Chapter Text
She’s not cold anymore. It’s nice .
Jackie feels like a new kid on their first day of class as Shauna leads her back into the cabin — except people don’t smile serenely at the new kid. Also classrooms don’t generally have a roaring fire in the hearth.
Someone wraps a blanket around her, and it smells like a bunch of teenagers who’ve been without a shower for four months, but it’s still comforting. The most comforting thing she’s felt in a while. She’s not warm yet. This is still nice though.
‘Thanks,’ she manages to say through shattering teeth. ‘It’s really cold out there.’
Shauna strokes her arm sympathetically.
She’s in a chair. She doesn’t remember sitting down.
Why is everyone staring at her? It’s nice to be noticed for once out here, but this is … a bit too much noticing.
Lottie’s here. Too close, so far. Things aren’t really making sense, but Jackie is forgetting how to care about sense. What sense is there in the wilderness, anyway?
‘This will help,’ Lottie says, pressing a mug into her frozen hands; Jackie doesn’t even check what is before drinking it — it’s warm, and that’s all she needs. Warm water would be a comfort at this point.
But instead it’s hot chocolate.
— What. —
She almost spits it back up in surprise.
‘How?’ she says between gulps; she drinks like she’s just stumbled out of the desert. Maybe she has. What has and hasn’t just happened is suddenly very difficult to remember. ‘Where did you guys find this?’
‘Does it matter?’ asks Shauna, Shauna, who looks at her like she hasn’t in years, all reverence and innocence. Warm. Jackie isn’t cold anymore — Is that true? — and Shauna smiles at her.
Oh, Jackie would’ve done anything to get her to smile like that again, anything Shauna asked, only Shauna doesn’t ask anymore, so Jackie’s stuck waiting for fortune to bring her a good day.
‘It’s all going to be fine,’ says Shauna, and Jackie glows.
A good day like this.
— It’s night. Not day. The sun isn’t —
‘I love you, Jackie.’
She’s been waiting her whole life to hear that. Maybe she’s heard it before — be sure remember Jackie reme — but not like this, not in this way. Shauna says love like she means it in every way she knows, and she’s so clever, Jackie’s sure she knows all of them. Does that include romantically?
Jackie hopes so. She can’t remember why she shouldn’t hope that, everything’s so warm and … and …
Except it isn’t.
The hot chocolate is warm, the fire is warm, the blanket, Shauna’s smile; everything except Jackie. She’s not cold, though.
She’s numb .
That lodges as a problem.
And suddenly everything is wrong.
‘We all love you, Jackie,’ says, well, everyone, in unison, like they rehearsed it, like a final tightening of a snare as the rabbit wakes enough to wriggle—
It’s comforting.
No, it isn’t.
Yes, it is. It’s so nice to be wanted. She’s their team captain, she cares so much about each and every one of them, but the knowledge that they care about her too is something she didn’t know she needed. All of them, Nat, Van, Tai, Misty, Akilah, Crystal, Laura Lee, Melissa, Lottie, Travis, Coach Ben, everyone — they all love her .
She glows.
Hang on — Laura Lee?
‘You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.’
Shauna’s voice pours into Jackie like a balm, like a siren-song. Jackie would wake up at four in the morning, every morning, if it meant that Shauna saying those words would be her alarm clock. Jackie could die right now if Shauna would say that at her eulogy.
Everything’s fine. Everything’s nice. Everything’s just so very warm.
The fire crackles. Jackie’s eyes droop.
‘My best friend,’ Shauna reiterates, like a lullaby. ‘You know that, right?’
Yeah. She knows. Like she knows how to walk, how to breathe. It doesn’t matter that Shauna fucked her boyfriend and then blamed Jackie for it, they love each other too much and everything’s too nice for that to matter. She knows that she’s Shauna’s best friend; knows it so well it doesn’t need to be said. Jackie likes to say it anyway, but Shauna…
…
…
Shauna doesn’t.
It would be nice if she did—
Shut up. Shauna doesn’t talk like that. She writes like that, like a poet, all fancy words and feelings, but in the real world, she broods. She sulks, and internalises everything until it collapses in on itself and gets used as energy to play soccer or hate Jeff. Or even fuck Jeff, apparently.
Jackie knows her Shauna.
Shauna would never say that Jackie was her best friend, even though it was obviously true. She’d never say she loved her, not with so little prompting and never ever in front of other people. She’d feel it. Jackie would see it, written in Shauna’s eyes, plain as day, but it would never. Get. Said.
This isn’t her Shauna.
This isn’t real.
She tries to stand up, throw the hot chocolate to the floor, or anything at all. But she can’t move.
‘It’s not as bad as you thought, is it?’ says a smiling someone, their face smudged; Jackie can’t tell if it’s her eyes or their features that’s doing the smudging.
Laura Lee. Laura Lee, who was brave, who believed, who is oh so very dead.
Which must mean she’s dead too.
— Or dying. —
Shauna smiles at her. It’s wrong. It’s sickly, saccharine, poisonous. The world is blurring.
A spark of ice lodges in her chest.
Get up, Jackie.
She never came inside. No one came to get her.
She’s dreaming as she dies.
No, that’s not quite right either.
Someone else is doing the dreaming for her.
So glad you’re joining us. We’ve been waiting for you.
It’s technically a voice. It certainly wishes it was one — it seems to emanate, more than originate, from a figure.
A man standing in the doorway.
The little bit of Jackie that does all the analysis throws out a dozen words at once — deathevildemondevilgodthing — before just plain giving up.
Lottie’s Wilderness, says the rest of her. It seems apt.
Get up, Jackie!
Her chest hurts. She can’t move, she’s numb all over. She’s going to die, and it’s not even going to be a normal death, the Wilderness is going to take her, and she has no idea what that means but she really doesn’t want to fucking find out.
She wishes Shauna were here. Real Shauna. Even if she was yelling at Jackie, it would just be nice — no, good, it would be good to not die alone. Shit, she’d settle for her parents in that respect. But no one here.
She’s dying. Alone, numb, and afraid.
The … thing walks towards her. Or maybe she’s pulled towards it. It doesn’t matter.
Numb. Did she say numb?
Her chest hurts.
That’s not entirely true.
Her chest hurts.
Jackie focuses on it, the pain, because if it hurts then she must alive to feel it — and it feels like putting her hand onto a hot frying pan, but the thing pulls harder so it must be the right thing to do. She focuses.
The Wilderness claws at her, and she wishes she could open her mouth to scream. It lasts an eternity.
It hurts to breathe.
But she’s definitely breathing.
It hurts. It hurts. She wishes she could cry, she wishes she could go home, she wishes she could wake up—
…__…—…__…
Her eyes tear themselves open. That hurts too. It’s so cold.
Snow covers the forest. Her fire is non-existent.
So that’s why she was dying. Ugh, what a nightmare.
So come back and dream with us, says everyone, and Jackie slips…
And catches herself. Absolutely not. Okay, so it can still get her. She needs to get inside; warn the others. Also, she can’t feel her feet or hands. Or face. Shauna got really into reading about mountain climbers one time, and Jackie really doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of hypothermia. Shauna should write horror, when she gets a chance.
Jackie takes a deep breath.
It turns into a hacking cough, only she doesn’t have the strength to cough, so she just convulses. Fuck, this hurts . But at least it proves she can move. She tries to stand.
Her face hits the snow before she realises she failed.
Hopeless floats through her mind like a taunt, and she’s not entirely sure who put it there.
A hand slams down into the snow, and pushes . She really hopes it’s hers.
She’s not hopeless.
A foot joins the hand; Jackie can’t feel it, so she has to use her eyes for all of this.
She’s not hopeless. She’s Jackie God-damn Taylor. She’s the captain of the team that was gonna fucking win nationals .
Poor Jaqueline Taylor. So self-obsessed.
She stands. It’s cold, just lie down, it’s easier, and she wobbles, but she doesn’t fall.
She’s a goddamn soccer player. She aced the team tryouts in her fresher year on an empty stomach and a bruised ankle. No one ever knew the difference. She knows how to run through pain. Walking’s a piece of cake.
You’re weak. You know it. They know it.
She knows it. But it doesn’t matter . She steps forward. Then again. And again.
Give up. You’ve alway wanted to.
Jackie’s Yellowjackets are stuck out here, and something is trying to take them.
They won’t love you.
Does it mean the team, or her parents?
Who cares. The door looms out of nowhere. Are her eyes going wrong? Her hand, reaching for the door, looks like it’s rotting, so she really hopes so.
She won’t love you.
…
Shauna.
I want—
No. She’s Jackie Taylor. She’s the fucking heroine. She’s not gonna die out here. And if she is, she’s gonna die making damn sure no one else does.
No.
The door opens.
Come back !
And then she’s inside, and the voice is so, so quiet. Not gone, but far enough for safety, says something in her bones. There’s movement. Everyone waking up? God, it’s warm in here. The door slams shut behind her; the wind pressure of it damn near bowls her over.
‘This place is poison,’ she tries to say, but her face is too numb to tell if she succeeds. ‘We need to leave.’
Then she collapses forwards. Someone might catch her, or she might hit the floor – she has no idea. Either way, she’s unconscious by the time her momentum arrests itself.
The wilderness is trying to take Jackie’s team. No one takes her team. That’s not allowed.
She’s their captain. She won’t let anyone hurt them.
She’s going to get them out of here.