilderness was a trap snapping shut. She didn’t know what to offer it so it might release them. If they were trying to bargain with a devil, the deal was slowly corrupting each person left alive, smaller devils springing up in the shape of friends. 

And suddenly she knew what to do. 

Jackie wasn’t going to rot with the rest of them. She had to choose between someone who was dead or the rest of the group and it was such an easy choice in the end. 

Tai had strung up rotting furs like tarps to guard their brush for burning to keep it somewhat dry. Nat desperately tugged pieces out, hastily assembling a pyre at the edge of the clearing. She rushed for each piece and built it up, blurred memories of her father and Jackie dancing over her shoulders, doe sprawled across her work. 

And then she went for the shed where Jackie’s body laid bundled beneath a blanket wrapped tight. Her arms were shaking but she managed the burden, pulling up a corpse and returning to her work. 

They could have lived a thousand different lives. 

They could have been anywhere but the wilderness. 

She coaxed a flame up with her only match that she had left and watched as it caught, burning and smouldering. The fire eventually snapped and grew, impatient with its own hunger, heat and smoke billowing up in a wave. It wouldn’t take long for the real fire to catch. Smoke stung her throat and she shuddered, stuck with Jackie’s body on the ground beside her, the gun still ready for her hands. “You’re lucky, Jack. I think shit is gonna get a lot worse out here. But you’re dead… so you won’t have to see it,” Nat rasped out. 

There was blood on her boots. She had left a literal trail of it in the woods. 

“Everyone’ll be jealous of you,” she continued, uneasily. “I’m sorry for what they did. For not being there. I had one purpose and you were gone… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The flames started eating at her offering. Burning flesh filled her lungs, undeniable for what it was. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

A door flung open. People screeched and Nat braced herself, gun coming up and drawing on the figures flocking the fire. “What are you doing?” Shauna gasped. The fire stained her face bronze. “What the hell, Natalie?”

They moved like they were going to rush her. Nat swivelled and caught Tai first in the cross hairs, shifting before Van could slip on the other side where she had the potential to be blind to an ambush. “Give me something to aim for,” Nat hissed. “Take one step and I’ll shoot.”

More fire poured off of the carcass. Orange heat melted snow, softening the ground itself. Black smoke curled up and it would take hours to finish burning, for the fire to turn to nothing but ash. 

Ash and a bed of softened ground ready for digging. 

“You’re wasting—” Lottie tried but Nat happily switched her target. 

“You want a sacrifice, right? Here’s your fucking sacrifice. Here’s your divine waste.” 

This had the potential to doom everyone. That doe had been a single opportunity and Nat was wasting it for the sake of giving Jackie’s body rest. 

And she didn’t regret it. 

Misty staggered to the side of the group. The battery on her watch died weeks ago which turned it into a useless ornament for her wrist, one memento that didn’t quite belong with their cooking fire and dwindling numbers. She fiddled with it, though, tightening the strap to keep it from sliding down where her wrist turned smaller. “If it wants us to have more… more will come, right? This won’t be it.”

Lottie faltered. “We didn’t give you the gun so you could do this.”

Travis was wrong. Nat was the executioner. She was the judge. She didn’t shy from her role. “I wasn’t asking for permission.” 

They were fully living and the doe was dead. Nat watched and kept watching, flesh burning up to charred bones and a miserable outline. The Yellowjackets drifted away in miserable hunger, leaving her alone with just Ben and Misty for companionship. They didn’t speak but their silence spoke volumes alone. 

And then it was over. Jackie was still dead when Nat began scraping at the ground with a shovel, digging down as deep as she could manage. The heat from the fire radiated enough that she could pull back layers, cracking open winter for a safe place to put the one thing she loved. 

She didn’t have roses. There was nothing to make the process softer, laying Jackie down as kindly as she could, stiff body sprawled out in it’s unnatural rest. “You don’t have to do this alone,” Ben tried quietly. He shifted awkwardly on his crutch. “This isn’t all on you.”

Nat ignored him. She touched her fingertips to where Jackie’s forehead might have been and lost every word that could’ve summed up her heart. And then she resumed the awful work, covering the body with bits of soil and ash, the sacrifice of the deer staining the ground. 

Life kept going on after Jackie’s death. It wasn’t the same at all. 

Chapter Text

Snow carpeted the ground and Nat brushed some of it back with her hand so the sun might touch dirt, cold light seeping through the layers below. Voices, though, snapped. It caught her attention and Nat turned her head, watching Misty stalk towards where Travis was squatting by bushes, clearly intent on twisting individual berries from branches. “Those are poisonous, idiot. You can’t eat any of that!” Misty hissed, confident from rereading her guide to the local flora. 

Not even birds bothered to snag the bright red berries. They were so colourful that they looked acidic beneath the sunlight, almost like the kinds decorating wreathes put up on doors around Christmas. Travis dropped another berry into his tin can, barely sparing her a glance. “I know.”

She jabbed her glasses with her finger so they sat straighter on her nose. Disbelief was visible even from where Nat was on the ground, gently placing stones in a neat pile to mark the space. “Are you planning on poisoning us all?”

“Didn’t you collectively drug us?”

“That was an accident!” Misty stomped her foot. She dealt with her frustration in a series of motions, restless in her need to achieve some kind of equal footing.  

"Well, that accidentally sucked."

"I only wanted... you know what I was trying to do!"

It was mildly dangerous to bait Misty but Travis clearly didn’t care, fingers grappling against the cold, plucking each berry left. Branches trembled from the consistent force. “Go bother Crystal. Sing karaoke to the trees, whatever.”

“Lottie says the trees aren’t listening.”

His shoulders bristled with impatience. 

Nat couldn’t remember what it was like being in her old life anymore. Now they were struggling to pry themselves awake before the sun rose, dressing in tattered furs with porn magazines shoved down their collars and sleeves as an awkward defence from the miserable cold. Lottie greeted them every morning, always awake before they were, ready to dust ash on their palms and bless them with potent smoke. She could see a flash of Lottie’s dark hair from inside the cabin, dark eyes watchful, a second spectator to Travis and Misty’s spat over the berry bush. 

It was strange. Travis was naturally hostile, prickly like a cactus, and yet was so tolerant to Lottie’s strange rituals. She was casting them up out of no where, one morning deciding to prick her finger and bleed into a cup of boiled water, and then days later completing the motion with a pot of ash. It wasn’t achieving anything but he kept patiently allowing it, drinking her blood, content to take her blessings. 

Nat and Travis were friends. Uneasily, at first. But eventually forged from the same desperate desire to live, the same innate ability to keep surviving. She didn't understand why he kept playing Lottie's games.

The sun was arching up in the sky high enough to demand energy. Nat's grief for Jackie had choked her, slowing down their progress in scouring the area for any sign of life. Eventually she would have to pretend she was fine, commit to the same motions as everyone else.

Lottie’s stare to turned to Nat. She didn’t flinch. 

The ground beneath her was like a scar. The remains of the ash and fire had blown away but it left the yard reeking of smoke even days later. It was a ghost that haunted the space, present despite the passage of time, and no one could disturb Jackie’s bones now. Nat was defiantly proud of her work even though it drew a sharp line between her and the rest. 

Friendship was a flimsy concept. Everyone had their loyalty scattered and Nat was left with nothing. 

Nat watched Lottie pull her hand up and trace her finger along the glass of the window, sketching something out. The gesture didn’t look crude enough for her to take offence so she turned away, hands skimming the ground, stuck in a pit of winter with no way out. 

Jackie’s voice fizzed up from the snow itself. ‘I’m waiting for you.’ 

She shivered. The cold bruised her lungs. She stood up and brushed snow from her legs, shuffling through the snow towards where Travis and Misty were gathered together. “Ready?”

“Yeah, sure. Go put these beside my bed,” Travis said, thrusting the berries out. “Don’t fuck with them.”

Misty’s owlish gaze didn’t blink. “But they’re poisonous.”

“I’m not fucking eating them.”

“Then why would you even pick them?”

“Misty. Go,” Nat said, sliding between them before one could start hitting the other. Patience was as thin as a razor wire. It begged to be snapped beneath enough pressure. “Travis isn’t going to kill himself off of three red berries.”

Her limp curls swayed as the girl tilted her head, judging the contents inside the tin can. “There’s at least twenty berries in this cup. He could very well die.”

His mouth peeled back into a frustrated snarl but Misty finally complied, resentfully ferrying the burden into the cabin. They took off in turn, abandoning the now empty bush and burnt scratch of land, Lottie’s eyes tracing their descent into the woods. 

Winter was unending. It’s cold sealed the woods into a grey, colourless tomb, completed by the snow sliding through passages between trees. Travis led soundlessly and Nat followed, letting his bigger feet break somewhat of a trail for her. It was the unspoken agreement within the group that she couldn’t take off alone with the gun anymore. Nat betrayed them by burning that doe and they were all so hungry, starved and merciless, and now they were watching her for signs of a second betrayal. 

If the wilderness was a boat, Nat’s decision nearly rocked it straight over into ice water. 

Travis was still looking for Javi. Every time he caught sight of trees bent by snow he saw the potential for a shelter, feverishly struck on the places his little brother had vanished. 

Doomscoming was a mess they were still shifting through. Nat’s memory of it was blurry and not entirely complete, sitting on moss and roots with Ben, the trees bleeding sap around them. Jackie had run off with Travis to piss Shauna off, content on using the boy as a human shield, inadvertently toying with the other girl’s jealousy. 

And the girls all reacted like a collective voice, drawing together and coming completely unhinged. Shauna locked Jackie in a closet and they all hunted Travis down. Somewhere between all the chaos the little boy had slipped off, escaping before the noose could come around his throat. 

Nat didn’t know why Travis still loved Lottie. She had gagged him and forced the knife to his throat. Whatever darkness was inside Nat’s own heart, Lottie overflowed with black shadows. 

But love was love. There wasn’t any explanation for it. Travis could love Lottie because they were both still alive and Nat was still trying to cauterize her bleeding heart, utterly stuck on the other side of Jackie’s death. Maybe she didn’t have to understand any of it. What a slow fall into love it all was and yet a rapid descent into plain hatred? 

Ice bristled from the branches overhead. They walked carefully beneath, wary of setting off anything to fall, and checked the ground for any trace of tracks. “Hold on. I’m gonna mark it,” Nat said quietly, pulling out a torn strip of clothing from her pocket. The blue and white striped material looked faded and was soft to the touch, and she knotted it  around the trembling reach of a pine tree. 

The needles whispered as a wind toyed against it, pushing on the slender trunk so the entire tree bent partially in her direction. 

“How much further do you want to go today?” Travis asked, half a challenge. He was waiting for her to tell him it was a waste of time pushing distance like they were. 

“Keep going straight or we loop around, follow the hills and see where they go. You pick.” Nat said, spinning the challenge back to him, giving him the burden of picking between easy or difficult. The terrain looked rockier along the hills, trail turning steep where the land lifted up in a sharp swell. 

He faltered. Mountains framed the landscape. “I’m not seeing anything.” 

“Maybe your girlfriend stabbed another bear. Maybe they’ve got a whole dinner just waiting for us right now,” Nat said sarcastically, trudging further into the snow drift. It was easier to keep walking. The cold seeped through her boots and turned her feet half numb. “Keep your eyes open and maybe you’ll see something, Martinez.”

They both knew they weren’t going to find anything but Nat was miserable enough she didn’t need companionship in it. Maybe Travis could find hope if he looked at the sun long enough. 

“You know Mari is totally rigging those cards? Misty’s going to kill her if she keeps making her get the water, right?” Travis teased out at her back, following her. They went straight for the sake of the easier path. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“You really think Misty Quigley would kill somebody?” Nat hollowly picked up the thread of the joke. “I thought she was the one keeping us all together and breathing.”

She saw red and turned automatically for it, seeing her father’s ruined face peering from the bushes. "The trees look hungrier than the wolves," he said to her, his voice rattling the cold from her bones. 

Nat blinked and he vanished. 

“— check the ice tomorrow and maybe we can fish. My dad always said some shit about ice being weak in the day but maybe we could try at night?”

“Ask Ben. He apparently knows all this shit,” Nat said, trying to regroup on what Travis was saying. Ben was their bible in hunting and dealing with game. Without him they wouldn’t know how to drain the bodies of blood and to skin it. Maybe he knew something of ice fishing. “I’ll check in with him when we get back.”

“Great.”

The grey sky hung low, dragging it’s belly across the jagged horizon. Nat slipped on a patch of ice and Travis caught her, hauling her back to her feet before she wiped out. His easy strength startled her sometimes but it was almost nice, sharing the burden with somebody willing to hold her up partially.

“How’d it go?” Ben asked, putting down his book. 

“Great. Except for the part where we fail for the millionth day in a row.” Nat felt small beneath Ben’s disappointment. Her hand reached into her pocket and ignored the Jack of Hearts playing card in favour of pulling out a ragged scrap of paper. “I have this at least.”

He eagerly turned it over, ignoring the old homework assignment from Gen’s chemistry class, looking at her map. Ben whistled in approval. “Wow. These are getting pretty good.”

She hummed. She watched him examine the distance and the empty space around it. 

“Okay.” Ben handed it back to her and stood up, hobbling with his crutch towards where a piece of wood was propped up against the wall. He flipped it over and spun it against the bed, positioning the fragment to fit against the others. “So… what? Seven miles in each direction?”

“Zero sign of game. Or Javi.”

He looked at her. “You know… at this point… I mean, there’s just no conceivable way…”

Javi was gone without a trace. He had shittier odds than a plane full of girls surviving in the wilderness alone. “I know.”

“You’ve always done the right thing, Nat. I’ve always known that.”

Nat scoffed on reflex. Crystal was humming in the other room while prodding their flimsy pot with a spoon, contents more melted snow than anything else. “Sure.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Ben asked her, shifting the board back to the wall. Travis knew that Nat was faithfully charting the area but it was a secret from the others. They didn't have to know how big the unknown really was. 

“Yeah. You look ready for a comedy special.” 

He elbowed her. “Don’t be an asshole. That’s Mari’s thing. You can’t take it from her because you’d be leaving her with nothing.”

Nat could still remember Ben’s smug expression when he hauled her up to the soccer field and pointed towards the ball. She was spiralling out those days without even knowing how low she was getting, stuck somewhere she didn’t want to be, angry without a single target to aim for. Ben was the one who plucked her from the principal’s office and saved her record from another suspension and gave her an outlet for all that rage with a single decision. 

Ben gave Nat soccer. He gave her a place that wasn’t the shitty trailer park, he gave her a place with other girls who liked winning as much as she did. And he was kind enough to call her passionate instead of troubled after her third game when she tried punching a girl for yanking on Lottie’s hair, wild with the need to defend her own. The Yellowjackets were Nat’s blood and now she was bleeding out, all over the woods, mapped out by her own hand. 

“Paul used to whistle whenever he’d do the dishes. Had this whole routine,” Ben attempted, gaze sliding away from Nat and towards the empty space where his leg ended. “It was annoying but sometimes I can hear it still.” 

It was a gentle offer. Nat tried not to wilt beneath it. “I hear my dad. He’s just bitching away about how he could do this all better,” she said instead, guarding Jackie from having to share her. Nat was stringing bits of Jackie’s clothes up to mark the wilderness so the other girls wouldn’t take them for their own comfort. Possessions were become a loose concept in the cabin but Nat guarded the scraps she had left of Jackie with her teeth and nails, unwilling to part with another shred. 

Except for her markers. Jackie would have liked knowing that Nat was pushing against the distance, figuring out how far she could go before turning home. And she would’ve liked being part of that. 

“My condolences. I met your father once… one conversation was enough.” 

She grinned with her teeth, startled by his words. But then she saw a flash of Lottie and Travis outside, the girl wandering along the yard and touching each tree with her hand, barely visible in the dark. 

If Travis kept watching the sun for hope, he’d eventually go blind. 

“Tomorrow— I’ll go out tomorrow and try the western direction. Can you find some of Javi’s clothes? We can… I can figure this out.”

Ben’s mouth looked sad. He was confined to the cabin in the same way Nat was confined to the wilderness. “We can figure this out,” he agreed. “It isn’t just on you to carry this.”

She left him and numbly started up towards her flimsy sleeping set up but Van stepped in her face without a trace of her old smile. “Can we talk?”

“Shoot.” 

“Babe. You’ve got to stop losing your mind over somebody who is dead,” Van said without a trace of apology. “I know. I’d be exactly like you if I were the one in your shitty ass boots. And you’d be the one telling me this.”

There was something on her pillow. It was red and barely visible beneath the tattered blanket hitched up. “Great. I’ll definitely rehash this with you when Tai’s dead,” Nat muttered, pushing away and drawing her guard back up. Soon they would be resetting their day, stomping through the snow again in search of nothing. 

The thought of deceit had Nat feeling crushed beneath guilt. 

“I get you, Nat. I’m trying to get you.”

“I’m tired.”

Van’s face wrinkled beneath her scars but she nodded, stepping away. “Sweet dreams, kiddo. Try and think of something better?”

She nodded compliantly and sagged down, dropping straight towards the floor, exhausted from the trek and hunger combined. Travis would want to push sunrise by another hour and all Nat wanted to do was sleep and dream about Jackie’s mouth lined with lipgloss, all of the things she lost. 

But her hand touched something first. Woven twine was braided into a simple loop, coloured and stained poison red. Her fingers tugged at it automatically, sliding it over her hand so it could fit her wrist properly, a match for whatever Travis wore on his. 

Chapter Text

Travis had his eyes locked on the fire, hunched over and unwilling to give up his position. He was dressed like he intended to step outside the door, done up in layers, heavy boots on his feet. The boots were a relic of the cabin from whoever owned it before and they fit him best, giving him the claim to keeping them. The toes were stuffed with crumpled pages from the porn magazine, featuring the most vulgar of the spreads, making his step slightly awkward. 

Nat touched the cord tying her hair back with one hand, fingertips grazing where she felt a headache forming, slowly lowering herself down to the floor beside them. They had precious hours to sleep but it felt wrong turning in and leaving him alone with just misery for company. His mouth curved down silently but said nothing for a short while, gingerly prodding a piece of wood with the poker, positioning it better to burn. “You don’t have to stay up,” Travis finally said, terse, wrenching the wood into place with a hard jab. “I’m fine.”

The other girls were drowning in dreams. Their tight quarters meant that Nat could practically taste the edges of their sleep, a thick haze of silence blanketing the bodies, girls piled in tight together to feed off each other’s body heat. A bit of the frost clung to her skin from her late evening hike in the woods alone and she felt herself partially thaw from the heat thrown off of the fire and all the bodies in the room. 

“And, what? Miss out on Stone Age television?” Nat made herself scoff, tone kept light. Her ankle stung, blood a glue holding a rag to her skin. “You’re crazy.”

“You think he’s dead.” 

She bit back brutal honesty in favour of a different blend of truth. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

The fire needed to die so somebody could clean out the fireplace of ashes. Nat wondered how long they could keep burning before the pipes needed cleaning, how the previous owner serviced it by himself in the wilderness. 

“My dad’s dead,” Travis said like Nat hadn’t helped dig that grave, like she hadn’t helped dig up that grave and fill it back in again. “I can’t be— Javi and I are it.”

“I know.” 

A ghost of her father was breathing loudly over her shoulder. She resisted the urge to turn her head and look at his destroyed face, identical to the shape and features of her own. “You’re it, huh? Just you and nobody else?” His voice hissed into her ear, a phantom she refused to acknowledge. Hunger played tricks on the mind. And her father was always an asshole, dead or alive, extra baggage to haul around. 

Misty sighed as she rolled over, triggering Gen to kick one leg out. It was like a nest of puppies. They touched each other freely, linked together, unconscious of their sleep time habits. Nat woke up once with Misty’s arms wrapped around her so tight she had a marvellous thought that it was Jackie clinging to her before she remembered Jackie was dead and gone, arms no longer able to reach and hold. 

“He’s little. The cold— I don’t know if he could even start a fire. Javi knows video games, how to steal comics from that shitty place on Wellington. Javi wasn’t supposed to end up out here. He wasn’t made for any of this.”

No one was. Nat understood why the previous owner swallowed a bullet from his own gun, stepping out of the wilderness with his finger on the trigger. 

“I know.”

“I just… can’t.” 

“I know.”

Silence bloomed. Nat thought the conversation was finished but Travis suddenly made an awful sound like his lungs were jammed up with something, breathing turning into a desperate pant that shuddered and struggled. Nat touched his shoulder with her hand and felt the fight beneath his skin, heart beat a plain riot, anxiety stringing itself taunt between Javi’s absence and the things only Travis could see inside his mind. “Come on. You’re good, Travis. You’re good,” Nat tried to tell him, heat from the fire burning their skin bright red, shuffling sideways as she peered at him. “Travis?”

Mari made a soft noise of irritation, head popping up from across the room, peering out at them. The other girls roused at the sound of Travis hyperventilating and Lottie kicked blankets away, struggling to her feet and rushing over, hands framing his face to block his view of the fire. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know. I think he’s having a panic attack or something.”

“Travis, focus on me. Breathe with me, okay?” Lottie demanded, half crouching and half looming, dark hair a curtain framing her pale face. “You can do that, okay? Breath is the only thing in the world right now.”

Nat pushed away and watched as Lottie coaxed air through his lungs, steady like a post made from iron, unbending as any oak tree. Her hand locked itself flat across his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. 

Fear flashed across his face. Nat saw it, heard the way his breathing caught in his throat, tracked how his hands clenched. 

“You’re doing great,” Lottie continued, serene. She took a pointed inhale in before exhaling, eyes as bright as two chips of sea glass. “One more for me? You’re fine.”

The fire burned a fraction brighter. Wood cracked and popped as flames devoured it, just as the fire had taken the doe. Travis slowly relaxed beneath her command and something switched, colour vanishing from Lottie’s face. Her breathing, despite precise and perfect as an example, went shallow, tentatively pinned beneath the concept of a vision. And then she was blinking her eyes and stepping back into their reality, a shade like Sleeping Beauty waking up. 

“What?” Travis rasped, hoarse. His panic seemingly aged his expression, turned him more brittle and battle worn. “What, Lot?”

Her mouth quirked to the side, a lopsided smile almost perfect. “Your brother is alive. I know he is.” She paused, looking around the room. “You— you should get some rest.” 

Travis didn’t move. Nat pushed a nearby bottle of water into his hands and started after Lottie, storming along her heels, pushing her out the door and into the cold night. “What the fuck was that?” Nat hissed, temper bright as the fire. “Javi is... Look, giving him false hope? It’s just going to make things worse.”

The coldness bit at their faces and exposed skin. Lottie shivered. “There’s no such thing as false hope. There’s just hope.”

She clenched her teeth. “Did you read that in a fucking fortune cookie?”

“What do you want from me, Nat? I just said what I felt.”

“I want you to say less, Lottie. A lot fucking less.” 

A bit of light radiated from the windows of the cabin and illuminated the blowing snow drifts, making them look almost like ballerinas dressed in white tulle, bounding across the open yard. Lottie made a sad expression and drew back, looking at Nat’s arms that were crossed tight across her chest to prevent herself from flying at the other girl with her fists. 

The bracelet was visible. The red was starker, more blood like in the mixture of dark and light. “Why?”

“What?”

“Why do you have that?”

“Travis thought he was funny,” Nat said, clipped. The string was braided together into a tight braid and knotted three times to keep it secure. She so rarely ever received gifts in her entire life that she felt protective over the bracelet. “It doesn’t matter.” Lies cost nothing. She gave one away because it was cheaper than the truth. 

“He’s coated it in poison.”

He used poisonous berries to dye the string. The red was recognizable, as bright as the berries had been growing off the bush. Misty scowled whenever she saw it but kept silent, keeping herself as the ultimate guardian of the local flora growing outside their doorstep. 

“Arts and fucking crafts, Lottie. It doesn’t matter.” She repeated herself, looking at her friend, teammate, and enemy without blinking. It was any different than Jackie hustling together crowns from fallen branches and wilting flowers, Misty sewing together garland of cinnamon coloured leaves. They all tried making the wilderness beautiful. They all left their thumbprints in places, tiny little efforts to manage and civilize their hell. 

Lottie hitched her shoulders up an inch, shivering in silk pyjamas and her running shoes half laced up. “That can’t be good, Nat. Can’t you see it?”

“See what?” 

“I… I don’t think there’s much hope for how this all plays out.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Scorn dripped from her voice. Nat turned on her heel and slammed back into the cabin, stumbling and dropping onto blankets, Akilah’s hand wrapping around her wrist and squeezing tight. She squeezed her eyes tight and embraced the darkness, feeling everything vanish but the circle on her wrist. 

The mountain ridge tilted up and they trekked along the edge of it, following a smooth plain of snow. The distant pine trees looked emerald coloured from the brightness of the sun and sky together. 

Nat walked through the snow without hearing her own footsteps. Travis was ahead and they were so close to finishing one thread of fate, her deceit planted so close. 

“You missed the blessing,” Travis said. They spent the morning in silence, lost to the spell of the sun rising up from darkness, and now they squinted into the distance, half blinded by the light reflecting off the snow. But now he was breaking it, practically kicking the elephant in the room with his oversized boot. 

She huffed, fumbling to keep her feet even. “I figured you had it covered,” she said lightly. Nat was manipulating threads of fate and had no desire to yank blindly where she didn’t need to. 

“Would’ve been better if you could’ve been there,” Travis told her, turning to look back at her. A few snowflakes clung to his eyelashes. 

Everyone had been gathered outside to chop firewood and take turns stacking it while Lottie paced her way through the trees with her eyes shut, feeling along the bark beneath her fingertips, never once tripping over roots or slipping on ice. Nat tracked her drifting passage warily, watching as she circled back to where Travis stood patiently, disciple of either love or patience, clasping him by the shoulders and whispering into the cold air something only for his ears. 

Nat didn’t want anything to do with the religion Lottie was forming out of nothing. Travis seemed to read her tension because his mouth turned upwards. “The tea is just a symbol.”

“Of what, exactly?”

Amusement glittered in his eyes. “Of not so being closed off. Of thinking you know everything.”

Snow crunched loudly beneath her boots. “I’m sorry… she goes all witch-doctor-Messiah and I’m the one not being humble?”

“I was talking about myself.” 

“It doesn’t bother you that we’re the ones freezing our asses off trying to feed everybody while she’s off holding hands and mumbling and making friends with the spirits of each and every pine needle?” Nat snarked, split between keeping her tone light and feeling the urge to hit something. 

She wanted Jackie. She had things she wanted to say to Jackie, things she wanted to do better if she just had a second chance. If Lottie could bring Jackie back from the dead, Nat would kneel at Lottie’s feet and worship for every hour that she stayed alive. 

But Lottie couldn’t do that. She couldn’t defy death and bring something from nothing. No one could. 

So Nat didn’t want anything to do with her religion made from the dirt and trees of the wilderness. 

“Everybody has a role,” Travis informed her like she didn’t know the value of jobs to maintain stability. “We’re gonna need more than just food out here if we’re going to make it through this winter.”

Did Nat want to see another season? Winter was killing her. Winter had killed Jackie. What was the point of making it to spring?

She faltered as Travis kept going, drifting into a passage shaped by the wind. “Hey, come on. We were going this way,” Nat called, pointing. “The wind is blowing that way, covering all the brush with snow. Less vegetation, less chance of game.”

Travis looked at her. “No. We’ve been that way before.”

Little markers shivered from trees. A ghost of Jackie practically waved from a torn soccer jersey. 

He went to walk ahead but Nat dug her feet a little deeper into the snow, turning slightly. “You won’t have the gun,” she tried. Her heartbeat was loud to her own ears. “If you find anything, how will you kill it?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

Nobody wanted Nat alone with the gun anymore. Travis wasn’t supposed to walk away and let her go off with it. There was rope slung around his shoulder and he touched it with his hand, squeezing it tight. 

“Fine. If you wanna go that way, then go that way, but… we need a plan if we’re gonna split up,” Nat grappled for a solution. She pointed up at the mountain framing them in on the one side. “When the sun hits that peak, we’ll meet in the clearing with the weird mossy tree. Okay?”

He nodded. “See you later. Good luck.”

Nat yanked her hood up higher and shoved through her chosen pathway. She felt herself vanish into the landscape as if it were a door that there was no returning from, blindly marching ahead. 

The rocks overhead looked frozen. She wondered what would happen if the snow started to slide down, crumbling beneath the weight of it all, rolling a wave straight down into their awful plain. Their bodies would drown on frost and ice, carried helplessly away, capsized like sailors from a boat. She trailed to where Javi’s bloodied clothes had been left, previously smeared some of her own blood, sitting on a pristine bed of snow without even a trace of her own footsteps. 

It was kinder. She was yanking off a bandaid. Javi wasn’t suffering because he was dead. He wasn’t cold or hungry because he couldn’t survive out alone. Travis didn’t need to torture himself with visions of his little brother struggling to survive because nobody could survive on their own like that. 

“I raised you, didn’t I? Sure as hell didn’t put that ice in your heart,” her father said. He walked beside her, dripping gore, teeth clinking as he spoke. “You gonna take him out back and shoot him if he doesn’t get with the program?”

“Shut up,” Nat said to the illusion and to the trees. A wind whispered back at her. 

“Just put the gun in his hand. Doesn’t hurt nobody, right? Your finger isn't on the trigger.” 

She had a bizarre sensation that the trees were framing her, that their branches stretched overhead like the bars of a cage, catching her in some kind of trap she was only halfways to understanding. 

Time slipped by. The sun hit the peaks and Nat circled towards the marker, following scraps of Jackie, a funeral procession in the shape of a single girl. Her eyes felt bruised from exhaustion and her father bled away, vanishing beneath her dread. 

Footsteps crunched. Nat fumbled for the shirt at her side, lifting it up so it was plainly visible. The blood was as red as the bracelets on their wrists.

His eyes flickered from the shirt to her face and back, yanking down at the fabric around his face. “Where… where did you find that?” Travis demanded, faltering. 

This was like an avalanche. Something was slipping, the force of it tumbling beyond anyone’s control. 

“Hanging on a branch.” Nat held it in her fist. The cold bit her exposed fingers, a chill setting into the bones. “A couple miles back.” 

“Did you— did you look for him?” Travis pushed away from her, refusing to touch her offering. 

“Everywhere! I looked everywhere!” Nat lied well. She had an entire childhood spent learning how to spin lies to avoid hurting. The truth could cost her a black eye, sometimes worse.

“Did you dig?” Travis demanded, wheeling around. She flinched from his hands. “Did you try and find where he could be?”

“I called— I screamed but nothing!” Nat tried to keep him from leaving. “No, no. Come on. I swear, hey!”

“We have to go get him,” Travis snarled and she saw a reflection of her own face in his anger, her own grief equal. Nat’s desire to free him had taken a knife to a soft spot and cut deep. The cut on her ankle throbbed miserably. He yanked the shirt free from her and clutched at it, burying his face into the stiff material. “You don’t get it.” 

Branches curled their fingers at them. A wind stirred through the snow, softly pushing through like a current. “Javi’s gone,” Nat confessed to Travis and the wilderness, tasting blood. 

He crumbled. 

Snow was coming down in thick flakes. It slowly soaked through Nat’s clothes and she shivered, struggling to keep going in a straight line. Travis was weaving like a man drunk and Nat wished for something to take the edge off, something that made her feelings manageable. Everything was both intense and numb, an awful state of feeling without relent. 

Dark spots bit at her vision. She could feel hunger pulling her down. They were on a dangerous road and they could only keep pushing against the inevitable for so long. 

Eventually wilderness collapsed into the space of the clearing and cabin. Travis staggered to where Lottie was standing, girl more like a lighthouse than flesh and blood, watching with a lantern clutching tight in one hand. A horrible sob sounded and Lottie softened, hand coming up to touch his jaw. 

They were early. There wasn’t any need for a lantern. The light failed to compete with the sun but still Lottie held it, wasting the feeble light. “He’s going to need a light,” Lottie told him seriously. “For when the darkness comes.” 

Travis bent his head. The clothing in his hand looked more ragged, more false. “He’s dead.”

She tipped her head. “Javi’s alive.”

“Stop with the bullshit,” Nat defended. “You’re making this worse.”

But Lottie said nothing. She gently placed the lantern so it rested on snow, still burning and casting light, and walked away with Travis. She led him by the hand like a butcher would his livestock, vanishing into the trees. Maybe she would cast another blessing to sooth a wounded spirit, something to patch a broken heart. 

Nat opted for the cabin. Let Lottie play games. She was tired of pushing against snow, exhausted from listening to the voice of a phantom hissing in her ear. 

Tai looked up at her from where she was sitting cross legged on a chair, flipping through the pages of Akilah’s SATs study guide. “Welcome home,” she said blandly, eyes flicking up from the page. “What’s the world like outside?”

“Shit. What’s the world like inside?”

Her nose wrinkled. “Bitchy.”

“Where’s Ben?”

“Sleeping. I don’t know. He’s barely… awake? You notice that?”

Nat sat down on a chair left by the window. Condensation marbled against the glass and she scrubbed her fist against it, peering through the streaks towards where a paltry pile of stones were, a vague mark against the wilderness. The trees each stood as tall and straight as individual ship’s masts, barely perturbed by her gaze. 

Grief kept it’s teeth inside her mind. Nat slowly drew out a card from her pocket and looked at the worn face of the Jack of Hearts, split into halves, the lightest thing she had to carry. 

“He’s tired. He’s tired of watching this shit happen,” Nat told Tai. She heard the book snap shut like a mouth clicking it’s teeth. Ben was hiding in his room from the others, unable to stop the worse from stacking up. “Maybe he’ll sleep until spring rolls around. Just like a bear or something.”

It was easier to sleep off the hunger. Misty’s head was pressed against the wall, hair ash coloured and limp, eyes barely cracked open. “Bears don’t actually sleep all winter,” she murmured. “They basically cat nap. Sleep for a bit, get up and do something. They’re not out cold for the entire time.”

Tai’s brows lifted slightly and she made a face. “Thank you, Quigley, for that super fun fact of the day,” she said, tossing the book aside. It landed with a soft thump. 

Nat kept seeing her father every time she blinked but couldn’t see Jackie anywhere. Her father stalked the woods like a reaper, hung in her shadow like a shark tasting blood. But Jackie was burrowed in cold ground, planted there by Nat’s hands, feeble pile of stones a testament to something. 

It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. She wanted so badly her chest ached, a burn pressing down her sternum in an awful line, splitting apart beneath the fact she couldn't stop missing what she lost. 

Darkness slowly streaked through. The cabin went quiet and soft at the edges, girls spent from the day cutting wood. Akilah had a silk bandana wrapped around her hair and she wandered through the crowd, sleepily kneeling to adjust the fire. Someone coughed from the veil of smoke flooding the room. It was pointedly civil, each person worn from snapping at each other and the tiny little spats that came from living in tight quarters with limited relief. 

Movement came through the trees. 

Nat squinted into the shadows and didn’t see Jackie’s pale, grinning face anywhere. Travis and Lottie hadn’t returned but someone else was picking their way through the wilderness, small and slight. 

A lantern burned away, cutting a path with it’s light. 

Javi emerged slowly, piece by piece, utterly alive. 

Chapter Text

“You should go looking for honey in the summer.”

“Honey?”

“Bees produce honey. If you follow the bees… you find the honey.” Lottie was sitting across the room, practically bathing in the full light streaming through the window. Nat tried to keep her attention pinned to the room itself, refusing to let it wander beyond and towards a path of snow and ice, Jackie’s resting place always within eyesight. 

“Wow. I’ll keep that in mind,” Nat told her, sighing. “Or maybe you could go if you’ve got such a sweet tooth.” She missed literal sugar. Sometimes Nat would dream about the little paper sugar packets that went with bitter coffee, feverishly hooked on the idea of sweetness. 

“I’m not the one who is supposed to be looking. They’ll want you in the end.”

She lifted a brow. Her back ached from where she was bent over the rifle split apart, working a rag around each individual part, cleaning it from dirt. It was something her father taught her first. Each piece needed to click back together in exact fashion in order to work properly and she liked the basic routine of it, breaking something apart just to rebuild it again.  “I thought the trees weren’t talking.” 

Lottie was immune to her sneer. She fiddled with the end of her braid and leaned back slightly in the chair, dried blood and dirt caked beneath her fingernails. “It isn’t just trees,” she said seriously. “Can’t you hear them?”

“No, Lot. I can’t. I’m not really paying attention to dirt spirits.” Nat rolled her eyes. She could worship a gun. That was safe power to trust. 

“You don’t know what sits here.” 

Her tone turned sharper, losing any trace of softness. Nat looked up from her hands and frowned. “Do you?”

Steam curled off of the mug beside Lottie’s elbow. Hot water was habitual for comfort. They didn’t have tea or coffee but the routine of cradling something warm in their hands was almost as good as holding someone else’s hand. 

“I could tell you. You just have to listen.” Lottie leaned forward slightly, offer extended. 

“Fine. Tell me a fucking story,” Nat challenged her, temporarily abandoning the rifle. “Who keeps talking to you?”

“The girls that he brought here.” Dark eyes flicked upwards towards the attic. “He liked bringing them out here.” 

He. 

They never spoke about the cabin’s prior occupant beyond the hasty burial of his bones. The body had no value to anyone, withered down from decay, some nameless void to be stashed beneath ground with the rest of their people. Travis wore his boots and Nat carried the gun left behind but that was all that was left of whoever once made a home from the wilderness. “Right. He brought, what? A mistress or two for some sketchy weekend getaway? That’s hot.”

Lottie’s mouth failed to smile. She looked utterly serious, just as she had during pre-game meets when Bill ran them through the line up. “He didn’t love them, Nat. He just took the ones no one was going to look for,” she said. “Said he’d pay them but instead… he put them on that plane, brought them out here. Had them run into the wild just so he could hunt them down.”

The cabin felt so quiet. It stifled her, made her skin itch like someone took dry ice to it. “What?”

“He hunted them down like they were wild game.”

“What are you talking about?” This wasn’t Lottie playing high priestess with smoke and a cup of her own blood. Her eyes looked dark as pitch. Something serious cut through the room, Lottie looking like a stranger compared to the girl Nat had always known. 

“Can’t you feel it? Every time you pick up that gun and go out into his woods? You’re walking where he walked. Hunting where he hunted.” 

Nat braced her hands against the table and leaned forward. They had so many bullets. It was the one thing they didn’t have to worry about running out of, no need to ration each shot. She even started stashing bullets out in the woods to spread the wealth out some, tucking them away nearby where the markers hung from trees. 

“What happened to the girls?” Nat asked. She wasn’t asking the right question, though. Lottie just told her: they were hunted down by somebody armed with a loaded weapon. “What happened to their bodies?” She amended, clicking together the right words like she would with pieces of her gun. 

“He marked the trees. Left a carving for where he buried each one,” Lottie told her. One shoulder hitched upwards like a tentative apology. “They all went into the ground in the end.”

“Jesus Christ. Where the fuck did you hear that?” 

“I told you. They tell me things. It can see me.” Lottie’s mouth turned into a smile. “My parents made me the focus of their entire lives but never really saw me for who I was. I’m finally understanding what they’re saying and I get it.” 

A chill swept through the room. Nat twisted and saw someone walk past the window, shadowy and unrecognizable, a man vanishing from the view. Her hands jumped for the pieces of the gun but it was gone. The table was empty. “Lottie—”

It wasn’t Lottie anymore. Some other version of the girl sat across from her, black eyes peering at her, face soft with rot. Her mouth split open, lips tinged blue and tongue fleshy, a horrible moan bubbling up. She lurched forward and staggered up and Nat shoved backwards, hands reaching for some kind of weapon and finding nothing. 

Stiff fingers locked around her throat. They collapsed on the floor and rolled across blankets and bags. Nat tried to fend off the dead thing but Lottie was stronger, clinging as she attempted to smother the air from her lungs with the force of her hands. “It—is—watching,” Lottie’s voice hissed out. Nat heard buzzing like bees and struggled, half burning beneath it all. “Aren’t— you— listening?”

Lottie’s eyes were like oil. The blackness seemed to suck the light from the room itself and turned Nat’s vision dark. Rotting teeth snapped at her. 

She shoved hard and the weight vanished. Nat flew upright and saw the room of the cabin drenched in darkness, fire crumbled into a bed of red ash. Misty made a grumbling noise of protest next to her hip but didn’t stir, oblivious as she sucked down air, vision spinning as she reoriented herself. 

There was a bag by the door. Nat could see the rifle leaning against it, ready for another search into the wilderness for absolutely nothing. Her fingers brushed beneath her pillow and touched the hilt of her knife, a new element she had begun sleeping with, a weapon easily on hand if needed. 

Everyone was where they should be. Travis was curled defensively around Javi in the other room and Nat could hear the slight snoring of Ben even through a closed door. 

Nothing was strangling her. There wasn’t anymore buzzing filling her ears. 

She was as safe as she could be starving to death in a frozen wasteland. 

Nat nervously plucked at the red bracelet around her wrist and bent her knees to her chest. “You see that? That’s what happens when you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, girl.” Her father’s voice was a familiar whisper, scraping over her nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. “This whole place is going to eat you alive.”

She cupped her hands around her ears to shut his ghost out. The nightmare was slowly dissolving into their current nightmare and it took effort to smooth the panic away. Movement caught her eye and she turned, seeing Lottie hoist herself up on an elbow, dark hair falling like a curtain around her arm. “You okay?” She whispered across the nest of sleeping Yellowjackets. 

Yeah, Nat imagined saying to her. I just dreamed about your corpse trying to kill me. Totally cool. 

“I’m fine,” she whispered back, settling for a plain lie. They both settled back down and Nat spent the hours of the night by counting the bodies separating her and Lottie, and also the ones separating her from the gun. 

“Fucking assholes,” Shauna announced, dropping a baking tray of cuts of bear meat onto the table. Nat blinked away the foggy memory of her nightmare, looking at the gun propped up, clean and ready for handling. “Someone took an extra share.”

Van’s face wrinkled beneath her scars. “What?”

“There’s less meat than there should be. Someone went out and took more. And if anyone should be eating extra, it should be me. But I’m not,” Shauna practically challenged the room, bristling with the dull urgency to fight. 

The gun was close. Nat slid into a chair so it was within reach. Shauna kept to herself since Jackie’s death, sleeping in a corner away from the girls, lurking around the meat cabin in habitual mourning. Travis had told Nat she wasn’t an executioner but she kept watching, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from snarling. 

Blood filled her mouth whenever Shauna looked up from her empty hands. 

Everyone was silent. Misty clung to the broomstick like she thought it might be taken from her, nervously peering around the room. She always wore her soccer uniform, clinging to it despite the cold. The yellow colour made her skin look paler, sickly from lack of nutrition. “Nobody would do that,” she said with the confidence of someone lacking in faith. “We don’t do that.”

Ben awkwardly shuffled through the room towards the fireplace, picking his way around two strewn suitcases with half their contents spilling out. Mari leaned over to Gen and whispered, “it was probably him. He thinks he’s so much better than us.”

He froze before turning slowly, fixing the girl with a look. Mari didn’t blink at his stare. “I didn’t take the fucking meat. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly nimble with snow and ice. What? If it had been me? What would you do about it?” Ben asked. His hand gripped onto his crutch, knuckles blanching from the force of it. “Would you eat me?”

“Chill! We’re not going to get in fucking fist fight over the last piece of meat,” Nat cut through the room. 

Mari whirled towards her. “This is all because of you, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Why we don’t have any meat. Lottie tries to bless you for the hunt, but half the time you’re MIA. Or when you do show up, it’s like you’re practically holding your nose shut.”

It was like taking a punch to the face. Mari and Nat had never liked each other exactly but they always sat on the same team, locked together against some other opponent. She wasn’t used to the pure venom laced through Mari’s voice directed at herself, her words spilling out like barbed wire. “Are you joking? You actually think that’s why we can’t find any game? Because of me?” She tapped her hand against her chest, barely restraining herself from slapping Mari’s judgemental scowl off her face. “I’m the only one that’s even trying. Me and Travis! While the rest of you guys are sitting on your asses—”

“Please. You’re punishing us for Jackie!” Mari snapped. “We all liked Jackie, Nat. You’re not special. But you’re the one who starved us for nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing,” Nat snarled back. Jackie’s bones were tucked below ground and safe. Her friends weren’t scraping their teeth against them anymore, they weren’t clawing for the mere scraps left over. 

Jackie died because Nat failed her but at least she managed to salvage some peace for her body. 

It was a tiny victory amongst an ocean of defeats. Nat clung to it because there wasn’t anything left for her to hold.

“You don’t get it. We’re trying to survive and you’re the thing that’s killing us.”

“Hey. Take a walk,” Ben interjected. He shifted just barely, planting himself on Nat’s side of the line. “Go cool off.”

Nat almost flinched. She was used to Ben snapping at her to take a hike whenever she started getting riled up on the field, ready to take a swing at somebody for spitting in Jackie’s direction, or the time another player full on body checked Val into the goal post itself. Ben was the one who made the deal without her consent, telling her she was on the team or the school would kick her out, assigning her the position just to save her entire future. 

Mari tipped her head and looked Ben over with an air of dismissiveness. “You’re not our leader. You’re only here because we let you stay here.”

“That’s enough,” Tai spat out. “Stop trying to rile people up for nothing.”

“That was our food and someone took it! Don’t you care?”

“Oh my god, I gave some to Javi. Consider it his share,” Travis announced from the door. “He was only out there because you all drove him out.”

The girls collectively looked away. Guilt was an awkward burden that some carried easier than others. “We were drugged.” Mari looked at his shoulder, the space above his head. Anywhere but his eyes. Anywhere else from where Javi was sitting crouched in the corner, silent as a mouse. “You know we were drugged.”

“Yeah. And I was the only one that nearly got his throat slit.” 

They never talked about what almost happened to Travis. He snapped that enchanted silence in half and glared at the room, hands clenched into fists. “You can’t take extra rations without telling me,” Shauna murmured, suddenly shame faced and awkward. “I have to make it equal for everybody.”

“Yeah? My little brother was hungry. I fed him.” Travis turned around and stormed back out into the cold. Nat went after him, slamming her shoulder into Mari’s so she could feel the full impact of her frustration and hopefully bruise for it. 

The cold air bit her exposed face. Travis had chosen to cut up Bill’s shirts from his luggage to give them something to wrap around them face to ward off the chill when they hunted but Nat didn’t reach for it. Instead it sat around her neck like a choker, black material knotted hastily at the back of her neck, utterly useless to the moment. “Hey.”

“Fuck off, Nat.”

“I’m trying to talk to you.” 

Travis stopped, feet frozen to the ground at the edge of Jackie’s grave. “What did you do? How’d you get it bloody?” His eyes were glued to the few stones marking the space. “Not like you’ve bagged a deer recently. Haven’t seen you coming home with a rabbit or anything.”

She tipped her chin up a fraction. “I cut myself.” The mark was turning into a scar. Her betrayal was becoming permanent on her body, something to carry with her wherever she went.

“I really thought he was dead.”

“I know.”

“What did I do to you?”

“What?”

“Javi won’t speak. I keep asking him where he was, how he managed to stay alive… but he won’t say a damned thing. And you’re the one— you planted evidence, Nat. You acted like you gave a shit! Fuck you,” he spat at her, twisting to look at her. “What exactly did I do to deserve that?”

Nat wasn’t sure if he would hit her or not. She wasn’t sure if anyone from inside the cabin would care enough to stop Travis if he started. “I thought Javi was dead. It just— you were going to get yourself killed looking for him out there. It’s fucking cold as shit out here and you were running yourself to the ground chasing after ghosts.”

“Oh, please. Weren’t you the one who tried breaking your goddamned hands on trees?”

She had tried. It was safer hitting the wilderness because if she started punching Shauna, Nat knew she would never stop. “I was trying to help you, Travis. We can only do so much out here before we’re done. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everything is getting super fucked up inside that cabin. I didn’t want to see you dying in the woods.”

“It’s on you that we never found him sooner. That’s your fault,” he spat at her, venomous as Mari. “Anything happens to Javi?” 

The threat splintered off. Anger burned off Travis in waves like heat from a fire. He didn’t need to tell Nat that he would be the thing to kill her. 

The promise was clear in it's silence. 

“I’m trying to tell Travis to forgive.” Snow dropped from branches along the path and Nat spun around, startled by Lottie’s presence shadowing after her. “Or, if he won’t forgive? He could try the whole forgetting concept. Apparently that’s pretty radical.”

“Why are you out here?”

“I’m not stupid. You’re not meant to be alone.”

“I’m not bonding myself to roots and dirt, Lottie.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything— you’re so stubborn, god.” 

Birds flew overhead. Their shadows were pinpricks on the ground, flickering between branches of the trees webbed like an arch. Nat didn’t bother trying to aim. “Travis gets to be mad if he wants to be mad. I can’t change that.”

Lottie surged ahead and grabbed Nat just above her elbow, squeezing tight. A chill chased down her spine at the contact of the girl’s hand, feeling how Lottie loomed over her head. She recognized the superior strength that had her at the disadvantage. “You lost something and now you’re barely here.”

She recoiled from the sensation of being seen. “Get off of me,” Nat said evenly, pulling against Lottie’s firm grasp. “And do not touch me again.”

Jackie always made a point to be careful with Nat like she had some strange notion that Nat was never careful with herself. Her hands merely held. They did not grab or cling, but merely touched. She didn’t like feeling someone else trying to hold her. 

Slowly Lottie let her go. She didn’t step away. “I know you, Nat. I see you. You never actually used your locker at school because you’d forget the combination. You stole Van’s cigarettes but never Shauna’s. We used to steal Mari’s mom lawn flamingos because Mari— actually, there wasn’t a reason, right? Mari was just a bitch and we’d go and take them. We just… we were friends before this. And now you won’t let anyone get close to you.”

Death turned Nat into a hollowed out shell that she worked hard to maintain. There wasn’t pot stashed beneath a rock in the wilderness and any alcohol was long gone. Numbness was the only security blanket she had left. Feeling anything was a risk she couldn’t afford because Nat knew what exactly sat at the bottom of that particular pit. 

“Maybe I’m the bitch, Lot. Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

“We matter. And we’re friends. You need somebody, Nat. You practically mate for life,” Lottie told her, mouth twitching into a smile. “And that’s okay.”

Her mouth burned with heat, barely containing her desire to lash out. “I fucked up. It isn’t okay.”

“Oh, you’re going to do bad things out here. We all are. But I think you’ll find some kind of forgiveness in the end.”

“If I shake you up and ask a question, are you gonna spit out some kind of answer like a magic eight ball?”

“Totally. I’ll definitely vomit on your boots if you do that.”

“Noted.” Nat looked at one of the trees and frowned. Something was carved into the bark, just like the symbols inside the cabin. Her veins filled with ice and she shifted closer, uneasily touching it with her finger. “Do you— these marks of the trees… do you know what they are?”

Lottie leaned over her shoulder and squinted. “No.”

Sap bled from one of the lines. It was tacky against her skin and she wiped it away uneasily. “The guy we buried. I think this was him.”

Someone screamed. It broke up from the trees in the distance, shrill and keening, shattering itself on the grey sky. Lottie’s head snapped around and she frowned. “That’s Shauna. It’s time.”

Chapter Text

The storm swept in fast. Grey winds battered against the cabin and snow crept through the cracks, slowly leaching icy fingers into their warm space, refusing to relent even when Shauna howled her way through childbirth. 

The body bent and twisted. Fingers grappled against the slight swelling of flesh, starved and scratched down into a shadow of a woman, Shauna metamorphosing before their very eyes. 

The girls huddled in tight together. Nat felt somebody press their boney shoulder into her own but didn’t know who was leaning into her side. Everyone was suddenly faceless. It was the curse of the darkness, burning their eyes on the red heat of a fire, deafened from the wind and Shauna screaming. 

But she still looked. The slope of the girl’s face flickered pale and warm from the fire light, cheekbones sculpted from starvation. It could’ve been Jackie, she thought. Loose hair hung bluntly around her shoulders, curling up at the ends from the damp. Nat blinked and it was the girl she wanted most of all, the girl she wasn’t getting back. 

Jackie smiled at her. 

She blinked again and it was somebody else. Alive, breathing. Red spots stained her cheeks like an imitation of a fever. 

“It sounds bad,” Mari muttered to the storm. She was somewhere buried beneath Gen and the old jacket Travis wore for hunting. “Like, really shitty.”

“No glove, no love. Let this be the lesson, guys. No decent drugs out in the sticks.” Van’s face wrinkled, torn between sympathy and the long aggravation of listening to someone shriek in pain. “Gotta feel the whole thing play out.”

Hadn’t they sat through some awkward video in health class? Nat tried to remember. Her memories felt riddled with faults, more delusion than anything else. Misty was trying to take command of the situation and Nat wasn’t venturing into that particular room. Shauna betrayed Jackie. Shauna had done more, she thought, adding up the damage whenever Nat wasn’t looking, stalking Jackie like prey she needed to pin down in order to love and consume—

Nat wasn’t an executioner. 

She kept her hands clenched so tight that her nails dug into her palms, bringing up streaks of fresh blood that she kept wiping on her pants so the blood just turned into stains. If Nat couldn’t be the thing to kill Shauna, maybe nature would. 

Nature that was shredding Shauna apart, punishing her to some degree. 

The storm kept raging. She tried taking comfort in whatever she had. Someone was suffering and Nat was so tired of everything else. 

She was poison. She ruined people. The truth couldn’t be denied and it was pathetic taking relief in whatever was happening, suffering no different than an animal caught in a live trap. Her father was dead and Jackie was wasting away beneath the ground; all those dreams shredded by the teeth of their friends, prom queen burnt down to the quick. 

It’s after, though, that Shauna screeched for a different reason. 

The blood had been like an ocean’s current. Something had to die. 

Nothing cried expect for Shauna and Nat merely pressed her hands over her ears, shutting out the grief so it couldn’t sting her too.

It took time for the snow to stop falling. They coiled themselves up like a bed full of snakes and breathed in blood soaked air, something rotting in a porcelain bowl on the table beneath a thin, moth eaten blanket. 

Shauna’s skull like face saw only what it contained. They didn’t need to check for themselves. The baby never had a chance and it felt unfair that it was skipping out what they were enduring, like it had come out holding a get out a jail free card. 

Nat kept watching Shauna for the visible pain, eager as a wolf hunting something lame and wounded. The other girl exposed her bruises and old hurts and she fed off of it all, delighting with cruelty. 

Jackie’s skin had been like marble. Indigo frost stained her eyelids and her poor fingers were black and stiff, tortured by the first kiss of winter itself. And the bruises—

Nat used to pretend she was a magician with the make up she stole from the drugstore on the opposite end of town. She would scrape green eye shadow into foundation just to help neutralize the redness of the bruises when they first started to set, vanishing the black eyes to just a hint of violence, shifting attention towards her snarling mouth instead. She knew what it looked like getting hurt. Jackie had been found frozen and dead, bruises marking her face, a bit of blood crusted along her hairline. 

No one talked about it. No one gave her the privilege of the full story except the flashes, of Jackie fighting the group for trying to kill Travis, of storming out into the dark by herself and of Shauna coming after her, the pair vanishing into the trees…

Shauna came back alive. 

Jackie curled up by the steps of the cabin and died. 

She could taste blood in her mouth. Shauna’s dark eyes kept flicking around the cabin like she could hear a ghost crying and what was it, Nat wondered, best friend or baby? What phantom clung to her loss the most? 

Eventually their tomb shattered. Travis refused to look at her and hauled the door open, breaking through their thin shell and exposing their faces back to the world again. Snow poured through like an avalanche and they struggled to work their way back out, carving a line down the steps. 

Trees greeted them with silence. Not even a wind stirred amongst the dunes of frost and frozen starlight. 

Nat could still smell blood and decay, even outside, face tilted back to a cold peach of a sun. It refused to wash away. 

All her ghosts seem caught in the web of the season, waiting and watching, each one bleeding.

But things kept getting worse. They were free falling straight into hell and someone needed to snap first.

It was familiar. Nat grew up in a tiny home with parents who knew each other best by plain hate. A whisper could turn into a shout and she knew to avoid hands, to keep herself from getting pinned beneath the wrong attention. 

Travis was dangerous in his restless anger so Nat severed the connection between him and her, felt the loss and kept her distance. The bracelets around their wrists was the silent memory of a friendship wasted. 

He could hurt her, she thought. In the right place and at the wrong time? Travis could leave her dead. 

Tai bent her face close to a soup pot of melted snow, bird bones, and wilted herbs tucked to the back of their pantry. Her hand maneuvered the spoon through the thin assortment of ingredients, focused on what little they had to offer. Everyone else was littered around the room, sparsely focused on tiny hobbies like reshuffling the deck of cards or picking apart the thread of a ruined pair of shorts. 

Mari was painting her nails aqua blue from some bottle pilfered from one of the bags. Nat focused on the colour and thought about swimming pools in the neighbourhoods she could walk through but never afford to live in. 

They were silenced by their hungers except for Misty, humming as she shifted for the door, already trembling beneath the task of fetching fire wood. 

Shauna staggered up on legs lacking strength and real mobility, whirling towards Misty. Nat flinched at the memory of her mother’s face, pale with anger, the same harshness carved around her mouth. “Where did you hear that song?” She asked through cracked lips and bloodshot eyes, accusation half formed. 

Nat felt her fingers squeezing an invisible trigger and the responding boom that came with it. 

Misty frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe Crystal…” she trailed off, because Crystal was gone. 

If someone was doing the math, they were adding a missing girl to a miserable snow storm and already figuring out the likely conclusion to that particular formula. 

Maybe that was how they should’ve taught math. If they rendered the formulas down into bodies and chances of survival—

Shauna surged forward and punched Misty to the face. Nat stood up and watched in horror as Misty hit the ground on her knees, her hands coming up to the clutch at her jaw. Van and Tai worked in tandem to haul Shauna backwards a few feet, making a vague patch of space between her and the target. “You killed my fucking baby!” Shauna shouted. 

The choice to act felt foreign but Nat threw herself between them like a shield and a wall, solid enough in her boots that she felt like she had a chance beneath Shauna’s hateful expression. “Stop! Misty did everything she could to save your baby—”

“No! Shut up!” Hysteria pitched Shauna’s voice so it was thinner. “You ate my baby, you all ate my fucking baby! I saw you, you were covered in blood!”

Van’s expression went tight with horror. She struggled to keep a hold on Shauna. 

“Shauna! Stop it! You’re acting insane,” Tai snapped in reprimand. Everyone was hurting but Misty was the one with a red mark forming on her face and eyes watering, making Nat feel a sting of sympathy for the times her father left similar on her. 

It always hurt feel the impact of a hand bloom across skin. The heat left behind, the inevitable mark of shame left behind. 

Nat held steady and they were all falling straight down, and she didn’t know if they would ever hit the bottom of that particular grave. Van jerked back when Shauna bit her and Nat squared up, ready for a challenge, fire licking her skin like it knew just how long she had been waiting—

Lottie slid into play like a white queen on a chessboard. 

 “Travis, take Javi to the bedroom,” Lottie said mercilessly. The girls silently formed a ring around her and Shauna, locking them into their positions. Travis stood helplessly but eventually shifted, obedient to the church standing beneath skin and bone, her dark hair pulled back by her shaking fingers. 

Shauna struck her hard and it was like opening a floodgate. Blood smeared down Lottie’s face, no different from her slicing her palm open. 

Her hands came behind her back, fingers lacing together. It wasn’t the same as yanking out earrings before getting into a tangle, it wasn’t the same as twisting hair back with an elastic. Lottie held herself back with easy grace, pale and steady as candle light. “Lot?” Van asked, gaze shifting between her and Shauna. 

“I know there’s a lot of pain right now,” Lottie said quietly. “But let it all out. Shauna, we need you. So let it out.”

The command echoed. 

Shauna obeyed. She beat Lottie down to the floor, shedding an old identity of whoever she had been and dreamed of becoming, raging so hard that her knuckles split open and she cried with ever blow she dealt out with her own hand. 

Nat watched. It was efficient brutality. Shauna’s boot slammed into Lottie’s spine, repeating the blow twice before moving on. She targeted the kidneys, whatever softness was left of her stomach. And then she clambered on top of the girl and kept hitting, breaking Lottie into a smear of blood, a body breaking beneath punishment. 

They watched compliantly. Shauna’s audience were captive and Nat was rooted in spot, watching what an execution looked like first hand. 

Why wasn’t she stopping it? Winter seemed to drench it’s chill down the veins of her arms, holding Nat prisoner to the scene, refusing to break until Shauna slumped side ways and collapsed on the floor like a drowning sailor. 

Her father’s ghost lurked over her shoulder. His ruined face was visible in the corner of her eye, exposed teeth clicking. “You don’t really wanna fight that, do you?”

Blood marked them both but only one was paying for it. 

Lottie managed a grizzly smile up at the ceiling, half choking on her own blood. 

“Here. They’re not that pretty and they won’t change colour in the cold or anything…” Nat managed to say, pure nonsense better suited to the girls on the team, handing a pair of gloves over to Javi. The fingers were torn off to make gun handling easier. “They might help.”

Javi slipped them on and wiggled his fingers. It was a tiny step up from the clothes he had been running around in. No one was prepared for winter but they made do, tying scraps of furs around their throats and ankles, layering whatever they could to stay warm. 

He said nothing. 

His silence was consistent.

“There you go,” she said weakly, gapping the silence where she could. Javi left with his gift and Travis suddenly eased forward, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “Do you need something?” Her tone shifted, cool and steady, gaze turning towards her knees and hands. 

“No.”

Travis sat down in the vacated space. It was the closest they had been since Javi sprung back to life from the cold. “You’re a good person,” Travis admitted. “And I’m sorry for ever making you feel otherwise.”

“How’s Lottie?” Nat said instead, picking at the skin around her thumb. Ben was half visible in his room with the maps she had drawn, sketching something over top a torn page from a textbook. All morning he had spent with his crutches and a knife, adapting them for better mobility in the snow. 

“Bad. She’s talking about dying.” 

“Fuck.”

“It’s— she’s talking about what’ll happen to her body when she dies.”

Nat had never imagined a life without Lottie in it. “Lottie talks shit when she’s losing. It’s, like, her go to move whenever the score looks trash. But she always wins in the end.” 

“She told me to chill the fuck out about— the thing you did,” Travis said weakly. “She kept telling me to get over it, that you weren’t the one that sent him out there. That what you did... it wasn't the bad thing.”

“Chill the fuck out? She say that between breathing exercises too?” The joke felt fragile. Nat twisted the red string around her wrist and felt it tug into her skin, biting slightly. 

“I think she mentioned yoga poses somewhere in the monologue about forgiveness and achieving greater inner peace.”

“That’s soft shit for the girl who tried pulling Becky’s hair out of her scalp last year for sideswiping Tai.”

Travis bumped his elbow against her side. “Isn’t that what you all have in common? Bit of a demon inside every single person on this team?”

“Oh, yeah. Ben had tough standards for selections. He actually checked if we’d burn up going into a church.”

“Wow. What does that make me?” 

Nat managed a thin smile. “You’re an angel, huh? Probably a fallen one, considering your company.”

“They’re splitting into teams, Natty. Someone’s gonna get left out at this rate,” her father said in a low drone, voice buzzing in her ears like a nest of bees. Nat didn’t turn to look. The cabin was visibly sliding into factions and she didn’t have a place anywhere. Mari was firmly in Lottie’s thrall, even in the girl’s battered absence, and it wouldn’t take long for the lines to become sharper. “You gotta pull the trigger. Stop being a stupid little girl and pull the goddamned trigger, Natty, pull the trigger—”

“Hey. Where’d you go out? You’re totally checked out.” Akilah’s brow furrowed slightly, temporarily shutting her SAT prep book with her thumb marking the page. 

Nat didn’t really know Akilah but she knew what clinging to optimism looked like. “Space.” Her dreams were getting exhausting. She sat upright and let the blankets pool around her waist, dazed but the dark angle of sunlight cutting through the window. It was better to imagine swimming through the curve of Saturn’s rings, perfecting her backstroke off the frosted shore of the moon herself, cosmic fantasies separating her from the cold reality of the wilderness. 

Hunger tore at her bones. It ripped teeth across her ribs, left her vision ruined by black spots. Embracing the cold to hunt meant shoving her way along snowy drifts, freezing with the lack of energy to pull herself together. 

They were drowning and Nat was truly tasting the dark, salt waters of death for the first time. It wouldn’t be quick like being sucked out of a falling airplane. It wouldn’t be an easy mercy like a fire bellowing up from the engine. 

The hunger demanded to be felt. It was sharper than her grief, a persistent wolf waiting for her to go down and stay there. 

“No shit. Bet the view would be intense,” Akilah said, tugging her knees to her chest with a blanket tucked around her shoulders like a shawl. “I don’t think I want to try defying gravity again. I mean, they’ll have to bring a plane out here—” she cut herself off, blinking mechanically like she was rebooting her system. “In the spring we could try checking the trees for nests. Maybe get some eggs?”

Spring was a lifetime away. Snow crackled on branches, weighing each limb down until they drooped low. Her efforts at map making had faded with her ability to keep upright. 

“Pull the trigger, Natty. We keep playing the same damned game because you’re so chicken,” her father rasped, louder. 

His ghost was persistent. Endless with his chatter, filling the gaps around the cabin until he was everywhere and Nat couldn’t get free. 

“You got some ladder squirrelled away somewhere? Someone’ll break their neck trying to climb up.” Nat asked her, trying to separate Akilah’s face from the crumbling one hovering over her shoulder. Blood dripped and vanished before it could stain the fabric of her blanket. 

“We could build something—”

“—the trigger, Natty. You’re not a little girl anymore.”

Misty came down from the attic. Her grave expression caught Akilah’s attention. “Hey, how’s Lottie doing?”

“She’s… um.” Misty dropped slowly, crouching awkwardly on the edge of the bodies piled on the floor. Her eyes were invisible from the fire light reflected there. “She said if she dies, she wants us to make use of her. To stay alive.”

Travis looked up from where had been silently pressing moss into the gaps of the cabin’s walls, trying to ward off the chill from passing through. They all took turns with the task, gathering moss to tuck into the cracks around the windows and door, numb fingers turning blue. Everyone else was scattered, seeking their own private sanctuary. Nat scrambled up on weak legs and shuffled towards the fire to warm her own hands, rubbing her palms first before extending her hands out. 

Fate lines throbbed from the heat billowing out from the flames. The fire crackled and burned wood, devouring it until it crumbled into ash. 

“Did she really say that?” Van asked without flinching. 

“She must be really fucking sick,” Melissa dismissed. 

But Van shook her head slowly, slightly hoarse like she had been screaming for hours. “I can’t imagine being here without her.”

Shauna cringed in her corner, distant from everyone, barely breathing. “Me either.”

Nat hoped her hands hurt. She knew what it was like to nurse battered knuckles after a fight, to press ice to the fingers to keep from throbbing. 

But Nat had resigned her temper to the trees alone. Shauna took her rage out on soft flesh. They weren’t the same.

“Let’s not,” Mari decided. She tapped her chipped aqua blue finger nails on the dirty floor. “Lottie isn’t going to die. The wilderness won’t let her.”

“It may not want her to, but if she’s starving… there’s no way she’s going to live,” Travis said quietly, already resigned. 

“The same is true for any of us,” Nat added faithfully. 

Tai sat up and leaned on one elbow, looking at the group. “Okay. We need to find a way to stay alive,” she decided. “And it can’t be her.”

“Go, girl. These ain’t your friends,” her father sneered. “Pull the trigger and go.”

Mari stood up and shuffled for the mantle where a ruined deck of cards sat. A blanket fell from her body and she looked strange, ruined designer jeans shredded at the knees, cashmere sweater faded from the sun. “Look, we can do this. Queen of Hearts, right? That sound fair?” She asked as she plucked it up, holding the expressionless face of the figure out for the room to see. 

They were all standing. Nat felt the awkward line of the Jack of Hearts folded beneath her bra strap, pressed tight to the skin. Her theft had gone unpunished and now they were shuffling the cards, the queen vanishing between Mari’s fingers, briskly manhandling fate around. 

A nine flashed. An ace. The cards kept going. 

Travis looked at Nat from across the circle and his bleak eyes were shadowed. 

“Haven’t you been staying alive? All the time out in the sticks and you’re all so hungry. Got your finger wrapped around the trigger and you’re so chicken shit you can’t even pull it properly. Fall from the heavens, Natty, and wind up in a grave. They ain’t even gonna bury you. No pine casket, nobody toasting you off with a flask of that whisky.” 

She wanted to press her hands over her ears so she couldn’t hear her father anymore. 

Misty stood before Mari and drew a seven. She took the deck and it was Akilah, pulling nothing. They kept going, drawing and revealing their card. 

Shauna’s ruined hand pulled something harmless. Nat felt sick watching Javi surge for Travis at his King of Spades, face brightening with relief. 

It was her turn last. Mari looked at Nat dispassionately from over Misty’s shoulder and Nat gazed down at the deck cradled in Misty’s hand, the girl so small and quiet as she waited her out. 

She knew what she held before she flipped it up. The Queen slouched in her throne, half bent by the crown on her head. 

Maybe dying meant her soul would be free to explore the galaxy. Nat could drift between pinpricks of light, wandering the planets like a stranger, following clouds of dust to find wherever Jackie had gone. Venus, maybe. 

“Turn around,” Shauna said quietly. 

Van’s expression was panicked. She kept looking around the room like she could see some way out of the grave they were digging. 

A delicate chain looped itself around her throat and it felt like a cold pair of lips pressing itself over the line of her collarbone, heavy as an anchor. 

Jackie would hate this. Shauna was pulling out a fragment of her and it made Nat’s throat string from bitter salt and wood smoke, a scream she refused to give up. They were going to pretend that Jackie Taylor would’ve blessed this ritual, that she could have ever participated in something like that, that she would’ve been thrilled to be their symbol—

“Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger, Nat. Safety goes off and you pull the goddamned trigger. C’mon, Natty. You’ve learned this lesson already.”

They were standing around the room and it felt like the cabin was shrinking itself down so they were just dolls in a doll house, strangely decorative. 

A knife came to rest against her throat. Nat moved and caught Shauna’s battered hand and squeezed it, pulling it away from the vulnerable skin so she could turn around. “Wait. Wait, Shauna. You’re gonna have to look me in the eye.” Her voice was harsh. It trembled beneath her rage and grief and she did not look away from Shauna’s pitiful face. 

“Oh, Natty. You always pick the wrong fight,” her father said, almost unheard. 

Nat wasn’t an executioner and it was absurd. Shauna’s eyes glowed from the fire. Her entire being looked hot, like she just might burn anyone who risked touching her. Somebody was going to be executed and Nat’s hands were clean of the task—

Shauna held the knife in a weak hand and Nat tilted her head back, swallowing back the urge to tremble. There wasn’t going to be a future for her beyond the wilderness. Nat wouldn’t be cleaning the blood and dirt from beneath her fingernails. Somebody, after they were finished scraping the flesh from her bones, might have the time to dig a shallow space for her. 

She was standing on the edge of death and all that separated her from it was Shauna and her knife. Jackie would hate you for this, Nat imagined telling her. 

Travis tackled Shauna and they went down hard. Mari tried to yank him off of her but he punched her hard, keeping her back. “Run!” He commanded, trying to hold back the loose wall of Lottie’s disciples from taking advantage. “Just go, Nat!”

She hit Misty. She hit the door, she hit the cold air beyond. “No! She’s getting away!”

Someone howled and they were all running, feverish in their urge to live and stay living, feet hitting the ground at a frantic pace. 

The air felt thin to her lungs. “Natalie!” Someone cried and that felt so intentional that it stung, sprinting through the brush and trees, hitting any path that she could recognize. 

Sweat soaked through her shirt. If she had time she could double back and rethread false trails through the snow but Nat didn’t know how far ahead she was. She was the hunter earmarked as prey, struggling to keep beyond the reach of the coyotes coming after. 

Death wasn’t her fear. Nat had seen plenty of it, from fathers with their faces half blown off to coaches strung across tree branches like sick garland. Dying wouldn’t be a cruelty, she imagined, if she knew her body might find a fair rest afterwards. 

Her skin needed a chance to rot and peel itself backwards, exposing her bones in gradual fashion. Something had to be returned to soil and moss, growing wherever she ended. The wilderness wasn’t taking another thing and leaving her with nothing again. 

More howling. The snow crusted over with ice and she fought to keep balance, ducking behind a large tree for cover from the band of hunters. Nat struggled to hold her breath, struggled to keep steady. 

She ran again when the group was gone. It felt like she was tearing herself against the wilderness. Trees seemed to bend slightly in her direction, arms extending down to catch, grimy bark forming faces that was as she ran. Death was coming and Nat was an inferno of desperation and stubborn pride, unwilling to yield yet. 

“Natalie! Stop!” Javi called. “I know where to go.”

He looked small. His one hand was stretched out, fingers splayed out slightly from where the gloves ended. “What are you talking about?” She gasped. 

“There’s a place the others don’t know about. I… I can take you there. You can trust me.”

Was it a trap or her only hope? “Okay.”

He led her to the bank of the lake. It was frozen over in a grey wasteland. Across the stretch more dark trees waited, bristling with a wind. 

She slid on the loose snow and it went down hard. Javi pulled at her arm. “We’re almost there, come on.”

She looked back and saw the girls rushing through the trees. Javi shouted again and they were moving, rushing as fast as they could manage, barely upright beneath the frenzied hysteria. 

Javi faltered, though. His feet locked up and Nat fell to the side with uncertainty, watching as he suddenly dropped through the ice. Dark water splashed up over the jagged line of the ice and his arms cut the surface, pale face gasping. 

The girls were shouting for the wrong reasons. “Javi!” Nat screamed, crawling to the edge and pulling at his cold hand. She was weak. Her vision was riddled with black spots. She tugged against the embrace of the water and Javi sunk despite her efforts. 

His fingers clawed for purchase. He gasped her name. 

“Help me!” Nat screeched to the others. “I can’t— not alone!”

Bubbles formed from Javi screaming beneath the water and ice. More cracks formed, she realized, weakening beneath her weight. 

“Stop! Stop! Natalie,” Misty tried, coming closer. She threw down her hatchet and it with the ice with a clatter. “Stop! If you save him, the others will kill you!”

Arms locked around her and wrestled her back. “Nat, please!”

“Should’ve pulled the trigger,” her father told her. 

Javi thrashed to the surface. He didn’t want to die and Nat didn’t want to die, and they were playing the same game out in a different way. His mercy was going to be the end of him. 

“We can still get him out of there,” Akilah said. 

“Wait. Just wait,” Shauna commanded. She was holding a knife again. 

“Natalie,” Javi tried again. They were all stuck watching him die and he was dying from the betrayal of it. Finally he sank low, no longer resisting. 

The girls finally moved. They hauled his body out limp and cold across the ice, keeping the water from taking their hunt. “The wilderness chose,” Van snapped, coming between Nat and Mari with a defiant expression. “It’s over.”

A ghost of her father's laugh bubbled up from the black water. "Is it, Natty? Do you really think this is over yet?"

Jackie’s cold heart sat around Nat’s throat and refused to beat. 

It was part of the end. Nat led the group back through the trees, the girls burdened with the task of carrying Javi’s body, and felt every mile scratch at her bones. 

Snowflakes soaked her hair, caught in her eye lashes. Her skin felt bleached from any colour. “Natalie!” Travis called from the porch, surging forward with warm shock. “What—”

She was no longer being hunted. Their appetites would finally be satisfied. 

It was ungraceful when they lowered Javi down to the snow. He thumped slightly, stiff and coated in a thin layer of ice. His fingers were exposed from her gloves. “Travis. It happened so fast,” Nat said, looking at him evenly. It wasn’t like spinning a lie to grant him comfort. “The wilderness chose.”

A faceless, nameless god seemed to stir from the trees at her attention. 

He leaned in her face. “No. No, no!”

The girls were silent in his grief. They departing, slinking like coyotes for their cabin, leaning Nat to endure what Travis was sinking into. He whirled for his brother and clutched at him, brushing the frost away from the boy’s eyelashes, shaking him like he could be roused into living.

Creek stones were partially visible beneath the snow. Jackie’s silence felt like a sting of hatred. 

Tai caught her shoulder with her hand and squeezed gently. 

Eventually, though, Nat had to leave. She followed the others and descended back into the darkness of the cabin, sinking into the rest of the girls while Travis screamed alone. 

They gave Travis time like it meant something but eventually Shauna drew herself up sharp, hand locked around the knife, awkwardly prepared to cut the boy into pieces like she had any of Nat’s kills. Bones and blood, it was almost the same. It was the face of devoted heretics at work. 

A wind howled from the trees and the blade cut skin, breaking him down so that blood dripped to the snow, soaking it in crimson. 

Nat turned away and saw Ben watching from the trees. His yellow jacket was painfully visible against the grey and white wash of the landscape. His attention was fixed to Javi’s neatly folded clothes and shoes sitting on a wooden stool above all of the blood and she slipped quietly over to him, leading him away from Shauna’s work. 

“Where have you been?” Nat asked him. He had been absent for her near execution, absent for the sprint through the wilderness. She could've died and the one person who she had left who cared about her would have been oblivious to that fate. 

“Nat, what happened?” He looked at her and flinched, suddenly back pedalling. “Okay, look. I found somewhere we can go. I figured it out. I know where Javi was hiding. I-I think you and I could go there together. We could probably survive the winter. Hey, do you hear me? You don’t have to stay here. You’re not like the rest of these girls.”

His belief in her stung her raw. Nat tipped her head back like she was looking at Shauna with her knife or her own father. “Actually, I’m worse.”

“How can you say that?” His brow furrowed. 

“I let him die in my place. It was supposed to be me.” A Queen of Hearts to match her Jack. Fate was a cruel bitch. “You’re a good person, coach. You really don’t belong in this place.”

Disgust flickered across his face and it hurt. Nat embraced to miserable feeling, proud of her own awfulness. The wilderness turned her into it’s hunting dog and she was alive because of it, living and breathing, no longer a decent soul. 

She was pure ruin. She was everything she had ever been destined for. 

She came by Scatorccio name honestly, Nat realized. It was her birth right. 

Ben limped away awkwardly from her and Javi’s body and Nat returned to the group, settling in for the cold night as they waited. Travis clutched his hands together and his bare wrists were visible with the sleeves of his jacket rolled up. 

They said nothing and silenced reigned, only ruined when Shauna brought in a tray. A literal feast compared to the weeks of nothing they had consumed, sucking on miserable bones for a scrap of satisfaction, heaped up high with everything that they had needed. 

Meat sizzled in a pan. They all shuddered beneath the sound of it, coming alive as it cooked slowly and quickly, heat rising up in a thick wave. 

Her own longing and hunger sickened her. 

Lottie staggered into the room like a ghost of herself. Her stare tore through the empty frying pan and their full stomaches, haunted by the bruises staining her face. “I’m so happy you’re okay!” Mari cried into Lottie’s shoulder, getting up and flinging herself at her. 

“I never wanted to be in charge,” Lottie rasped over Mari’s thin arm. “It chose me, I think, because… I was the only one who could listen. But I can’t hear it anymore. It doesn’t need me anymore.”

Fire cackled. Travis didn’t look up from his empty plate. 

“You all learned how to listen and now I’m not the one it wants. Maybe… what it wants most of all? Is a leader who can understand it, who can keep us surviving for the rest of the winter that we’re out here for.”

“Lottie, no!” Van surged forward on her hands and knees. “You’re wrong. We need you, we’ve been needing you!”

“The wilderness chose who fed us. It’s already chosen who should lead us,” Lottie said plainly. She was wearing her jacket over her home coming dress, layer on top of track pants. Each piece of clothing was blood stained and ruined. She across the room at Nat and did not smile. “Natalie.”

“No.”

“How else do we explain what happened out there? We tried to kill you and it wouldn’t let us.” Lottie stood over her and held her hand, finally free from the weight of Mari clinging. She touched her palm lightly with her mouth and Nat cringed, twisting her hand away. 

The rest followed suit. They touched her hand and bent their heads slowly, touching what Nat wanted to be untouched, embracing her new reign. 

Nat survived. Nat was chosen. Tears stung her eyes and a heaviness settled over her shoulders, some new burden to carry. 

Travis did not come forward. He sat quietly alone, a line walling him off from a third hurt. 

Shauna looked at her evenly. Their fingers twisted together and Nat pulled tight, catching a flicker of pain in the girl’s expression. “Jackie would hate us both if she was still alive,” she said quietly. “There won’t ever be forgiveness.”

This, she knew, was eternal damnation. 

An invisible crown of Lottie’s making slid over her brow and pinched, tipping her head forward. 

“I know,” Shauna whispered back in perfect agreement. 

Blood filled her mouth. She was choking on it, absolutely ruined by it. 

They slept in an awful pile of bodies, Nat buried in the center of it all, unable to escape the sensation of hands touching her. The heat seemed to lull them all deeper, room throbbing from the heat of a fire, smoke whispering across their faces and hair. 

Orange light danced across the windows. 

“Wake up! There’s a fire!” Shauna screamed. She was running around the room with a bag and snatching at things left out, desperate to kick everyone awake while maintaining her rhythm. 

“Oh my god!”

The porch, Nat realized, was on fire. It was creeping inwards, chewing straight through the walls and floor, devouring the cabin and everything they had. 

It reminded her of the plane catching fire. The same acidic smoke stung at her throat and lungs, making her eyes water. 

Nat tried to door and hissed from the burn the handle left on her palm. “Fuck, it’s locked! God, fuck!”

Tai tried the backdoor and screamed in frustration, struggling against whatever was holding it shut. 

Tiny candles were scattered across the table and casted tiny bits of light through the smoky haze like some kind of sick joke. “Move!” Van snapped, shoving Nat away as she started kicking the wood, desperate to find somewhere weak to focus on. 

“I got something, here!” Tai cut in, hoisting a fire poker up. 

“Grab whatever you can! All our stuff!”

How strange, Nat thought, to focus on knives. They all went for the tools left out and scattered, hands reaching for the cast iron cooking pan and pot, fumbling for matches and the hatchet sitting beside the fireplace. What would she have gotten in her past life? Her cassettes, maybe? Her old bedroom seemed beyond reach but she tried imagining it, tried picturing it as how it had been left. There was a soccer ball in the closet beside a bottle of cheap whisky Kevin's cousin stole for her. The collection of detention slips. Her posters, the flowers hanging upside down to dry. Her mother would've tossed everything, Nat knew, the minute she heard the plane crashed. 

But Nat was living with so little things left in her current life. She grabbed Jackie’s shoes. She grabbed the gun. She grabbed Misty when she tried going back for more blankets. Tai was ripping her way straight through the door and the wood was splintering beneath the force, screaming as she fought with it. 

Windows shattered. The heat of the inferno propelled itself upwards, devouring their tiny bit of shelter. 

Lottie’s bruised eyes watched as the roof crumbled. Nat shoved her blanket higher over her head like a hood and kept looking, searching through the flames to see the answer, to see anything but the truth she already knew. 

Someone damned them. 

And Nat was ready to play executioner. 

Chapter Text

Daybreak was hell. The flames had turned to hot ash, blistering with heat, and eventually cooled with the wintery wind brushing through. Nat tried to understand, tried to grapple with the odds of making do, and it stung. They had survived hell just to find a new level waiting for them, barely functioning with the slender luck they had before. So much time, she thought, had been wasted with shoving moss through the cracks and filling the cabin up with firewood. A tiny patch of domestic comfort was gone and lost. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Misty breathed, blinking at the choices. "Fuck."

She should comfort somebody. Nat struggled, counting the bodies around the ruin, double checking for who was absent. But voices stirred from within, half visible from one portion of the wall still standing upright. 

“It isn’t worth it,” Lottie said cooly. Her dismissal was a cruel lash of a whip snapping down.

Akilah was trying to shovel her way through the ruined pieces of wood and ash, somewhere close to where the table once stood. “Get out of my way.”

“It’s gone.”

“I wasn’t asking you! Just go away!” Akilah snapped, rocking back on her heels and glaring at Lottie with plain hate. “You’re not the leader anymore. You can’t tell me what has worth and what doesn’t.”

Nat winced from where Misty tied the torn bandage around her palm and flexed her fingers, feeling the painful singe of the burn blister against her palm. The reddened skin needed something like aloe smeared across it but they were making do with thawed snow and miserable scraps of nothing, trying to make amends to the damage. “Hey!” She called, hoarse from the smoke. “Just take a break, guys. Cool off or something.”

Misty gnawed at her lip and shivered, exposed to the cold air coming through. “Shelter. Food. Water. That’s what we need to survive,” she whispered to Nat like some parody of a conscious telling her right from wrong. 

Inventory, she imagined. Figure out what they still had and what was gone. Jackie’s rose scented shampoo and conditioner hadn’t made it out of the fire. Nat instinctively breathed deep to try and find a ghost of it lingering in the air but only smoke stung her raw lungs, white smoke stilling billowing up off the ruins in thick plumes. 

The other girls were standing around with dazed expressions on their faces, like they were all experiencing a shared concussion. Work, Nat recalled, pulled them through the first few days after the plane crashed. They needed a routine to cling to. “Do me a favour, yeah?” She asked Misty, like Misty hadn’t physically held her down to the ice to watch Javi die. “Those shoes… unlace them. I want the laces.” 

They were Jackie’s favourite pair. 

Misty practically beamed as she scurried for the pair, dropping to her knees and plucking at the laces. A smile trembled across her face at the reprieve from playing God with a dwindling first aid kit. 

Mari seized Akilah by the elbow and dragged her up, trying to pull her away from the wreckage. Black soot stained the girl’s clothes and skin, drenching her in the colour of it. “Just snap out of it, Jesus."

But Akilah wasn’t passive. She wasn’t clinging to optimism and cheer. The fire had taken their only hope and now they had nothing left but their individual grief and angers. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Lottie said to get up.”

“I don’t care.” 

“Oh my god, it was just a book! A stupid book that couldn’t tell you shit about anything out here. Were you gonna figure out the rate of rubbing two sticks together to generate a flame somewhere in chapter thirteen?” Mari mocked her, leaning down in her face. Some of her hair had gotten singed from the fire and it left her looking wild, eyes red and blood shot, dark hair hanging around her face like a curtain. “You’re acting crazy. Grow up, Akilah. This is all that you’re ever going to have.”

“What?”

“You’re, like, pawing through literal ash looking for something that definitely burned up. It’s gone. Get over it and move on.” 

Akilah’s hands turned into shaky looking fists. Nat watched as she tucked her thumbs into her palms, a rookie move that could only result in a break. “No. You don’t get it, Mari. I’ve been studying for my SATs because I was supposed to do stuff when we all got back. This was supposed to be part of the plan… a fucking test and I’d graduate, go to college… nobody in my entire family has ever gone to college! I was supposed to be the first. I didn’t come from the kind of money that could afford a private plane!”

“—a shitty private plane,” Van muttered to Nat under her breath, yanking her coppery hair back with a frayed elastic. A few pieces slipped out, though, short enough that she couldn’t pull it all up in a ponytail. She pressed close like a wary guard, sliding to her side as she drew closer to the trio.

Nat was partially in a trance. Akilah’s smile was stripped away to just her teeth, angry rising up in an ugly shade that Nat had never seen before in the girl. “I didn’t land out in these stupid, fucking woods with pearl earrings or designer lotion. I wasn’t shoplifting jeans that I could afford to buy… just to return them— like, what the fuck, Lot? You stole decent jeans for credit that you’re sitting on top of because you weren’t ever gonna use it? That’s crazy. If I did that? I’d get arrested and goodbye future! I did everything right and I’m out here with all of you! I needed that book to study because nobody is going to teach me math out here, or stupid fancy words. I’m falling behind every single day we’re out here and I— need— that— book.” 

Lottie tipped her head back and peered straight through the rafters at the white smoke and blue sky overhead like she was searching for her woodland gods. “Nothing matters.” Her voice was thin like Shauna had battered it down to a whisper when she tried to beat Lottie to death. “You won’t survive if you’re still clinging to your old life.”

“How do you know? The trees weren’t speaking to you, right?” 

Mari’s expression went ugly. “She led us when we needed her.” 

Akilah was wearing her soccer jersey beneath a matted fur jacket, shivering in cheap leggings. The only colour was the silk bandana wrapped around her hair, stubbornly bright blue and candied pink, remarkably clean for where she was standing. “It isn’t the same anymore,” her voice warbled, turning watery with salt and exhaustion. “We’re not the same.”

Nobody ever appreciated how hard Jackie worked to bend over backwards, appeasing every corner of the team, studying the dynamics of individual parties within. She knew that Rachel and Akilah needed time for their pre game rituals and that Tai was ruthless in the second part of the game, like she needed time to make amends for whatever shit came up in the first. Her locker was a storage of cassette tapes just so she could churn out Lottie’s favourite hype mix to get her in the spirit, that she would take the time to paint individual Yellowjackets to their cheeks and hands before the prep rallies. Jackie Taylor loved the team so much that they never saw how hard she worked in the background, making do with whatever they let her work with. 

Jackie used to clean the graffiti off of Nat’s locker after school. It wasn’t something they ever spoke about but Nat saw her there once, stubbornly working a brush and a rag, banishing the words ‘father killer’ from existence. 

Only one person would have know what to do and how to lead.

“I’ll help you look for the book later,” Nat said, cutting through the trio and trying to pull Akilah’s attention away from her targets. “If we can find it… I’ll help you. It might be somewhere safe. Something could’ve made it.” Because Jackie would’ve been on her hands and knees, dusting away ash and scrabbling with fallen beams, anything to keep Akilah level and on the same bar as the rest. 

They needed all their players. 

Akilah blinked. Tears made her eyes look brighter. “Yeah?”

“Fuck. If dead guy’s porno mag’s made it through… maybe it’ll be somewhere.” Nat needed to check if the magazines were somewhere. They made decent material to start fires with, burning up the glossy images of women splayed out over the hoods of sleek cars, their long legs and soft mouths vanishing beneath layers of flames. “But right now? We need an actual inventory. Because it’ll get dark and shit, and we’ve got to figure out what the next stage looks like.”

“Dying, maybe.” Mari’s scoff was audible. Nat twitched, resisting the urge to show Akilah how to make a proper fist. “What’s the plan, brilliant leader? Squatting beneath trees?”

Van’s mouth wrinkled. “I don’t know, Mari. Do you see a second cabin somewhere around here? Like, are we missing something that only you know about?”

“Yeah, genius. Somebody started that fire. And in case you forgot what a headcount looks like, we’re missing a person.”

“I know,” Nat snapped. “Ben’s MIA. I got it.”

Mari plucked at the collar of her polo shirt. “So, what? What exactly are you going to do about that? The wilderness chose you, Natalie. This is on you. Everything we do out here? It’s all on you.”

There was a faint line against her throat that had already scabbed over from Shauna’s knife. Nat felt an echo of that terror and dread rising up inside her bones, sick from the sensation. “You really wanna know what I’m gonna do to Ben?” She challenged, tipping her head a fraction to the side. 

Love was a mercy and yet needlessly traumatic. Nat needed to cut away the soft parts of her heart in order to survive what love did to her. Ben set their cabin on fire, sealing them to their fates. If she searched the snow, she would find his awkward tracks, a plain trail from the man to wherever he lurked. It wouldn't take long, she imagined, hunting him out. Ben had studied her maps but she knew it, truly, every ridge and bend of the wilderness; the shape of everything that surrounded them. He was a mere guest to the land that had taken to her.

“I told you, Nat. You’re going to do bad things out here.” 

“Shut up, Lottie.” 

“Well, we’ve got food. So that’s a win,” Van said plainly. “And we’ve got water.”

She could practically feel Travis watching them. His stare was heavy, loaded like a weapon. It pinned itself to her spine. “However long we can stretch Javi’s body… that’s the time we’ve got on the clock.”

Javi was just a boy when he died. There was a painful difference between him and any of the girls, slightly bigger in frame and size. 

Her fingers tugged at Jackie’s cold heart hanging from around her neck still. They slowly left the ruined cabin and started pulling at their scant few possessions, counting the blankets three times and yanking brush to form weak lean-tos, plotting themselves in the empty yard. Nat felt the absence where Jackie should have been, the gaps where Crystal and Javi could have fit, the place where Ben wasn’t sitting. 

A cold sun was just forming itself beyond the trees when Nat shouldered the rifle, awkwardly slipping into the old ritual of preparing to go out. She had slept poorly with Gen’s elbow lodged against her spine and her joints felt stiff, not quite ready for hours spent pushing through deep snow. 

“Rise and shine, Natty. Gotta file your teeth sharp if you’re gonna try and bite a wolf.” 

Her father was sprawled beside the fire. She blinked and he shifted, crumbled up with blood oozing out from his blasted skull. She blinked again and the man transformed, leisurely stretched out on his back with his ankles crossed. “Fuck you,” she whispered, crossing the line between a ghost and the rational world, looking him in the eye without flinching. “Go rot.”

He barely reacted. His fingers came up in lazy salute, brushing against the crumbling part of his face, skin turning to black gore, chips of bone exposed. 

She spat in the place where he laid at her feet. 

The early hour of morning made the snow look painted in colours of indigo and plum. Orange light cut some of the darkness back and skeletal trees shivered, trembling with an audible rattle. Tai offered her the one tin cup they had left and she sipped hot water with pine needles, remarkably blood free. “I’m going to hunt. See whatever is moving,” Nat said quietly. Travis was sleeping between them and the meat shed. “I’ll be back when…” she trailed off, blinking. The mountains weren’t visible from where they were nestled in a thick swath of trees, lake spilling out at the distance like something frosted in pale grey. “Before dark.”

Tai looked as tired as Nat felt. She cracked her knuckles, an old habit carried through school and before every soccer match. “White people would totally pay for this shit, you know. Sitting out in nature, disconnected from, like, time? Yeah, we could make an actual fortune selling all this.”

“Wow. We’re all totally losing the will to live and you’re scheming get rich quick plans. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t hate just because I’m productive.” 

“Right.”

Tai trained her eyes on their dwindling pile of wood. Someone needed to replenish the stock, work on drying it before they had to burn it. “You know, for whatever it’s worth? I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

“It wasn’t me this time,” Nat cooly corrected. “And yeah. I’m glad you didn’t kill me.”

“It’s this place. It… I feel like I go numb.”

She couldn’t resist scratching back at a scab and making it bleed again. “Remember Allie?”

Tai’s nose wrinkled. “Yeah. What about her?”

“Did you feel numb when you shattered her leg?” Nat leaned down slightly, bending to the pressure of the gun across her shoulders. “Don’t try and fuck with me and blame it on the trees. We’ve been like this since the beginning, before we even got here. Own your shit, Tai.”

She started to slip off for one of the trails but Mari stopped her, jerking herself upright with a frenzied expression. “You— the ritual, Nat. You can’t go out there without a ritual!”

The other girls squinted and came to life in slow motion, shivering and cold from where they bundled in tight clusters, sleeping as close to the three fires as they could possibly manage without catching fire themselves from stray sparks. 

It didn’t escape her notice how much further Travis was, a silent ink stain on the white snow, skin grimy from soot and sweat. 

“No.”

“You have to maintain the rituals. Lottie had rules and we were safe.” Mari’s brisk tone was a contrast to her rumpled hair and shirt buttoned crookedly. 

“Yeah, no. If…” Nat’s mouth scowled despite herself, “the wilderness really elected and campaigned for me to lead? We have new rules. No more drinking blood. No more fucked up shit.”

Melissa looked confused. Gen turned to look at Lottie, whispering something Nat couldn’t hear. But Mari was hauling herself up, livid. “Stop pretending that this doesn’t work. We had the rules for a reason. It worked, Natalie.” 

“Fine. You want rules? We’re sticking to the old philosophy that when somebody tries to kill you… try and kill them back. That’s all I’ve got for any of you.” 

“Nat. You’re going the wrong way,” Lottie said. Her words were laced with a paper cut sting of disappointment. “The wilderness needs more.”

“And it’ll take what it wants. It doesn’t matter, fuck. But we’re not bowing down to the fucking pines. No more alters. No more bullshit. You wanna play like you're all gods? Go somewhere else.”

“Fine!” Mari snapped. “I’m taking my share of Javi.” 

“Fuck you,” Travis rasped from where he sat guard, faithful and ruined. 

“I’m not staying with a… heretic!” 

The bit of blue polish on Mari’s nails was almost gone. Nat didn’t think the bottle had survived the fire. There would be no more temporary beauty, no more tiny rituals of girlhood. “Great, Mari. Take a hike,” she challenged ruthlessly. “See how it works out for you.”

Get pulled herself up. “I’m going with her. She can’t… nobody should go alone.” Melissa silently joined Mari and Get, dividing themselves as a tiny tribe from their dwindling numbers. 

Jackie, for all she knew, had never left behind a guide book on what to do when the team was fracturing into different degrees of bloodlust and transforming themselves into woodland witches. Nat looked at Lottie and sneered silently, waving her hand in open invitation. 

But Lottie shook her head. “The wilderness has given you a crown.”

“We’ll take the plane ruins.” Mari made her decision quickly and Nat wondered how long she had been brewing this particular split. The ruins meant some degree of physical shelter. Anything decent was gutted but with some ingenuity, somebody could craft a decent refuge from whatever was left over. 

“We’ll stay here,” Nat responded quickly, staking claim to where Jackie’s body laid beneath the ground. She wasn’t abandoning the site.

“Nobody should starve,” Tai said. “It isn’t fair to make anyone good hungry.”

Was it fair that somebody needed to die to keep everyone fed? But Nat tugged at the necklace around her throat, uneasy in her position as leader. “Fine. You want food? You come back. When it gets dark? That’s when we’ll sit down.”

Let the trio exhaust themselves hiking. Eventually Javi’s remains would run out and they would be back to consuming nothing, shrinking and hollowing out to shadows again. Their pride could crumble. 

Mari, Gen, and Melissa made a hasty retreat, assembling their possessions the best they could without bags, stumbling through the snow and vanishing. 

“Did that feel right to you?” Her father’s ghost frowned through the cooking fire, skin blistering and ruining itself on a white flame. “You feel good about that decision?”

Nat didn’t. She never felt good about pulling the trigger. 

Nat stumbled. She needed to vomit, to choke up all of her sins and banish them into the clean snow, anything to remove the traces of Javi out from her body. 

The light bleached her hands. She tipped her head back to squint at the sun, stuck half blind beneath the darkness it threw off. Javi might’ve had his own dreams and now some of them were stuck inside her stomach, curdling like sour milk, a ghost inside a bottle. 

It was different, she realized, eating without the raw hunger that came with it. 

The urgency was gone. The horror was sharper, biting back at her with it’s own teeth. 

She crawled through a thick bank of snow towards a miserable stream barely visible and cupped her hands, drinking deeply at the frosted water. It stung her tongue and throat, chilling her stomach. 

Her gloves were gone. They had become Javi’s and somewhere between him living and dying, they were no longer around. She rubbed them briskly against her knees and struggled back to her feet, swinging around in a shallow turn to guess what move she wanted to make. A tiny scrap of Jackie’s shirt danced from a tree and Nat started towards it, struggling through the deep crest of snow, alone without Travis to break some of the path for her. 

It wasn’t safe to go out alone but Nat couldn’t ask him to preform old routines. It wasn’t fair to either of them. 

And Javi’s body was dwindling down to miserable bones. Shauna had whispered in Nat’s ear that they were down to two days worth of ration and now she was fighting against the slim odds, desperate to manage something. 

They wanted a leader and Nat had never once been dependable to anyone. 

She pretended it was Jackie waving from the tree but the closer she got, the less she saw. The small knot of fabric clung to the branch and Nat pressed her fingers to the soft edge of it, feeling where it was frayed. 

The world suddenly hushed. Shadows turned to ice and Nat shifted towards the branches, watching for whatever was coming, feeling movement slinking along. 

And she wasn’t disappointed. A deer, large and towering, strode along the cold bank. It’s antlers cradled the sun in the sky, cast their own shadows on the ground. A velveting muzzle shifted, body freezing, dark eyes scanning the white space before accepting it, resuming motion again. 

Life. Nat hadn’t seen life since the doe she shot just to burn for Jackie’s sake. She gently eased the gun down from her shoulders and pulled it out, already loaded, and released the safety. A ghost chattering was unnecessary. 

She knew what she was doing. 

Nat wrapped herself around the gun and felt the weight of it against her shoulder, cradling it like it was precious, and felt the wind stir from the side. The deer kept moving and she tracked it, lining it up carefully, calculating the angle she needed to combat the slight slope it was on, watching each line snap into place at the right moment—

The gun exploded into action and she felt the welcoming burst of it rocking against her shoulder.

Blood splattered and it screamed, awful and alive, jerking itself through the brush in a frantic attempt to outrace death. 

Nat didn’t run. She merely followed the tracks, followed the blood. It collapsed at the bottom of a steep hill and she gave it a second bullet for mercy, finishing the job. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, rubbing her knuckles across soft fur, feeling all the potential buried beneath the skin. “It wasn’t clean. It should’ve been clean. God, fuck. I’m sorry you had to feel it happening.” Javi thrashed and called her name, stung by her betrayal. Jackie slept cradled in the snow with blood in her hair, waiting for Nat to come back. “You don’t… you don’t know what this means, though.”

It said nothing. Death had a strange way of keeping silence. 

She pulled weakly at it. Nat carried rope and it took effort to slide it beneath her kill, looping it around before knotting it the way Ben taught her and Travis. She yanked and felt the rope cut into her palms, bite where the burn was slowly healing. 

How had she managed the doe alone? The snow seemed to suck at the beast, pulling it beneath layers of frost and ice, claiming it the way the water tried to take Javi’s body. Black eyes met her, helpless to her work. 

Slowly and painfully she managed to inch it forward. Hooves scratched at the crust of ice and Nat tried to use it to her advantage, pulling it across instead of through the snow, but she slipped and fell awkwardly, overwhelmed by her burden. 

The sun burned her eyes. Nat turned her head towards the hill and saw somebody watching her, a familiar shadow amongst the landscape and trees. “Help me,” she gasped, struggling back to her feet. Slush soaked her ankles, dripping down into her boots. “I can’t do this alone, fuck.”

Travis stood at the high point and looked down, face utterly impassive. Dark curls framed his eyes. He didn’t have a brush to comb them out anymore and the wildness made him visibly different, a stranger to whoever he had been to her. 

“Travis!”

He stepped away. His back turned and he vanished. 

“Please, Travis! I need help!”

It wasn’t just for her. They all needed her victory. But it didn’t matter because Travis never returned and Nat fought with her kill, yanking and pulling at it, struggling with the privilege of a trophy shot. 

Someone would’ve taken the head to mount it. The size of it… 

Nat swallowed her hunger, swallowed her bile of Javi’s memory. 

Eventually darkness soaked the tiny valley and she leaned against the body for warmth, worn from her efforts. The sun sunk low and shadows grew, stars pricking out of the distance. Nat traced the icy bit of cosmic patterns she could see before her vision grew blurry with tears, clutching the heart so tight that the charm cut her good palm from the force of her grip. She eventually tugged pink shoelaces free from her pocket and knotted each one around her ankle, stubbornly binding herself to Jackie's memory a little more. She was alone, miserable and cold, stuck with all of her memories and without a shred of relief.

But somebody came with the night.  

Van scampered down the slope with shocking grace and managed to get to her, eyes wide and barely visible from the patch of moonlight they were in. “You killed something!” 

“Yeah.”

“We heard shots.”

Nat struggled to her feet, letting Van haul her up with both hands. “That was hours ago.”

“Yeah. Travis said it was a false. You missed a partridge.”

She resisted the urge to snarl and remind Van that she didn’t miss. Even a bad shot had drawn blood. “Surprise,” Nat said charitably, cold and bitter. 

Van was still holding her hand in the darkness but Nat could feel her sweat slick fingers, the desperation of her grip. “Holy shit, Nat. This is huge. Like, big dick energy.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re gonna freak when you roll in with this beast.”

They wouldn’t have to kill. There wouldn’t be another drawing of the cards, somehow saved amongst the chaos of the fires, and nobody would be running against the trees and branches. The meat would keep them going. It was a promise of more. More game, more seasons of opportunity. Nat could hunt and it would be enough, it would carry everyone a little further into the future. 

Fuck yourself, Nat imagined sneering to Mari. No blood rituals, no breathing in smoke. She didn’t need woodland magic to manage a bullet and a rifle. 

It was barely easier pulling at the deer with Van but eventually they managed to get it uphill before they paused, fumbling to hack at a branch wide and strong enough to pull it through the snow together. Nat slipped and Van laughed, pulling her back up. Van wheezed and Nat elbowed her, taking some of the weight until the other girl could catch up again. 

And the trees thinned. The path got easier. There wasn’t a cabin leaking warm light from within anymore but Nat recognized the area, stumbling back to the clearing. 

“Surprise, bitches!” Van practically cackled. It summoned a wave of movement from the girls, pulling and tugging, fawning over the kill. 

Akilah flung her arms around Nat so hard that her ribs creaked in protest, laughing with a shrill catch of hysteria. Someone was dancing and suddenly they were alive, jumping in raw glee, drunk off the golden note of optimism. They were alive, they wouldn’t go hungry, they were together—

Nat doubled over. Her heart was playing riot against her ribcage. Jackie was dead and Nat was so happy, and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. 

The joy soured amongst everyone. Shauna took to work cutting at the deer to drain the blood away and Tai awkwardly handed out the rations they had left, letting the girls take their fill briskly and without speaking, counting down the minutes until they had venison again. 

Mari knelt across the fire and watched Nat silently. Her collective was shrunken and tiny, weathered by the hike back and forth from the plane wreckage. They took their fill gladly and without offering thanks to the provider, blankly consuming with a ravenous appetite. 

After, when the girls had either retreated to their new refuge or curled up beneath their rough shaped shelters, Nat slunk out to gather blood from her kill. It dripped from where it hung, knotted in place by Shauna’s steady hands. 

She cupped her hands together and carried blood to where creek stones sat, gently pouring blood in offering. “I’m sorry it took so long,” Nat whispered. “I know you would’ve wanted better for them and I’m not the person who should lead them. But I’m going to try. I’m going to try and keep them alive.”

Her hand came up to pressed against her sternum, staining the jacket with sticky blood. “You… you won’t like me anymore. And I get it, Jack. I’m not really fucking fond of myself now, if we’re being honest. But you mattered and I don’t know if I ever told you that, that you were the thing I needed. I’ve been counting every second since I knew you were dead—” she splintered off, feeling tears drip and freeze their way down her face. “Please talk to me. I want to hear your voice, Jackie. I need to see you again.”

Something hurt inside her chest. That was the cost to loving something, Nat assumed. When a person ripped themselves apart, that pain couldn’t be denied. 

Blood ruined the snow. It clung to her hands, it smeared across her chest. Nothing spoke to her. 

Nat killed a bear. She brought home some bird nobody could recognize but was large enough it formed a meal for everyone, the main site and Mari’s tiny fragment both. They ate their fill and gorged themselves, praising the flesh of the animals and the smoke of the fire, desperate to stay full. 

The wilderness bristled with life. Tracks formed in the snow and she saw patterns, coming home with rabbits like trophies, even once sniping a red squirrel down from the branches to toss at Lottie’s feet like a gauntlet. 

Some nights she could hear Van sobbing into her blanket, rubbing her feet together like a cricket to stay warm. Akilah pressed her forehead into Nat’s shoulder like a ritual for good dreams and it would lull her in consequence, smooth silk feel of a bandana, hair brushing her cheek. 

They were making do. They were surviving. 

Their makeshift lean-tos were slowly reinforced and they managed, full of energy from decent calorie consumption and finally free from the bitter taste of picking who would die next. 

She could almost forget running through the woods. She could almost forget sliding across the ice, reaching for Javi’s cold hands—

The wilderness demanded a sacrifice. 

Nat was going to keep everyone alive. 

Misty was half asleep by the fire on watch but stirred at the sound of Nat stepping through the clearing, ignoring her gun in favour of Shauna’s knife. “Where you going?” She murmured in the hushed quiet. 

“Taking a piss,” Nat lied, hands in her pockets, guilt heavy on her shoulders. “Don’t worry about it.”

She cut through darkness like a switchblade. It seemed to know who her prey was because the path curved out for her, barely visible like a ribbon of black velvet, her feet wandering a soft groove. They were all just mirrors of the woods, playing the same song and seeing with the same eyes, fading into what they needed to be in order to survive. 

Roots didn’t trip her. Branches brushed against her face like fingers, touching her skin and hair, barely skimming as she slipped through the gaps. 

And eventually the path ended. A large stump jutted up from a mound of snow and Nat saw a familiar crutch leaning against it, visible as a flag planted in the soil to colonize the wild. 

“Oh, you’re so close. Your teeth are as sharp as your claws, Natty. You’re sitting on the edge of the trigger. Come on.”

She touched the brush covering the base of it. Javi’s hiding spot, their potential refuge from her near death. Someone else was borrowing his generosity and it wasn’t fair to have scraped her teeth against tiny bones, to have watched his screams choke into nothing— 

“What happens if I don’t?” 

A cold hand brushed down her spine. “Aren’t you your father’s daughter, girl?”

She turned and looked at the shredded expression. Half ruined, half flawless. Her own eyes peered back at her. “I’m nobody’s daughter.” 

Bloody dribbled down the side of his mouth. “You’re always gonna be somebody’s. You’ll be mine, Natty. Or you’ll be for the wolves and trees.”

Moss clung to the side of the stump. Nat turned her focus away from a dead man and peered at the symbols carved into the wood, brushing aside the fronds growing around it to reveal a mouth of darkness. 

She had teeth and claws. Nat didn’t fear the dark the way she feared dropping from the sky, of dying in the wild with nobody to care. Shadows unspooled and she slipped through, crawling the short passage before it dropped into a steep, almost ladder like ravine, dropping her way down until she finally hit the bottom of the mouth. 

A tiny fire sat. It was more ash, barely glowing, starved for more. 

Ben was curled around the feeble bed of heat, grey face tipped back. He must have watched her climbed down. 

“Fuck you,” Nat said without remorse. “Do you know what you cost us?”

But he did. That had been the intention. They were ruined and Ben was pure, and the fire would have cleansed them for all their sins. “Nat—” he cracked, lips cracked and slipped. “I would’ve… tried to save you.”

Something had brought here to stand like a pillar of judgement. She tasted salt against her tongue and felt a strange hollowness from within her chest, like somebody reached through skin and bone to rip her heart away. “I’ve killed so much,” she said, bending down so he could see her face properly in the low light without shadows veiling her mouth. “The woods are alive again. I hunt game and I kill it and we’re all still alive.”

Melissa had awkwardly hung around the fire the night before, fiddling with her baseball cap, limp blonde hair falling around her face. She looked lonely. Nat wondered how long it would take before the other girls came back, begging to resume their place. 

It was simply pride that kept them away.

“Murderers,” he struggled to say, rasping and caught like an animal in a trap. “I know what you’ve done.”

“I want you to understand something, Ben. Someday? We might get out here. We might go and do all the shit we ever talked about. Akilah could go to college, Misty’ll do whatever the fuck she’s dreamed about doing. Everyone who survives? They’ll have a story. And I’ll make sure the story is always the same,” Nat swore, low and cold, frozen like winter itself. “You did this to us. You’re the one who hunted Javi. You’re the reason some of us had to die. I’ll pin the blame to your name and nobody will regret your death. Nobody will cry over your name. Our sins will be yours. You don’t get to stay innocent.”

Tears leaked from his eyes and rolled down his face, pooling beneath his ears. “Tried for you, Nat. Wanted to— tried saving you.”

Ben had always tried to save Nat. 

Without him, she would’ve burned out already, dying in some bathtub in the pit of civilization. He had hauled her down the avenue of academic responsibilities, arranging tutors and assistance, bullying her into making up missed assignments. Without him, her name would’ve meant nothing, she never would have found a place to belong. 

But he had given her a team. Lottie’s locker beside her own, Jackie bribing her with the good kind of licorice that could peel apart into tiny strings, girls who laughed and sniped, the thrill of victory—

Ben was a sacrifice. 

The wilderness demanded a sacrifice. 

“You tried to kill us but we’re going to live, Ben. I wanted you to know that. You’ve been wasting into nothing and we’ve been living,” Nat hissed, judgement stamping itself into her bones, painful as frostbite. “We survived what you did to us.”

Maybe he carried a different guilt. Ben had been the one to teach the girls how to hunt and manage their kills, had been the thing to give them the skills that transitioned to hunting and killing their friends. 

Javi was the first one of their intentions. Nat hoped he was the last. His clothes were left like a shrine in the cold, carefully folded by Shauna’s hands, never to be touched again. 

“Please.” His voice cracked like bones breaking. She dropped down and brought the knife across his throat shallowly, making him feel the sensation of the blade cutting down, an unfinished motion that left Ben suffering. 

Blood soaked the hiding place. The coals grew cold and nobody was left to tend to them anymore. The body was left to rot in the darkness and Nat climbed her way back up the narrow pinprick of light, swallowing her own sobs and screams, barely keeping herself from collapsing all the way back down to the bottom again. 

Darkness spat her up into the cold snow. Her hands fussed with the fronds, rearranging them to bury the evidence, brushing snow back into place with light touches. 

No one would disturb Ben. 

“You’re dreaming.”

Nat contemplated pinching herself. Her relationship with Lottie had progressed to assuming delusion at any statement from the girl’s mouth, even if she said the sky was blue or grass was green. “Sure.”

Lottie cradled a crown. It was fashioned from the antlers of her kill, bound together with blood soaked rope and branches. “I made this for you.” 

“Very funky but not really my style.”

“Seriously. I think it’ll fit.” 

Nat rolled her eyes and watched as Lottie drifted close, dressed in her bizarre ensemble of dress and pants, pale like the priestess on a tarot card. It weighed heavy across her skull. She felt her bones ache from the pressure of it, bowing beneath it. Could she stand up? Nat felt like she was shrinking, vanishing down to nothing, leaving the faintest impression that she had ever been there in the snow.

Fire crackled. Smoke stirred. The jagged mouth of the ruined cabin watched. She flicked her eyes towards Jackie’s grave and saw nothing, not even a blood stain in the snow. 

Lottie danced back, skipping along where the snow was crushed and stamped down, plucking a bottle from where she had been sitting. “Come on, Nat.” She beckoned her with a hand and Nat felt dreamlike, pulled over by a force of some spell. Her feet moved and she tripped down to Lottie’s side, off balanced from her crown and reign. “Open wide.”

Her mouth didn’t open but fingers pried it open and Nat’s sobriety was gone, shredded by the familiar bite of alcohol burning at her throat, sickly sweet with decay and rot. 

It was the same as drinking from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag outside the school’s gym. It was the same as drinking beer at a party, hands cradling red plastic cups. It was the same as drinking alone in her bedroom to hide the hurt beneath layers of alcohol. It was the same as drinking to feel something beyond the jagged wounds left on her back, the awful sting of a belt lashing down, her father’s voice echoing around her skull—

“Stop,” Nat rasped, struggled to separate herself from Lottie’s arms. The other girl was holding her, practically pinning her, clearing mysteriously empty. She had been sleeping and everyone had been lounging around and talking, crowded in a constant buzz that formed the backdrop to her dreams, and now it was just her and a nightmare. “I don’t want this.”

Lottie twisted with her, inescapable. Long hair brushed her face and it was a nightmare, fighting against something that wanted to hold and consume her, shrinking her down until Nat was bite-sized. 

There was no comfort in the touch. 

It hurt. It was a claiming. Her hands pushed against Lottie’s shoulder and she jerked back, sliding against snow, the contents of the bottle spilling everywhere. 

The crown fell from her head and clattered, nearly landing in the fire. Sparks burst and Nat was no longer struggling but fighting, slapping to disconnect Lottie’s hot mouth from her throat, barring her teeth in a snarl. 

“Hey!” 

Someone came close. They didn’t wedge between her and Lottie but Nat felt comfort of having someone at her side, at having space form between her and Lottie’s madness. “Don’t fucking touch me,” she seethed, drunk from the mild taste Lottie had given her. “Don’t ever try and touch me again.”

“What happened?” Akilah frowned, unwilling to do the math. 

“I— I was giving her a crown.” 

Nat struggled to do the buttons of her coat again, tucking skin back beneath layers of fabric. “I liked you better when you took your fucking meds.”

Hurt marked Lottie's face like she had drove her fist against her jaw. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck you." She pinched her wrist. She bit the inside of her cheek. It only hurt. 

“I was trying to share it, Nat. I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Lottie’s watery voice half confessed, one foot snaking backwards. “You’re not willing to do what it demands. I know you’re not ready but we’re running out of time. Eventually… you have to answer when it calls.”

“I already did.” 

It was worse than filling her hands with blood to paint Jackie’s grave in a weak offering. Ben’s blood stayed beneath her fingernails, staining her skin crimson. 

Lottie flinched. Was it envy? Was it an attempt to consume some part of Nat to taste power again? Nat struggled for the gun across from her but tumbled sideways, furious and betrayed. Akilah stooped low and held her hands out, a blatant offer. 

Nat had killed Ben two days prior. The meat shed was overwhelmed by her conquests, rafters groaning from the weight of hanging bodies. His blood soaked the earth and now the world was full of life, vibrant despite the snow, her shoulder bruised black from the kick back of the rifle. 

She took Akilah’s one hand carefully and let her tug her back up to her feet. “This is fucked, but I won’t hurt you.” 

“You’re going to get out of here. Do all your stuff you wanted,” Nat swore. The world spun circles around them both. “You’ll make it.”

Lottie cried, miserable and wet sounding, clinging to the crown. She was kneeling at Nat’s feet and Akilah kept her balanced, awkwardly managing the weight. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Lottie cried to the snow and the antlers, to Nat’s feet. “I just wanted it back.”

I’m dying, Nat thought. I won’t ever survive this. It didn’t matter how much she fought and kicked, the human part of her was doomed to fail. Someone good needed to break through.

The crown was a cage. 

“It was made for you. Custom fit ain’t so bad, huh?” 

“Shut up,” she gasped to her father, crumbling back down to the cold snow. “Shut up, shut up, shut up—”

“Take a break, hot shot.” 

“What?”

“We’re good. Like, really good. So take a break,” Van quietly advised, flexing her fingers and slipping a knot of string back and forth on loop. “You look like shit.”

She dragged fingers through her hair. Her own knots yanked against her, tangled and greasy from the lack of water for a decent bath. “Yeah, sure. You look like a fucking a queen.”

“Do we… do we need to do something?” 

“No.”

Executing Ben was bad enough. Eventually the wilderness would call to her a peculiar song for her ears alone and Nat would need a body ready to offer it. It would be easier to give up an enemy instead of a friend. Hate was dull poison that throbbed inside her chest in place of a heart.

Van’s brow quirked up. “You sure? Because that was some fucked up shit. Like, I’m sure she’s sorry… but it doesn’t fix anything.”

They tried killing her and now they were sharing a camp fire. It didn’t matter the transgressions made by the collective apparently. Nat wanted to laugh, hysteric and wild, but she managed to cling to her silence, fingers curling into painful fists. “Keep her away from me. I’ll deal with her when the time comes.”

She should’ve been rotting with the other burn outs back home but somehow she was the leader. Her word went for some, and for others it was a chance to rebel. 

What side was Van on?

“So, like, I’ve been on fire twice and also kind of fed to the wolves,” Van said sardonically, twisting string tighter around her fingers, web narrowing in on itself. “If you wanna talk…”

The offer dangled. 

“Where are the cards?”

Van tugged the deck free from her pocket. “Solitaire or what?”

“Nothing. We’re never doing this again.” Nat said carefully, taking the cards and feeding each one to the fire, burning aces and nines, a miserable king of spades to nothing; shrinking the deck of cards until only one remained in her hand by plain fate, a heartless queen. 

She dug out a piece of wood from the fire, charred and blackened, and carefully scratched out the eyes. Nat left the card on Lottie’s pillow, separate and beside Travis, isolated by the feeble line drawn between them and the group. 

Only two cards remained from a full deck, she thought miserable. A Jack and a Queen. 

Tai tapped her hand and Nat jerked away, barely catching herself before she swung her leg out and caught her ankle. She had started sleeping with both the rifle and knife, awkwardly braced for anything attacking her in her sleep. 

 “We’re missing a body,” she whispered, voice low and smoky beneath the thick darkness. 

Chapter Text

Nat cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted Akilah’s name. It echoed, ricocheting off of the ice glazed branches, vanishing in the smoked grey sky. 

Everyone was spread out as they combed through the wilderness is search of their missing teammate and all Nat had seen were the scratches left by bear claws against the trunks of trees and black birds spiralling overhead in dizzying swoops. She had opted to investigate what was drawing the attention of birds and found a stiff corpse of a moose sprawled out against a bank of snow, belly soft with rot. 

Glassy eyes looked through Nat. She avoided getting close to the carcass and edged around it, switching her passage to avoid the thorny brush sticking up through the snow. 

Nothing. There wasn’t a trace of Akilah beyond where her tiny sized six sneakers had stomped through, vanishing beside a knot of trees, far enough from the camp for privacy. There wasn’t any sign of a scuffle, nothing to point where she could have gone. 

Nat pressed her lips together and drew a sharp breath. The cold bit at her exposed fingers and face and she longed for the luxury of a hot bath. The metal wash basin they had used before was melted and ruined from the flames that took the cabin and now they were limited to a quick scrub of a damp rag beneath layers of clothing, not quite achieving the full feeling of clean. They had two buckets for water and it wasn't enough.

They needed more matches. They needed candles again. They needed their sanctuary that came with the walls and a roof overhead, some kind of shield to hold back the bitter wind. 

A familiar mark was gouged into one of the trees. Nat stopped next to it and traced a finger along the lines, feeling out whatever message was left by plain sense of feel. The ground, snow covered and thick with roots, felt hollow beneath her feet. What, she wondered, slept undisturbed?

Something rattled. Van came around the brush, branches catching at the sleeve of her blue and yellow hoodie. She was carrying a slender looking hatchet and it set Nat’s nerves on edge to see her with it. “Anything?”

“No. Just snow.”

Tai’s voice, slightly distant, shouted for Akilah. She must have strayed from her section of the rough map Nat sketched out with charcoal on a strip of birch bark. 

“Shit. I just checked on Lana. Some of the others are going to check the lake later on the way back.” 

“We didn’t exactly find Crystal when she went missing. I don’t know— maybe they just checked out. Like, they figured fuck all of this shit and took a hike.” Nat tried to smother the regret in her voice. The loss stung as badly as the cold did. 

Van’s eyebrows tipped up slightly. “Akilah was pretty smart. We’re down to a handful of matches left but Misty said they’re all accounted for. There’s literally nothing that we’re missing.”

Except for Akilah. 

She left a gap next to where Nat slept, a faint impression lingering in the stiff, frost coated blankets. Every single person mattered and they were missing someone. 

Van was thin and tired-looking. Despite the recent success with hunting, everyone was suffering from the lack of vitamins. Her fingers looked surprisingly dainty as she clutched the hatchet tighter, knuckles blanching. A reflection, Nat imagined, to where she stood with her rifle tight in her grip. 

“We’ll give her until the sun goes down. After that…” Nat trailed off, helpless by her own inadequacies. 

Her socks were damp and it was making her toes ache from cold. Nat needed to hang them up by the fire to dry overnight, vaguely recalling some history class talking about damp feet inside boots and the consequences that came with it. She didn’t want to know what she could look like without her skin. 

Fire was their greatest luxury they had left, ironic with having been chased from their refuge by flames, and they were stuck feeding the camp fires around the clock to preserve the heat. Four campfires were constantly burning and it left the snow around the area grey and powdered with ash. 

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck,” Nat agreed weakly. She barely knew Van in this life. She didn’t trust how close they were standing or the fact that Van could lash out with either the hatchet or her own hands to hurt her. “We can’t risk anyone else getting lost.”

Purple flashed from the trees to the left and Nat spun on instinct with her heart jolting, seeing Tai practically gliding through the snow with narrowed eyes. “Akilah! Come on!” She shouted hoarsely, batting one branch away with her hand. 

She waved her arms to catch Tai’s attention and the girl stared at them with an expression of mild irritation. “You’re supposed to be to the right. Don’t you know how to read the map you drew?”

“You’re the one who crossed over. You’re totally on the wrong side.”

“No. You said to check up around the fucked up grey trees.”

“These aren’t the fucked up grey trees. All the trees out here look fucked up and grey— seriously, Tai. I drew lines and everything.” Nat dropped back slightly when Tai came close, framing both girls in front of her so they couldn’t take her by surprise. 

It took effort to keep breathing. Her hands clutched the gun for support, squeezing so tight that her bones ached. 

Tai leaned against the tree like she was bracing her shoulder against a locker. Nat could almost picture Tai in the old world with her mouth painted with lip gloss and nails buffed to a clean shine, tall as a razor blade. “I don’t know how to break this to you, Nat, but you aren’t exactly the Picasso of the woodland.”

“He’s the dude with the fucked up lines, right?” Van cut in, squinting. “Wouldn’t Van Gogh be better? Or someone less abstract?”

“Jesus fucking—” Nat cut herself off and sighed, withdrawing from the banter. “I haven’t seen her yet. There’s nothing.”

They each frowned. “We’re planning on looking until it gets dark,” Van said to Tai, softer.

“It’s winter. It’ll get dark fast.” They had spent most of the day spread out. She felt the strain of the hike through the muscles of her legs, half winded from the effort it cost. Three rabbits, snowy and practically invisible, had skirted right by her and Nat let them go, unwilling to spend the time hauling extra weight. 

“Misty said she’d leave the buckets by the creek. We’ll just have to push and fill up on the way back.”

“Misty’s trying to get out of hauling water herself.”

“Yeah, well. Whatever. We need the water.” The lake was covered in ice which left the creek as their only source of water, favourable for the reasonable distance from the camp and the fast moving current which kept it from freezing over. 

Nat led back to where the moose was dead, once again bypassing the body to circle around for a cleaner path. The wind swept some of the snow back and it made the process easier to work through. Tai led and Van followed, Nat dropping back to keep to their prints left in the snow. It grew awkward, though, when the land grew up into a steep slope, ruptured by giant slabs of stone. 

Sweat warmed her skin and it made her colder, shivering and shuddering, wheezing by the time they finished scaling the first portion. Tai coughed weakly, just as impacted from the climb. “Gotta be easier going down, right?” 

The view was beautiful. Land dropped straight down in a sweep of ice brushed trees towards distant mountains, virtual legions of unknown space beneath the three shadows they left. Nat drew one hand up to her heart and pressed flat so it might contain the sensation of a fracture. “We’re fucking close. See?” Nat made herself say, nodding towards the mark in the distance. 

The plane crashing left a visible scar. Trees were on awkward angles still, ruined and trying healing from the damage. 

It had been plain stubbornness to come along the side and around, avoiding Mari’s territory out of spite. But time was running out. The grey sky was darkening with shadows, heavy with the promise of more snow to fall. 

“We might have to talk about going back. Shelter… we need it.” Van shrugged mildly. 

“No.”

Tai’s mouth prickled into a frown. “Nat. It’s cold out.”

“Shut up.”

She sighed and ran her fingers through her slowly growing hair, still cropped short. It was the most overt gesture of unease Nat had even seen from the girl. “If we don’t actually sit down and discuss our options for the long term, we’re going to freeze our asses off out here. People are talking about leaving for Mari’s side. Maybe if it was summer, Nat? But it’s winter. And it’s brutal as fuck. The fact that we haven’t died from exposure is a miracle.” 

“I know what kind of risk it is. I remember Jackie.” Nat’s lips curled back and she showed her teeth. 

“We all remember Jackie,” Tai’s eyes were bright and glassy from the cold, like she was almost on the verge of crying. “That’s the whole point. We need an actual shelter. If we’re gonna survive, we need more than shitty little branches propped up with fucking string—”

“—cool it, Tai.”

“—winter will kill every single person out here if we don’t get some kind of game plan figured out.”

A bone felt like it was yanked out of place. A choice, Nat realized, was being made. “What exactly did I miss?”

The visible line from the plane crash felt like it was mocking Nat. They were so close to where their shitty journey began but missing so many things from in-between it and the now. 

Van tugged at the collar of her hoodie awkwardly, shifting weight from one foot to the other. Snow crunched beneath her heel. “What?”

Dread was needling through her bones. Her heart was beating so forcefully it felt bruised against her ribs. “Jackie died and I was gone. Tai remembers Jackie, right? Jackie fucking died,” Nat drawled, voice low and chipped like flakes of ice. “And I missed it. I’ve been trying to pretend like I don’t need a fucking story because it isn’t exactly gonna change anything, right? But fuck it, Tai. You’re probably right. We’re doomed out here and there’s probably nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard I bust my ass to keep you all alive? Well, Jesus. It didn’t do a thing for Jackie.”

They were silent. Nat leaned forward slightly, burning with frustration and unfinished anger. “Give me the dirty details because, what? We’ll be tasting grave dirt in a few weeks again?”

The cabin was gone and with it every item of raw sentiment. Nat only had her rifle and Jackie’s shoelaces, the two things she could carry. A band of poison red string around her wrist felt more like a shackle. She resisted the urge to tug at it in case it snapped. 

Tai shook her head. “Let it go.”

“No.”

“Knowing? It won’t change anything for you. It doesn’t do a thing for Jackie.”

“Taissa.” 

Her eyes glimmered with an honest trace of tears. “You could’ve asked before but you didn’t. That’s on you.” 

Nat had been selfish with her grief, retreating to the woods and keeping distant. It wasn’t safe for anyone with how angry she felt. Travis tried reminding her, she remembered, that she wasn’t an executioner. That she couldn’t pretend she was beyond the scope of rules and judgement. 

Staying unaware of the truth was the one thing that kept her raging from frothing at the mouth. 

Smoke was curling up from the distant. It was a tiny sign of a cooking fire. Van lifted a hand out and pointed towards it, subtly shifting between them both. “Let’s just go talk to them. Tell them about Akilah… there’s a chance she could’ve jumped ship, right?”

Tai didn’t wait for permission. She started down the slope, working her way back down to the thick sprawl of trees. Nat waited for Van to move first before following, cold resolve heavy like she was carrying stones in her pockets. 

“Mari doesn’t want you guys out here. This is our land.”

“I’m sorry. Is there some kind of land deed you all have?” Tai asked with frustration. Her eyes narrowed at the spear Gen was holding and the way it was directed defensively at them. “We’re not playing games. This isn’t capture the fucking flag, Gen.”

The spear had been designed with metal at the end, likely pulled from the plane itself. Something brown flecked the sharp edge. Nat planted her feet firmly and toyed with the safety subtly, letting Tai take the heat of Gen’s unfriendly attention. 

But Gen’s eyes flicked to her. “You said this was our side. You were keeping the camp and Mari wanted to the wreckage. You allowed this.”

“Yeah. All this? All yours. Keep it,” Nat said wearily, a bit of anger colouring her voice. “We’re looking for Akilah.”

Something whistled. It sounded metallic and Nat nearly dropped down to the ground on automatic reflex to start working her way through sets of push ups. Bill’s old whistle, hellish and awful as ever, dangled from Melissa’s fingers. “Mari’ll come,” she said as she came around a thick oak tree, whistle sliding into her sweater pocket. “She always comes when we call her.”

“You wanna put down the stick?” Tai asked imperiously. “Before someone loses their eye?”

“Akilah. Have you seen her?” Nat asked, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Tai was shivering and worn from the hike in the woods but was staring down at Gen like she was ten feet tall and made of marble. 

Gen didn’t move the spear. “No.” 

“You guys really came out here for arts and crafts, huh?” Van said, acknowledging the spear in a different fashion. Her shoulder had subtly came in front of Tai like she was prepared to drive her to the ground and take the heat of an attack. “That’s really fucking cool, Gen. Didn’t you fail art?”

“How the fuck do you fail art class?” Melissa blinked. Blonde wispy strands escaped from her hat. 

“You don’t go. Obviously,” Gen said, face flushing slightly. “I was dating Zach and he had a spare when I had art class.”

“Oh, God. Zach? Zach from—”

“— the stupid party,” Gen finished. “Yeah, like he’s an idiot. But crazy hot, right? And it wasn’t serious. We just fooled around. He wasn’t exactly offering a promise ring or anything.”

“I bet he misses you,” Melissa offered. “Like, cries every day and puts flowers down on your grave misses you.”

Gen scoffed but her face took on a bit of colour, obviously pleased. “I hope I ruined him for other girls.”

“Holy fuck. What the hell are you doing here? This isn’t your territory,” Mari snapped, suddenly coming through the brush with her own spear. It was larger and notched with faint lines along where her hand gripped the one end. “Go back.”

“Am I missing something? Y’all come over for fucking dinner every night. You’ve obviously got no problem with that,” Van snapped back. 

But Mari shook her head. “This land is clean. Every day we bless it with smoke. We’re the ones feeding it blood. You— you don’t keep with the traditions anymore. It isn’t the same. You people don’t respect what Lottie did. We keep this side clean and you being here? That ruins it.”

“I mean, I was right there with Lottie.” Van scoffed. “Like, whatever she said? I was jumping to do it. But it’s not the same anymore. We don’t have to live like that anymore. You see what the woods are like, right? We’re not lining up to pick a friend out to die. Congrats, Mari. We’re living in a new age.”

“Respectfully, I will drive this spear through your chest and pluck your heart out if I ever see you on this side of the lake again. This is your one warning.”

“Talk like that again and I’ll shoot you,” Nat said, matching Mari for coldness. “We’re not here to fuck with whatever you’ve got going on. Akilah went missing last night and we’re just looking for her.”

Her skin was grey from ash. It made her hair look darker, like tar poured over her scalp. Mari’s tennis shoes were soaked and looked grey, the same colour that matched the miserable trees around them. “Retake your title, Natalie. We’re asking you to guide us through the wilderness.”

She remembered the crown placed on her head by Lottie. The hands that tried to catch her, the fingers that attempted to unlace and simply take. “Keep your land. It’s yours. If you wanna pay for it with blood… go ahead.” 

“Go. Don’t ever come back here again.” 

“Oh, what? You still coming for venison? Because it’s different, right?” Van chirped absentmindedly as she pushed Tai back, opening a gap for Nat to follow them. “Yeah, Mari. We’ll see you around our fucking fire.”

Gen pointedly followed them, dogging their heels with blistering silence, watching to see them across the chosen border. They took a different way back, opting to avoid the hills they came down from, and left her by a gnarled tree that forked up like a victory sign. Tracks brushed through the snow, clearly from where the three girls tramped along every night to sit down for a meal. 

“You really want to bunk with them?” Nat asked sullenly, giving Tai a long stare. “Because they’re looking really fucking homey.”

“I’ll take the frostbite.”

“We still need water.” 

The lake was a grey stretch of cold wasteland. Looking at it hurt. “I’ll get it. You guys go back and tell the others that Mari’s suffering from long term brain damage.”

“I’ll help.” Van was quick to offer, shoving one hand in the pocket of her hoodie. 

“Whatever.” Nat wanted silence. She wanted the refuge of emptiness, a place where she could drive her fist into the trees without judgement from someone watching. 

Mari survived everything and Nat didn’t understand how.  

They split at one path and wandered back into the woods, half blind by the white snow and shadows setting in. Buckets were left right at the edge of the creek and Nat jumped down to the rocks, bending to fill one up with fresh water. 

Slush clotted up the banks of the creek but the quick flow was enough to keep the ice from forming. It was just one of the veins that led back to the lake itself, their closest available access to water. “Here. Take this,” Nat tasked her, holding up the full bucket with shaking arms and letting Van switch it for an empty one. 

It was mulish pride, however, that kept her from accepting Van’s help to hauling herself back up the bank. She scrambled and skinned her knee on a loose stone and managed alone, refusing to trust in an extended hand. 

They were all murderers. Nat just wasn’t soft enough to expose her back to more teeth. “Let’s go.”

“No. I—I’m sorry. I needed to talk to you.”

She looked back at Van and saw that she was still standing in place, eyes fixed to the running water. “What?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said very carefully. “I thought this was everything but it wasn’t. You’ve been hunting and bringing back actual stuff. We don’t— I didn’t want you to die. And I would’ve, you know? Because that’s how the shitty game was playing out. But I didn’t want that. Fuck, do you know how happy I was to be pulling Javi home? Like, we’re all on a scale and I’ve got personal biases to who can get hurt. I like you, Nat. And maybe if it was Mari? Maybe I could’ve handled it. But it was you. And you’ve been in my life for years now and I don’t want this anymore.”

Hadn’t Van come between her and the others on the ice? Nat tried to remember but Javi’s tortured expression blistered through her memories, thrashing in the grip of black water as it sucked him down. “You’ve been following Lottie since the beginning.”

“My face got ripped apart. I was seeing stuff and Lottie was making sense. I can’t explain it because everything out here is fucked up. And I know you’re pissed that we ate Jackie but I didn’t see you turning away from Javi.” Van’s tone got harsh. Her mouth curled up to where the scars puckered and it made for a strange smile. “I just didn’t want to die out here. Tai thought I died and set me on fire. And that was everything. I could see... it was awful. But Lottie made it make sense.”

Occasionally Nat still heard the cries at night. Mari called her heartless three months in for not giving a shit about her own mother but the others all took turns sobbing into their moth eaten blankets, mourning the absence of family and friends from back home. Even Van, nearly as numb as Nat was on the concept of family, woke up with bloodshot eyes from her own tears.

Everyone felt a desire to survive for a return. 

“Either we live or we don’t. There’s no changing that.” Nat tried to be gentle but she was fixed to the snow falling from the trees overhead, the whisper of a cold current rocking itself across the stones at their feet. “Give me something, Van. Because I don’t fucking trust you.”

The hatchet dropped to the snow with a soft thump. The blade landed upright and maybe if Nat was superstitious she could have read something out of it, squinted to divine fate from the silver glint of the edge. 

But it looked harmless. It sat at their feet like teeth waiting to bite shut. 

Van tucked her cold hands into the pocket of her hoodie and shut her eyes. “I didn’t know that it would get so cold,” she said slowly. “We didn’t think it would snow.”

The cold had cut her trip short with Travis. She remembered stomping back, disgruntled by her failure, watching her breath hang into the air as a cloud. Snow fell in soft clumps and it blanketed over roots and rocks, making the entire trek slower as they forced a path through the cold element. “Right.”

“We fucked up. Misty got us a high… but we opened something up the night of the party. The shit— Travis could’ve been hurt. We would’ve hurt him. I wish there was a better story for it but it was shitty. I try and think about it, but honestly? There’s nothing but flashes. We were hunting him down in the dark and it was bad enough Javi took off… but I remember it, Shauna locking Jackie in the closet and the shit Lottie was saying. That part is crystal fucking clear.” Van sneered helplessly. Red hair slipped from the elastic and it fell in limp curls around her face, dark from her own sweat. “And Jackie was pissed. You were gone and that was it, right? She didn’t have anybody but you on her side.”

Jackie was waiting for Nat. 

Jackie had waved Nat off from the steps and promised to wait. 

Van’s head bent a fraction. “You weren’t there. You got to be innocent,” she said, continuing. “We fucked up and Jackie paid for it.”

“Tell me,” Nat said hoarsely. 

Her eyes opened but she still refused to look at Nat. “We kept ignoring her. Lottie killed a bear with a goddamned knife and that was it. She was Wonder Woman or some shit… we were hungry so she gave us a meal… and Jackie refused to thank the wilderness for it. It— everything exploded after that. She called Shauna out and no one wanted to take a side. So we didn’t.” 

“You took Shauna’s side. You left Jackie on her own.” 

“In the moment? It felt like we were outside a box. Like we couldn’t interfere. Jackie tried to kick Shauna out but she wouldn’t go.”

“So Jackie left,” Nat realized dully. “That’s why she was outside.”

“Shauna went after her but said she couldn’t find her. We just went to bed and assumed it could be fixed in the morning.” 

“What do you think happened?” Nat asked Van, voice thin and cold to her own ears. “Because you’ve never been stupid.”

Van looked at her sharply. The water splashed across stones and the bits of ice flowed with the current, all bleeding into the lake in the distance. “What?”

She drew closer so that she towered almost above Van, mouth set in an imitation of her father’s sneer. Nat stared directly into her eyes. “I’m not playing games.”

They weren’t on a soccer field battling it out for the gold anymore. Something bigger was at stake.

“Misty had to take a look at Shauna’s hand after we moved Jackie into the meat shed. Her thumb was messed up. She had to do something for the swelling, right? Shauna never said anything what she did… Tai thought she might’ve banged it off of the door or something but didn’t want to ask. She was pregnant and Jackie was dead… it was over. There wasn’t any undoing it.” 

“Sounds like you all picked a fucking side after all. So much for being Switzerland, right?”

Tears rolled down Van’s pale face. “You cried when you came back.”

“So?”

“That’s how I knew. Jackie wasn’t alone because she had you on her side… you guys were involved.” Van was an ugly crier. Her skin blotched strawberry red and her mouth trembled, flushed and bitten. “Nothing was fair.”

Nat felt twisted with anger. It threatened to ruin her, to leave her gutted and empty. “When you think about Jackie? I want you to remembered how much she loved you all. How much she would’ve done if any of you let her.” 

Her heart was a war drum. It beat frantically inside her chest. The hatchet was on the ground as an offering and Nat could take it easily and swing, drive the blade straight through Van’s soft throat. She wouldn’t even fight her on it, Nat realized. And she had the gun still. A bullet could render justice. 

Her fingers twitched and she allowed herself to reach for the rifle, scooping it up and adjusting it, taking several steps back to frame Van in the crosshairs. 

Van watched her. Tears kept rolling down her face and flakes of snow caught on her red hair like lace. “I’m so sorry, Nat.”

“Fuck you.” She drew the safety back. The trigger felt hot against her finger, ready to draw back and take the shot. 

“Just—” Van broke off, swallowing a sob. Grief seemed to whittle her down to just the bones. She lifted her hands up in acceptance. “Give Tai some mercy, yeah? Please.”

Her father, in the shape of an icy wind, formed between them. “Pull the trigger, Natty. You know how to do it. You’re a wolf now.”

“Shut up.” 

Van almost crumbled. “Please, Nat.” 

Winter clenched the landscape in a tight fist. The trees felt like they were her antagonists by just existing and Nat yearned to take their precious flames and set them all on fire by their roots. 

“You can’t fold for crocodile tears, Natalie.”

A wind sighed mournfully as Van slid through the scope of the rifle. “Jackie would’ve tried to forgive you.” Nat’s voice shook with rage. She wasn’t sure who bore the true brunt of her anger. Van was a decent target but there was something about a dead person that left everything unfinished. “And she’s dead.”

Her father moved in a familiar fashion like he wanted to hit her. She jerked away from both him and Van, cradling the rifle to her chest. Nat was so tired. The truth left her feeling hollowed out. 

Fuck Jackie for dying. Nat hated her for it, hated herself for not being there to stop it. 

“Nat.”

Dark eyes narrowed at her and the blood dripped down his blasted jaw, falling like individual tear drops. His hand extended and Nat took another step back, automatically sticking beyond reach. 

Jaws snapped around her ankle. White hot pain shot through her bones and she howled, folding down around the sensation of being caught. Her hands were numb to the cold snow. The wetness sank through her jeans and maybe it was blood, the consequence of being caught in a bone crush. 

“Nat! Holy fuck. Okay, hold still. There’s a release, right? There has to be a release.” Van dropped to her knees and scrambled to help, trying to touch her. 

Birds burst through the sky. Her head tipped back and she screamed louder, hooked by the agony. 

“Oh, Natty. You were supposed to be better than this.” 

Loose red hair brushed her face and it felt like Lottie’s, desperate hands pushing and prodding, fumbling to free her from the bear trap. Jagged teeth bit into her, cutting through the leather of her boot. 

“You can’t fix this,” Nat gasped, blinded by it all. Water rushed and it sounded like blood flowing through the creek. 

“Shut up. Just shut up, Natalie. I’ve got you so let me do this,” Van snapped back, catching her by the wrist and holding her still. “I’ve got you.”

“I made you and this is all you have to offer?” 

Her father’s words stung her. They felt like individual bite marks, the scraping of teeth across her bones. “I’m n—not yours,” Nat said weakly. “Never was.”

Flakes of snow stung her cheeks. They mixed with her tears and blood, the pain that never ended. 

“Your shitty taste in fashion saved your ankle from being crushed.” Lana’s voice sounded flat. She was chewing at bear meat, chin bright from the grease that dripped. “So, congrats on the life choices that brought you out here.”

“You’ll be okay.” Misty was quick to clarify. “I don’t have anything for the pain… Ben took up anything good. And the fire got the rest, I guess.”

Nat hitched herself up on her elbow and gazed down at her feet. “You cut it off.” 

Misty scrunched her nose up, kneeling down beside her. A fire laughed and spat out sparks from a piece of wood breaking beneath the heat. One of the other girls jabbed at it with a stick to reposition it better. “I nearly cut your boot off. Your ankle was swollen but we managed to pull it off. Can’t replace quality footwear out here, right?”

She blinked and tried to pull herself out of the fogginess holding her down. “I saw you,” Nat said, voice hitching. “You cut my legs off.”

She was in one of the lean-tos. The ground was hard and blankets were pressed in around her, damp from sweat. Nat was supposed to be on the lake, she realized. She had been running but Misty cut her legs out from beneath her, tipping her over like a tree falling in the woods. 

Howls still echoed inside her ears. She needed to run. Secondhand adrenaline tore up through her chest and it made her nauseous, looking between her two feet and each of the girls present. 

Misty stood up, knees cracking and popping, and staggered towards a metal pot of water. She dipped a ladle into it and brought it back carefully, attentive enough to the task to avoid spilling a single drop. “Try this.”

The water tasted metallic from the ladle but Nat drank like she could get drunk off it, greedy for more. It threatened to make her sick and she nearly choked, struggling against the urge to gag. Blood, she imagined, flavoured it. 

A hand awkwardly patted her head. Comfort, she supposed. 

Unrecognizable fabric was knotted around her ankle. It was tight like it was supposed to hold her together in one piece and Nat purposefully wiggled her exposed toes, jerking back the blankets to check that she was truly whole. “What happened?”

Tai and Van drew in. Some of the other girls were watching her from the fire but they didn’t move. Travis was sitting hunched over by the orange coloured flames. His attention was devoted to the heat, grounded by the smoke curling up. 

She felt small beneath their stares and his silence. Nat shoved the blankets further back and staggered up unevenly, almost collapsing beneath the pressure of pain before Van caught her quickly, giving her the luxury of support.

“You had the shitty luck of stepping on a bear trap. We were getting water,” Van explained quickly, eyes veiled with shadows, and squeezed her arms tight. “And you got caught on it.”

“She dragged you back.” Tai added forcefully like it meant something. 

“My gun. Where’s my gun—” Nat started, practically panicking beneath the absence of it, but Van was jerking her head towards the corner of the lean-to, right where it was propped up. “Jesus, fuck. This fucking hurts, Misty. Why the hell didn’t you just cut it off?”

“You can’t just cut off a healthy limb,” Misty sniffed delicately. “You just have to stay off of it. It’ll probably heal.”

“Probably? You said I’d be okay.”

“Well, I’m not exactly a fully functioning hospital. You probably need X-Rays and something decent for the pain. I think it’ll heal.” 

She was numb to Van’s arm around her. Nat only outran death once before because someone took her place. If the cards soured a second time, she’d be lamed. Putting weight on her foot meant her ankle barked with pain, protesting the attempt. She couldn’t imagine running properly. “What happened to the trap?”

“Tai brought it back. Could be useful,” Van shrugged. “You said the woods have been different. Maybe we can rig it again and catch something for ourselves.”

Travis wasn’t looking at them. 

“No. We don’t do that shit,” Nat decided roughly. “Get rid of it.” 

Hunting meant killing something to be successful. A trap, though, was drawing out the suffering. She wouldn't punish her prey. 

Nat couldn’t stand the thought of something shrieking in pain, forced captive by metal jaws springing shut. There was no grace in death but it wouldn’t be a slaughter by her hands. Ben was the first and last to die badly. 

“You were out for two days,” Van told her, helping her limp towards the campsite. “We’ve been trying to keep the fire going but the pits gotta get cleaned out. The ash is starting to add up.”

Four fires were burning. Nat looked at each hasty patch of flames, the black smoke curling up off. “Let two die out tonight. We’ll clean up and rebuild the fire with some fresh wood. Once those are burning, we’ll do the same with the other two.”

Lana was coughing on the smoke. Asthmatic, Nat distantly recalled. The snow was bitter with ash surrounding their camp. 

“Mari dropped this off for you.” Tai looked weary, scooping up something from a basket. The basket itself was more in line with the concept of what a person might believe a basket to be if they were blind. Some of the girls had taken it upon themselves to take flexible sticks and awkwardly weave them into containers, limited in actual use but something to keep the hands busy. “I told her you wouldn’t want it but Mari wasn’t really working with the concept of no.”

“Do I want to know what that is?”

“Freaky woods stuff,” Van muttered. It was pine needles bundled together with fragments of torn rags and string, half glued from tree sap that was tacky to her own fingers. A face plastered to it was torn from a textbook and Mari had etched a smile in what Nat assumed was with a tube of lipstick. 

She rubbed off the waxy expression with her finger until it was just a red smear. “What the fuck?”

“She said it would help.” 

Nat never played with dolls growing up. Some of the other kids in the trailer park had a collection of cheap ones from the dollar store but they were always so fragile, heads popping off and limbs bending after a couple hours of playing with. Mari’s creation resembled something like a voodoo doll without pins stuck through and it left her unsettled. She scratched at it, gingerly peeling the face free to pocket, and tossed the body into the nearest fire. “I’m good.” 

The fire chewed at it. The flimsy arms bent and turned black, withering down to a vague outline, burning straight through with heat. The pine needles vanished. The tiny bits of fabric melted down to ash. Mari’s intentions were cremated for the smoke to carry back up to the sky. 

“Can you move your toes comfortably?” Misty inquired, perching beside her on a stump. “Does it hurt?”

“Feels like a shitty sprain,” Nat diminished for her sake, wiggling the best she could beneath layers of fabric. Her boots had been pulled off and the cold was turning her exposed feet red but she imagined it was good for the swelling. 

Van silently passed something to her before moving for the buckets. “We’ll grab a refill before dinner tonight. Lottie thinks it’ll storm soon.” 

Shoelaces. Pink shoelaces. Nat stashed them away in a pocket for later, content just to pull them through her fingers in the illusion of holding someone’s hand. 

Tai and Van took off and the camp shrunk slowly. Lana slowly got up, knees cracking and arms stretching the stiffness free, wandering over to where Lottie was pacing around the burnt remains of the cabin. Snow dusted over the black wreck but her tracks formed a visible outline around the scene, pacing a loop without break. 

“Where’d you get the bear trap from?” Nat asked Travis quietly. 

Misty’s head snapped up but he didn’t move. 

“I asked you a question,” she drawled, stretching her bad leg out slightly. “That was a bullshit move.”

“Fuck off.” 

“You’re lucky I got caught up in that. Someone else? They’re innocent to this.”

He looked up suddenly. “We’re all just sitting beneath the glow of fucking missiles, right? This wasn’t my move,” Travis seethed. His lips were stretched into a snarl and he was alone, Nat realized, in the woods without family. His father was buried beside the wreckage of the plane and Javi got consumed by the rest of them. “And I don’t care that you got hurt. I wouldn’t care if anyone of you got hurt.”

Nat blinked first. She didn’t believe him but she wasn’t going to keep jabbing someone with a sharp stick when she didn’t have the luxury of her ankle being in shape. 

They collected water from the bend at the creek because the water came fast enough that it never froze. It took effort to climb up the bank but somethings were worth the struggle. They had stomped around that particular spot for days without incident and somehow her foot got lodged in a trap. 

She wondered how many more coincidences were lining up out of sight. 

“I’m sorry about Javi,” Nat tried telling him. Her hands rubbed her knees briskly, trying to banish the cold from her legs. “I didn’t know he’d die out there.”

“I tried helping you for nothing,” Travis said sourly. “He’s died twice now and you’ve been the reason for it each time. You’ve got nothing, Natalie. You don’t get what it’s like to keeping losing the one thing you’ve got out here. Jackie? You’re fucking lucky you only got that once. If she were still alive? I’d choke her. I’d bring her body back just to make you see it.”

Was it once? Nat remembered sitting hunched over in the meat shed with her body. She had taken warm water and a rag to rub the blood out from her hair, gently banishing some of the damage away. And then the second time, returning from a failed hunt, watching their teammates sitting around the charred remains of her, gorging themselves on the flesh—

She hadn’t wanted to feel Jackie’s death. It was what kept her out in the wilderness, a relentless dog chasing the promise of a catch. Jackie was dead and Nat could never undo it. 

She stayed ignorant for her own sake but the truth was itching at her bones, practically dragging fingernails right down her spine. 

“Lottie’s a good match for you, Flex. Crazy looks natural on you.” 

His whole body twitched and Misty recoiled. Nat didn’t yield a single inch of space. “Shut the fuck up.”

“You are here because I let you stay here. Think about that the next time you’re planting fucked up traps out there.” Shauna, Nat thought. Lottie. 

Hate kept piling up, festering with rot. Travis wasn’t her mirror in the wilderness anymore. They were bound for unholy destruction. The fire tinted his skin warm and he swept some of his hair back from his forehead. 

“Everyone always talked about you. You are just Ben’s charity project. So what? You could run fast? That’s bullshit. Only thing special about you was that you killed your dad.” 

Nat was Ben’s charity project. The past tense mattered. 

Misty looked sick. She was caught in the middle despite being physically at Nat’s side. “Bad gun safety killed Mr. Scatorccio,” she mumbled. Her cheeks were red from the cold. 

She tipped her chin back and felt a ghost of Shauna’s knife scratching at her throat. She was as responsible for her father’s death as she was for Javi’s. 

“You don’t scare me, Travis.” 

He stood up and sent a wave of snow into the fire with a hard kick. Smoke scorched the air, flakes evaporating into nothing. Travis went to vanish into the trees but Lottie stopped him, patiently extending a hand out for him to take. 

And he took it. He kept taking whatever he offered, battle lines sketched out by their retreating shadows.

Nat woke up by choking on her panic. 

She jerked upright, clearing illuminated by the campfires, her chest heaving. The dreams slid straight through her hands and she swallowed around a frozen scream still lodged in her throat, barely aware of the bodies spread around. 

Snow dusted the blankets that were pooled around her waist. Nat swept away at the stray flakes, cold and overheated, glancing towards the trees for the quickest escape. It was always her habit, she realized, sketching out the best way to avoid getting caught. She still remembered the way she crept around the double wide trailer, tiptoeing over the floor where it creaked, slipping past the living room while holding her breath in case her own breathing set off either one of her parents. 

Her ankle still ached whenever she shifted it. Her brain was wired to survive and being hobbled meant limitations, turning her into a sheep around a pit of sleeping wolves. 

When would her value tarnish? Jackie got cut out of the group. Ben was slowly diminished. Everyone got pooled into the dicey game of fate they played, evenly putting Misty’s first aid skills in the same pot as laying out a buffet for the others to eat from. 

The cold bit her toes and fingers. Her bones felt hot. This was fine, Nat told herself dimly, struggling to settle back down. 

Anxiety, maybe. She could rationalize it as a physical effect of a nightmare, beads of sweat rolling down her forehead, caught with the dregs of adrenaline still floating around her system—

Nat staggered up, barely avoiding to step on Van’s extended hand, rushing for the bushes as fast as she could limp. 

She missed the luxury of a clean bucket to hurl into. Better, she remembered, to lie on the bathroom floor with her body partially twisted like a pretzel to fit around the sink and shower, rubbing her cheek into the damp tiles across the floor. 

“Natalie?”

She choked on bile. Her body was wasting hard won nutrition, tossing all that effort spent hunting down the drain. It scattered across the snow. 

Lana panted from where she emerged. Her running shoes were unlaced and starting to fray, hoodie sun bleached across the shoulders. “I keep hearing it,” she murmured. “The street lights.”

“What?”

Her knees buckled and she dropped, face turned away as she started to dry heave. The process looked violent and Nat felt a pang of empathy. 

“They’re buzzing,” Lana finally finished. 

“Come on. Stand up.”

“I can’t.” 

Nat dragged herself upright, limping sharply towards Lana. “I said get up. On your feet,” she ordered. “You can’t stay here all night.” 

Lana struck out hot hands and she helped her up, bending and twisting beneath the weight, counting each step back to the nest of blankets she had abandoned. Akilah’s space was empty and Lana dropped obediently into that void, gasping raggedly, face silver with sweat. 

Twenty steps and she was wasted. The short distance felt equal to the treks made through the wilderness, scrambling along the mountains and into valleys, plunging into the unknown after miles of relentless marching. 

Her heart was racing. Nat felt it and it was a relief, she realized, knowing that she still had it after everything that had been done. 

“You’re on fire, girl.” 

She wasn’t going to cry. Her body simply folded down, burrowing beneath frost stiff blankets, practically drowning with her face exposed to the sky and trees. 

“All this time and you don’t know when someone’s gone and cut you up? That’s a damn tragedy.”

“Stop talking,” Nat said through chattering teeth. “Just shut up.”

“They’re gonna make a fine meal out of you,” her father continued, oblivious. “Burn around the bad parts, sure. Practically five star dining out here.”

The stars were humming. Maybe those were Lana’s street lights. Nat squinted and tried to focus on the white fuzz burning above. They were glacial tear drops, stray diamonds. “Everything bad— it all came from you.”

And her mother, she thought belatedly. Nat could extend credit where credit was due. She had her father’s face and hair. She had her mother’s hands and foolish desire to love what caused hurt. 

“Can’t keep friends with the trees. They’ll turn eventually.”

“Why won’t you just go away?” Nat whispered. Her cracked lips threatened to bleed. Van’s spine was curved and Lana’s toes brushed at her ankle. 

His fingers proofed at her throat like he was trying to feel for the steady ticking of her pulse. It hurt. His touch felt like shards of ice were catching at her skin. Was she bleeding? She didn’t know how to stop. “Because I’m the only one you can tolerate, Natty. I’m all you got,” her father chided. “Don’t panic. It’ll pass.”

The weight on her chest felt like layers of dirt. “Fuck you. I’m panicking,” Nat said roughly with ultimate spite. 

“In my experience, this’ll be bad.” 

“What experience?”

Misty shoved her head deeper beneath her bag, a flimsy makeshift pillow. “I don’t know. The kind of experience I got when a plane crashed. Or from that Red Cross Babysitters First Aid course I took.” 

Tai’s mouth wrinkled as she tried to hold back her sigh. “What are we doing here?”

“Dunno.”

“Misty.” 

She made a soft sigh. “Separate the worst. Keep everyone hydrated. I really don’t know, Tai. I never studied plague prevention or whatever this is.”

“What are the odds this is food poisoning? Something we just gotta get through?” Tai ran her fingers through Van’s hair. Cold and malnutrition had softened the natural orange tone and made the colour brittle looking. “Can I do something?”

Misty was cradling her glasses in her hands, eyes fluttering shut. “Separate the dead when they die.”

Snow crunched beneath unsteady footsteps. Nat looked up and saw Lottie bending over her, face pale and gaunt, long hair a black curtain on a stage. A damp rag brushed against her forehead, a flimsy balm to the fever itself. “Don’t,” Nat whispered. It felt like she had been screaming. Her throat had the bruised sensation like someone had recently choked her. “I said no.”

Her voice wasn’t strong but Lottie still flinched. Her eyes were bloodshot as she peered at where Nat laid on the ground, helpless at her feet. “You were hurting.”

“No.”

Lottie wanted to open her up and divine fate from her bones. Nat didn’t even dare move; if she did, she would be opening herself up for another attack and someone else’s mouth would be on her, and the memory of Jackie’s would fade and she would be gone forever—

“I’m trying to listen.” 

But not to her. 

Lottie missed being the pipeline of craziness that came from the trees. They went silent and she got cut out of her own belief system, tossing the power to a nonbeliever. 

Nat wouldn’t give her an inch. “The street lights are singing,” she lied. “It’s a whole goddamned anthem.” 

“I can’t stop thinking about what it used to be like. The stuff we did,” Lottie said, wobbling as she lowered down to the ground. Her skin was the colour of snow in the trees, glazed from where her tears left a trace down each cheek. “Parties. We got in a grocery cart, right? Or is that inside my head?”

They had. Nat stretched her memory back and felt a phantom pain from where her knees had folded, jammed in tight with Lottie and Van inside the basket of some stolen cart, barreling down a hill so fast that her stomach felt sick just thinking about it. “That’s real.”

It was plain luck nobody smashed their heads in that day. Nat had operated for years off of that luck; drunkenly tiptoeing across a balcony railing two floors up from honest pavement, jumping sideways off of bleachers for a crash landing on padding left over from track meets, running drunk through the woods with someone chasing her, blindly popping a pill with a mouthful of vanilla whisky, waking up at home with no memory of leaving a party, and foolishly considering a private plane to be safe. Plummeting down the steep side of Harland’s Hill inside a rickety grocery cart was just the icing off of the cake full of stupidity done for a cheap thrill. 

Wandering down memory lane was like stomping through a minefield. She wasn’t sure where her foot would land. This Lottie looked drenched beneath the candy colours of nostalgia. The Lottie that lived inside Nat’s skull had crowned her with antlers and tried kissing the love out of her heart. Both were dangerous but one threatened to turn Nat soft to the danger. 

“I’m so tired.”

“I know.”

The old Nat would have battled a head cold with cheap booze pilfered from someone stupid enough to buy for her. The best thing her mother ever did was dose her up with a cup full of black tea, honey, and whisky when she was eight and coughing half the night. This world, though, only had buckets of water to drink from and dip rags into, awkwardly compressing against hot foreheads while they slept amongst the snow and blankets. 

Lottie’s mouth twitched and it wasn’t a full smile. “I think we used to sparkle and now I can’t remember how we did it.”

She struggled, bracing her weight on one elbow and twisting around the empty space Akilah had left behind, looking up at Lottie with a fair stare. “It doesn’t matter, Lot. We’re here now,” Nat said slowly and carefully, half spitting the words out from behind a jaw that ached from being clenched and teeth that chattered from cold. “I don’t trust you. That’s the only thing that matters.”

Lana shifted and the girl beside her turned, mirroring the movement. A single sigh turned into a wave, shoulders hitching and hands curling into fists, practically one body knit beneath different pieces. Lottie stood up and blanched from the pressure, hands cradling her head gingerly like a shield from a migraine, shuffling back to her own flimsy tent. 

A stiff fur was tossed across the branches strewn across supports. Lana had carefully built her the lean-to personally, stealing the cover from where Shauna had it stretched for drying out. Lottie’s loss of power hadn’t tarnished her any to some of the girls. She had a new status of a martyr, graciously handing off the torch for someone else to burden. 

Nat squinted, peering out at their rough camp. Any orderliness was shrinking away with Misty out of commission. The girls were sprawled together for heat, half sheltered and half exposed. Tai was holding a ladle for Van to drink from, patiently waiting for the girl to finish sipping it down. 

The day stretched long, dozing and waking with panicked starts, watching time lapse by the shadows stretching their indigo fingers across the camp. The trees seemed to exhale as Mari emerged through the thick of it, flanked by Melissa and Gen. Their faces were rubbed grey from ash. “Sick still?” Mari asked Tai. She bent low to peer Alice, apathetic and vaguely distant. It was like she was looking down at a splayed frog ready for dissection in biology class.

“We’ve all got it.”

Tai was the strongest one and even she was wearing down. Her fingers threaded through Van’s hair and kept making miniature adjustments, tugging blankets around her shoulders easier and wiping away rogue tears that slipped down her face. 

“You’ve stopped doing the rituals. This is what happens,” Mari told her with firmness. “You have to honour what it can give you.”

“Transactions based off of hypothetical advancements are usually total bullshit.” Tai drew herself up from where she was perched on her knees, somehow looking down her nose at Mari. “You can’t be coming here when we’re like this.” 

“How much longer will the food hold out?”

“Days.” That was generous. 

Nat shifted, rolling awkwardly on the pallet of branches and tried to focus. Her bones were so hot that her skin was peeling off in strips. She wanted someone, felt desperate for a ghost—

“This isn’t working, Tai. We have to pick a new path.”

“You need a new hunter,” Gen quickly added, coming to Mari’s side figuratively and physically. Her hair was shining with a healthy lustre, dark like feathers from a raven. “Now.”

“We have Nat.” 

“Has Natalie been hunting?”

Tai’s hand froze from where it stroked Van’s hair. “She’s been resting.” 

“When you’re ready? I’m ready.” Mari drew her shoulders back and spine straight, a grey faced queen of the woods. “And we’ll take back anyone willing to join us now.”

“No,” Nat called, raggedly and hoarse. “No one goes.”

The world felt fractured. She saw the bodies of the girls and the fire dying in each pit, exhausted reflections of each other. “The wilderness picked you, Nat,” Mari shot back. “You have to let them pick for themselves.” 

“I’ll go,” Lana said weakly. Her knees jerked up and she struggled up, peeling herself from the blankets. “Take me.”

Mari dipped her head in consent and Gen rushed to help her. Her arm supported Lana’s slight weight. “Anyone else?”

Ragged breathing emerged from each pile of bodies. No one moved to join Lana in her exodus. “You can’t,” Nat tried weakly. “It won’t be good. I don’t— you can’t go with them, Lana.” 

Gen paused, looking at her. A nest of wires and twigs had been woven together like a crown and it slid slightly lopsided. Laura Lee, if still alive, would’ve called it a tarnished halo and made some kind of speech about angels falling from high places. 

But Laura Lee was dead. Jackie was dead. Javi died. Ben was murdered— 

“Have fun dying.”

“Dude.” Melissa openly frowned at Gen. “You can’t just say that.”

The trio left with their prize. Lana turned once and waved with a faint smile, shuffling down a path left in the snow like a groove in a vinyl. Their feet skipped and crunched over crusted ice, sound practically popping to Nat’s ears, and she heard the fragments of rock and roll swell up from their departure. 

“Nat—”

“I know,” she chipped the words out. Defeat felt bitter. Nat was a Yellowjacket and they never lost a single game, desperately wrenching gold no matter how far down the score dipped. “Tomorrow. I can try hunting tomorrow.” 

Morning came like a sentencing. 

The rising sun cast fuzzy streaks of orange light through the trees and Nat hobbled around the camp, awkwardly adjusting to the pain in her ankle. The gun was a comfort across her shoulders. 

Tai twitched and contorted from where she was lying, eyes slitted open. Fever turned her mouth pale and darkened the sleepless marks beneath her eyes. “Bring someone,” she rasped, bossy even from a sick bed, half aware to Nat’s movements. “You’ll need help.”

They all needed help. They needed the help that cold and flu medication could provide, the bliss that came from a flat bottle of ginger ale stuck to the back of the fridge. They needed an adult to fix what needed mending, comfort that came from someone else. 

“Shauna.” 

The girl in question looked surprise. It was the same expression, Nat realized, she had worn when Lottie decided Nat was the one chosen by the wilderness. 

It just lacked the needling sting of jealousy. 

Shauna obediently came as called, shuffling in her leather boots. They were awkward for the snow. The slight block heel on the left boot had started coming loose, wobbling slightly beneath her step. She clung to a blanket tight around her shoulders like a shawl. “Now?”

It was time. The woods looked quiet beyond the reach of the camp. “Why not?”

“I’ll come with you guys,” Alice decided, scrambling to join them. “I can help.”

“You see it, right? The trees want to make you into a branch. They’ll grow their roots right around you,” her father crooned ghoulishly, summoned by a wave of apprehension that came with having a witness. “You’ll be buried at the center of all those rings.”

“Great. Travis had the rope last,” Nat said, speaking around the familiar blasted skull. “Grab it, yeah?”

Travis had spent two hours awake the night before using it to practice knots. He had faithfully bent and caressed the rope into a hangman’s noose before unpicking his work, steadily retying and undoing before Lottie convinced him to sleep for a while. 

“How’d you bury me?” 

With my eyes shut, Nat almost said. 

Everyone who attended the funeral, which was a thin audience that was mostly of blood or a drunk from the bar, tossed a bit of dirt down on the cheapest coffin that her mother managed to cough up the money for. Nat obediently followed them, gripping the loose dirt so tight in her hand she thought it might turn to a rock beneath the pressure of her fist, tossing it in with the rest. 

She hadn’t looked. Her father would always be in the grass outside the double wide with his face wrenched to the sight and ruined, Vera screaming over his chest like the damage could be undone. 

The man inside the coffin was a puppet. He wasn’t the same person screaming at her or trying to cause hurt. 

They barely managed to get beyond view of the camp when Alice doubled over and brought back the meagre amount of water she had gotten down that morning, half choking on bile. She clung to a tree and Shauna shifted with discomfort, blanching from the process. 

Alice nearly dropped the rope but eventually straightened, rubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Fucking sucks, man.”

“You’ll be okay,” Nat said roughly, waiting on the ghost of a trail left in the snow. She wanted veer left, pull away from where she had tried searching for Akilah. Tai’s zone of land sectioned out was scrubby from grey overgrowth and mostly level, a decent place to start seeking out tracks. “What else would you wanna do? This beats figuring out parallel parking.”

She hissed out a laugh. “Couldn’t do the reverse parking. The guy only passed me because I cried,” Alice gamely continued the weak joke. “I think I looked like his daughter or something.” 

“Men. Thank god they’re sentimental cows.” 

“Bill used to make me do push ups whenever I said I had cramps. He wasn’t really sentimental.”

“No. Bill was just an asshole,” Nat quickly agreed, yanking back a branch to keep it from snapping back at Alice. “It was, like, his entire thing. Personal aesthetic or some shit.”

Footsteps were dragging behind. She slowed her pace accordingly and kept Shauna and Alice tighter to her back, wary of the effort it cost to struggle through the snow. Her lungs were heaving for air and Nat already wanted to turn back for the camp. 

Tiny tracks dotted the snow around bushes. Rabbit tracks, she recognized, reading the passage that crept against the branches. One, most likely. Two, if they were lucky. 

Losing the cabin meant the wilderness regained an old pulse of life. Nat’s mind ached, feverish and exhausted, but she fumbled along that string of thought. Lottie believed the wilderness demanded a sacrifice and maybe Ben burning down the last connection they really had to civilization meant unlocking something in return. 

The girls had nothing and so the wilderness unfurled slightly. 

Transactional, Tai would have called it. A proper give-and-take relationship was Nat’s best definition. She gave Ben up and they had a bit of stability to stretch out longer, acknowledging the price to maintaining stability. 

But the sickness… 

Something needed to be done. 

“My dad would’ve paid for a limo,” Alice huffed. Her cheeks were stained red. “For prom, right? It was this whole thing he always talked about. Senior year was supposed to be the best apparently.”

“Senior year sucked,” Shauna bit back with lightness. “All it got me was this trip from hell.”

“He never factored in the whole plane crash into his plans. It was applying for colleges,” Alice said, eyebrows lifting slightly as she pulled back her memory to recite some old conversation. “Doing dumb shit with friends when you’re young enough to get away with it. Prom, right? The good kind where no one goes home knocked up or, like, getting their stomachs pumped.” 

Prom could’ve been a planet in the galaxy for all that Nat was concerned. She couldn’t imagine standing in a room full of people without her skin crawling.

“Prom is like some fucked up joke,” Shauna was breathing heavier as she struggled to keep the pace. Nat was blind to the pain in her ankle and locked onto the tracks in the snow, half numb to everything. “Jackie’s dead and I still don’t get to wear the prom queen crown.”

“What?”

“It’s just fucking typical. Jackie totally would’ve been voted for prom queen. Everyone always loved her best and she just looked like the kind of girl who would’ve had it on her resume. ‘I was voted most loved and prettiest of everyone in my class’,” Shauna’s voice took an awkward pitch, sharp with self loathing. “She’d have kept the crown. Would’ve taken it away to school, would’ve kept it on a shelf somewhere.”

Nat stopped. A branch cracked beneath her boot. It sounded like a bone snapping, a trap slamming shut, like her last fragment of patience tossed out the window and never to be seen again. She pinched the skin of her wrist and felt pain, establishing some slim standard of sanity. 

Not a dream. 

“Do you see something?” Alice hissed. “Should we be quiet now?”

“Jackie volunteered for the blood bank even though blood made her sick,” Nat said quietly. A wind ruffled through her hair, whispering as it slid through the trees. “And did the food baskets for Thanksgiving. She had a whole fucking agenda just for volunteering.” 

Shauna looked surprised. “I know that.”

“That’s why people would’ve voted for her. Jackie was everywhere.” 

“And I wasn’t, right?” 

But she had been. Shauna was Jackie’s shadow, drowning in love and misery. “I just can’t think of a single person except for her who would’ve given you a crown.” Nat’s mouth prickled into a smile. “But she’s dead.”

It was exhausting trying to find dignity in her grief when there wasn’t any. At least anger could keep her warm. 

Shauna’s face went pale. She was, Nat thought, an animal gutted and left to hang, utterly drained from blood. 

“I never— I never thought that I could hurt her,” Shauna said. The confession hurt. Arrogance coated it, sweetened by the pain in her voice. “She was my favourite person.”

She slid the gun from her back and it dropped into the snow like a stone into water. It sank from the weight, a black mark on pristine white. 

“You’re playing this game all wrong, girl. Don’t you know how to hunt? You’re supposed to wait,” her father warned her. “You don’t really wanna fight that, do you?”

Nat wasn’t Lottie. She swung first and felt the blessing of her fist cracking against Shauna’s cheek. The return hit just as hard and she stumbled back, bracing herself for the next round. Hate bit at her bones and Nat gave herself into all of it, clawing and hitting, rabid with grief and love. 

Jackie was dead and Shauna wasn’t bleeding enough. Jackie was dead and Nat couldn’t hit hard enough. Jackie was dead and Nat couldn’t fix what Shauna did. 

Someone was screaming. It could’ve been all of them like some Greek chorus or it might’ve just been Alice, horrified by the violence. 

They were all so lucky, Nat thought, because they didn’t have to live with all of that anger festering inside their hearts. The anger had no where to go. 

She tried choking Shauna but she kicked her bad ankle and Nat went down hard. Pain shot white hot through her leg. “Hey! Stop!” Van shouted, coming through the woods with Tai and Misty. 

She struggled back to her feet and wiped blood away from her chin. Shauna looked awful beneath the damage Nat had caused. “Stay back,” she snarled. “She’s mine.”

And Jackie’s. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” 

“She needs to be weaker. You’re a damned needle trying to stab a bull. Won’t do any good,” her father coached her, almost as gentle as Ben when he redirected her on the field.  “You’ll always hate a reflection for being in the mirror but that girl’s your equal.”

Shauna Shipman, literary addict and half muse, had become the carver of the wilderness. She hacked at the skin to drain blood, severing limbs in easy cuts, working her way patiently around each bone to ensure nothing was left behind. It would be fascinating to see what Shauna could look like running through the woods, no different than a rabbit. 

Van’s feverish eyes glittered with tears. “Are we doing this again?”

‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’  

The girls would, Nat knew. If she pulled the command? They would rip Shauna apart. They would hurt for it. 

My kill, Nat thought with an ugliness that matched her father’s soul. There wouldn’t be any sharing of Shauna with anyone. “It’s over,” she relented through the bruises, practically vibrating with anger. 

Shauna tried to wipe blood from her face but ended up smearing it with her hand down her chin. “Bitch.”

The air went thin. She tried to breathe around it but it was like gulping down air through a straw. The trees wavered and spun and Nat collapsed down into the frigid snow, sliding straight into blackness. 

Alice died two days later. 

It was her fault, Nat knew, for not finishing the work. For not feeding a sacrifice into the wilderness. 

They left her body in the woods for the birds to consume, stealing tiny bits of a father’s dreams into the polished blue sky to never return home again.

“You’re supposed to be helping me,” Nat scoffed, flipping through a few cards. Blue writing swirled from one. “And you’re remarkably unhelpful.”

Jackie snickered. Her elbow nudged her out of the way and drove her closer to outdated Christmas cards. “Whatever. You’re just afraid of using actual words to say how you feel. Like, God. It won’t ruin your image if you said something from the actual heart.”

“He’s Ben. You know this is weird.” 

“You’re weird.”

Cartoonish looking pine trees decorated one card, complete with a nest of wolves sleeping beneath. Nat pushed her finger against the yellow star and scratched at some of the glitter. “This is a dumb idea.”

“Please. This is the best idea.” Jackie smiled. “It’ll be so sweet that he’ll die.” 

That felt wrong. It rubbed at her the wrong way like a nerve struck wrong. 

This was their first date and they were wasting it inside the stationary shop, meandering through the racks of greeting cards. Jackie looked right at home as she swept through the flowery bits of poetry, picking the worst to read out in a funny voice. Every time she turned away from something, it was like it vanished. She tried to look back for the wolves but only saw a Pilgrim’s Feast decorating a card, each face lit up with a toothy smile. “I don’t really want Ben to die.”

“I know.”

“Fuck. How do you say ‘thanks for giving a shit about me’ without the flowers and bullshit?” Nat looked at Jackie properly. Her hair was loose and was curling around her shoulders, heart charm glittering from where it hung from her throat. “I hate this.” 

She shoved a card towards her. “Look! See? ‘Happy Father’s Day, you’re pretty cool’. It practically screams nonchalance. You won’t lose any points for it.”

Nat took it. The words stayed rigid against the creamy white paper, carefully written out in plain script. They didn’t bend or muddle, completely legible to her traitorous mind. “What the fuck? Jackie. It’s a condolence card.” A grim reaper frowned at her. “Jesus, man. This is fucking dark.”

‘Sorry I killed you.’ 

“Whatever, Nat. Let’s go!” Jackie was oblivious. Snow dusted her shoulders. “I’ll wait for you.”

“I don’t have any money for this,” Nat realized with a humiliating stab of realization. “I can’t afford this.” 

Shoplifting was practically a Scatorccio family trait. Nat had grown up pilfering pens and books for school from the box store on the other side of town, idly stealing cosmetics from the drugstore that had security following Tai whenever she bothered to stop in. But she was better than this, Nat thought dimly, frozen by the reaper’s stare. She was supposed to grow out of petty crimes. 

“Nat. I’m waiting for you.” 

Nat blinked and suddenly it was all gone. The dream melted like snow tossed onto a fire, vanishing in a cloud of steam and hissing smoke. 

The dreams were a refuge from their fates and fevers. Old memories flickered in and out and Nat took relief in whatever scraps of mercy came through her sleep, clinging as tight as she could to the vague boundary between sleep and waking. She shifted, turning and burrowing deeper into her blankets, feeling the phantom ache of someone pressed against her body. 

But sunlight streaked through. The silent ghost of Jackie vanished. 

Anna dying meant two spare blankets and her old hoodie. Two more deaths meant more resources to be divided. Dying was becoming a luxury of options, of stretching the few things they had left a little further. 

Voices were whispering from where the girls sat huddled. Mari was standing, unfeeling to the cold bite of the air, with her arms crossed. One fire had burned down to a bed of grey, powdery ash but the other three fires were somehow maintained. 

No one had the energy to cut wood down or stack it for drying. Nat didn’t know how much longer their flames could last. 

“—time. You’re being sentimental, Tai.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“How much longer do you want to wait? We’re all going to starve again.”

Mari hadn’t brought her companions. Lana was gone and vanished, never seen again. But usually she always traveled with Melissa and Gen. The emptiness at her shadow was unnerving. 

Nat struggled to her feet. Her skull ached from either being sick or from the concussion Misty diagnosed her with. “What are you doing here?”

Mari flicked her a cool glance. “You’re still alive.”

She somehow floated beyond the reach of the reaper’s scythe. It was both a lucky and unlucky feeling. “There’s nothing here for you, Mari. So cut the bullshit.”

“I want the gun, Nat.” Mari’s face looked rosy. Her hair was brushed back neatly and bound from her face by the weight of her manufactured crown. “Someone has to hunt and no one here can do that.”

“No. It stays with us,” Nat said automatically. Her hand flinched to her hip where her knife was stashed. Before Travis hated her with every inch of his soul, he had made a holder for her from a scrap of old leather to hang from her belt. It was a comforting weight, a smaller version to the gun itself. “You don’t even know how to shoot, Mari.”

“Please. You aim and pull the trigger, right?”

You need to know more than that, Nat wanted to say. You have to know when to shoot. When to spare an animal. 

But the words tasted like ash of a spent fire in her mouth. 

“Nat. Maybe we should let her. We’re getting short on food,” Tai suggested uneasily. “Someone needs to be going out and you can’t keep trying.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“Wow, Scatorccio.”

Nat didn’t spare her a glance. Dried blood was crusted to Mari’s forehead and she had painted her cheeks in ash. She was drenched in the stuff, practically colourless except for a whisper of pink and blue sticking up from her pocket. “Someone else.”

“There isn’t anyone else. I’m the best thing you’ve got,” Mari sniffed. “And, realistically speaking, I’ve always been better than you.”

“That’s enough. We’re not going to play this game out,” Tai shot back, but she held Nat’s stare. “It’s your choice, Nat. The gun is yours. But we’ll die if someone doesn’t start hunting again.”

Her heart snapped into halves. Nat shuffled back to her sleeping set up and scooped up the gun, awkwardly handling it and the can of bullets saved from the fire. It rattled like a jar full of teeth. She returned slowly, practically bleeding from the cost of it, and thrust both out for Mari to handle. “Don’t shoot your face off,” she said to Mari and her father both. 

Mari’s nose wrinkled and she frowned at the weight. “Are these all the bullets left?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Whatever, then.” 

They watched her walk off alone and Tai kept frowning. “I don’t know what else we can do,” she admitted. 

“Drink something. Don’t dehydrate,” Nat ordered roughly. One of the girls was sleeping and wasn’t moving properly. She lingered for a moment, staring at the frozen chest that did not rise or fall, stiff fingers curled around the blanket’s edge. 

She was tired. The body could stay for a while longer. 

Her body stopped caring about days and nights, practically giving up and curling inwards, burrowed into a pathetic patch of heat from her body and blankets. Nat’s mind wandered, rethreading itself back across the country, down the hell that was New Jersey, searching for whatever place made her first. 

A funeral, maybe. The stolen flask of whisky had altered her to some degree. Soccer fields and a trophy case, barely recognizing her expression in the glass next to the photos of the team. The trailer she always thought she would leave. A school, the woods. 

Maybe the sky. 

Van’s feet were rubbing together for heat and Nat faded out of the present. “—missed your tutoring session with Shauna today. She said you never met her.”

“Jesus, man. I don’t need tutoring.”

Bill frowned. His hands were splayed out across paperwork collecting across the desk in piles. “You’re failing English. Betty says you haven’t submitted your last two papers.”

Nat scuffed her boot pointlessly across the floor. It had taken her a long summer of saving money from cutting grass to purchase them. “The class is stupid,” she told him flatly, and maybe in Bill actually knew her, he would’ve translated what she actually meant. I’m stupid, Nat thought. “It isn’t working right. So what?” I don't work right.

“Let’s be clear, Natalie. You’re one of the best players on this team. But you’re going no where. Nobody expects you to be anything of value off that field.”

“Great. So stop trying to make me something that I’m not.” Nat was smiling but it didn’t feel funny to her. She had emptied her flask somewhere between first class and lunch and her head was in a pleasant place. “Super easy.”

“School is important. Ben is the only reason that I haven't kicked your sorry ass off of this team. But your grades? They’re the thing that might cut you from the list.”

“God. Randy’s still playing ball and he hasn’t stepped foot in math since Christmas. Jonesy,” Nat said, referring to the boy’s baseball coach, “keeps writing him permission to stay on the team. This is basically sexism. Hold me to his standard or whatever. I don’t exactly need Shakespeare to survive, right? It’s not the one thing that’ll keep me alive.”

Bill looked exasperated. He picked up a pen just to drop it back down. “You’re wasting my time.”

“Please. Maybe if the teachers here actually taught us something useful? Like, we bury four bodies at the crash site but Javi never gets a fucking grave because we ate him? But Jackie got buried. How many people matter? And Laura Lee? She was on fire, man. We fished pieces of the plane out of the lake but I don’t know where her body went or if it just, like, burnt up,” Nat felt wild. Tears were stinging her eyes and rolling down her face. The math was crumbling apart. “And Ben—”

It was like summoning him. He popped his head through the door and stood plainly on two feet. “What about Ben?” 

Seeing him stunned her. “I’m a violent person," Nat said, struck by both him and her own confession. "I'm violent."

“What?”

Guilt twisted like snakes in her chest. Someone was holding her wrists and Nat jerked in response. “I’m him. I can’t get rid of him because he’s inside my head, my dad, he’s here!” She spat the words out urgently like individual pieces of glass. She needed Ben to understand so he could fix the problem. “He’s here and I can’t get rid of him!”

“Hold her steady,” Lottie’s voice said, flickering soft like candlelight. “Don’t cause unnecessary hurt.” 

She was being dragged across the snow towards the actual fire. Nat spun her head around and saw Lottie and Travis, both of them working in tandem to haul her by her arms. “Get off of me!” Nat raged, kicking hard against the chill of winter. Ben was gone and she needed him. Reality came rushing through with painful clarity. "Don't!"

Travis grunted but kept moving. She refused to be cooperative, fighting and spitting so he had to work for it. Nat wouldn't be dragged like a shot doe from the woods. Pain pricked across her hands and face and she realized she was crying, tears streaming down her face in hot streaks, practically crumbling apart from the effort it cost. "She's saying no."

"We've talked about this."

His expression hardened.