Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eddie sat in a tree, watching over his tripwire. They had let Mari be the decoy, but Shauna had always been the fastest. Eddie strung a length of rope between two trees that Mari would lead Shauna through. Shauna would trip, buying Misty more time. Eddie also couldn’t exactly say that the thought of tripping Shauna and watching her fall didn’t make him giddy with joy. 

He heard Mari crashing through the woods. He shifted in his position to be more comfortable. He wasn’t high up, if Mari was close to getting tagged, she was supposed to ‘throw’ the imaginary bone to Eddie, and Eddie would play the decoy from then on. Mari appeared through the brush, tailed closely by Shauna. She hopped over the rope, not noticeable enough for Shauna to know something was up. Sure enough, Shauna’s foot got caught on the trap, and she fell on her face with a yell. Mari kept running. 

Eddie snorted, the sound enough to alert Shauna to his position. Like a Goddamn bat. She snarled up at him. 

“You.” Shauna got to her feet, spitting a leaf out of her mouth. Eddie couldn’t help the smug smile on his lips. Shauna jumped at the tree he was in, scaling up to his position in no time. 

“Yo- The fuck? I don’t have it!” Eddie said, before jumping down from the low branches and taking off in a spring across the forest floor.

“You’re fucking dead, Taylor!” Shauna screamed in rage, following suit. 

Eddie wove through the trees, but he knew it was pointless. He was just trying to run into anyone else before she caught up with him. She charged after him. Great. The fastest one out here chasing after the guy who hadn’t done a sport in his life -excluding the few soccer scrimmages that they had held in the first months after the crash. He could hear Shauna practically gnashing her teeth at him from behind.

“Fuck off! Psycho bitch!” Eddie yelped as she yanked him back by the shirt. He fell to the ground and tried to scramble away. She practically jumped on top of him, pinning his chest to the dirt below, as she twisted her hand in his hair and pulled his head up. “Fuck- Get off me! Help! Help! ” He screamed, before he was silenced by a knife pressed against his skin. He swallowed nervously, eyeing her right hand that held the blade on the left side of his throat. She could slit his neck clean across right there and then, but Eddie figured she liked seeing him struggle. He took a few deep breaths, a difficult task because of the weight on top of him.

“Alright. Alright, Shauna, let’s not- Shit-” He tried to reason with her before he felt the blade press in deeper. It definitely broke the skin. He tried to calm himself, to reckon with the insanely lame way of dying in the wilderness to a nineteen year old girl while playing capture the fucking bone . He closed his eyes, trying not to think about the way that he could feel his heartbeat in the artery right under her knife. She huffed above him, like even she hadn’t made up her mind yet. 

“Shauna! What the fuck?” Nat came to his rescue. Shauna startled and climbed off of Eddie, who scrambled forward, bringing a hand to his neck. He drew it away, blood on his fingers. He looked back at Shauna and Nat, who had brought Akilah and Tai with her. Meeting Nat’s eyes, he got to his feet and turned on his heel, walking briskly towards the camp. He was done. They let him go, their hushed reprimanding of Shauna fading into the background noise with the bugs and birds. 

Eddie stormed into the camp, immediately checking the damage in the communal sink and mirror. It didn’t look too bad, nothing a clean cloth wouldn't fix; he held a rag to his neck, keeping it from bleeding all over his shirt. He frowned at his face. Sure, they were all looking a little worse for wear out in the wilderness, but his skin looked and felt like leather. It was almost yellow or grayish in hue, and he took the time alone in the camp to examine the sun damage on his cheeks, nose, and forehead. He gave up trying to keep himself from getting all greasy while out there. It was the middle of summer, he was almost seventeen, and he had been living on a diet of basically just meat - not that kind - for the last year. Eddie ran a hand over the stubble that he was too lazy to shave away. At least, he was too lazy to shave nearly as frequently as he had for the first year out there. Once they hit that mark, he figured that anyone still caught up on his appearance was just someone looking to be miserable. Of course, Shauna was the main one to consistently point out that he looked like shit. 

He rinsed his face off with the water in the basin, scrubbing almost aggressively at his eyes, and washed away the blood from his neck. It stung, Eddie hissed through his teeth. He looked back up to see Travis right behind him in the mirror. 

“Christ!” Eddie jumped, turning around with a quick sigh. “Fucking scared me, dude.” He breathed. 

“What happened with your neck?” Travis asked, leaning in to examine the damage. Eddie tilted his head to the side to allow him to see it better.

“Well... Shauna decided we should be matching.” He said dryly, referencing the thin white scar on Travis’s throat, a reminder of what happened during Doomcoming. A reminder as to why Eddie could never fully trust most of the girls out there ever again. “Psycho cunt tried to kill me for tripping her during the game. Wait- Why aren’t you out there? We’re on the same team.” Eddie lifted the rab back up to his neck to soak up the blood he could feel dripping onto his collarbone.

“Got lightheaded, so I came back.” Travis shrugged. “I’m gonna guess you won’t need any help with that?” He gestured to Eddie’s neck. He knew him so well.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine, thanks.” Eddie smiled tiredly. Travis returned the expression, squeezing Eddie’s shoulder, the way he always did when he didn't know what to say, before wandering back the way he came. 

Eddie sighed. Something in his chest gnawed at him, but he couldn’t tell why, or what. He bit his lip as he returned to examining his greasy, acne-covered skin in the mirror. 

They all sat in a circle as Van recounted their triumphs and tribulations in the wilderness in honor of the summer solstice festival they were holding. She was a great storyteller, Eddie could give her that. Her flowy, ribbon-adorned cape fluttered in the wind as she dramatized the victory of Eddie’s team, the win scored by Gen. He had come to know Gen pretty well during their time out there. Ever since Nat had gotten a promotion to leader, and since Travis’s incident in early spring, Eddie was the only one of the original hunting trio that still had access to the rifle. Gen had gotten pretty good with it in the last few months, and Eddie’s traps kept a steady supply of game coming into the camp.

“-against the wishes of a psychopathic, untraceable, hot -if you’re into that kind of thing- high school soccer coach, they thrived. ” Eddie caught the end of Van’s sentence. He bit his cheek in discomfort. Speaking of traps . He hadn’t been able to ignore the snares that he would stumble across while in the woods. Unless someone saved the handbook in the fire, no one else but Eddie, Gen, or Mari knew how to set those. And Eddie kept charts of the snares that he and Gen set up. Eddie knew he was out there, no matter how much Nat tried to convince him that Ben was dead.  

Eddie was a king for a day. He lounged in the camp clearing with Mari and Gen, sipping on berry wine. He said he was working on his tan, which got a few chuckles. The tan line that marked the outline of his t-shirts was almost comical. In the summer heat, the girls were accustomed to walking around shirtless, so Eddie would occasionally do the same. Well, he didn't wear sports bras, of course. The warm breeze cooled the sweat that was ever present on his skin. He took the shirt that was covering his face from the sun away from his eyes as Nat poked him in the ribs with her boot. 

“If you're trying to show off for your boyfriend, he's out in the woods. Have some decorum.” She said jokingly. 

“Oh, you guys’re getting distracted by all this?” Eddie grinned, gesturing to his chest, and flexed his arm. He had lean muscle, sure, they all did, but the jutting of his ribs made him look more starved than toned. Nat rolled her eyes. 

“In your dreams, twig-ass.” She sat down next to him. Nat hadn't been on a team, because she was the leader, so she was spending the day going back and forth from servant’s chores and king’s lounging. Eddie swatted at her shoulder. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the clearing. On the edge, at the butcher’s table, Shauna violently hacked at a recently-caught deer. She looked up, and stared him dead in the eyes as she ripped a leg bone away from the game so quickly that Eddie felt his own knees ache. 

“You think you're first on her hitlist?” Nat asked him. 

“You think there's a single universe where I'm not?” Eddie replied dryly, breaking the stare-off he was holding with Shauna.

“What was that earlier?” Nat turned to him, gesturing vaguely to his neck.

“I set a trap for her, she fell down, and tried to slit my throat. That's kind of it. And, before you ask, it was Mari’s idea.” Eddie said. His neck still stung a bit, like he had gotten a deep papercut. 

“Hey! You're still the one who set it.” Mari protested, looking back at Eddie from her conversation with Gen. Eddie waved her away, shooing her words out of the air. 

“Whatever. There's two things she could do. Either she kills me and you all put her down like a rabid dog, or she graciously lets me live. And either way, she's miserable.” Eddie laid back down. Nat’s jaw set in an uncertain frown. It was no secret, ever since the birth, that Shauna pinned most of the blame for the baby’s death on the clueless guy who got stuck with delivering it against his will. Eddie kept his distance about it, he wasn't a monster; but he also knew that Shauna was insane and unfairly taking it out on him. He pulled the shirt back over his eyes and let his shoulders settle. He heard Nat stand up and walk away. 

—

Eddie looked up as someone stepped into the hut. Travis had gotten back from the woods with Lottie just recently; he had wandered off with her after checking on Eddie at the camp, and miraculously, he was sober. 

“For the middle of summer, it's beautiful out.” Travis said, looking out their hut’s door. “Gotta hope It likes the little ceremony Lottie has planned later tonight.” Eddie tried not to roll his eyes. Believing in religion was one thing, a cult was another, and thinking that spiritual ceremonies controlled the weather was a completely new level of insane.

“I’ve been thinking, if Lottie’s whole thing is the wilderness taking and giving because of what we do for It, wouldn’t you agree that the cabin burning down might’ve been a ‘don’t eat people’ omen?” Eddie asked lazily, fiddling with the sticks that his crown for the day was made of. The pale yellow flowers that grew in abundance around the camp sat patiently in a basket for him to weave in. 

“I don’t know.” Travis responded quietly. He sat down on his and Eddie’s bed. 

“I’m just saying, It seemed pretty happy with us before people started dying.” Eddie paused. “Or maybe It doesn't fucking exist in the first place.” He finished the thought, said what hung in the air out loud. 

Travis’s jaw clenched. “Maybe. But if It doesn't exist, then how come Lottie can talk to It?”

Eddie scoffed. “Oh, yeah, that’s solid. If Jim Jones couldn't talk to God, how would he have known that God wanted him to poison everyone on his commune? I’m sure that priests in the Catholic Church just get message after message from God to touch kids cause otherwise-” He was cut off by Travis. 

“Alright, alright, I fucking get it. You think religion’s stupid.” Travis spat. 

“No, I think cults are stupid. I think Lottie drugging you just so she gets another vessel to talk to the trees through is stupid. I think…” Eddie trailed off, realizing that he was about to say something highly insulting. 

“You think the people who believe in her are stupid.” Travis finished his sentence. Eddie said nothing, mostly because of the light prickling feeling of shame on the nape of his neck. Or maybe the gash on his throat was already infected and spreading down his spinal column. 

“It's helping me connect with whatever’s out here. Helping me connect with him again.” Travis said. It was an unbeatable move, really, because Eddie would never be able to say anything against Travis’s search for peace in the wake of Javi’s death. Eddie sighed quietly. “It's helping me process.” Travis finished. 

Eddie knew that Lottie forced Travis to sit in his misery, diving deeper because she would convince him an answer was just a step away. It was infuriating to watch, and he felt his chest twist in concern for Travis’s wellbeing. 

“I know you're convinced it does. Maybe it's just ‘cause it's Lottie, I’m not. Whatever, just... stay safe about it, I guess.” Eddie conceded, dropping the sarcasm. He didn't want to argue. He really hated arguing with Travis. Because Travis would say something to remind Eddie how fucked up the whole situation was and Eddie wouldn’t have anything left to say that didn't make him look like an insensitive dick. 

“I just think- Maybe you might want to join us out in the woods someday? It could help you too.” Travis offered quietly. 

“I’ll pass on the shrooms. Thanks.” Eddie said, uncomfortable memories of spiked tea and food poisoning and Misty resurfacing in his mind. “I’ve got Nat to get high with. I don't like tripping.” 

Eddie and Nat had discovered chamomile and lavender growing in the plains that crept under the cliffs surrounding their campsite. They then, through the process of glorious scientific experimentation, found that if the plants were dried and smoked together, it gave them a light buzz. Eddie’s APUSH textbook pages were seeing use for the first time in months. 

“Alright, so when I get high it’s a problem, but when you roll up with Nat, it’s not that big a deal?” Travis rolled his eyes with no real anger behind it. 

“Nat and I do it to relax. You do it to see faces in trees and hear plants talk.” Eddie said. “Plus, at least I’m not the one stumbling back here wasted every other night. I’m starting to think you do it to get a chance to feel me up.” He accused. 

Travis paused. A small smile appeared on his lips, and something about him shifted. “Well, hey, you don't ever stop me.” He jabbed Eddie in the arm with a finger. And like that, all the tension in the air from their mini-argument was cut.

“Alright- Would you rather I stop you?” Eddie grinned at Travis. 

Travis pretended to think about it. “Mmm… Nah.” He decided, leaning in to kiss Eddie on the cheek. Eddie chuckled at the pecks and turned his head to connect their lips properly. Travis reached a hand behind him and fumbled with the sheet that closed their shelter off to the forest. The fabric swayed as it fell over the entrance, blocking them from any nosy squirrels. The bundle of twigs that was meant to be a flower crown was discarded on the floor of the hut as Travis clambered over Eddie in their bed.  

—

At dinner that night, Eddie shifted uncomfortably in his cloak and ran his hand anxiously through the fox pelt he had slung over his shoulder, the one that Robin had skinned for him. The table was set with decorative leaves, the cups and plates set for only half the group. The servants milled around them, pouring wine and serving foraged salads. Melissa set a bowl down in front of Eddie, just a bit too roughly to be an accident. He mumbled a ‘thank you’ back to her, which she rolled her eyes at. Eddie was chewing the chunks of venison in the stew when he heard Mari’s chattering next to him stop.

“What the fuck, Shauna just spit in my stew!” She said, laughing incredulously. Eddie kept his eyes on his bowl. There was a pause. 

“Well… Did you?” Nat asked Shauna. 

“What? The fact you would even think that is insulting.” She responded. Mari scoffed. 

“Oh, come on. You- Whatever. I’m not eating this.” Mari shoved the bowl away from her. Eddie spared a glance at the rest of the table, who were all looking around at each other. It was definitely not below Shauna to do something like that, and he knew they were all thinking it. Eddie looked down at his bowl, contemplating, before continuing to eat. If bacteria from someone's spit killed him, he would be shocked at how he hadn't died earlier.

“You should eat. I worked hard on this stew.” Shauna said, walking to the other side of Mari, between her and Eddie. She leaned in to say it in Mari’s ear. Her smug tone made Eddie set his spoon down slowly. Had she worked hard on all of the stew? Had she worked hard on Eddie's as well? On second thought, forget Misty, Shauna would definitely poison him. He picked the strings of meat out of his teeth nervously.

Mari said nothing as she dumped the soup out on the ground. Shauna straightened up as Mari stood from the bench. “Fuck you. Fuck this.” She said, before getting tackled to the ground by Shauna. She screamed and the table erupted into chaos as Shauna pushed her face into the dirt, into the stew that Mari had poured out. Eddie backed up to stay out of her way. 

“I told you to eat, bitch!” Shauna yelled as Mari flailed underneath her. Nat pushed Shauna off, and Mari scrambled to her feet. 

“What the fuck, Shauna?” Nat helped Mari to her feet. Shauna shrugged, a small grin on her face. Eddie shared a nervous glance with Travis. “Mari?” Nat asked. Mari didn't say anything, choosing to glare at Shauna as she wiped the dirt and stew off her face. “Alright. No. Y’know what? Both of you, back to your huts right now. Stay out of here for the night. Cool it.” She decided. Both Shauna and Mari looked at her in disbelief. 

“That’s bullshit. ” Mari protested. “She started it!” 

“Keep at it, Mar, I’ll make it for the week.” Nat crossed her arms. Mari’s jaw clenched and she stormed off to her hut. Shauna did the same. The clearing was quiet for a bit. Eddie looked at his bowl suspiciously. 

“Whatever. Guys, let's not let Shauna ruin this night.” Van finally spoke up. Nat nodded, and took her place again at the head of the table. The rest followed suit. It was a quiet dinner after Shauna and Mari left, everyone chewing their stew like they were trying to taste for something else in it. 

Eddie lit his lantern, flicking out the fire on the lighter stick. Akilah’s textbook pages, which had been glued together with sap, expanded with the hot air. The firelight flickered as they all let the lanterns float away, into the night sky like fireflies. 

Lottie stepped into the circle, kneeling at the gravesites that had been constructed when the snow melted. 

“On the shortest night of the year, we give thanks to the wilderness for its grace.” She said. 

We give our thanks, the group murmured, repeating after her. The words left Eddie’s lips, but nothing in his mind trusted their weight.

“To our teammates, Rachel, Crystal, Laura Lee, Jackie, and to Javi and the baby, we ask for their guidance and trust they’re with us.” Lottie bowed her head. There were four crosses staked into the ground, for the four that had died over the winter. The lanterns rose higher and higher, floating with the cool summer breeze.

We ask for their guidance, the group murmured, but Eddie kept his mouth closed.

“As we carry their spirits with us, we-” Lottie was cut off by a sharp screeching noise. Eddie’s hand went to the knife in his pocket, and he looked around to see what could have been making that sound. The rest of the girls were doing the same. Lottie raised her face to the sky, and turned to Travis as she stood up. The screaming was grating, and Eddie had to cover his ears with his hands once it was clear it wasn’t an animal about to attack. 

“Is this what you heard, Travis?” Lottie asked. Travis nodded, stumbling back. Eddie caught him, placing a hand between his shoulder blades to steady him. Travis looked around in awe and fear, and Eddie’s jaw clenched.

Some of the girls screamed with the trees. Others cowered to the ground. And some were indifferent. Eddie’s heart sped up as it continued. He looked over at Travis. If that was what he was hearing out with Lottie, then that meant that… No. There’s always an explanation, Eddie cleared his head of any thoughts that might be starting to rationalize Lottie’s belief. It could be gas escaping through fissures, or animals that were deceptively far away, because of how sound echoed through the mountains. Eddie could finally be losing it, along with the rest of them. He hated that, but he didn’t discredit it. Anything but whatever explanation made Lottie's delusions true.

The screaming stopped as soon as it started; harsh noise followed by the soft chirping of crickets. Eddie’s shoulders relaxed, and the rest of the group started to calm down. Most of them looked to Lottie for an explanation, which Eddie thought was just as useful as expecting accurate wolf sighting statistics from the boy who cried wolf. Lottie turned around and around, dazed, like she was still hearing it. It was definitely something that would get stuck in anyone’s head. She waved her hand towards the group to quiet them, and the muttering stopped. 

“I think…” She looked at the lanterns in the sky, almost out of view. “I think that something big woke up to join us.”

Chapter Text

Eddie was in the plane as it shook and rattled. He stumbled to his feet, drawn to the cockpit while the floor creaked under the strain. Holding the backs of the seats, he pulled the curtain to the cockpit back and got a glance at the nearing mountains below them. The pilot was wearing a brown and green bomber jacket, struggling with the steering mechanism. He turned back.

“Bit different than a B-17, isn't it?” Eddie’s grandfather -Pa- asked. Eddie stared at him in shock. “You're wearing my dog tags there, boy. They find you out here, they're gonna think you're Catholic.” Pa chuckled as the plane lurched. But Eddie’s focus was on him. 

“Yeah. Yeah, wouldn't want them thinking that.” Eddie laughed in disbelief. “Also wouldn't want them thinking I served in World War II. They might be confused when they pull my bones from the wreck.” His hand fumbled with the necklace, unhooking it and handing it out to his grandfather. Pa took the chain and put it around his neck, smiling gratefully. 

“How you been, Ed?” He asked. Eddie tilted his head, confused. 

“Pa, the plane- You have to…” He trailed off. 

“It was always gonna crash.” Pa said. “C’mon, you know I-”

“-Was never a pilot.” Eddie finished. Pa was a navigator. He wanted to ask what had gone wrong with the navigation to cause them to wind up crashing down into mountains. His grandfather messed with the throttle, pulling the plane up for a moment, buying them more time. Eddie had a vague understanding that when they crashed, he wouldn't die. That something would happen while they were stuck by the wreckage. But he couldn't figure out what. 

“You takin’ good care of your sister?” Pa asked. Eddie paused, images he couldn’t decipher playing through his mind, making him stumble back. Or maybe it was the violent angle the plane was at. Eddie nodded. “Good man.” His grandfather smiled at him, before taking a cigar out of his pocket and lighting the end.

Eddie stepped towards him, trying to get a better view of the windows. The outside warped, twisting like an illusion. He could still feel them going down, but he couldn’t really see it. He looked back to his grandfather, who had a pair of aviator goggles on. He hadn’t been wearing those before. He messed with the controls again, muttering to himself. 

“Damned thing…” Pa frowned. “Say, boy, you know where the beacon radio’s stored on this hunk a’ junk?” He asked. 

Eddie shook his head in confusion as his grandfather flickered to a younger version of himself. “You said it was always gonna crash, what-”

“Well, where’s the CSR?” He held his cigar in between his teeth as he talked. 

“I… I don’t know what that is, Pa.” Eddie answered, as the plane tipped and corrected itself. Whatever was outside the windows, he couldn’t make out. Eddie thought they would have crashed by then. 

“The compass radio!” Pa said, fully his younger self. His voice was stronger, if not a bit squeaky. Pa had been eighteen when he enlisted. “Dammit Jones, the hell kind of gunner doesn’t know his own plane?” 

Pa wrestled with the throttle of the plane, eyeing all the switches in confusion. The cockpit was warping back and forth between the passenger plane that Eddie knew they were on, and the inside of a bomber. Eddie looked back at the curtain to the plane’s cabin, which flapped open to reveal a breach in the hull of the plane. A member of the bomber crew was lying on the floor next to it, with a bullet hole in his head. 

“Don’t focus on him, focus here! Flak already picked the rest of ‘em off! Now either we crash in enemy territory or you man the hell up and find me a radio!” Pa roared. The whiz of other planes around them was audible now. Eddie stepped back, fighting just to stand on both feet. He was about to tell his grandfather he didn’t know what was going on, when a blast of orange flame covered the nose of the plane, the floor Eddie was standing on broke apart, and he found himself falling through the air. 

—

Eddie woke with a start, sitting up in his bed. The drum of rain on the roof of his and Travis’s hut was deafening. He blinked, rubbing his eyes and looking around. Travis was also sitting up, staring at the doorway, though it looked like he had been awake longer.

“Bad dream?” Travis asked. Eddie nodded.

“Same with you?” Eddie asked. Travis nodded. 

“The day Javi died.” He said, which told Eddie all he needed to know about Travis’s nightmare. Travis didn't like talking about them, which Eddie definitely understood. There was a short pause, and Travis cleared his throat. “So- What about you?”

“Uh… World War II.” Eddie answered. Travis gave him a look. “I don’t know either.” He chuckled. Except he did know, he left out the part where it was another version of the plane crash. Travis smiled thinly, settling back in bed. He looked at Eddie expectantly.

“Well, come on, Colonel Taylor.” He said, holding his arms open for Eddie to crawl into. Eddie snorted and obliged, letting Travis hold him close. 

“For your information, I was apparently a gunner.” He mumbled against Travis’s shirt. Travis hummed and started running his hands through Eddie’s hair. The dream wasn’t shaking him up like a lot of other nightmares could have, it was just… out of place. Content and still exhausted, Eddie let himself drift off to sleep, listening to his boyfriend’s heartbeat over the sound of the thunderstorm outside. 

—

It was halfway through the day when they realized Mari wasn’t just sulking in her and Akilah’s hut. 

“She could just be asleep out in the woods somewhere.” Nat reasoned, as the group convened for afternoon chore assignments.

“Did anyone even sleep after that screaming?” Gen asked.

Yeah. Really well, actually, Eddie thought.

“What if those sounds were something eating Mari?” Van said quietly. 

There was a quick chill that blew over the group. Coincidentally, right as Shauna walked by. Glad to know there's signs for when she's around. That and the plants withering, the plagues befalling us, and the sky going dark, Eddie closed his eyes, smiling at how funny he was until he remembered the potential severity of the situation.

“Shauna.” Tai called. “Akilah says Mari never came home last night. After your little stunt with Eddie, is there anything you wanna tell us?” Shauna’s lip curled. 

“I don’t know anything.” She scoffed, turning away.

“Where even were you just now?” Van asked. 

“We don’t have time for this.” Nat interjected. “I’ll find her. Anyone else wanna join in?” 

“I’ll go.” Eddie volunteered. Nat nodded, along with a few others who were willing to go and search for her. 

Misty’s hand raised, and she looked at Nat expectantly. Nat sighed and pointed at Shauna. 

“How about you, Shauna? You should come along with me.” She said it in a way that made it clear it wasn’t a suggestion. Shauna wasn’t one for following orders, though, and crossed her arms. 

“I’m not looking for her.” Shauna said. “Fuck Mari.” She spat. Eddie rolled his eyes and sighed just a bit too loud for her liking. “And fuck you too.” She hit Eddie across the back of the head as she walked away, sending him stumbling forward. He whipped around to hit back, but Travis grabbed his arm without looking. It was almost romantic, how well he knew him. 

Shauna stormed into her hut and the group broke off into pairs and trios. Eddie went along with Nat and Misty, and saw Travis join Tai and Van. The groups all split up into different directions, trying to cover as much ground as possible. 

“Where d’ya think she ran off to?” Misty asked as they broke through into a small patch of knee-high grass.

“Well, Mari skipped dinner, there’re a ton of berries down South, so we’re going that way.” Nat explained.

“Plus, if she never came back to the hut, she would’ve been wandering around at night. There’s less tree coverage South, so she would’ve gone where she could see what was around her.” Eddie added, brushing his hair out of his face. Nat nodded and pointed to him, agreeing. 

“Good idea, really decisive. It’s, like, so impressive how well you know these woods, you guys just immediately knew exactly where to look.” Misty smiled. Eddie and Nat said nothing. “You know, this is kind of like a road trip, if you think about it. But we’re making the road. Or following Mari’s. So, we can, like, talk about a ton of stuff while we search, ‘cause I’m sure it’s gonna be a while, and I’m a great listener.” She followed a bit behind the two of them. Eddie was about to say something when Nat’s jaw twitched. 

“You know, when I hunted with Eddie and Travis, the three of us never really talked all that much.” Nat lied. 

“Yeah, we just kind of… walked in silence most of the time.” Eddie said. He and Nat shared a side-eye towards each other as Misty mumbled a quiet oh. 

They all kept walking South, passing the plains and cliffs beyond them. Eddie didn’t know how long they had been walking for, but he did know how many conversations Misty tried to start up: eleven. All of which went nowhere, because Eddie and Nat weren’t interested in talking. 

“Y’know, too many people have just disappeared without a trace out here.” Misty continued. “Crystal, Javi, for a bit, Coach Scott-”

“Fuck Coach Scott.” Nat sighed. 

“Don’t have to tell Misty twice.” Eddie mumbled under his breath.

“What?” Misty asked, leaning towards him. Eddie shook his head.

“Nothing- Nothing.” He said, clearing his throat. That seemed to actually satisfy her. There was a blessed moment of quiet.

“Do you think he’s actually dead?” Misty asked the two of them. “Or… That he burned the cabin down?” 

Well, I certainly have my theories, Eddie bit his cheek.

“What does that matter?” Nat said dismissively. Misty hopped forward to be in between her and Eddie. 

“He always believed in you two.” She said, looking up at the canopy of leaves above. “I think he’d be really proud of what you’ve built, Nat.”

“He didn’t know shit about me, we barely spoke.” Nat rolled her eyes and sped up, leaving the two of them behind. Misty turned to Eddie.

“For what it’s worth, I think he would be really proud of you too. Your trap setting, your hunting…” She smiled up at him. Eddie nodded awkwardly, trying to catch up with Nat’s new pace. He felt Misty’s hand reach for his hand, her thumb tracing over his fingers. Eddie shook her hand away, nearly slapping her off of him. 

“Holy shit.” Eddie stepped away from her. “Take a fucking hint, Quigley.” He snapped. Nat turned around, looking at Misty in disbelief.

“I was just…” Misty started.

“Jesus, Misty, is he not public enough with Travis for you?” Nat stepped in between the two. Eddie looked at the ground as his skin prickled, shoving his hand in his pocket. He spotted, behind Misty, a snare that he knew neither he nor Gen had set up. 

“-I mean, God, is a whole fucking year not good enough for you to respect?” Nat continued, but Misty’s eyes followed where Eddie’s gaze lingered. 

“Wait- A clue!” She gasped, jogging over to it and crouching down. “One of Mari’s?” She asked. Nat and Eddie exchanged a look, confirming between the two that it hadn’t been set by anyone at the camp.

“One of ours.” Eddie said. Misty looked back at him. Nat nodded. 

“Yeah- This part of the forest is a bust.” Nat added. Misty’s head tilted, confused. Eddie thought that if she was trying to save Ben, she could be a little more subtle about her lying. “We’ll try going East, towards the lake and rivers.”

“But… What about going South?” Misty asked. “Y’know, in case Mari needs berries?” 

“There’s- There’s berries to the East, too. And it’s closer. Let’s go.” Nat turned, waving them over. Misty looked at her, confused and clearly working something out.

“Hey Nat?” Eddie called over. She turned around to him, tired of the interruptions. “I’m gonna try West. No one’s searching back there.” He said. He didn’t know if that was true, he just didn’t want to be near Misty. Nat shrugged.

“Fine by me. Misty, you’re not following him.” Nat said. She and Misty continued East. 

Eddie sighed in relief as they walked off, and he turned West. 

—

“No! I don't- Get away from me!” Eddie's head snapped up at the sound of Travis yelling in the distance, his voice panicked. He stopped examining the crutch-shaped tracks in the dirt and ran in the direction that the sound came from. Looking around frantically, Eddie stumbled into the clearing where Lottie and Travis were. Travis was crouched, curled up on the ground, mumbling and hitting his head with the heels of his hands.

“Keep listening, Travis. This is what you're made for.” Lottie crouched beside him, sparing only a quick glance at Eddie, holding a hand back to keep him from interfering. Travis screamed, almost in pain. Eddie rushed to get in between them.

“They’re coming. They’re here- One, two, one, two… Three- One, two, three…” Travis rocked back and forth, twitching. 

“Who? Who’s coming?” Lottie tried to crawl back to Travis’s side as Eddie tried to get Travis out of his head. He kicked at her, but she didn’t back up. 

“Eddie, no, you can’t interfere with-” Lottie started. 

Two other footsteps crashed into the clearing, Tai and Van appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Tai grabbed Lottie’s arm, yanking her away from Travis. Travis looked up, which Eddie took as a chance to pull him back to reality. One hand on Travis’s shoulder, the other on his chest, Eddie couldn’t even begin to describe how fucked up what he stumbled into was. He didn’t have any words to say that would calm Travis down, and that desperate uselessness killed him. Travis’s eyes were wide as he looked through and past Eddie, into nothing.

“What the fuck are you doing to him?” He heard Tai hiss at Lottie from wherever she had dragged her off to. 

“I can't- They're coming. They're coming for me. I-” Travis’s words became incoherent as he started to break down in Eddie's arms. 

“Travis-” Lottie started, but was pushed back by Van. 

“No, no one's coming for you.” Eddie pulled him close, and Travis practically collapsed against his chest. “I got you. You're safe, you’re good, I got you.” Eddie mumbled against Travis’s hair, his eyes darting over to the hushed conversation Tai, Van, and Lottie were having, Tai’s reprimands weren't audible, but her face said enough. Eddie shuffled the two of them off to rest against a large tree at the edge of the clearing, where he could keep an eye on Lottie. His hands rested steady on Travis's neck and back as Travis cried in his arms. 

“He- I heard him, Ed.” Travis sobbed. “And then they- they’re gonna…” He exhaled out shakily. 

“Can't you see what you're doing to him? What you're doing to all of us?” Van shook Lottie by the arms. Lottie looked back at Eddie, who glared up at her. 

“I can't- can't- I can't, they're gonna-” Travis whispered, his voice breaking. Eddie couldn't do anything to calm Travis from whatever awful high Lottie was putting him through. 

It was always jarring when Travis was high, worse than when he was drunk, how he would collapse onto Eddie, mumbling or giggling, a completely artificial vulnerability. Usually it wasn't this bad. Lottie must have been pushing him to a breaking point for months. How long had it been going on for?

Eddie brushed his fingers through his boyfriend’s hair, mumbling equally incoherent words of comfort. 

Lottie walked up to the two of them, much to the protest of Tai and Van, while Eddie’s eyes were still completely on Travis. She touched Travis’s shoulder gently, before Eddie slapped it away in a fraction of a second. Travis got to his feet unsteadily, his hands twitching. As he hunched over, holding his head with his hands, Lottie got too close again, and Travis hit at her and shoved her away, making her stumble back. Eddie got up immediately, putting himself between Lottie and his boyfriend. Van rushed over to Travis to try to calm him down. 

“No, no, he needs to see- he needs to-” Lottie began, trying to push past Eddie.

“Are you fucking deranged?” Eddie hissed. Lottie stepped around him, but he grabbed her by whatever weird fabric scrap necklace she was wearing and pulled her to him. “Don’t you dare.” He stepped in close, pushing her back. 

“But he… I-” Lottie protested. Eddie shook his head, staring her down. Lottie backed up, looking around, her eyes wide, like she wanted to say something. Tai, who was standing over by Travis and Van, gave her no support. Lottie raised her hand to her neck, turned, and walked away. 

Travis clung to Eddie the whole afternoon. So, of course, the second Eddie stepped away, Lottie found him.

He was returning with a cup of water when he saw Lottie talking to Travis in his hammock. Eddie ran over, pulling Lottie away by the shoulder.

“Absolutely fucking not.” He snapped. 

“Eddie, I should-” Travis started.

“He needs to connect with It.” Lottie showed Eddie a mug of mushroom tea, like it would make him trust her. 

“Jesus Christ, are you a broken tape?” Eddie snarled. “Is that all you can say?”

“Eddie, please, let us talk, you’re upsetting Mortimer.” Travis said. Eddie looked at the duck in his arms, who was disgruntled from the noise. Well, fuck, he was. Eddie snatched the tea from Lottie and poured it out.

“Talk without this.” He said. Lottie’s brow furrowed, but she looked back to Travis.

“What you’re tapping into is so much bigger than anything else out here.” She said. Eddie walked away, leaning against one of the trees that held the hammock up. 

“I hurt you.” Travis mumbled. “It’s hurting me.” He exhaled shakily.

“Travis, you’re not… You have to keep trying to connect with It.” Lottie insisted.

“It doesn’t want me!” Travis said desperately. Mortimer quacked and Travis’s tone softened. “It- It said It didn’t want me. It wants someone else. The one who’s trusted by the animals out here, she’s closest. That’s what It said.” He pleaded. Eddie’s eyebrow raised. Robin? Britt? Akilah? Lottie’s head tilted, also confused. She looked around, over to Eddie, who glared back at her. 

Clearly thinking, Lottie nodded like it was all coming together, and she stepped away, walking back to the main camp. Eddie looked at Travis and joined him, standing next to the hammock. There were tears on his face again. Eddie ran a thumb over his cheeks to wipe them away. He offered Travis the water, and set the cup on the ground when he was done. 

“Mind if I join you again?” Eddie asked. Travis shifted over to allow him onto the hammock, making sure to hold Mortimer up so he wouldn’t get spooked by the shaking as the hammock rebalanced. 

Travis’s head was on Eddie’s chest, and Mortimer was on Travis. The duck settled, content in the warm sunbeams that shone down through the leaves. Eddie held Travis’s shoulder, tracing small shapes on his shirt.

“I’m sorry.” Eddie said, at last. “For getting in your business.” There was a long pause, and Mortimer seemed to sneeze -if birds could even do that- and sigh, closing his eyes.

“No.” Travis responded. “You were right.”

—

Dinner was quiet with Mari gone. They all sat around the fire in the middle of the clearing, some on the forest floor, some sitting on log stools. Eddie picked at his salad.

“Explain to me how no one found any trace of her.” Shauna spoke up. “I mean, Jesus, you guys can’t track down the girl with zero spatial awareness?”

“That’s exactly why we’re concerned about her being out there, Shauna.” Tai said, closing her eyes in frustration. “And I don’t seem to remember you being worried enough to look for her yourself.” She looked up at her. 

“You’re all still incompetent.” Shauna muttered.

“Like you know the woods better than her.” Eddie rolled his eyes. Shauna stayed in her hut nearly all day, and when she did walk around, it was never too far from camp. 

Shauna’s eyes narrowed, and she looked around quickly, like she was expecting anyone to say anything. “You got a problem, Taylor?” She snarled.

“I don’t know.” Eddie scratched the back of his neck. “You clearly do.”

“Ed.” Travis mumbled a warning.

“Take it out.” Shauna said eventually, setting her bowl down on the ground with a thud.

“What?” Eddie asked. The rest of the group glanced at her, just as confused.

“Take that fucking earring out.” Shauna clarified, glaring at Eddie with a type of conceited, entitled, childish rage he had come to associate with Shauna and only Shauna. Eddie lifted his hand to his right ear. 

“Oh, this? My earring? My dead sister’s earring? My dead sister that… if memory serves, help me if I’m forgetting something,” Eddie sneered, looking around the dinner circle, sarcastically tapping his temple. “but my dead sister that… you killed? And then ate? So no more wearing the earring to honor my dead sister who you murdered, desecrated, and then ate? Am I getting all that right?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Eddie.” Shauna snarled.

“Guys, cool it.” Nat said, her tone warning. Lottie mumbled something to her, too quiet to hear.

“Oh, I’ll cool it, yeah, don’t worry about me, guys. Shauna’s gonna make sure I cool it just like Jackie did, now how about that? Like sister, like brother, you know?” Eddie spat the words out, looking Shauna straight in the eyes. 

Her jaw clenched, and before Eddie knew it, she had lunged for him, knocking him to the leafy camp clearing. The wind was knocked out of his lungs as a few girls around him yelped and cleared out of the way, but Natalie wasn’t telling them to stop. Eddie rolled out from under Shauna as she punched right where his face was half a second prior. 

That’s the first punch. You’re on, Shipman. He balled up his right hand into a fist and landed the blow on the side of her ribs. She wheezed and tumbled to the side. Eddie scrambled to his knees and pinned her to the ground while she was trying to catch her breath. His hair fell in front of his eyes. He didn’t know if that mattered, he was fighting on instinct. He placed his left knee to her stomach, his right foot to one of her arms, and his left hand held the other in place. She kicked and thrashed but couldn’t immediately duck out of the situation like Eddie had. He wound up his right arm and punched her square across the face. As he pulled his fist away, Shauna’s head shot up and she snapped at his hand, raking her teeth along his already mangled fingers. 

Eddie screamed in pain and rage, and backhanded her hard . His foot on her arm had come up slightly in the attack, and she was able grab his ankle and drag it away. Quickly, Eddie put most of his weight back into his left knee, pressing into her abdomen, and punched her again to get her to loosen her grip on his ankle. He grabbed the arm that had come loose, as she struggled beneath him, and tried twisting it down at an unnatural angle. She was still able to pry herself away and slap him so hard his head snapped to the left. He hawked up a blood filled loogie and spit it down onto her, doing his best to keep her limbs under control. 

“Bitchass mutt!” Eddie grabbed her hair while she tried to bite at his arms. “You need a fucking muzzle?” He said through gritted teeth. 

With a scream, she managed to get out from under his knee, sweeping his legs in the process. She pushed him by the shoulders onto the ground, where they rolled in a flurry of limbs and fists and teeth and blood and so, so, so much hate. Shauna bit Eddie’s neck through his shirt, her sharp-ass teeth gnawing as he struggled to get her off. And God , did it hurt. Eddie swung a left-handed punch that connected on the side of Shauna’s head, dislodging her hold on his neck. She reeled back for a second.

“Were you gonna go for the jugular with that one? You gonna murder me?” Eddie got punched in the gut, and threw up in his mouth a little. He spit it out onto the ground. “C’mon, Shipman. Murder me!” Another blow landed on him, and it felt like his bones were on fire. “Murder me the same way you murdered Jackie!” He got a handful of her hair and twisted it until she was screaming. 

“And- I’ll fucking… haunt you. Shipman. The same way… I know she does.” His words were growls in the back of his throat now.

“Fucking shut up!” Shauna brought a hand to his throat, squeezing the life out of him. “I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you and you’ll rot in hell with your bitchwhore sister! Is that what you want?” Eddie’s hand was falling out of her hair, he couldn’t focus. His arms flailed uselessly and his vision went darker as his eyes rolled back. He spit up at her before letting his head fall onto the ground. 

Her weight was off of him in a second. As he sputtered back to life, he saw Travis grappling with her on the ground, as the others finally moved in to restrain her. Heaving breaths, and his chest on fire, he scrambled over to Shauna, knocked Travis off of her, and landed his final punch, one where he could feel the cartilage in her nose dislocating and breaking under his fist. After that, he was dragged away by Travis, Nat, and Gen. Shauna was kicking and screaming, it took Akilah, Mari, Melissa, and Van to keep her back.

“That’s fucking enough. ” Nat’s jaw twitched as she looked between the two. “Lottie, I don’t- Both of you- hut arrest. I don’t want to see either of you in this clearing for two weeks.” Her tone was final, and Eddie accepted it. He had stopped struggling almost immediately after being pulled away from her, only Travis was still holding onto him - and it was more to pretend that Eddie needed to be restrained to even remotely the same level as Shauna. As he was led past Shauna, he spat a mouthful of blood at her feet.

“You hungry, Shipman?” He looked up at her before straightening his posture. 

“Don’t.” Travis mumbled, tightening his grip on Eddie’s arm. 

Before they reached their hut, Lottie tapped Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie turned around with Travis, and Lottie waved Travis away. Maybe it was the adrenaline pumping in his ears, or the fact that everything in his body hurt, but the gesture made Eddie seethe, even more so at the fact that Travis followed it and retreated past their curtain. 

“Great. To what do I owe the pleasure, o all-knowing shaman ?” Eddie’s lip curled at the way she looked at him. It was clear she wanted to discuss something with him, his and Travis’s hut was far off the main village’s circle, nestled in the woods itself, only a lantern at the curtain way to indicate that there was anything more past the main huts in the clearing. She wouldn’t follow them for anything but to talk. And God , Eddie did not want to talk.

“I understand why you did that… Edward.” She said softly, in that voice she used when giving sermons about the leaves or some shit. His full name sounded awkward on her tongue, like even she knew, deep down, that no one in their right mind ever called him that. It made Eddie prickle. 

“It’s Eddie, and you know that. Don’t test me right now. You and I both know you’re suicidal enough to not fight back.” He spat. Lottie nodded her head forward in acknowledgement like she was trying to waste Eddie’s time. 

“I kept Natalie from breaking the two of you up, because I thought it would be healthy for you two to release the emotions surrounding Jackie’s death. I’m apologizing that you were hurt there, and I’ll do the same with Shauna. But, I hope you understand why I let you two fight.” She spoke quietly. Eddie bit his lip. “I also hope you’re able to forgive her and let warmth back into your heart.”

“Should’ve let me kill that son of a bitch.” He said, finally. “My heart’s plenty warm, tell her to take my forgiveness and shove it so far up her ass she can taste it.” Eddie crossed his arms, glaring at the fucking witch in front of him. 

Eventually, like she was debating saying something else, Lottie nodded and turned, walking back to the main camp. 

Eddie kicked off his shoes as he sat on his and Travis’s bed. His stomach ached, his neck tingled, and his arms stung.

“Jesus. Do you want her to sneak in here tonight and kill you?” Travis asked finally.

“Hey, if she kills me, you all have to return the favor. If I’m dead, she’s dead, and that’s good enough for me.” Eddie responded flatly. 

“Are you sure that’s…” Travis trailed off, gesturing at Eddie’s arms and shrugging. It was bullshit. The scars were barely visible anymore, at least the ones from before the crash. And he had figured that at that point, people would stop pointing them out like it was a revelation. 

“Dude. The last thing I need right now is you talking about that. I don't know if you figured, but I’m in an awful fucking mood right now.” Eddie said frustratedly, rubbing at his face with his hands. “So, either I can sleep it off, or we can sleep it off.” He glanced over as Travis realized the insinuation. 

Travis looked at him for a second, hesitantly amused. “So talking about it is off limits, but mindless sex is fine?” He asked, already sitting back on the bed. 

“Yeah, that’s like, exactly what I was saying.” Eddie followed suit. “And she can’t sneak in here to kill me if we’re both up all night.” He mumbled against Travis’s neck. 

Travis tilted his head to the side, letting Eddie kiss at his jaw. “You’re making me collateral.” He laughed breathily.

“Mhm.” Eddie hummed, a smug smile on his lips.

Eddie was aware that common courtesy at the camp was: if you fuck someone’s brains out, at least try to keep quiet. But no one had the balls to question anyone about any noises they might hear late at night. And if he knew that Shauna was most likely struggling to sleep with a broken nose and aching bones, he might as well let her know that at least he and Travis were having a good time.

Chapter Text

Hut arrest was wildly boring. Two days into being stuck inside, Eddie had exhausted all his sewing projects. The structure was pretty big -as far as huts went. Two pronged sticks that staked into the ground held up a flat log that acted as the roof peak. Resting against that log, the walls were stacked to hold it in place. It was triangular, and kind of looked like a regular tent, just made out of sticks instead of fabric. Moss, straw, and hardened mud kept the rain out. The back wall was a bunch of stones piled on top of themselves with mud to act as mortar. The front entrance was half covered with another stick wall, the other half was a sheet that functioned as a door. Eddie was slowly but surely covering the packed dirt floor with proper flat logs that he could walk barefoot on. Call it home improvement. The bed was two layers of small logs stacked on each other, to keep them off the floor. Straw and dried grass padded underneath the blanket that acted as their mattress. Excluding that and the door, Eddie and Travis had three blankets to their names. 

When the group had first started construction, Travis had gone far out into the woods past the camp and set up a hammock with a shitty twig roof to cover it. Eddie told Travis that if he made him sleep in that, he would break up with him. So they made a different shelter, one that kept out rain and wind. Travis scored another blanket he could use as a hammock from Nat, after they were finished building their hut. Of course, the antler queen kept a stockpile of the resources. 

The door flapped open, and Eddie glanced up. The wind had undone it. Eddie stood up to pull it closed again. When he turned back, he saw someone on his bed. Jackie. She appeared like a glitch, TV static showing him another universe for just a split second, and then she was gone.

“Trick of the light.” Eddie said out loud, to himself, stepping back involuntarily. Maybe it was something about it being near-dusk, or the flickering of candlelight. 

“Eddie.” Jackie’s voice. What the fuck. 

Eddie whipped around, but he didn’t see her. Obviously. That would be impossible. The last he had seen Jackie was that bitter morning, where her bones hung with strings of meat and congealed blood that the girls who devoured her were too full to pull away. 

“Sick fucking impression. Leave me alone.” Eddie called out, just in case he wasn’t losing it, if one of the girls decided to play an awful joke on him. 

“Nasty bruise there, Ed.” Her voice echoed around him. Eddie turned in circles, bumping his head on the top beam of the hut.

“Shit- Ow! Leave me alone. Don’t do this.” He stumbled back onto the bed.

Her laugh faded out, and nothing else came. Eddie looked around the hut, which had started to feel like it was closing in on him. He stood up, thoroughly spooked, and left the structure, walking quickly to Nat’s across camp. 

“It was just a hallucination.” He mumbled to himself, then scoffed. “Just a hallucination. Jesus. I’m losing it.” He hadn't ever hallucinated before, just dreamed. But he saw her with his own eyes, he heard her voice while being completely awake. 

A few girls looked up at him as he walked, his eyes on the ground. He knew he shouldn’t be in the clearing, but he didn’t stay in their view for long. Eddie held open the curtain to Nat’s hut, stepping in. Nat was sitting on her bed, reading, and Travis was sitting on the floor, carving something out of a block of wood. They both raised their eyebrows at him, maybe it was his disheveled appearance or uncomfortable expression, or maybe it was the fact that he should still be on hut arrest.

“Ed…” Nat started, putting her book down.

“Nat, please. I need a smoke.” Eddie nearly begged. Nat kept the blunts in a small Altoid tin. She and Travis exchanged a look before realizing that Eddie wasn’t just being a junkie, that something more was wrong.

“Yeah- Alright.” Nat reached for her bag and pulled out the box, handing it to Eddie. 

“You okay?” Travis asked. Eddie couldn’t meet either of their eyes as his shaking hands held a blunt to the small tealight in a mug. Their lights were made of sap-soaked twigs and slow burning wood. The smell of burning sap mixed with the smell of smoke as Eddie took a long drag in. He sighed, sitting down and handing the box back to Nat. 

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell Lottie.” Eddie said. Travis and Nat nodded, worried. They each took and lit a smoke for themselves. 

Eddie paused, nervous. If he told them, he would be admitting to insanity. He would be admitting there was something deeply wrong with him that wasn't there before. “I saw Jackie.” He said. Their eyes narrowed. 

“Did Misty-”

“No- No, I haven't taken any shrooms. No drugs, no wine, no nothing. But I saw her.” Eddie cut Travis off. “She was sitting on the bed and then disappeared, and I heard her.” 

“Well, Ed, a lot of people hallucinate out here. It’s probably just stress.” Nat said, and the words were supposed to be comforting, but Eddie felt his spine prickle.

“No, you don't get it, I don't hallucinate. I can't. I shouldn't.” Eddie looked at the ground. “But ever since the summer celebration, with the screaming, I’ve been having more dreams, all about people that are already gone.”

“Who?” Travis asked. 

“My grandparents, Laura Lee, Jackie.” Eddie said, biting the inside of his cheek. Javi wasn't in any of his dreams, and he knew that was who Travis was asking about. “It’s every time I fall asleep, even if I’m only out for just a second.”

“Ed, everyone dreams about what's happened. You're just-” Nat sat down next to him. 

“No, Nat, I never get dreams about people. I get nightmares about the crash, or the moose, or stuff back home, but almost never with people.” Eddie explained. Nat took a drag of the blunt. “And I sure as hell shouldn’t be seeing things.”

“Do… Do you think it might be the wilderness?” Travis asked hesitantly. Eddie’s shoulders fell.

“I don’t know. I don’t want it to be. I want an explanation.” Eddie coughed a bit as the smoke filled and exited his lungs. Lavender and chamomile weren't the best to get stoned on, but kept him from freaking out. He didn’t know what he would do once the plants started dying in the winter. Eddie definitely relied on them more than Nat did, which made him feel like shit. He hadn’t been able to kick the cigarette cravings like she had, they persisted through the summer until they started experimenting with the plants. 

“The explanation is that everyone’s fucked up out here.” Nat tapped the ash onto a small tray sitting on a log stool. “You're not special enough to not be losing it.”

“I’m not fucking insane!” Eddie snapped, before he realized that made him seem more insane. “I- I just… I can't think of- of a good enough… It’s not-”

“You don't want to admit you have a problem but you know that if you don't have a problem, It exists.” Travis said, and Eddie hated that it was right. He didn't say anything. He was looking for an answer that didn't exist and they knew it. 

Thankfully he didn't get the chance to try to justify his thinking. There was a commotion in the main clearing, which the three went out to investigate. 

Mari was limping into camp, helped by Gen and Van. Eddie stepped back into Nat’s hut to grab a blanket for the shivering girl. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was covered in dirt, cleared partially by tear tracks. Akilah got her a cup of water and wiped her hair out of her face. 

“Thank God you’re okay!” Misty sat down next to her on the ground. “Or… Thank the dirt or whatever.” Mari chuckled and took a big gulp of the water in her cup. Eddie was relieved. He had gotten pretty friendly with Mari since they started sharing farm-related chores together. 

“Yeah, it was- It was rough out there. Hurt my leg pretty bad but- uh, I was able to walk back.” Mari said it like even she couldn’t believe it had happened. 

“We’re just glad you’re safe.” Akilah squeezed Mari’s shoulder affectionately.

Mari’s face fell when Shauna walked up, Melissa in tow. Shauna’s bitter personality was palpable in the way the air around them shifted. She crossed her arms.

“You were gone for three days. Where were you?” Hut arrest means nothing to this absolute anarchist, Eddie thought, also not following the rules of his hut arrest. 

“Well, Shauna, I walked back to civilization so I could fuck your dad.” Mari said snarkily. She sighed at Shauna’s unwavering glare. “I fucking- I just fell. In a massive pit in a part of the woods we haven't really discovered, I guess. And- And I just had to climb out.”

“She dislocated her knee.” Akilah said. 

“Yeah- The kneecap was, like, all the way out here.” Mari unwrapped her knee and showed them all the damage. Eddie grimaced at the angry red swelling. “And the hole was, like, twenty feet deep, I thought I was gonna die out there, like Baby Jessica.”

“Baby Jessica didn’t die.” Tai corrected her.

“And it was a well.” Melissa added. 

“Pedantic much?” Eddie rolled his eyes. As usual, none of them paid him or his comments any mind. 

“A well’s a hole. Sorry, it was just- just the first thing I could think of.” Mari conceded.

“If your leg’s so fucked, how’d you get out?” Shauna pressed. Eddie glanced at her. It was pretty fucking obvious how: she waited and then climbed. Shauna was baiting for something.

“I- I set my knee back in place, and just sort of… got out. I don't know, it hurt like a bitch.”

“How’d you get water?” 

“There was a creek nearby.”

“And you didn’t use that to find your way back?”

“I did, but my leg was messed up, so it took a while.” Mari responded.

“Bullshit.” Shauna scoffed. “You can’t climb like that with a dislocated knee.”

Mari was quiet for a second, looking around like she got caught. She didn’t have any reason to lie, though. Unless…

“Coach Scott found me.” She said at last. And Eddie had put that together by the time she said it, but he had to feign surprise. A chorus of ‘what’ and ‘he’s alive?’ followed her admission. Eddie glanced up at Nat. Her look told him everything he was worried about. 

“What happened then?” Tai asked. 

Mari stared at the ground. “After he found me, he helped me put my knee back, and pulled me out of the hole.” She said quietly. “Uh, and then, he- he tied my hands and took me back to- to this cave he’s been hiding in.”

“A cave?” Britt’s eyebrows raised.

“He took you prisoner?” Akilah asked. 

“Jesus, that’s terrifying.” Robin said.

“I- I mean, yeah.” Mari agreed. “But he wasn’t-”

“I fucking called it, he’s totally lost it.” Van put her hands on her hips. “Holy shit.”

'We don’t know that',  Misty and Eddie said in unison. 

“What the fuck- He tied her up and took her to his lair!” Van gestured to Mari. 

“Guys, he-” Mari started, but was cut off by Shauna.

“You know how to get back?” She asked. 

“Oh, what are you gonna do, go catch him?” Tai asked sarcastically. “Couldn’t 'a shown this kind of drive when Mari was being held hostage?” 

“Yeah, I’ll find him, Tai. That’s exactly what I want to do.” Shauna said firmly. “He tried to burn us alive. You really want to just leave him out there?” She asked the rest of the group. Eddie looked down at the ground. 

Nat shifted uncomfortably. “That’s insane, how would we-”

“What’s that, Nat? ‘Cause it almost sounds like you don’t want to find him.” Shauna said accusatorily. Nat was quiet. “Can you find him or not?” Shauna asked Mari.

“I- I think so.” Mari answered.

“Great. I’m going to look for him then, before he finds another dungeon to crawl into.” Shauna said. “Anyone who wants to come with, please do.” And with that, she walked off to grab supplies. 

—

Eddie didn’t want to join her. He contemplated going back to his hut, but decided against it. He didn’t want to be in Nat’s hut alone while she was out with the search party. He decided to hang out in the animal pen with Mari. She was quiet. Her leg was too weak for her to walk all the way back, but she gave them the exact directions and landmarks around the cave’s entrance. She was huddled in the blanket Eddie had brought for her, letting the ducklings crawl up her legs. Eddie was sitting against the log in the middle of the pen, a little rabbit curled up on his lap. The rabbit’s name was Peter. The farm crew liked to joke that Peter was Mari and Akilah’s son, and Eddie was his uncle. They were comfortable enough to have the luxury of pets during the summer, but no one could bring themselves to think about what would happen to those animals in the winter. The people who were around the animals and farms the most were Akilah, Britt, and Robin, but Mari and Eddie did a lot of farming, which kept them close to the pen. The setting sun was warm on Eddie’s face, and he tried to keep his mind from racing over Ben’s fate.

“He didn’t hurt me.” Mari said. Eddie looked up. “I mean- he bear-sprayed me, but I did that to him first.”

“Bear spray?” Eddie asked.

“I think he found some kind of resource reserve somewhere in the woods.” Mari explained. “He apologized a lot. He only kept me in there ‘cause he was worried I would tell you guys he was alive. Which… I didn’t want to.” Her voice was small. 

“I hope they don’t find him.” Eddie scratched behind Peter’s ears.

“You two were friends, right?” Mari asked. Eddie nodded. “I’m sorry.” She whispered. Eddie didn’t say anything. Peter yawned and stretched out on Eddie’s legs. 

The gate to the pen opened slowly, and Travis stepped in, like he was debating asking permission to be there. Eddie gestured to the spot on the ground next to him, and Travis joined him against the log. A few curious ducklings waddled over to him, sniffing and pecking at Travis’s shoes. Mortimer was sleeping in the little shelter at the edge of the pen. 

Mari followed the straying ducklings, shifting over closer to Travis and Eddie. She sat with her knees to her chest, picking at her nails.

Eddie glanced up at her miserable expression and bit the inside of his cheek. “You hungry?” He asked. She looked over at him before nodding. “I’ll go get us some dinner. Here, hold Peter.” He handed the rabbit over to her and stood up.

In the main camp, the only ones that had stayed behind besides those in the animal pen were Lottie and Britt, who were talking by the fire pit. Eddie had to find the meat in the shed next to the butcher’s table. He didn’t have Shauna’s knife, but he used his own to carve off a turkey leg. He told himself it was just like Thanksgiving, only, he was slicing into a turkey -feathers and all- in the dark using a pocket knife. He didn’t like butchering. 

Meat and collected blood acquired, Eddie found the skillet. He laid out the meat evenly spaced across the cast iron and poured the blood in. He set it on a log and went to grab some leafy greens from the garden. They didn’t know the names of anything, just that certain leaves tasted better and made them feel less like their intestines were rotting away. Eddie shrugged to himself as he plucked a berries off the bushes in the garden. He might have to become a regular chef. Contrasting savory flavors with sweet, or whatever. 

After frying everything up in the blood, he scooped the meat and leaves onto a large plate and kept cooking the blood and berries until they congealed. Lottie and Britt were too immersed in their conversation to ask him any questions, or request that he save a portion for them. The search party hadn’t eaten, leaving the people who stayed behind to make dinner for themselves. If those two weren’t interested in making themselves something, that wasn’t Eddie’s problem. He brought the plate back along with two cups of water that he had to configure his fingers unnaturally to hold. 

“-just think she got all weird after the fire.” He heard Mari say as he opened up the gate to the pen. “All creepy, smiling like it was a good thing. That’s when I walked away.”

Eddie sat down, putting the plate in between all three of them. He handed the cups to Mari and Travis. “Bon appétit.” He said, mostly to himself as he took a cut of turkey.

“Thanks, Ed.” Travis smiled at him. Mari nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, I wish I had gotten away from her sooner.” He said, continuing the previous conversation. Eddie figured they were talking about Lottie. They had both been pretty deep in her wilderness sermons, but now that Travis was keeping his distance, it became common ground. 

“I mean, it’s not like weird shit doesn’t happen out here.” Mari took a bite of the leaves. “Did you put berries in the blood sauce?” She asked Eddie. He nodded. “This is real good. I’ll do that next time we make stew.” Eddie had to keep himself from smiling too proudly at the compliment, he hoped the low light hid how his mouth twitched as he tried to fight it.

“I think it’s nice to have an explanation. But, God, I wanted her to stop drugging me.” Travis referenced Mari’s previous comment. Eddie wondered what Mari would think about the fact that Travis had set Lottie’s sights on Akilah. He supposed no one had to tell her. 

Eddie didn’t have much to add to the conversation, so he zoned out as he ate. One of the grown ducks waddled up behind him, ruffling its pale spotted feathers. It wasn’t Mortimer, he didn’t know what its name was. He wanted to ask, but didn’t want to interrupt. In his head, he decided its name was Jam. Jam nipped at his arms until Eddie pulled a flannel over his shoulders. 

The sun was fully set when he three decided to return to the camp. It was a bit of a walk from the animal pen, but the sky was clear and the moonlight lit up the path. Eddie offered to help Mari walk, but she laughed and told him that she wasn’t geriatric. He walked her to her hut, though. Lottie and Britt were nowhere to be seen in the camp. Standing alone, the creeping dark hardly staved off by the fire in the center, Eddie couldn’t help the feeling of deep dread that crawled up his spine and into the back of his head. What would they do with Ben? When were they coming back? Could he have kept them from going? Did Ben even deserve that? The thoughts swirled around his mind as he stared blankly into the fire. It was a humming, droning, buzzing noise between his ears that told him that something was very wrong. He swayed on his feet before the popping of the fire reminded him that he shouldn’t stay out all night to think. 

Hesitantly, Eddie joined Travis in their hut, unable to keep his eyes from lingering where he had seen Jackie earlier that day. Travis must have noticed that he was still shaken up, because he let Eddie curl up in his arms, his thumb soothing over Eddie’s shoulder as they went to sleep silently.

—

In the morning, as sunlight filtered through the blanket covered doorway, Eddie woke up as the search party returned with Ben in tow. He stepped out of the hut as the girls passed by. Ben limped along, his knuckles white, gripping his crutches. Eddie inhaled sharply at the sight. It was one thing to know Ben was alive, it was another thing to see it. He joined their train to the main camp quietly. Ben looked around the camp in awe at the structures. Nat seemed to be leading him back to her hut, like they were going to have a discussion.

Shauna caught up with her. “Hey!” She pointed at Nat. “He’s here, we got him. What are you doing?” She asked. Nat looked around, and almost shrugged. “We need to make him pay for trying to kill us and-” Shauna continued. 

“That’s not how we’re gonna do it.” Nat interrupted her.

“Nat’s right.” Lottie stepped forward. “We need to let It decide life and death.”

“Fuck that.” Melissa snapped. “He burned down the cabin with us in it. Seems like he decided then and there.” Shauna nodded, gesturing to Melissa to emphasize her point. 

“I know you’re angry.” Lottie said calmly. “But we-”

“What if it was a freak accident?” Nat asked. “What if Coach had nothing to do with it? He deserves to plead his case.”

Shauna and a few others looked around incredulously, but no one interrupted Nat. She bit her lip, clearly thinking. Eddie could feel the tension in the air like a thick blanket. The girls had come back after a long night, they were tired, hungry, and angry, and wanted someone to point at. Ben looked at the ground, unable to meet their eyes. Especially unable to meet Eddie’s. 

“We have to do this right.” Nat decided. “We’re gonna have a trial.”

Chapter Text

“The real question is… Who’s gonna defend Coach Scott?” Tai asked. They had set up the ‘courtroom’ in the middle of camp. They were going on a two-thirds system, which Shauna threw a fit over. Tai had already settled on prosecution. Natalie was the judge. The group looked over at Misty. She looked up from her notepad.

“Why are you looking at me?” She set the paper and pencil on the table. 

“‘Cause he’s your boyfriend.” Van sneered. Misty shook her head. “In your mind, at least, right?” 

“No- No, that’s not funny.” Misty said. “And I’m not defending him.”

“Well someone has to.” Nat crossed her arms. The group’s collective attention turned to Eddie. He felt trapped. But if Misty wouldn’t…

“I’ll do it.” He said. 

Nat nodded. “Alright. He’s in the animal pen. I’m giving you two ‘til noon to make your arguments.”

And so Eddie pushed the pen’s gate open. Defending Ben could implicate him, which he didn’t want. Lord knew the trial was just a formality to pretend they still had some civilization left. Ben looked over at him, and his gaze softened. But Eddie’s face was unchanging.

Eddie remembered, through the haze of months passing and brain fog, the shape in the window that night. The orange flickering that he was too tired to investigate, the flickering that turned into a white-hot inferno. He didn’t sit with Ben. He looked down at him, tied to the log. 

“Did you do it?” Eddie asked, once he was sure no one was still around the animal pen. Ben shook his head adamantly.

“I was awake. I saw you. I saw the fire start and I fell asleep before I realized what was happening.” Eddie said. “I fucking saw you. I’m your lawyer now, I’m defending you no matter what.”

“Eddie, I never- I wouldn’t-” Ben started.

“Don’t lie to me.” Eddie huffed. “It won’t change anything. But it’s been eating me alive.” Eddie sat on his heels next to Ben. He reeked. Absolutely reeked, and looked like he had aged twenty years out in the caves. Ben looked around like something would save him from answering. Nothing came.

“I wasn’t right in the head.” Ben mumbled. 

Eddie drew his hand back and slapped Ben across the face. The man exclaimed and spat, unable to get away. Eddie’s jaw clenched. 

“Why?” He nearly yelled.

“I- I would’ve been next. You were all willing to sacrifice anyone at that point. I saw what you did with Javi- That little boy never did anything.” Ben explained, his voice wrecked. 

“Fuck you.” Eddie stood up to pace. “Don’t bring Javi up. Fuck you! Travis was in there! Nat was in there! I was in there!” He hissed, sure to keep his voice down. Ben looked at his hands in his lap, ashamed.

“I thought I was saving you three.” He said quietly. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t, it was cruel and wrong and I wouldn’t have done it if I was thinking right.”

“Oh- Oh, so you woulda saved us and left the rest to die if your head was on straight?” Eddie leaned in. 

“I never wanted anyone to die! I loved you guys, really. Shit- Don’t act like you weren’t considering jumping ship to join me, if Travis, Nat, and Javi came along too.” Ben stuttered. 

Eddie shook his head in disbelief. The noise in his brain at the open confession was unbearable. He raised his hands to the sides of his head and hit both of his ears over and over, clearing his mind -he had heard it was a self defense technique to stun someone, but he needed a reset. Then he slapped himself hard, making his own head whip to the side. Ben looked up at him, uneasy.

“Fuck. Okay.” Eddie swallowed his emotions and turned back to Ben. “You’re pleading not guilty. That confession won’t leave this pen. I want you to stay alive, even if the feeling’s not mutual. My ass is on the line for defending you.”

Ben opened his mouth to protest, but Eddie cut him off. 

“You were overwhelmed by Javi’s death, you were scared, you ran as far away as possible the night he died. You didn’t linger around the cabin- did anyone else see you?” Eddie interrupted his own train of thought. The cabin had burned down four days after Javi died, four days after Ben left. If Ben had been wandering around nearby for those four days, he could’ve been spotted, which would bring the argument down crumbling. 

“No- No one but Nat.” Ben responded.

“She won’t rat on you, she’s the judge. I’ll call Melissa to the stand. She was tending the fire that night.” Eddie started mumbling to himself. “If they remember that the fire was started from outside- which was pretty obvious, good job with that- If they remember where the fire was coming from, I’ll get Lottie to say that it was the wilderness.”

“How would she agree with you on that?” Ben asked.

“She never wanted Javi to die. If I play into her culty theory of taking and giving, she’ll convince everyone that it was a sign from It.” Eddie countered. Ben nodded. “What do you want to say?” Eddie asked. 

Ben paused. “I want to apologize to them-”

“Be specific. Apologize for what?” Eddie interrupted.

“Apologize for leaving.” Ben said. Eddie nodded.

“Good. Good, make sure they know you weren’t in the right state to make rational decisions. Don’t rely on pleading insanity though. Tai might get you on that, ask what was keeping you from setting the fire, if you admit to being batshit.” Eddie had never been so concentrated on something. He closed his eyes, envisioning the argument. Maybe in another life, he had joined the debate team in junior year like he had planned. 

—

“The People v. Benjamin Scott, on charges of kidnapping, arson and multiple counts of attempted murder. Jury verdict requires a two-thirds majority. The Honorable Judge Natalie presiding.” Van announced, stepping aside as Nat took her chair. She was dressed in a white robe with a fur collar, and had a deer skull with antlers tied to her head like a crown. Eddie clapped politely with the rest of them, but it was a lot. She sat rigidly, as the rest of them took their seats on the benches in the clearing.

Nat hit the gavel against a log. Tai would be going first. 

“Court is, uh- in session.” She said, then cleared her throat. “The prosecutor has the floor. Taissa Turner, you may call your first witness.”

“The people would like to call Mari Ibarra to the stand, Your Honor.” Tai walked to her spot next to Nat. Mari was staring out into the trees before she realized her name had been said.

“Oh-” She whispered, getting to her feet and taking a seat on the witness log.

“Mari, first of all-”

“Wait.” Misty piped up from the jury section. “We have to swear her in.” 

“Oh, yeah, forgot to do that.” Nat said. “We- uh, we still got a bible out here?” 

Mari was sworn in, after a minute of Lottie trying to make her swear on the wilderness. Eddie had never rolled his eyes harder. Nat redirected the group’s focus back to actual legal proceedings, though.

Tai picked up where she left off. “As I was saying, Mari, we are so glad to have you back with us, after such a traumatizing ordeal-”

“Objection.” Eddie piped up. Tai looked up at him, already annoyed. That made two of them. “It’s your opinion that it was traumatic for her.”

“I think everyone here can agree that being held against your will is traumatic.” Tai said. 

“Coach Scott was unfairly bear-sprayed by her. Wouldn’t that be traumatic for him as well?” Eddie challenged. He glanced apologetically at Mari. She had told him that before she knew he would be fighting on Ben’s behalf.

“Sustained.” Nat decided. Tai gave her a look. “Well, it’s your opinion…”

“Fine. Mari, was your time in Coach’s dungeon traumatic?” Tai asked. Eddie wanted to object to it being called a dungeon, but he figured that might end up digging him deeper. 

“I- I mean, yeah, it was.” Mari answered. “He made me eat bats and stuff, and he was always talking to himself.” Eddie’s shoulders sank in disappointment as he realized she wouldn’t be helping his case.

“To himself? Not you?” Tai questioned. 

“I don’t know what, but it wasn’t me.” Mari said. 

“Are you saying he’s deranged?” 

“Well- No- Maybe. I heard the noises too.” Mari shifted uncomfortably.

“Did he hold you captive because he was deranged?” Tai asked, skipping over the part where Mari confirmed that Ben wasn’t. That might have been good, though. It left ambiguity.

“No, he kept me ‘cause he didn’t want me coming back and telling you guys where I was. And then he let me go. And then… I told you where he was.” Mai mumbled the last part.

“Why didn’t he want us to know where he was?” Tai leaned in.

“He- He was scared we would find him and get… payback, I guess.” Mari said. Tai leaned back and nodded, giving up the rest of her time with Mari.

“Payback.” Tai repeated, walking slowly back to her seat. Eddie glanced at Nat and stood, stepping towards Mari. 

“Did he say the word ‘payback’ verbatim?” Eddie asked. Mari shook her head.

“No, he said he was afraid we would find and… eat him.” She clarified. 

“Find and eat him.” Eddie repeated, the same way Tai had done. “Has a bit of a different motivation than ‘payback’, doesn’t it?”

“Objection.” Tai spoke up. “We could find and eat him as a form of payback. Why are you trying to get Mari to perjure herself?”

“You were the one who took that hesitant answer at face value.” Eddie snapped back. They looked at Nat.

“Overruled.” She nodded. Eddie couldn’t keep the smirk off his face.

“Mari, could Coach Scott have killed you in his cave?” He asked. 

“Yes.”

“But you’re alive.” He continued. Mari nodded. “So, he found you in the pit, but helped you reset your leg, and took you back instead of leaving you for the wolves.” He made sure to gesture with his right hand as he said it, letting the group’s eyes follow the mangled and missing fingers. “Were you able to walk when he pulled you out?”

“No. I mean, he had to give me one of his crutches.” Mari answered.

“So, he gave you time for your leg to heal before letting you leave.” Eddie said.

“Objection, leading the witness.” Tai said, her hand raised.

“Sustained.” Nat looked at Eddie. He bit his cheek.

“No- I- I don’t think he had a plan, he didn’t want to kill me. But he tied me up as soon as I was out. He said once I had seen him, I might come back and tell you guys.” Mari clarified. Eddie nodded, like that didn’t throw a small wrench into the argument he was trying to make, proving that Ben had never intended to let Mari go. 

“He didn’t want to kill you. Why did he pull you out in the first place?” Eddie asked. “He heard you screaming before you saw him.” 

“He didn’t want me to die.” Mari said. Eddie turned to the audience.

“He didn’t want her to die. Does that sound like the rationale of a man who supposedly tried to kill us all just four months ago?” 

“No. It doesn’t.” Mari shook her head.

“Thank you, Mari. You can go back to your seat.” Eddie smiled at her. She looked at him warily. “I would like to call Melissa Bennett to the stand.” He said. Melissa looked at Shauna nervously before walking over to the witness chair. She stared up at Eddie while Shauna glared daggers at him. Apparently he wasn't allowed to talk to her little lapdog. 

“Melissa, where were you on the night of the fire?” He asked. 

“In the cabin- The main room.” She answered. 

“I seem to remember you pulled the seven of diamonds earlier that day. Wasn't it your job to watch the fire?” He said. Melissa fidgeted uncomfortably on the witness chair. 

“Yes, but- Nothing that night was unusual. I fell asleep after making sure it would burn through to the next morning. That was my job.” She was confident in her answer, because she was telling the truth. It was Eddie’s job to make them all think she wasn't. 

“Wouldn't it be possible for a spark to catch on the carpet? Something that happened after you went to sleep?” He questioned. She shrugged. 

“I guess.”

“So Coach Scott had nothing to do with a fire related incident? It could have been human error?” Eddie continued. 

“Objection.” Tai stood up. “Leading the witness, and fucking stupid. Of course it could have been human error, but we-”

“Wait your turn for the rebuttal, Tai.” Nat interrupted. “But- Sustained.” She decided. 

“Melissa, do you think everyone was practicing proper fire safety?” Eddie asked. She looked at him, suspicious. “It’s not a trap. Do you think that we might have all gotten a bit negligent with, say, keeping our blankets safely away from the fire? It was freezing in there, and I know plenty of people kept their stuff right next to it.” 

“Uh, sure.” She answered. “I saw Gen put her outfit for the next day near it, so she would have warm clothes to change into.” That was significantly more than Eddie expected to get out of the questioning.

Eddie nodded. “We might have gotten careless, to no one’s fault. Thank you, Melissa, you're good. I want to call Shauna Shipman up.” 

Shauna frowned as she walked over and sat down. Her face was set in a sneer. “You reported the fire.”

“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. 

“What were you doing when you discovered the fire?” He asked. 

“It’s a bit hard to remember through the pain of my broken nose.” Shauna snarled. 

Eddie scoffed. “And it's a bit hard to be standing up like this, y’know, with all the bruised ribs-”

“Can it. Get back to the questioning.” Nat cut them off. 

“I was journaling.” She said. 

“Were you journaling about Nat being chosen as leader earlier that night?” He crossed his arms.

“I- Yeah- how did you know?” She stuttered, confused. It was an educated guess he had gotten lucky with, that was how. 

“I saw you nearly stand up when Lottie was choosing the queen.” Eddie said, before Shauna could accuse him of snooping through her journals. “Were you angry about that?”

“No.” 

“Really? You weren’t disappointed that, after everything you went through, you weren’t picked?” Eddie pressed.

“Why would I be?” Shauna muttered.

“Why wouldn’t you? I would be.” Eddie said. “I mean, I can only imagine. That kind of disappointment might make someone upset enough to… burn everything down.” He let the implication settle. He had to sow enough doubt in the audience. It helped that he fucking hated her. 

“I lived there too, dickwad.” Shauna stared at him.

“Maybe you felt hopeless? Like there was nothing worth living for and that you needed a fair escape? I mean, especially after the baby-”

“Objection-”

“Don’t fucking talk about my baby!” Shauna snapped, grabbing Eddie by the collar. “You fucking killed him. You have no right-”

“Shauna!” Nat reprimanded. Shauna let Eddie go. Stumbling back, Eddie took a second to glance over the audience, making sure that all of them saw how her display could be connected back to his accusation. 

“Food for thought.” Eddie said, smoothing his shirt out. “Withdrawn.” He took himself out at Tai’s objection. 

Tai stormed up to Nat, whispering something. She stood next to Shauna after the brief exchange. 

“I don’t think you did it, Shauna.” Tai said. “I think you’re brave, you’re a hero who saved all of us by reporting the fire. I think you-”

“Objection.” Eddie called. “Get to the point.”

Tai glared at him. Nat sighed. “Sustained. No preaching.”

“Shauna, do you think Ben is a hero?” Tai asked. Eddie looked at Ben, confused. 

“No.”

“Why not?” Tai continued. “Wasn’t he there for you, when Eddie failed, while you were in labor?” She drew the question out, ignoring how Shauna’s face closed off in pain. Even Eddie wouldn’t have gone there. Then again, he wouldn’t have gotten the chance to. Shauna was ready to kill him after he referenced that day just once.

“No.” Shauna’s voice wavered. “He wasn’t.” Eddie sat back, biting his cheek in discomfort. 

“What did he do?” Tai asked.

“Nothing. He- He left me bleeding.” Shauna swallowed as she recalled the memory. Images of that day rushed into Eddie’s mind, and his shoulders hunched in shame. “And I- I was in so much pain, and Natalie went off to find him, and he just… he said: ‘all I ever did was press play on a VHS tape.’ And-”

“Objection.” Eddie raised his hand. “Tai, this is fucking cruel. We all know what happened that day.” He glanced at Shauna, and for just a moment, he thought he saw something thankful in her eyes as they brimmed with tears.

“Sustained.” Nat decided. “Tai, be mindful of what she’s been through. Ask something different.”

“Why would Ben have wanted to start the fire?” Tai asked. 

“‘Cause he judges us. ‘Cause he’s not one of us, and it scares him.” Shauna answered, the harsh edge back in her voice. I can’t imagine why he would be terrified, Eddie had to bite the sarcastic comment back.  “We’re here because we fought. He’s only here because, all this time, we just assumed it was the way things had to be.” Shauna stared right at Ben. Tai grinned.

“No further questions.” She yielded her time yet again. 

“Lottie Matthews.” Eddie called her up. She looked up at him, sitting on the log. “The wilderness gives us signs for whether or not It’s pleased with us, right? That’s the basis of your worship system?” 

Lottie nodded. “It takes and gives depending on what we do for It.”

“You never wanted Javi to die, did you?” Eddie continued. He had to ignore Travis’s eyes on him from the audience.

“Of course not. He wasn’t chosen.”

“Are you saying that the wilderness might have been upset that he died instead? Upset that… he was the one eaten instead of the one It chose?” Eddie suggested. It was just about the touchiest subject he could have gone for.

“Objection. You’ve literally never believed in that shit.” Tai glared at him.

“I can still make arguments based on my understanding.” Eddie retorted.

“Overruled.” Nat said.

“Do you think the fire could have been started because the wilderness was upset with us?” He asked.

“I think It was trying to reconnect with us.” Lottie responded. Eddie was taken aback. 

“Are you saying the fire was a good thing?” He asked. Maybe it was time to pivot. 

“It helped us rejoin with nature.” Lottie said. Eddie looked around at the audience. Clearly they weren’t expecting that answer, either. He assumed it would be pretty unanimous among everyone in camp that the fire was a bad thing.

“What was keeping you from starting the fire?” Eddie pressed. “A cabin of non-believers, that you wanted to convince… Now, we were in AP Euro together, if you can remember that. Wouldn’t you say it was fairly common to see churches fake or doctor miracles in order to gain more support?”

“To the last question, yes.” Lottie answered. 

“So, I repeat, what was keeping you from starting the fire?”

“I- I wouldn’t.” Lottie’s mask fell for just a second. “I would never want to hurt any of you. All of that is for It to decide.” She said.

“Sounds like exactly what Mari testified about Coach Scott.” Eddie crossed his arms. “You would never hurt us, he would never hurt us, if that’s the best argument any of us can come up with, that sounds a lot like plausible deniability- Multiple contrasting ways to interpret the same situation.” He looked around proudly. Holy shit, that kind of made sense. “No further questions.” He sat next to Ben on the bench. 

Tai called Nat to the stand, much to everyone’s confusion. It was certainly unorthodox. Nat sat on the witness seat, having discarded her crown and robe.

Tai crossed her arms. “Your Honor-”

“Nat is fine.”

“Nat, when was the last time you saw Coach Scott before today?” Tai asked.

“Uh, the day we brought Javi back.” Nat couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as she said it.

Tai nodded. “Before or after we drew cards?” Ben hadn’t drawn cards with the rest of them. He had left earlier in the day, apparently returned after Javi was brought back, and then disappeared. That was the last time most of them had seen him

“After.” Nat clarified.

“Where did you see him?” Tai asked. 

“Out- Outside the cabin.”

“What was he doing?”

Nat looked up. “Sharpening his crutches, for the snow, I- I guess.” She stuttered. 

“So he had planned to run away that day, run away and never look back, right?” Tai pressed. Eddie knew that she had to have known Nat had seen him. There was no other reason she would be called to the stand. 

“Right.” Nat answered.

“Why did Shauna see him near the cabin the day the fire was set, then?” Eddie felt his stomach drop. He looked at Ben, who had paled. 

“So he hung around the cabin for a few days?” Nat raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Right, he leaves the cabin the day Javi dies, wanders around the area for four days, and on the last day anyone sees him, a fire breaks out.” Tai shifted on her feet. “When the fire started, what did you think could have caused it?”

“I- Anything. A spark from the fireplace, a candle falling over-”

“But not Coach Scott?”

“N-No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he wasn’t around to ask.” Nat responded, exasperated.

“But you knew he was alive! You tried to lead Misty away from one of his snares while we were looking for Mari! And quite frankly, I want to ask Eddie how he never realized Ben was out there.” Tai looked down at him. “You’re in the woods all day, you never saw something suspicious?”

“Objection!” Eddie called. “I’m not on trial.” He shot Tai a glare before looking back at Misty, who was staring blankly ahead. Shauna crossed her arms, a smug look on her face. 

“You knew he was out there, and you gave orders not to search for him anyway!” Tai was yelling at Nat now. “And this trial is just another attempt to absolve him of what he did!”

“Alright! Yes, I knew he was out there. But I gave those orders because he didn’t want to be found! He wanted nothing to do with us!” Nat’s lip quivered. “He’s not a threat- I just wanted to live in peace.”

“Not a threat? How is that for you to decide?” Shauna stood up. They had abandoned court procedure entirely. 

The courtroom devolved into chaos. Some were hurling accusations at Nat, others were demanding clarification on the timeline of events. Nat and Tai were having an argument that couldn’t be heard over the yelling. Swirling over the voices, in Eddie’s mind, he heard Jackie laughing at them. She was mocking them, or him. In an attempt to shut her up, he grabbed the nearest cup and hit it against the table, calling for order like he was the judge. Eventually they settled. Eddie looked back at Tai.

“The prosecution rests.” Tai announced, walking back to her seat.

Eddie stood, everyone’s eyes on him. “I’d like to call Coach Benjamin Scott to the stand for questioning.” He said, unable to mask the way his voice shook. It was Ben’s last chance to speak for himself. Eddie just needed to get him to say the right things.

“Why did you want to become a teacher?” Eddie asked. Ben looked at the ground, his hair in his eyes.

“I never wanted to become a teacher.” He mumbled.

“Why’d you take the job?” Eddie tried to ignore Tai’s snort from the audience.

“I- I blew out my ACL in college, lost my scholarship, and needed a way to make money.” Ben answered. “Soccer was… pretty much the only thing I knew.”

Eddie nodded. “Why’d you choose Wiskayok? I mean, you’d been working there for almost a decade.”

Ben glanced up. “You all were in elementary school when I started working at WHS. I don’t know if you remember, but the soccer program was… pretty shitty.” He said honestly. “I was a D3 athlete who couldn’t play anymore, but I knew the game.”

Eddie turned to face Ben. He wasn’t done talking.

“I went into it thinking I would move on, get offered something better, but the school started putting more funding into the soccer department, until you guys came along, and all of a sudden, we were undefeated in the state.” He chuckled. “And the job didn’t change my life, you guys did. I mean, while I was in the caves, the only songs I could remember were your warmup tracks.”

A few of the girls chuckled at that. Eddie smiled sadly. “So you eventually grew to enjoy teaching?” He asked.

“Of course.” Ben nodded. “You guys were hard workers, and funny, and absolutely fucking relentless. And, uh… You were underdogs. I like those. I grew up one, and stayed one. But I could see your futures were so much bigger than mine ever could’ve been.” 

“And you would never want to destroy that, right?” Eddie knew that what he was saying was real, even if he was guilty. 

“No- If… If I wanted to hurt you guys, I wouldn’t’ve put my career on the line and pretended I got blackout drunk and puked in seven different rooms the night before we played New Brunswick. I would have turned half of you in.” There was quiet laughter from the audience. “Look, my whole family… sucked. My parents barely bothered to check that I was home once a week, and couldn’t have cared less about what happened to me. I- I wanted to look out for you all the way they didn’t.” 

The switch in tone had everyone paying attention. Eddie sat on his heels, looking up at Ben as he talked. He didn’t need to ask any more questions. Ben was talking from the heart, making a better case than Eddie could have.  

“I loved you guys, and I cared about you guys, and then we crashed here and- Christ, you cut off my leg and wouldn’t listen to me anymore. I told Laura Lee not to fly that plane, I told Jackie to stay inside, and everyone ignored me.” Ben’s voice shook. “I- Eventually, I just couldn’t do any of it anymore, and I stopped talking, and I ignored you the same way you did with me. I’m an adult, and I acted like a child, like the way my parents would’ve been, and that is embarrassing.”

The crowd was sniffling, looking at their hands in their laps, ashamed and reduced to a group of children again. 

“I was a coward. I left you all, and I shouldn’t have. I was so scared that I would be next, I didn’t even think about what would happen to the rest of you.” Ben’s eyes were full of tears. “Shauna. I can never go back to do what I should have. You needed me, and I left you, and that is shameful. And I am so fucking sorry.”

Eddie looked up at Shauna. Her lip quivered for a second, she swallowed her emotions, and looked away. 

“I’m in awe of all of you. Kind of always have been.” Ben continued. “What you’ve built is incredible, and I may not understand what you believe, but- God- I would never try to hurt you for it. You all- Fuck, sorry- I could never hurt you guys. I could never live with myself if I did.” Ben finished his speech. 

Eddie’s eyes stung, and he looked at the ground. Either Ben was an incredible liar, or he had been telling the truth earlier. I thought I was saving you. The words echoed in Eddie’s mind. Something had driven Ben to the point where he was convinced that killing them would save them. It was so fucked up. He had to wipe away the tears in his eyes before he stood up, facing Ben again. 

“No further questions. Thank you.” He said. The gavel clicked against the wood as Eddie rested his case. Ben stayed on the witness stool. He looked at Eddie, sincere misery and regret behind his eyes. Eddie had to look away. 

—

“Those who find Coach guilty, raise your hands.” Nat said. The voting had begun. Eddie kept his hand clenched in a fist at his side. “Those who find Coach innocent, raise your hands.” And Eddie knew it was untrue, but his hand raised, along with a majority of the group. Nat scanned over the hands in the air. Her face fell. 

“Okay. That- That’s not a two-thirds majority. Again.” She called. 

It was excruciating. They must have voted ten or more times, all producing ratios that didn’t fit the required majority. Very few people changed their minds. One more time. One more time. One more time. Eddie’s vote never changed. 

“One more time.” Nat’s voice was weary. “Those who find Coach guilty, raise your hands.” The same people as always.

“He tried to fucking kill us!” Shauna slammed her fist on the table, startling everyone. Ben looked at the ground, still on the witness stool. “He set the only shelter we had on fire, while we were inside!”

“Trial’s over, Shauna!” Nat tried to quiet her.

“Do any of you believe any of those apologies he gave? He’s trying to save his own ass!” Shauna yelled. “Anyone who find him guilty, raise your fucking hand!” She snarled. 

Eddie couldn’t meet the eyes of those who were convinced by her. Lottie, Akilah, Gen, Robin, Britt, and Tai. Their hands rose hesitantly. Eddie looked into Shauna’s eyes as his hand remained in place. It was a matter of principle now. Nat looked around desperately. Misty’s hand rose slowly, and Nat had to turn away to wipe the tears from her eyes. 

“That’s the needed majority.” Shauna said. 

“I know.” Nat said hoarsely.

“Then give the ruling.” Shauna crossed her arms. Nat closed her eyes and turned to Ben. He nodded before she even said anything.

Nat had to take a few breaths, and even then, the words sounded like they were fighting their way out. “By majority decision… on the charges of arson, kidnapping, and attempted murder, we find you, Coach Scott, guilty.” Eddie was out of his seat and walking away into the woods before she even hit the gavel against the rotting wooden boards. 

Chapter Text

“Ben.” Eddie said, opening up the gate to the animal pen. Ben looked up tiredly, his eyes softening as he saw Eddie’s face. He had been kept in the animal pen for the night, as the group deliberated. Eddie wasn’t welcome in their conversation. 

“Ed. Finally dropped the Coach , did ya?” He responded. Eddie shrugged. 

“Doesn't mean much anymore.” He sat next to the man. Eddie leaned against the mossy log and rested his arms on his knees. 

There was a silence between them, the kind of silence where birdsong melted into a chorus of static and the rustling of leaves matched the ever present noise in Eddie’s head. Eddie’s neck prickled and the pit in his stomach that had been there since Mari first got back seemed to be eating its way through his organs. He picked at his nails. 

“Why did you try so hard to defend me?” Ben asked.

Eddie stared at the opposite end of the animal pen, biting his lip. “You’re still my friend.” He said. After everything, after the confession of guilt, after the death sentence, Ben would always be a friend that he had made. Eddie was quiet for a moment. “I knew you were alive. I’m sorry I couldn't do more for you today. I’m sorry I couldn't find a way to keep them from coming for you.” He couldn't meet Ben’s eyes. 

“I tried to kill you.” 

“You… weren’t in your right mind.” Eddie bit his cheek. He had given up on being mad at Ben for it. Maybe it was for the best, like Lottie had said, to get out of a cabin filled with so many awful memories. He wanted to scream at the fact that her reasoning was starting to make sense to him. 

“There isn’t an excuse- Dammit, Eddie. Let me apologize properly.” Ben said frustratedly.

“I don’t care about that!” Eddie snapped. “No one died, no one got hurt. But they’re gonna kill you. They’re gonna kill you, and if I had done a better fucking job they wouldn’t- They wouldn’t have even found you if I had- had done anything. Anything.”

Eddie felt a hand on his shoulder. “You know, I was never making it out of here.” Ben said, like he had accepted it long ago. Eddie shook his head, his eyes on the ground. Bullshit. “It's not your fault. None of this is.” The man added. Eddie would have protested that, explained what he could have done differently, if it wasn't for the fact his throat felt like it was being wrung. He swallowed whatever emotions were built up there, and looked over at Ben.

And what Ben did next was more painful than anything, he smiled. His eyes betrayed his exhaustion, his matted beard covered his lips, and grime buried itself in the wrinkles around his face, but he smiled, trying to comfort Eddie in his own last hours. 

It was the same smile that he gave Eddie when Eddie had come to him a year ago, asking for advice with Travis. It was the same look in his eyes that Eddie had seen a week after Jackie died, when Eddie had come back from the woods with stinging arms and wet eyes that no one would comment on. It was a pitying look that said that there was nothing more to be done, and a thousand other things, and Eddie didn’t want to hear any of them. 

Eddie felt tears prickle at his eyes, and he looked away. “It’s not fair.” He muttered. Ben hummed. 

“Nothing about this is fair.” He responded. It was such a levelheaded answer, it drove him insane. Eddie extinguished whatever explosive emotion was bubbling in his chest and felt the tears dry back up. 

“Ed.”

“Mhm?”

“I’m sorry for leaving you. I left you the second Jackie died and it's been killing me.” Ben said. So he was still hellbent on apologizing. And Eddie couldn’t handle it.

“You left all of us. It's not personal, and I don't blame you.” Eddie focused on tearing away his overgrown nails. 

“No, you're my friend. You were a friend and I stopped being there. I just- I should've been a better guide for you.”

“So are you my friend or my dad?” Eddie asked flatly. 

“I’m supposed to be a coach. I was supposed to help you all navigate this, and I checked out, and I can't ever forgive myself for it.” Ben said, miserably. 

“I’m not five.”

“Eddie, you're not even an adult.” 

Eddie paused. He would be seventeen in a few months. But it felt like he had aged decades. A duckling waddled up to him, pecking curiously at his feet. 

“I can still manage.” He said finally. 

“I just-”

“Oh my fucking God, just stop.” Eddie hit the dirt next to him in frustration. “There’s nothing you can apologize for that’s gonna change anything. Just stop.” 

It was an awful feeling. It was like Ben was holding reminders of every time he had fucked up in front of Eddie, to hurt him over and over. Eddie didn’t care that Ben had ‘left’ him, or that he had burned down the cabin. He had come to the animal pen to make sure that the last few hours Ben had to live were spent with someone familiar. But maybe he should have just gotten Nat to do it. Because, funnily enough, Eddie didn’t like thinking about the fact that Ben was just as fucked up as the rest of them. Or, maybe the fact he was saying sorry at all meant that he wasn’t. All that confused him. The confusion shortened his temper, and he needed Ben to shut up.

Ben was quiet. After a while sitting in silence, Akilah joined them with a goat in her arms. She ignored Ben and Eddie, and knelt with the kid, soothing its bleats. Ben watched her, and Eddie kept his eyes on the sky. It was drizzling lightly, barely a mist.

“Is, uh, is his mother the one you found dead yesterday?” Ben asked her. Akilah nodded. 

“He looks pretty young.” Ben continued. “Is he weaned yet? If not, he’s gonna need special feeding.”

Eddie glanced at Akilah. She looked back at him, uncomfortable. She said nothing.

“My- My mom used to foster kittens, so… I know it can be tricky when they’re so little.” Ben tried to get Akilah to talk.

“We have a feeding tube.” She said shortly. We do? “We found it in your stuff.” We did?

“Smart. I never knew you were so good with animals, Akilah.” Ben said. Akilah smiled politely, then went back to petting the goat. “Do… Do you have any idea what they’re gonna do with me?” He asked after a moment. And that was when Eddie stood up and walked out without a word. 

Maybe it was childish. Maybe it was cruel. It was definitely cruel. But it was too painful to listen to anything out of Ben’s mouth, Eddie realized. Fuck whatever he had been thinking when he walked in there. There was a sick voice in the back of his mind the whole time he was talking to him, saying: You’re talking to a dead man. You’re already talking to ghosts. That’s all he is. 

And every word from Ben made that phrase repeat. 

—

Eddie and his smoke cloud were pulled from Nat’s hut after the group had finally made their decision. And their decision was to draw cards first. The king of hearts would choose who would shoot Ben dead. As he found his place in the circle in between Tai and Gen, he noticed the way Shauna eyed him, Nat, and Travis. The original hunting trio, objectively the best shots, though Gen wasn’t far behind. But he knew the real reason she was staring them down. They were connected to Ben, and he could tell Shauna was gnawing at the bit for one of them to be the one to kill him. 

Eddie had always been better with the traps. He was a slow shot, even if it was precise. With anything skittish, he would miss nearly every time. Travis’s aim was good, and his speed was better. His hunting skills were sorely missed, but he had lost rifle privileges when he tried to blow his brains out on their approximation of April twenty-fourth; Javi’s thirteenth birthday. And Nat was the best of all of them, could reload the rifle fast enough it sounded automatic, and hit almost anything she aimed at with deadly accuracy. She had been Shauna’s favorite hunter -among other reasons- due to most of her kills being headshots, so there was never any lead to dig out of meaty areas. Though, as antler queen, she was too busy putting out spats and taking care of other responsibilities to hunt. 

Other such tangent thoughts held Eddie’s mind hostage while he took the cards from Van as she passed. A four of spades. They were using the whole deck, for some reason. A king of clubs. He had smoked enough to be unsteady on his feet, which, for lavender and chamomile, was an impressive amount of dedication to the art of self destruction. 

He drew a seven of diamonds, and Van moved over to Tai. Tai took the next card, and looked at it for longer than usual, her shoulders dropping. She flipped the card around and showed it to the rest of the group. The king of hearts stared back at all of them, freezing everyone in place. Apparently it didn’t matter what the stakes were, a card draw would always come with a powerless feeling of relief and guilt, once everyone else realized they weren’t chosen. Eddie looked at the cards in his hand, then over at Tai. Only one away. Holy shit, that could’ve been me. There was a shift in the group’s mood, and Eddie realized that he had said that out loud. Or whispered it, at least. He looked around, dropped his cards to the ground with a humorless laugh, and walked away. 

Eddie lay on his back in his bed, listening to the rain. No one bothered him. Subconsciously, he knew that he should be just as desolate as everyone else, but it was hard to get that way when every thought he had was slowed by at least two-hundred percent. The ever-present pain in his side was significantly less sickening, and he was able to stretch his back out. 

“This would be so much better, literally anywhere else.” Eddie mumbled to himself. It was a nice high that was wasted by what was happening around him. “Any other… circumstance.” He talked to himself a lot if he was alone and high. It made him feel less lonely and less like he had a problem. 

“My eighteenth birthday party?” A voice asked. Eddie smiled, the memory coming back to him. 

“Yeah.” He answered. “That’s- That was a better circumstance.” Jackie’s birthday party, his first and only rager, one he only got into because his three friends had gotten an invitation from Kevyn Tan -now that was a name he hadn’t thought about in a long time- and had dragged him along. And, of course he had gotten in because it was Jackie’s party. But, she had spent the night with her arms wrapped around Jeff, so Eddie probably could have snuck in and stayed there without her noticing. Eddie had completely greened out that night, and had to stay the night at his best friend Zach’s house. 

“How’s he doing?” Eddie wondered out loud.

“Pff- Don’t ask me.” Jackie said. “You are so shitfaced right now, oh my God.”

Eddie laughed, before stopping abruptly. Jackie was dead. He sat up. Jackie was dead, but she was sitting there, next to him on the bed. 

“Uh, hi?” She said, confused. Like she was the confused one. 

Eddie felt a jolt of fear that made him feel like he had been pushed off a cliff. The intense feeling was so jarring after God-knew-how-long of complete numbness, his first instinct was, regrettably, to hit her. Despite Jackie being well within his reach when he swung, by the time his hand would have hit her, she was too far away, and his fingers grabbed at air. 

“Jeez, you got a problem?” Jackie asked. “How do you even get this fucked-up off of-”

Eddie shushed her, getting to his feet. That was the problem. He wasn’t that fucked-up off of fucking lavender and chamomile. He backed up towards the doorway, shaking his head. Jackie looked at him, sad and confused. And Eddie didn’t want to leave her, except it wasn’t her. 

“It’s not her.” He muttered, stumbling through the camp. It was deserted. His vision went dark with the sudden movement, and he leaned against someone’s hut to wait it out. “It’s not her. It’s not her.” He repeated like a madman. 

Eddie jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around, ready to swat Jackie’s ghost away, but Lottie’s face was even more shocking. He looked at the support beam that he had used to regain his balance, and he saw the unmistakable circular doorway of Lottie’s hut. He looked back at Lottie.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

He stumbled over his words, unable to get a single coherent thought out. He couldn’t stop thinking about how solid Jackie had appeared in his hut, clean clothes, styled hair, a fresh manicure, and perfect makeup. A version of Jackie so far away from anything he could imagine after so long in the wilderness, it hurt his head to even think about.

“What happened?” Lottie asked again. Maybe if Eddie’s mind wasn’t so scrambled, he would’ve told her to fuck off or ignored her. 

“I- I keep seeing her.” He said. Lottie’s eyebrow raised.

“Who?” 

“Jackie. I keep- She keeps…” Eddie trailed off, trying to read Lottie’s face. She looked up at the sky.

“Eddie, I think you should take a walk with me.” She said, eventually.

“No- No, you’re…” Eddie stuttered. “Not you.” 

“We won’t be alone.” She reassured him. “But I think you can help me with something. It’ll be quick, I promise.”

—

Before Eddie even really knew what was happening, he was walking through the woods with Lottie, Akilah, and Travis. As his mind started to clear, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly nervous about what was going to happen. Lottie was whispering things to Akilah, and Travis asked to come along once he realized he couldn’t convince Lottie to let Eddie go back to camp. Maybe something deep down inside him was also curious, and kept him from running away.

The sound of a distant gunshot startled Eddie. It was just Tai practicing, like she had been doing all day since she drew the king. The actual execution would take place at sunset. They weren’t missing anything. 

“Isn't this kind of… dumb?” Akilah asked. “Like, all we’re doing is getting high off of gas. It doesn’t mean it’s true.” They had reached the caves.

“I think the gas is a conduit. Like the Oracle of Delphi.” Lottie answered. “The gas opened her up to the truth-”

“So the crackheads in Newark are just… blessed with divine visions?” Eddie interrupted. “I mean, the gas’s just a drug, you know?”

“Well, of course it is.” Lottie conceded. “But I think what we’ve found out here can help us hear what we normally wouldn’t. Your encounter with Jackie earlier today would support that, wouldn’t it?” 

Eddie shook his head, but wasn’t able to think of anything that would get Lottie to drop it. Admitting that he was hearing things and seeing people and dreaming cryptic things while completely sober would only interest her more. 

“You saw Jackie?” Akilah asked. Eddie didn’t say anything. 

“Would you like to join Akilah in the caves?” Lottie offered Eddie. 

“No.” Travis spoke for him. “I- uh, when she passes out, we’ll need as many people as possible to carry her back.” He reasoned. Eddie nodded along. 

Lottie looked at Akilah, whose eyes were fixed on the opening of the cave again. She was whispering to herself, mumbling encouraging words. 

“It’ll protect you.” Lottie said, her focus on Akilah. Eddie glanced at Travis gratefully.

“I know, I know.” Akilah held up a hand. “I just… need a second.”

“This is bullshit.” Travis whispered to Eddie, his eyes on Akilah’s nervous expression. Eddie nodded. “Hey, maybe we should call this off.” He said, loud enough for Lottie to hear it. Lottie turned around.

“You said she was ready.” Lottie’s head tilted. “You said the wilderness showed her to you.”

Travis said nothing. Maybe it should’ve been easier to walk away, but Eddie’s feet were stuck in place. 

“Maybe you should encourage her.” Lottie said, after it was clear Travis wouldn’t be saying anything else. “She trusts you.” 

There was a flicker of a pained expression on Travis’s face. He hadn’t done anything to earn her trust. The afternoon he had admitted Eddie was right, Travis had told him that he had pointed Lottie in Akilah’s direction to get her off his back. And it had worked, until Eddie got involved. The guilt was palpable as Travis walked up to Akilah and started a quiet conversation. 

“What did Jackie say to you?” Lottie asked.

“She- She just appeared while I was talking to myself.” Eddie said, caught off guard by the question and still not having the rationale to lie or ignore it. “It… It was just, like, a reminder of home, memories of when she was still around.”

“The cabin?” Lottie asked. Eddie looked at her in confusion.

“No- My home. My house. Before the crash.” He said, anger rising along his spine. The cabin was never home. The wilderness would never become home. The fact she was so far removed from reality for that to be her first thought was jarring and rage-inducing. Before he could say anything else, he saw Akilah start walking into the cave. He followed her, alongside Travis, to get away from Lottie.

Inside the dark tunnels, Eddie remembered what claustrophobia felt like. Crouching down, the flame in his lantern sputtered as they made their way to whatever point Lottie deduced they needed to stay at. She tied a rope around Akilah’s waist. 

“The second you pass out, we’ll be there.” Travis reassured her. Akilah’s eyes darted around the cave, and she took a few deep breaths. 

“When the rope stops moving, we’ll run in and grab you.” Lottie said. Like a canary in a mine. “I know you can do this, Akilah.” She whispered. 

Akilah took a hesitant step into the darkness, then another. Slowly, she disappeared from view. They didn’t know exactly how far underground the gas started leaking, but Eddie worried that where they were standing wasn’t exactly the safest place to be, either. The air was already thin and the sap lanterns crackled. He, Lottie, and Travis watched the rope like hawks, but it kept unfurling as Akilah went deeper. 

“What happens if she goes too deep, and we can’t reach her in time?” Eddie asked. 

There was a moment of silence before Lottie turned to him. “The wilderness will protect Its prophets.”

And that was such a bullshit answer, Eddie would have started arguing about it, if it wasn’t for the fact that the rope’s movement slowed before it stopped completely. Akilah had passed out. 

“Give her a second.” Lottie said. Travis shook his head.

“No. I’m going in.” He started off into the darkness. And Eddie followed suit, rushing after him as they all pulled their masks over their faces. Travis held the rope, guiding himself to Akilah’s position. The lanterns would extinguish in the low oxygen and thin the air out further, so the three were quickly plunged into darkness as they left them behind. Lottie and Eddie followed the sound of Travis’s footsteps and held their hands out to feel for the walls of the cave as it narrowed. 

Eventually they stopped. Between the noise of dripping water and the three panting for breath through their masks, they could hear Akilah sputtering for air. Lottie found her, and even though they stung with the gas, Eddie’s eyes started adjusting to the darkness. He and Travis rushed to her side and immediately hoisted Akilah up. Eddie lifted her legs while Travis supported her shoulders. Together, they started back the way they came. 

The air was still thin when Eddie felt his mask slipping off his nose, then off his face entirely. Maybe it was a combination of his panic and the fact he was still a little high, but he was stumbling after a few breaths. Akilah’s legs slipped out of his hands and he was torn between trying to catch them and putting his mask back on properly. Thankfully, he wasn’t tasked with making such a difficult choice, because before he could, he fell to his knees. The world spun violently before going dark. 

—

Eddie opened his eyes when he heard music. It was playing from a distance, echoing through the forest. True Confessions, which he hadn’t heard since… since that day on the beach. The painful memories of Javi’s chatter, the simplicity of everything, the hope that they would get rescued, Eddie needed to find the source of the noise. He had forgotten his favorite songs. He had forgotten the lyrics and parts of the melodies. Ever since his cassette box, which he had kept with Jackie’s bag along with the other sentimental, unnecessary things, had burned in the fire, he would be hard pressed to recall most music. But the lyrics were clear, and the song came back to him. 

He stepped into an open clearing of tall grass, and saw Ben sitting there in the distance. He looked up and waved at Eddie. 

“Finally found batteries for this thing!” Ben called over to him, smiling. “C’mon, the sun’s warmer out here!” The upbeat tune matched the warm breeze that swept through the trees. So much of Eddie’s life had revolved around music before the crash. The friends he made, the places he went, it all depended on whatever bands he listened to. And when they left, the music stayed. The music had always stayed, until the crash, and the death of his walkman, and the death of Crystal, and the death of anyone’s will to preserve any aspect of their lives from before. In the clearing -or, maybe it was closer to a field- Ben hummed along to the song. 

Eddie sped up his walking, until he was jogging, then running through the grass. Ben wasn’t tied to a log. He wasn’t imprisoned. Eddie laughed at the relief that washed over him. 

His shoe caught on a hidden rock. It had been a long time coming, with the sole and toe having partially separated ages ago. Eddie stumbled, trying to catch himself, before falling to the ground. 

—

In what felt like a blink, Eddie was back in the cave, gasping for air. The music was gone. The warm sun on his skin had been replaced with the stifling humidity of the tunnel. And Ben wasn’t free. Eddie’s eyes watered with the pain of his burning lungs. 

“Thank God.” Travis’s voice came to Eddie as he tried and failed to sit up. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” Travis held his hands as he whispered it over and over. Eddie looked over at Lottie, who was talking to Akilah. They were lying down pretty close to each other, close enough for Eddie to see the way Akilah’s eyebrows scrunched at the pain that was also clearly making her lungs feel like they were disintegrating. 

“It’s okay.” Eddie managed, then had to clear his throat. “I’m fine.”

Eddie managed to sit up with the help of Travis. Lottie looked over.

“I told you this was a bad fucking idea.” Travis spat. 

“We can get a better idea of what It wants if we have two people communicating with-”

“You’re the one who didn’t move him!” Travis whisper-yelled, like Eddie wasn’t meant to hear it. “Christ- What if I couldn’t get back in time? Were you not gonna try to help at all?” 

Lottie ignored Travis and crouched by Eddie, in between him and Akilah. “What did you see?” She asked. 

Eddie swallowed, a dryness in his throat. He had had a vision. But everything he had been through in the last few hours was a result of telling Lottie about his visions. He didn’t know what she was looking for, and he wouldn’t allow himself to be used again to find the answer. 

“Nothing.” He lied. “I didn’t have a dream.” Lottie’s face fell. She looked like she was about to start questioning if he was telling the truth, when Akilah started coughing. Lottie’s attention was off of him again. 

“We should get you standing.” She said to Akilah, helping her up. “It- It’ll help to get back to fresh air.” With Akilah clinging to her shoulder, Lottie turned to Travis and Eddie. “You should stand too. We need to get back as soon as possible. I think I know what It wants.” And then she was off to the surface, stealing the rope and one of the lanterns.

Standing was easier said than done. As Eddie and Travis finally made it out of the cave, they struggled to catch up to Lottie and Akilah. Eddie had refused to be carried, and had refused to lean on Travis as they navigated the uneven, slippery cave, so his steps were still shaky and uneven. No one filled him in on why they needed to rush back to camp. Eddie assumed that when he had passed out, Travis had gotten Akilah back to the spot they both woke up in, then ran back to get Eddie. If Lottie hadn’t helped, then she either stayed by him or followed Travis to a gas-free spot in the cave. And she was far too coherent and steady on her feet to have stood next to Eddie for so long. She must have left him, which was why Travis was so upset. Why? So he might have a better chance at giving her a dream she could interpret? He shuddered at the thought that all of them were so expendable to her. The wilderness will protect Its prophets. That must be what she told herself to justify it. Did it make it less reprehensible, if she thought Eddie would be safe? It’s not like I died, Eddie thought. He didn’t know how to feel. 

The yellow light of near-dusk cast long shadows through the trees. 

“Fuck you!” Ben’s distant yell told them how close to camp they were. It also told them that they needed to hurry. Something about Akilah’s vision meant that they needed to save Ben. Eddie’s mind was hazy as they started running. His head still hurt, his side was starting to ache again, and, worst of all, he was exhausted unlike anything he had felt in a long time.

They crashed into the camp as Tai rested her finger on the trigger. Travis tackled Ben to the ground as the crack of a gunshot rang out. 

“What the fuck, Lottie?” Tai stepped back. Eddie ran to Travis and Ben to make sure neither of them had been shot. Travis was fine. Ben was shaking and crying, but he was fine. Akilah started coughing as she joined Lottie, keeping the crowd away. Eddie didn’t know they were holding the execution so early, and without everyone’s attendance. He guessed that might have been intentional on Nat’s part. 

“We can’t kill him- not yet.” Lottie panted. “He has a purpose. Akilah saw it.”

“He’s our bridge home.” Akilah said. Travis and Eddie helped Ben sit back up, then to his foot.

There was a collective whisper of ‘Home?’ from the crowd, as the girls began to cry, in relief or shame or anger. They had all given up on going home, and so few people still devoted themselves to Lottie’s ideas, but the word carried a weight that no one could deny. There was no reason to say it, unless someone was sure. 

—

Eddie was told to go back to his hut, as Nat convened with Shauna, Melissa, Lottie, Akilah, Tai, and Van. He listened. It had been a fucked up day. He didn’t have any energy to argue with Nat, or insist he should stay as they talked about what to do with Ben. Maybe it was pathetic, how quickly he resigned to powerlessness. Maybe it was more pathetic how he assumed that Nat’s role meant anything, because she never would have suggested whatever Shauna and Melissa had done. Eddie didn’t ask Travis what had happened to Ben when he crawled into their bed. He didn’t tell him about his vision in the caves. He didn’t speak as he held his blanket over his ears to drown out the screams from the animal pen. 

Chapter Text

The morning sun streamed through the trees at an angle as Eddie walked up to Ben. He was tied down, feverish, and had been up all night. Lord knew they all knew that. Eddie was there to figure out what they had done to Ben, and, with the permission of Nat, do something about it. 

He didn’t bother greeting the man, and Ben didn’t say anything as Eddie knelt down. There was a pool of drying blood on the straw floor of the pen, right underneath Ben’s heel. For a moment, Eddie was sure that they wouldn’t have done something so cruel, until he remembered Shauna and Melissa were the ones who had done it. Melissa had been slowly but surely getting Shauna to warm up to her, Eddie could see them sitting together most nights, before they both went back to Shauna’s hut together. 

Carefully, Eddie lifted Ben’s leg from the ground. Maybe he should have gone with a different approach.

“What the fuck?” Ben gasped in pain. He nearly kicked Eddie in the head. 

“Nat’s letting me bandage you up.” Eddie said. “Just… Let me do this so I can get out of here.”

Ben looked suspiciously at the things tied up in a cloth next to Eddie, then at Eddie himself, then screwed his eyes shut in pain. His breathing was ragged and dry. Eddie figured that might have been the case. He handed him a tin of water, which Ben accepted gratefully. 

Eddie took a better look at Ben’s ankle. The bloodstained sock and vomit-inducing slice taken out of his heel made it clear that Ben’s Achilles had been cut. Nearly clean through. He figured he didn’t need to state the obvious. So he grabbed a water bottle and started cleaning the blood away. Ben hissed and groaned and ground his teeth, but thankfully, he didn’t move his leg away. 

Eddie glanced back at his needle and thread sitting on the cloth, then to Ben. He figured he had to ask. “Do you want me trying to sew it back together?” 

Ben looked up at him in horror. Probably more at the idea that the sixteen year old was his best chance at a functional foot. He didn’t say anything. 

“Alright. You have three options.” Eddie decided to simplify it, counting on his fingers. “I can do nothing and just wrap it up, I can stitch the skin up, or I can try to sew your tendons back together.”

“The third… They wouldn’t- They wouldn’t allow you to do that.” Ben said. 

“They wouldn’t. If I put your heel back together, you won't be able to tell anyone.” Eddie looked at the ground. “Even if you were able to walk again. Even if you never walked again.”

There was a moment of silence as Ben clearly thought about his options. 

“I’ll never walk again. Even if you do it.” He said what they were both thinking. Eddie nodded. “Just… save me the trouble and sew the skin up.”

“‘Kay.” Eddie kept Ben’s foot from the ground as he grabbed the needle and thread. Ben wouldn’t look at him, so Eddie figured there was no reason to announce that he was about to stab him with a needle. 

Ben bit the sleeve of his shirt and let out a slow breath as the needle connected the corner of the gash. Eddie made the knot, then tuned the noise out as he pretended that he was just patching up a rip in a pair of his jeans. The blood started to flow again, as Eddie’s needle dipped into the tendons and back through the skin to get a proper grip. There was about a centimeter of distance to close up at the worst of the cut. It made Eddie want to puke. 

When he made that final knot, Eddie poured water over Ben’s heel again, patted it dry, then wrapped it up before Ben could start twitching in pain. He had to remove Ben’s shoe and wrap around his foot, so that he wouldn’t be able to flex the broken muscle and rip the stitches. Finished with the surgery, Eddie placed Ben’s foot back on the ground and stood up, rinsing his hands off and gathering his things. It would be easier for both of them If Ben was alone while the pain ran its course. Hopefully, it would be alleviated in the long run. Maybe if Eddie hadn’t been so weak the night prior, he would’ve been able to save Ben from all that pain in the first place. 

“Nat’s gonna be by later today with your lunch.” He said, unable to look Ben in the eyes. 

—

It only took about four weeks to get cold. The early-fall wind rustled the leaves in the trees and dulled the warmth of the sun. Eddie lent his raincoat to Travis for the morning, but as a soft chill nipped at his arms, already covered by long sleeves, he found himself staring at that green and brown bomber jacket. It sat in his duffel bag, taking up space. Of course Eddie would have to wear it sometime, but he hadn’t touched it in months. 

When the cabin burned, the jacket had been hanging up, frozen in the meat shed. When they tried to reheat and dry it off, the ice in the fabric would just melt and freeze again. It wasn’t until the snow melted and spring came that Eddie had been able to wash and dry it properly. They were doing so much physical labor to construct the camp, though, that he hadn’t needed it. As it got colder, he knew he didn’t have a choice. 

He took the jacket from his bag and sat with it in his lap. The dusty yellow cuffs were stained with dirt and blood. And, as much as Eddie tried to convince himself it must have been splatter from his time hunting, he knew that the blood dried into the fibers was Javi’s. The image of raw, bloody lines on Javi’s wrists from where the fraying rope had bound his hands to that log still stuck in Eddie’s mind. 

Nat opened the door up to Eddie and Travis’s hut. Eddie looked up. They had recently replaced the curtain with log planks. 

“Hey.” Eddie greeted her. She smiled tiredly, sitting next to him on his bed. “You need anything?”

Nat shook her head. “Nah, just… Just been thinking a lot, wanted to say hi.” Her tone betrayed something deeper than that, and Eddie had an idea of what it could have been.

“Ben?” Eddie asked. She nodded. 

“He… He keeps asking me to kill him. Keeps trying to convince me why I should.” She said. After his first week in confinement, Ben had started asking to be put out of his misery. Eddie had to be kept out of the pen after that. They all knew he would do it. 

“I assume Lottie’s still sure about keeping him around?” He said, fidgeting with the zipper of his jacket.

“Akilah too. She’s… fuck, I don’t even know anymore, Ed.” Nat put her head in her hands. Eddie was quiet. “He just started saying all this shit about burning the cabin down, how he wanted us dead, and- I don’t know. It fucked with me. I’m not giving him his meals anymore.”

So Ben was that desperate, to admit to the fire. Of course, Nat didn’t believe him. Eddie was pretty sure most of the camp wouldn’t believe him. But Eddie knew, and it was killing him. 

“Whatever.” Nat looked up. “I- Um- It doesn’t matter.” She looked down at his jacket. She knew how he had debated getting rid of it entirely, and she had been the one to convince him not to.

“It’s getting colder.” Eddie said, explaining before she could say anything. She nodded. Eddie paused. “I just… feel weird about wearing it-”

“Because it was Javi’s.” 

“-because it killed him.” 

Both of them said their ending to that sentence at the same time. Nat looked at Eddie, confused. 

“What?” She asked. 

“‘Cause- ‘Cause it killed him.” Eddie repeated what he had said. Nat tilted her head. She looked like she was thinking. Her eyes lingered on Eddie for a moment. “And I gave it to him. So I...”

“It wasn’t your fault, Eddie.” Nat said quietly. Eddie looked at the jacket in his hands. He shook his head.

“No. No, Nat, you don’t get it. He drowned. If- If this coat hadn’t weighed him down, you guys might have found him. Might have been able to save him.” Eddie said. He heard Nat inhale shakily next to him.

“How… do you think he died?” She asked. What kind of question is that?

“He drowned.” Eddie said, confused. He didn’t know why Nat wanted to hear his theories. “The coat- It weighed him down- Why would you…” 

“Eddie…” She started. “He- We watched him drown.” Nat’s eyes met his for just a second, before she looked away. Eddie’s neck prickled, and a sharp ringing started in his head the way it always did when he realized something awful.

“Nat- You didn’t… But he- You said the wilderness chose him. They all-”

“We chose him, Eddie. He was trying to save me, and- and the ice in the lake cracked, and he fell through. And I ran to help him, but everyone else told me to stay back.” Her voice shook.

“And you- You stayed back?” Eddie asked, in horror.

Nat nodded. 

“But- They were about to kill you, right? They held you back?” He said, even though he knew what the answer was. Maybe he was just trying to give her an out so he could have the peace of mind. She shook her head. “But-”

“No. He called me. By name. He begged for my help. And I could have, and should have, but I didn’t. Eddie. You don’t get it. It’s my fault. It was everyone’s fault but- besides the people who stayed back at the cabin. We all let him die.” She said miserably. “But you didn’t play any part in it. Trust me, that fucking jacket didn’t determine if he lived that day.”

"Why didn't you tell us?" Eddie asked, his ears ringing.

"I- I thought you knew! Or... I thought you would figure it out." Nat said. "Oh God... Travis doesn't know." She realized. 

"Nat, why would-"

“You can't tell Travis.” Nat interrupted. “He just started healing. Don't do that to him.”

A  pit of nausea in his stomach formed as he stared at her. As sick as it made him, Eddie knew that she was right, that Travis couldn't ever know the truth. How had Eddie never known? How had he never figured it out? Maybe everyone assumed they knew. How had it been it a perfectly-kept secret? Why would they keep something like that a secret? Why was everyone keeping shit from him? Thinking back, if neither Eddie nor Travis questioned what had happened that day, they never would have had to admit it. It wasn’t like they were gnawing at the bit to talk about the time a twelve year old died. Maybe no one tried to hide it, and he and Travis were just unwilling to see it. 

Looking at Nat made him feel sick. It disgusted him. The layers of the secret disgusted him. 

“Ed, I-”

“Don’t.” Eddie cut her off. “Don’t call me that.” Nat had a habit of forcing people to get upset at her, to blame her. And maybe if Eddie was a better person, he would care about that. Maybe if he did, he wouldn't feel so stupid, and so betrayed. But the nickname was pushing it.

“I thought it-”

“Get out.” He whispered. 

—

“What’s your favorite color?” Eddie asked, his voice raw. The silence that hung in the air felt like it muffled the question. It was cold that morning. Eddie had started wearing his jacket again. Most mornings, he visited Ben, leaning his back against the animal pen’s wall. He missed Mortimer and Jam, and their ducklings, and Peter the rabbit. Some days, Akilah would take Barry -the goat- out for walks through the camp. One of the most annoying things about Ben being on suicide watch was that Eddie couldn’t visit the animals. 

“Yellow.” Was the answer he got from Ben. There was a pause, and Eddie stared out into the trees, hoping for something more. “Like a pale yellow. Buttery, orangeish, sunset yellow.” He elaborated. Eddie looked at the ground by his feet. On stalks, small, five-petaled flowers grew in the tall grass. They matched the color description so perfectly Eddie wondered if it was some sort of symbol. A sign, maybe. 

He broke a stem, and held the cluster of flowers out, contemplating. He couldn't hand them to Ben. And it wasn't like Ben could meet him outside. But still, Eddie stood and walked around to the gate. It was stupidly useless, Eddie knew that. Maybe that was why it felt so important.

Britt crossed her arms tiredly when she saw him. “You know what Nat said, Eddie.” Her eyes betrayed her remorse. 

“I don't need to be in there. Just- please, Britt, can you give these to him?” He held the flowers over to her. She looked at them, weighing the chance that they were poison of some kind, maybe, before taking the stem from him and stepping into the pen. Eddie waited obediently outside of the log structure. He watched over the wall as Britt handed the flowers to Ben and pointed in Eddie’s direction. Either Ben wasn't able to or was too tired to turn around and face him. 

Ben laughed dryly, which turned into coughing. Eddie tried to smile, but his face was something more like a grimace. He sat down back where he had been. 

“Too little, too late.” Ben rasped from the pen. Eddie bit his cheek. “Gonna have to try harder than that to make me want to live.”

“What’s your favorite band?” Eddie blurted out. 

“Ed- You won’t just bring me back by making me- making me talk about all my favorite things.” Ben said. “That trick only works in The Sound of Music.” He laughed wryly at his own joke. 

But Eddie wasn’t asking Ben’s favorite things because he wanted to inspire the man to live. He had realized that he had gotten so little information about Ben from their previous conversations, it was something like making up for lost time. In other words, he was trying to learn as much about the man before he managed to kill himself. They had exhausted philosophical discussions, Ben was too weak for those. All conversations about their current situation led back to despair. 

“Just answer it.”

“The Beatles.” Ben said, after a second. 

“What’s your favorite song?” Eddie asked. 

“Blackbird.” He responded. Eddie nodded to himself. When he heard the song’s name, he got the memory of something so vivid, there and gone in a flash, it disoriented him. 

When he was five or six, he had been sleeping over at his cousin’s house, when his family had visited them down in South Carolina. He had gotten a nightmare, and his aunt had played that song -well, the whole album- on her record player, and sat with him on the couch, listening to the music until he fell back asleep. 

It wasn’t all too often that something out there gave him such a specific memory of home. Eddie cleared his throat.

“When you played soccer, what position were you?”

“Second striker. Did you ever play any sports?”

“No. If you could have one drink from back home, what would it be?” 

Ben had to think about that one. “Dr. Pepper. Are we playing twenty questions?”

“We’re playing something that’s not nearly as fun, but, sure.” Eddie said. “When’s your birthday?”

—

When Mari discovered Ben wasn't eating anymore, everyone knew better than to ask Eddie to help force-feeding him. Eddie was left in the dark for most discussions around the camp that involved ethics, rational reasoning, or humanity. He didn't even want to be at the camp when they did whatever they were planning. He knew he couldn't stop them, so he walked far out and lit up a joint and tried to convince himself that the strained yells of a man in the distance were actually just birds. 

—

“Eddie-” Ben rasped. 

“I can't.” Eddie answered what he was clearly about to ask. He was looking over the pen’s wall, down at Ben on the ground. He was a disgusting, pitiful sight, practically rotting in the sun. “They’d… kill me or something.” Ben glared at him. 

“When has the fear of death ever stopped you?” He whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“C’mon. Go out for a righteous cause and let me die.” Ben hissed. “Lord knows you’ll end up killing yourself anyway.”

Eddie was lost for words, his eyes narrowing. 

“I am going to live- live like this ‘til the day I die. And it’ll haunt you, Eddie.” Ben started wheezing, spitting out blood. “Do both of us the favor.”

Eddie shook his head. Ben’s words made his skin crawl. 

“C’mon- Don't…” The man started pleading desperately. Eddie backed away from the pen. “Ed-”

“Eddie.” 

Travis’s voice appeared next to him. Eddie blinked. 

“Jesus, you okay?” Travis asked, a hand on Eddie’s back. “You zoned out while I was talking and were… mumbling and stuff.” They were in their hut. They weren't at the pen. Their hut was so far away from the pen that Eddie couldn't even hear the noises of the animals in there. He looked at Travis, disoriented. He had been talking to Ben. Right?

“I- I was just…” Eddie started, trying to explain it away to both Travis and himself. Travis looked at him, concerned, like he was piecing things together. 

“Was it another…” He started. “You hearing things again?” Travis asked.

Eddie didn’t say anything, which said enough. His jaw trembled as he wondered if what was happening was even real. It made his mind race. He tapped his foot against the ground anxiously, something to remind him that he could still feel, could still interact with his surroundings. It wasn’t just hearing things. It went further than seeing things, too. It was a complete loss of his grip on reality, and the thought fucked with him more than he could put into words. 

Apparently Travis noticed. “Hey, y’know, we won’t go to Lottie.” He said, holding Eddie’s hand. Eddie hated to admit it, even to himself, but a small part of him wished that they could. Maybe if he was more selfish, maybe if he had less responsibilities, he could allow her to delude him, numb him with mushrooms, and let him rot away in peace. Eddie hated how, as the days went on and the nightmares continued, the idea looked more and more appealing. 

They sat like that for a second, before Travis sat back on the bed and gestured for Eddie to join him. His arms wrapped around Eddie’s shoulders securely as he held him close to his chest. It felt like Travis was doing most of the comforting as of late. Eddie didn’t know how to feel about that. He was grateful for Travis, he liked the warmth that came from being near him. But sometimes he hoped that it would melt him down to the bone, become something so violently destructive that he wouldn’t allow himself to think too hard about it. 

“Is this-”

“It’s real.” Travis assured him, answering Eddie’s question before he could even finish it. Because Travis would never burn him. And if Eddie was normal, and if they could be normal for just a second, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Eddie’s hand moved to run his fingers through Travis’s hair, trying to let himself relax. His head rested comfortably on Travis’s chest. He just wished they could stay like that for longer. Unfortunately, Travis had some kind of deal with Gen and Britt, so Eddie tried not to worry down the minutes they had together until Travis needed to take his shift guarding the animal pen.

—

“Murderer!” Misty’s shrill scream woke Eddie up with a start. “Murderer! She killed him!” He stumbled out of bed, panicked, into and then across the camp, where she was standing. A crowd had gathered around Misty and… Eddie had to push his way past Melissa and Robin- Nat. 

“Nat- what did…” Eddie’s question trailed off.

Nat was staring at the ground, smeared blood on her face and a distant look in her eyes. Travis stood behind her. Eddie realized, with a feeling that was in between despair and relief, that Ben was dead. 

“What the fuck, Natalie?” Shauna stormed up to her from across the clearing. Eddie realized that people were talking, murmuring questions to each other. Nat’s eyes flickered to Eddie’s, in guilt. 

“I kept a promise.” Nat said, her voice heavy. 

Misty sobbed and ran into the animal pen. 

Akilah shook her head, holding Peter close to her chest. “Natalie- He was…”

“He was suffering!” Nat pleaded. She cleared her throat. “I couldn’t just… He couldn’t live like that.”

“And so you decided you should kill him before asking any of us?” Tai snapped. “What about-”

“It was the right thing. I’m sorry, but it’s true- He was dying-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Melissa spat. Eddie couldn’t miss the way she glanced up at Shauna for approval after she said it. 

“Yeah, shut the fuck up!” Gen joined in, shoving Nat to the ground. 

Eddie hadn’t realized the girls cared so much about Ben. Though, clearly not for the right reasons. The group erupted into accusations.

“How are we gonna get home now?” Robin voiced the worry of everyone who believed in Akilah’s visions.

“What the hell were you thinking- You do not get to make that decision for all of us!” Van yelled. 

Nat stared at her hands in the dirt as she knelt there. 

“We need another trial.” Tai decided. “This isn’t-”

“No- No more trials.” Shauna said. “We all know she did it! She just fucking confessed! We put her in charge and she decided to undermine all of us.” She looked around for support. Most of the girls nodded. Eddie stared at the ground, backing up slowly as his stomach dropped. “I think it’s clear what we do now-”

“Shauna will lead us.” Lottie interrupted her, stepping in between Shauna and Nat.

That decision left a worse taste in Eddie’s mouth than Shauna’s decision for what they should do with Nat. His neck prickled, and he glanced around the crowd nervously. Apparently everyone else was less than pleased as well. Shauna herself looked confused. The smug look fell off her face like she didn’t know what to say. There was a second of silence as they waited for her to say something.

“I know everyone’s upset.” She said slowly, after clearly thinking it over. “But… we’re still a team.”

Eddie wasn’t so sure about that. Tai and Van shared a confused glance. Mari raised an eyebrow. Lottie watched Shauna nervously, like she wasn’t sure about her supr-of-the-moment decision. Eddie was at the very edge of the crowd, unsure if he might need to run. 

“We can’t let this break us.” Shauna continued. “When people die, we honor them, don’t we?” Eddie didn’t like where that was going. “So, tonight, we’ll honor Coach Scott. We’ll give the wilderness what it wants.”

Blood. Blood was always what the wilderness seemed to want. It wanted and it took and no matter how much Lottie insisted it did, it never gave back. The wilderness was a leech, slowly killing all of them off, to instill more fear, to spill more blood. 

“What about Natalie?” Misty demanded. “Is she just gonna get away with it? Two second ago you were-”

Shauna’s blank expression changed again. She smirked and nearly chuckled to herself. “Natalie will prepare the feast.” She decided. Eddie only got a glimpse of Nat’s expression as she looked up at Shauna, before he slowly and quietly left the clearing, unnoticed. 

—

Eddie felt his mouth dry up at the smell of cooking meat. He would have done it sooner or later if Nat hadn’t. But still, his chest ached with the all-too-familiar feeling of complete loss. Eddie had gotten to know Ben especially well through the log slats that fenced in the animal pen. Maybe he shouldn’t have. He thought it would have been easier.

He set a stone down next to a tree that wasn't in the way of any of the usual paths out of camp. It wouldn't be discovered. Eddie didn't even want Travis or Nat to know about it. There it was again, a prickling deep in the back of his neck, like his spine was on fire with some emotion Eddie couldn't decipher. Eddie shook his head and repositioned the stone, setting it deeper into the ground. He took a tube of lipstick from his pocket. He had long forgotten when exactly he had stolen it from Jackie, but he had held onto it for ages, tucked it away in the corner of his duffel bag next to Jackie’s jewelry box. It was dull, long since used for making markers on the trees that wouldn't be washed away by rain. The very reason he was using it now.

Thinking for a second what exactly he would write, he carefully drew on the following: Benjamin Scott, August 7, 1969-September, 1997. His handwriting had deteriorated out there, or maybe it was just the low light. Eddie paused. Leaning back to the stone, he finished the message. Miss you, he wrote. Eddie sighed, completely resigned. He would miss Ben. 

“Fuck.” Eddie whispered, a lump forming in his throat. He missed everyone. He wiped at his eyes before tears even formed and stood up. 

Eddie looked down at his plate, three squares of meat still sizzling from the fire. He refused to look at the array of food, Ben’s head resting at the end like a decorative table piece. His robe itched on his neck uncomfortably. It was hard to reckon with, that he had talked to the man inhabiting the flesh he held on a tin plate just less than a day ago. He brought a piece to his mouth and hesitantly took a bite, as the rest of the group ate in silence. The feeling was all too similar to the texture of Jackie, which made his skin crawl. He took another bite, and set the half-eaten chunk back onto his plate, focusing his eyes on the fire. 

“Aren't you hungry, Eddie?” Shauna asked from the other side of the circle. Eddie bit the inside of his cheek. That, right there, was why he wasn't allowed at the communal dinners anymore. “Be grateful, Natalie worked hard on your meal.” 

He stared at Shauna blankly, picturing any number of violent scenarios. He would tear her head clean off if he could, for no reason, for so many reasons. Tai shot Shauna a look, and the rest of them turned to look at Eddie, waiting to see what he would do. He wanted to move, but the exhaustion in his bones ate him down to the core.

Eddie opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but all that came out was a strangled laugh, or a sharp exhale. His eyes widened in disbelief, at the situation at hand, at the situation that had been at hand, at the fact that any of this was real in any conceivable universe. He laughed again, and again, and his body pitched forward as strained cackles caught his breath. 

He laughed at the fact that he had ever thought it could get worse than the crash itself, he laughed at Shauna for thinking that he respected her new authority, he laughed at whatever fucked-up bored god decided to put all of them through this. He laughed along with the voices he was hearing, as Jackie and Pa and Ben started cracking up. He laughed for different reasons they did, though, because the only reason they were laughing -or the reason he could hear them at all- was because he was fucking losing it.

The group stared at him as he cackled hysterically, in disgust or concern. He felt like his mind was being ripped to pieces, the absurdity and abstractness of the feeling spurring him on.

“What the fuck’s so funny, Taylor?” Shauna snarled, putting her plate down on the ground and standing, like she was going to start another fight with him. Lottie started chuckling too, which made Shauna pause. One by one, some of the others started laughing, joining in the hysteria. Eddie stopped, but they continued. It was a chilling sound, insincere barking laughs reverberating through the trees. His breathing was heavy as whatever he had started began to spiral into something different.

“Stop!” Lottie shrieked all of a sudden, drawing the whole camp to silence. She paused, as if listening for something. She hummed a note, then vocalized it loudly. The rest of the group looked around at each other nervously. Travis, Eddie, and Nat all shared glances. Lottie stopped, running out of breath, and closed her eyes, standing up. “Sing. It wants us to.” She said, and started again on her flat note.

The same girls that had been the first to join in on the laughter were the first to sing with her. There was no melody, no key, everyone was doing something different. Slowly, one by one, they all stood. Travis closed his eyes, humming something unintelligible over the noise. Eddie figured there wasn’t any harm in joining. That was, until the screeching started. The group faltered before Lottie screamed back louder, of which they all followed suit.

Eddie had no idea what the noises they all heard were. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t believe one bit in Lottie’s shit, but he screamed his throat raw, releasing a year and a bit’s worth of anger, pain, and fear. The girls started to dance around the fire, singing and screaming whatever they could think of. Eddie closed his eyes and yelled his heart out, yelled until he began to cough, adding to the chorus. 

Primal. That was the only way he knew how to describe it. They sang and hollered and howled. Eddie took Travis’s hand, and had just started to sway around the fire, when Lottie screamed again, something different enough to make all the hairs on his arm stand up.

“No!” She quieted the camp with that, almost a command. Eddie looked around. Lottie’s eyes were fixed on the forest. Eddie tried to see what had her so enraptured. That was when his eyes focused on the movement from beyond where their torches lit. Bracing for a wolf, a bear, a deranged moose, Eddie stepped in front of Travis before he could even see the thing fully.

A shoe appeared in the low light, taking a step forward. Eddie’s first thought was that the camp might become the first witnesses of someone resurrected. But, no, Ben’s head was still on that platter. He was still dead. The face of someone new came into the light. Man. A man. A man who looked around the campground in stunned fear. With him were two others. A woman, and another man. Woman. Man. Eddie felt his reality shift and crumble to dust in less than a second. It was whiplash-inducing. The woman’s big eyes darted around the camp in confusion and unease. Woman. The man took another step forward, holding up both his hands. He took a deep breath. Eddie’s eyes were locked on the three, the same as everyone else in the camp.

“Hello.” The man said. A voice. It had been so long since Eddie had heard another person he wasn’t sure he even registered the greeting. Voice. Eddie was frozen. The man looked around the clearing, then down at the feast table, where Ben’s head sat at the end, adorned in wreaths and flowers. Eddie was shocked to see it too, like it was the first time he had noticed Ben there. The man jumped back. 

“What the fuck.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, my God.” The words were so unrecognizable in such a new voice. 

“It’s not what it looks like, you know, he died of natural causes.” Misty said hurriedly, tossing Ben's rib over her shoulder. 

“We would never-” Britt was quick to follow Misty’s lead. 

“Oh my God. You all are- You're-” The new voice was cut short by a sick, wet thwack. The man fell to his knees almost instantly, the handle of their axe sprouting from the back of his head. Lottie stood behind him, blood spattered on her face, her eyes wide. Everyone screamed. Eddie choked out a gasp.

“Oh God.” Travis said breathlessly. The man reached for the axe in his skull, gasping and shaking, and pulled it out. He crumpled to the ground, twitching before going still. The blood was starting to pool on the leaves underneath him. 

“Shit, shit, Lottie, what did you do?” Nat asked, panic and horror in her voice. Eddie looked around. 

“They didn't belong here.” Lottie said, almost inaudibly. 

“We don't, you're right. We don't belong, we’ll be on our way right now. Sorry.” The woman spoke up. She took a few steps back, and the other man raised what looked like a weapon of some kind. The shine of an arrowhead caught the firelight. Eddie undid his cape, letting the fabric and pelts fall to his feet. A few others did the same. The man’s eyes narrowed. 

“Run.” He told the woman, who immediately turned and sprinted away. He held his position with the crossbow. 

“Don't let them go! Bring them back! Alive!” Nat ordered immediately. The camp whipped into a frenzy. They grabbed their torches and shed their cloaks, running for the two.

The twang of a wire and the whistling of an arrow preceded a scream from Melissa. Eddie was still frozen in place, and watched as she stumbled back, an arrowtail sticking out of her right arm. The man followed the woman into the darkness. Eddie moved then, backing away from the direction the rest of them were going in and peeling off the opposite way through the camp. He heard Shauna yell something unintelligible. He felt a hand try to pull him back, but he kept moving, until he knew the shroud of midnight would hide him. Slowing down, he backed up against a tree, breathing heavily. He hadn't run that far. It might have been a panic attack or something similar. 

“Fuck.” He whispered to himself as the rest of the camp started screeching and whooping through the trees, the same way they had done when they hunted Nat down. He tore his eyes away from the light of the camp and the moving torches in the distance. He looked up behind him, and grabbed a branch. Eddie hoisted himself up into the tree, hyperventilating and shaking so badly he worried he might fall. He found a nook far up, and held himself there like he was bracing for an earthquake. 

Eddie heard a gunshot in the distance. A few seconds passed, then another. The screams were deliberate. They weren't all caught up in the thrill of another hunt, he knew what the howls meant. They had managed to separate the two. He knew that, because in one of Cabin Guy’s hunting manuals, it had suggested to divert and fracture deer herds by designating certain people as noise-makers and others as silent. It was chilling that that strategy worked on human prey as well. 

Once he had started to calm down from the shock that came with seeing the first new people in what felt like years, Eddie started to hear the echoes of voices chattering around him. He was getting used to the noise, getting used to never being alone. Thankfully, they only really started talking to him when no one else was around. 

“That man certainly knew his way around a crosssbow.” Pa said. “You think he’s military?”

“I… I don’t know. He looked pretty tough, but he didn’t have an actual uniform on.” Eddie responded, not fully recognizing the insanity of actually engaging with the voices in his head, while he tried to reckon with the insanity of the feast. 

“Maybe they were here to save you.” Jackie, ever the optimist, chimed in. 

“Well, I don’t think Lottie fucking killing one of them improved our chances.” 

“Watch that mouth, boy.” Pa reprimanded. 

“Sorry.” Eddie said instinctively. He looked up at the stars in the sky, partially covered by the overcast weather. A voice in his head, his own voice -his rational thought- was telling him that they were just extensions of his subconscious. But maybe he was selfish, and was starting to enjoy their company. Eddie supposed that if he didn’t know what to do in any given situation, which, in this one, he didn’t, he had a council to discuss things over with. Maybe that was why Lottie loved the wilderness so much. 

“They also saw my head on a table. If they were gonna help you all before, they sure as hell aren’t gonna do it now.” Ben said. The voices hummed in agreement. 

“We don’t know what they were here to do.” Eddie mumbled. “Nat’ll catch ‘em. And when they’re back at camp, we’ll be able to figure out- figure what they want.”

“Then why aren’t you out there?” Eddie jumped at the new voice. He looked around the branches for Javi for just a moment, before he remembered that the boy was very dead. 

“I- I don’t want to get hurt.” Eddie stuttered.

“You’re scared.” Javi said simply. So he wasn’t going away. There were four of them now. Eddie hit the back of his head against the tree, knowing that there was no way in hell he could tell Travis about that.

“I’m not… scared, I just don’t want to be-”

“You don’t want them to think you’re associated with the people hunting them down.” Pa articulated the thought better than Eddie could have. Eddie nodded to himself and gestured in the direction of Pa’s voice, as if any of them were in the tree with him. 

“If you’re not associated with them, then why were you dancing around a campfire and howling at the moon?” Ben asked wryly. 

“Shut up.” Eddie muttered. “I never thought that they would- that anyone would find us like that.”

“Or ever.” Javi piped up. Eddie nodded.

“Or ever.” He repeated. 

“You’re gonna get back home and they’re all gonna know how much of a horror show it was out here.” Ben said. 

“No the fuck they’re not.” Eddie snapped. “Stop being such an asshole- I didn’t know what to do.”

“Boy-”

“Stay out of it, Pa.” Eddie crossed his arms. The idea of home was so close but so unbelievable. He couldn’t imagine going back after having eaten a man. He couldn’t imagine walking by Jackie’s room in the hallway knowing what her flesh had smelled like as it cooked. He slapped himself to focus. 

“You should check on the camp.” Jackie said. “You don’t want to miss it when they bring those two back.”

“That girl got shot.” Pa added. “You’re a medic, aren’t you?” Eddie nodded sheepishly.

“No, you should find the hunters.” Javi spoke up, urgently. “Travis was carrying the rifle.”

“He’s not gonna- not gonna kill himself while they’re tracking those people down.” Eddie responded. He had seen Nat toss the rifle over to Travis as the camp had started the chase. He wasn’t worried about it. 

“Either way, you can’t just stay up here.” Ben said what Eddie knew. What they all knew- because they were all Eddie. 

“Yeah.” Eddie said. He couldn’t move. The noises from the group hunting those people down kept him in place.

“They’re not chasing you. Get a move on.”

“Give him a moment, Pa.” Jackie interjected. Eddie started laughing, holding the branch in front of him as he doubled over in hysteria. They were quiet. 

“Holy shit.” He breathed, holding his face in his hands. It was one thing for him to hear voices and hallucinate. Nat had been right: they were all going crazy out there. It was one thing for lost hikers to find them and get spooked. He would also get spooked if he saw a grown man’s head decapitated on a table while a group of teenagers were holding a cult ritual. It was another thing entirely for Eddie to be sitting twenty-five feet in the air, hiding from the girls, who were hunting the hikers down, while the voices in his head talked to each other. He was snapped back to the absurdity quicker than he could process.

“You’re not even real!” Eddie shook his head in disbelief. “You’re me! You’re all me! I’m telling myself what to do, and to shut up, and to watch my mouth, and- and I’m fucking losing it!” He rambled. He paused, waiting for one of them to say something.

“See?” He exclaimed. “I’m fucking- I’m waiting for your input- which is just my own input! Like I’m gonna help me!” Eddie looked back up at the sky. 

“Is this helping me?” He screamed at the stars. “Is this fucking helping?” There was no response. 

“Fuck. Fuck!” He yelled so loud it echoed. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” He rested his forehead on the branch in front of him, looking down at the ground. And part of him wished that, if they weren’t so close to rescue, he could fall, snap his neck, go out easily and be done with everything. 

Eddie climbed down from the tree, shaking. 

—

He stumbled into the camp, his head quieter than it had been in weeks. He didn’t know how long he had been out in the forest, or anything remotely related to what time it was. All he knew was that it was pitch dark out, and all he could see in the camp were the moving figures of the girls who were trying to deal with Melissa. 

Eddie crouched by the three. Melissa looked up at him warily. Gen and Mari looked at him in confusion. He guessed that they had probably heard him. 

“Can you get this arrow out?” Melissa asked desperately. Eddie looked at the tail, which stuck out probably a foot from her shoulder. The bleeding was concentrated around the area, which told him that there wasn’t much injured in the impact. It was just embedded Lord-knew-how-deep in her arm. And if Mari and Gen hadn’t been able to get it out, Eddie didn’t know what else he would be able to do. 

“I can.” He said, pulling out his pocket knife. I can try, he thought.

“What’s that for?” Gen asked, her hand hovering above Melissa’s shoulder, like she was ready to stop whatever Eddie was going to do. 

“I need to see the entry wound.” He said. “I’m just gonna cut your jacket and shirt enough to see what’s… going on.” He explained. 

“I’ll get water to clean it.” Mari offered, standing up. Eddie nodded gratefully, starting to cut through the fabric. Melissa grit her teeth.

“See, what’s good about the shoulder is that you don’t have any organs there.” Eddie started rambling the way he did when he was nervous. “I mean- Obviously. And your shoulder blade shouldn’t be in the way of the arrow. The issue is the muscle damage, but with thin projectiles like this, they should fix themselves if you give it enough time. It could be an issue to pull out if it’s barbed, it would shred your muscles. That’s why it’s good it’s your shoulder, ‘cause we can always just push it through-”

“Oh my God- Eddie, shut the fuck up.” Melissa hissed, in pain. Eddie nodded as he removed her jacket from her shoulder. He had to cut away that part of her shirt next.

“She’s gonna come to you to mend that. Be careful how you’re cutting.” Jackie said. Eddie ignored her.

“Mel, look at me.” Gen grabbed Melissa’s hand, talking quietly. “We’re basically almost home. And once we’re home, you can get that fixed up properly.” She whispered. 

Melissa nodded desperately. Eddie was finally able to get a good look at the puncture wound pretty much right as Mari came back with water. Melissa kicked at the ground as Mari poured the water over her shoulder. It was able to clear the blood for just a second, long enough for Eddie to see the torn skin from where the arrowhead had pierced it. 

“Well?” Melissa asked, trying to blink the tears out of her eyes. 

“Pour the water again.” He pointed at the wound, leading Mari’s eyes to the jagged edges of the torn skin. “Do you think that looks like it was barbed?” He asked. 

“I- I don’t know- Aren’t you the medic here?” She asked, squinting at the bloody mess. 

“Well, I can’t tell the difference between the… Jesus- I’m not a medic!” He snapped. “Sorry. Sorry. Okay, Melissa, I’m gonna try pulling it out.” He warned. Maybe it was a specific angle that he had to pull at. Melissa clenched her fists and braced. 

The only thing that happened when Eddie pulled the arrow was Melissa screaming and Lottie appearing behind them.

“Do you need help?” Lottie asked. Eddie couldn’t be bothered to turn around. Gen and Mari started arguing with her about blood and fucking off and how insane she was. They both stood up, trying to shoo her away. Eddie sopped up some of the blood with the sleeve of Melissa’s jacket.

“Okay. Alright, that’s not working. I’m sorry.” He said, moving quickly to cut a hole in the back of her shirt, wide enough that the arrow wouldn’t catch on any of the fabric.

“You’re sorry- Fucking- Get it out! Why are you-”

“I'm sorry in advance.” Eddie mumbled, snapping the arrowtail in half, balling up a rag to put in between his palm and the splintered end, and pushing the arrow as hard as he could until he heard the sick sound of her skin break on the other side- only if he tuned out Melissa’s scream of agony. His fingers found the arrowhead sticking out of her back and pulled it out quickly. Mari and Gen were already finding rags to press against both sides of her shoulder.

Melissa thrashed as Eddie stepped back, holding the bloody arrow in his hands. “Fuck you, Taylor! Get- God- Get fucked!” 

“You couldn’t have given her a warning?” Gen hissed up at him. Eddie shook his head as he swayed on his feet slightly. 

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and whipped around. Lottie was staring at him, her eyes wide. He stumbled back at the sight of all the blood on her face, at all the blood that was drying around her mouth. He shook her equally bloody hand off of him. 

“I heard you.” Lottie said quietly. “I know you’re still hearing them.” She stepped towards him as he backed up further. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about-” Eddie started. 

“What you’re hearing is the wilderness trying to communicate.” She insisted. “It’s trying to tell you things in a way It knows you’ll listen to. What are you hearing?”

“Nothing!” Eddie shoved her away. “I’m not hearing anything- It’s not…”

“You’re hearing Coach Scott, aren’t you?” Lottie asked.

“How- Why would you know that?” Eddie asked, taken aback. He hadn’t told anyone about that. Her large eyes glinted knowingly with the early morning light.

“Who else?” She pressed. 

“Why does it matter?” Eddie looked back at Mari and Gen for backup, but they were both preoccupied with Melissa.

“You’re connecting with It too.” Lottie said breathily, holding her hand out to Eddie again. He slapped it away.

“I’m not connecting with shit!” He yelled. “I’m not hearing It, I’m going fucking insane!” 

Lottie tried to say something, stepping closer as Eddie continued to make it clear he didn’t want her anywhere near him. 

“No, I’m deranged! And you are too, except I have the balls to admit it!” He held a hand to his head. “Is that what you want to hear? That I’m insane too? Is that what you want, so you can drug me like Travis and Akilah?” His voice was bouncing through the trees, straining with the volume. 

Lottie turned to look at the dead man in the clearing, Eddie’s eyes following. 

He started hyperventilating at the way the man’s limbs were crumpled under his body, at the blood drying in the leaves and sticking in his clothes, at the blood that was drying on his own hands, at the back of the man’s head, which looked like it had been pried open. Eddie stared, wide-eyed at the pattern of the blood spatter on the man’s clothes, then at Lottie’s hands and face and mouth, then back at the man, as his head started ringing.

“Lottie…” He started. “You didn’t.” He whispered. She didn’t turn back to face him.

“He was going to ruin everything.” She whispered back. 

Eddie’s knees buckled, and ran to the edge of the clearing, barely able to make it past Tai and Van’s hut before he threw up. The acrid taste stung on his tongue and burned his throat as days’ worth of food -of Ben- came back up. The thought made him sicker. He doubled over, holding onto a tree for dear life. The pain in his side was shooting, then nothing, then numbing, then shooting again. He coughed and spat so violently that he didn’t hear the footsteps in front of him.

“Ed.” Eddie looked up. His eyes met Nat’s, and it was like everything about the night that they needed to talk about was discussed in a glance. His jaw shook. Her eyes were wide. She was leading the group back, the woman in tow. The woman was shaking like a leaf, staring at the blood-covered, vomit-covered teenage boy that was blocking their entrance into the camp. That, and a puddle of puke. Eddie wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, trying and failing to straighten up with the ache in his abdomen. 

He blinked and cleared his throat. “Hi.”

Chapter Text

The first thing Eddie noticed as they tied the woman to a seat in the clearing was that Travis was nowhere to be found. Or Akilah, for that matter. 

“You should've gone after him.” Javi said. 

“Shut up.” Eddie whispered, earning him a few looks. 

The woman’s large eyes followed each of them as they stood around her in a circle, unsure what to say first. The silence was almost more deafening than all the questions Eddie wanted to ask. 

Van was the first to bite. “Did Mulder and Scully get together?” That opened the dam, and everyone’s questions tumbled out at the same time. 

“What day is it?”

“Who are you?”

“Can you get us out?”

“How far away are we from help?” 

“Everyone, shut up!” Nat quieted them. Eddie was glad he didn’t get the chance to ask any embarrassing questions about his favorite bands. “Let her answer. Why are you here?”

The woman looked at Nat nervously. “We’re a… I was a part of a research team sent up here.” She glanced at the man lying dead on the ground. “We were studying a species of frog from up here, maybe you heard their call recently. My name is Hannah… Hannah Finch- and his name is- was Edwin.”

“Mating call…” Eddie whispered to himself, inaudibly. The screaming? He looked over at Lottie to see if she had also put that together.

“What are people saying about us back home?” Shauna asked. Hannah looked at her, confused. 

“W-What?”

Shauna scoffed. “Oh my God-”

“We w- are a soccer team. From Wiskayok, New Jersey.” Nat explained. “Our plane, uh- crashed, and we’ve…”

“Jesus.” Hannah breathed. “I remember that. It was- It was all over the news.” 

“Is anyone still searching for us?” Tai asked. 

“I- I don’t know.” Hannah stuttered. “They searched for months, but… but after a year, we stopped hearing things…”

A chorus of ‘What?’ and other such shocked noises rippled through the crowd. Eddie looked up at the sky as they started to mumble among themselves. It was one thing for them to be a presumed lost cause, if the search teams hadn’t even tried, but a year. A whole year. He felt the air fall out of his lungs in a laugh.

“Fuck. We’ve been out here a long time.” Van whispered, but everyone felt the heavy words.

“So you’re saying that our friends and families- they just… gave up?” Shauna asked, clearly getting angry. Hannah’s eyes widened in fear, and Eddie couldn’t blame her. If he was tied to a chair and Shauna was angrily barking questions at him, he’d be pretty fucking terrified. 

“I- I really don’t know. I don’t know. I’m so sorry.” She said quickly.

“But you can get us home, right?” Nat redirected the conversation. 

Hannah looked like she was about to cry. “I really- I don’t even know where I am right now.” She whispered. There was a collective sigh among the group. 

“You don’t seem to know a lot of things.” Shauna said accusatorially. No one tried to speak up, because she was right. Eddie stepped off to the side and sat on his heels, with his head in his hands. Of course it was their fucking luck that the only person they were able to contact was even more clueless than they were. 

“Are you- like, the team captain or something?” Hannah asked. He heard a few people scoff.

“If I say yes, will you start fucking remembbering?” Shauna sneered. 

“She’s not the captain-” Nat started.

“Well, neither are you.” 

“Yeah, because you fucking killed her.” Eddie spat, looking up at the rest of them. There was a chill that passed over the group. Hannah swallowed nervously. Shauna’s vicious glare followed him as he stood up. Nat cleared her throat, looking at the ground. 

“You all… built this by yourselves?” Hannah asked, trying to change the topic. 

“Who the hell else would’ve done it?” Shauna responded. “You all clearly left us out here to die.”

“It’s impressive.” Hannah said quickly. Shauna rolled her eyes. 

“Can you get us out of here?” Nat repeated the question after a quick pause.

Hannah shook her head in regret. “Not by myself.” She answered. “The other guy we were with, he was our guide, and-”

“Guys!” Misty crashed into the camp. “I found them!” All heads turned to her. Eddie crossed behind the group towards Misty as she caught her breath. He had been trying not to think about what could’ve happened to Travis and Akilah while chasing after the man, but the crossbow had left him mulling over the worst. He let the questions rising in his throat die as Misty continued. “I know where they are- Akilah and Travis and- and the other one!”

“Kodi.” Hannah said. 

“Let’s go.” Tai decided, the rest of the camp following her as she joined Misty. Eddie was right behind her when he felt a hand grab his arm roughly. 

“You’re staying to watch her.” Shauna said. Eddie wrenched his arm away.

“Fuck off.” He stepped back. 

“I’m in charge, Taylor.” She snarled. “And our hostage shouldn’t be left unattended. For her own safety.” The last comment was added with a knowing sneer.

“We’re going home, you can’t command shit.” Eddie hissed. “Van’s already staying behind, isn’t she?” Van gave him a thumbs up, sitting on the log next to the seat. “Looks like your dilemma’s all sorted.” He said, turning around to join the group that had already gone up ahead. 

His mistake was turning his back on someone like Shauna. He felt a quick kick to the back of his knee, bringing him crashing to the ground. As he tried to push himself back up, Shauna kicked him in his stomach so hard that if all the food in his stomach wasn’t currently lying behind Van and Tai’s hut, he would have puked. His abdomen erupted in pain, that familiar ache in his left side keeping him from getting back to his feet. A few shocked murmurs came from the group, no doubt as they saw what had happened, but no one turned back. 

A sharp “Shauna, come on.” from Nat was the only defense Eddie got. He looked up at Shauna, who was clearly contemplating something, before she crouched down and shoved his face back in the dirt. As he sputtered and spat, she left him with a warning.

“Try that shit again, Taylor, I dare you.” And like that, her hand was out of his hair, he drew his head back from the ground, and she was jogging off to catch up with the group. 

Another shooting pain left him writhing on the ground, curling into himself.

“You need to find Travis.” Javi urged. Eddie couldn’t get up if he wanted to. He was used to the ever-present dull throb in his… stomach? Chest? Side? But Shauna’s kick had clearly done something. The pain was more intense than anything he had felt since winter. He knew that the stranger was watching him. He knew Lottie and Van were, as well. He wanted to crawl off to some secluded place, or better yet, join the group that was tracking Travis, Akilah, and the guide down. He couldn’t move. 

He felt tears well in his eyes, then fall, running across the bridge of his nose and down the side of his face and into the dirt. He bit his lip as hard as he could, trying not to shake too hard with the staggered breaths. He didn’t want them to know he was crying. 

“It’s alright, Ed.” Jackie shushed, and though he knew it was utter delusion, Eddie found comfort in the words, and in her voice. Then, something in him wondered if it was even her voice, or if he had forgotten the sound and was making  the closest guess, and he curled in on himself further to hide the way his body was shaking. 

When his tears finally stopped, drying into muddy tracks along his face, and he unfurled his body as much as the ache would allow, he heard footsteps behind him. He wiped furiously at his eyes and the side of his face, to erase evidence of the tears, and braced for Lottie to start preaching to him. 

Van tapped his shoulder hesitantly. Eddie looked back, his shoulders falling in relief. 

“Um- Sorry.” He said. “I shouldn’t have made you stay… I-” He winced as the pain caused his stomach to lurch in on itself, and he had to turn away. 

“I just thought you might want to wash your face off.” She said, putting a damp rag in his hand, to keep it off the ground.

“Thanks.” Was all he could manage without the tears starting to form again. Her footsteps retreated. 

After a minute, Eddie was able to sit up, breathing heavily. He scrubbed at his face, and wasn’t surprised to see the rag turn brown. Apparently his nose had been bleeding. He wiped off his hands, digging under his nails, to get rid of all traces of blood, vomit, dirt, and the night before. He held the rag in his hands as he sat with his knees halfway to his chest. He couldn’t look at anyone in the clearing. He stared at the ground, keeping his head low. 

Eventually, Eddie realized that the longer he sat there, the more insane he looked. He stood up, brushed his pants off, and filled a cup with water. He found the jar where they stored their tea leaves, and grabbed a handful. He set the tin mug next to the weak fire, and tossed the leaves in. Sitting by the fire, he picked away his nails as at least one pair of eyes watched him. When the water was warm, he took a sip, breathing slowly to calm whatever was wrong with his side. 

He saw Lottie approach him out of the corner of his eye. He closed his eyes in frustration, mentally preparing himself for any number of things. 

“Don’t.” Van’s voice stopped Lottie in her tracks. Eddie wrapped his hands around the warm mug as Lottie retreated. 

—

Eddie would have run to Travis’s side when he came back, if it wasn’t for the guilty look on his face and the way he was being escorted with Akilah and the guide -Kodi- like they had done something. He stood, the pain in his stomach having ebbed into something manageable. As they tied the man down to his seat, Shauna, Nat, Tai, and Misty interrogated Travis and Akilah. Eddie stood on the side. 

“Where were you guys going?” Shauna crossed her arms. 

“To get rescued.” Travis answered. 

“You were just gonna leave us here?” Tai asked. Travis shook his head quickly.

“Well- We… I thought it would be faster to travel in a small group-”

“And that we would be able to send help back quicker.” Akilah finished what Travis was stuttering over. He looked at her gratefully. Eddie couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed that they were planning to leave just like that, but he figured it was his own fault that he hadn’t joined in on hunting the man down, the night prior. 

“Why’d you leave a trail behind for us to find?” Misty asked. Travis’s eyes narrowed like he didn’t know the answer. 

“In case he turned on us.” Akilah explained. “Either way, you- you all would have found the rescue point.”

Shauna looked like she wanted to say something else, but Nat, apparently satisfied, turned around to talk to Kodi. Eddie joined Travis at his side, and the two shared a quick look as their hands found each other. 

“Can you get us out of here?” Nat asked the man. 

“I can.”

“How long does it take to get to the rescue point from here?”

“Six days, if you can keep up.” Kodi said. Nat almost laughed. 

They were just six days away from humanity, from home. Eddie breathed out shakily at the thought.

“Okay, then, everyone should pack what they can for six days.” She announced back to the camp. “We need water carriers and food, and I assume you two can carry the tents you brought-”

“Excuse me,” Shauna interrupted. “But I don’t remember you being the leader around here.” An uncomfortable hush fell over the group.

Nat looked at her, then at Eddie, like he was going to say something, then back at Shauna. “This is fucking rescue.” She said the obvious. 

“What do we do with them?” Misty whispered, coming to stand between Shauna, Nat, and the strangers. Nat looked at her, puzzled.

“Misty, we’re-”

“They’ve… seen us.” Misty elaborated. “I mean, we can’t just let them walk away.”

“Statute of limitations is what she’s worried about here?” Ben asked. Eddie shook his head like he could dislodge the voice. 

“Hey, we haven’t seen shit.” Kodi said. 

“We can say whatever you want us to say.” Hannah added. 

“We can’t really control that, can we?” Misty turned back to them.

“I swear to God.” Hannah said. 

“That doesn’t mean anything out here.” Shauna crossed her arms. 

“We can figure it out while we’re walking back. What to say, what to do with them.” Nat decided. “For now, they need to bury their friend. Mari, you’ll be supervising them.” She looked around like she was trying to find any more loose ends to tie up. “You guys, we’re going home.” She breathed. The camp started buzzing with excitement. 

“No. No, we can’t go.” Lottie spoke up. All eyes turned to her.

“Jesus Christ, Lottie, why the fuck not?” Nat asked incredulously. 

“We don’t… belong there anymore.” She said quietly. Eddie pinched his temple in exhaustion.

“Oh really? Why the fuck should we listen to you?” Nat walked up to her like they were about to argue, but Lottie said nothing. Nat paused. “Right. So we’re going home. Everyone, pack your shit.” She turned around eventually, a smile on her lips. 

Travis looked over at Eddie, breathing out a small laugh. Eddie returned it, smiling in disbelief. They made their way back to their hut as everyone split up to start packing. 

—

“I guess this is all we’ll be coming home with.” Travis said, zipping Eddie’s duffel bag up. They had decided to split each of their wardrobes in half and bring back the good things, and the items they needed, because Travis’s suitcase was too clunky to carry through the woods. Eddie refused to leave any of his band shirts behind. He ditched two pairs of pants and the rest of his shirts. Most of what he had crashed with was still in his possession, saved from ending up in the communal clothes piles. He would lend clothes when other people needed them, but most of them were just too big for the rest of the girls. Even Travis would end up tripping over the ends of Eddie’s jeans when he wore them. 

Eddie knew that they had more pressing issues, but a small part of him, one he knew wouldn’t be returning with them back home, knew that he would miss some of his and Travis’s things out there. He would miss having a house to live in with someone. He would miss the wooden carvings that Travis would give him after Eddie would get back from hunting. He would really miss what they had, away from the rest of the world. And then he hated himself for thinking that way. He cleared his throat. 

“When we get back, are we still gonna be…” The question died on Eddie’s lips. He looked at Travis to make sure he knew what he meant, to make sure he didn’t have to say the rest of it out loud.

“Yeah- Yes. W-Why wouldn’t we be?” Travis held Eddie’s hand gently, his thumb running over his knuckles. 

“I- I dunno, it’s stupid.” Eddie laughed nervously. “I just- I keep thinking about my family, and school, and… I don’t want you to get caught up in all that.” 

“Eddie, I don’t care about any of that stuff.” Travis reassured him. And Eddie smiled warmly, but he knew it was two different things to say something like that, and to be known as ‘cutter faggot’ around the school. Maybe Eddie’s mood changed enough at that for Travis to notice, and he sat down on their bed, patting the space next to him for Eddie to join. 

“I mean it.” Travis said, wrapping an arm around Eddie’s back. “We can- We’ll get a sweet apartment together and say we’re roommates, and go on dates that just look like us hanging out. And we’ll be just fine, alright?” 

Eddie relaxed at that. “I want to go back to school.” He said. “I- I want to be, like, an archaeologist or a historian or something. And I’ll go to college somewhere nice. Would- would you want to…”

“I’m not going back to school.” Travis shook his head. “It’s way too late for that.” He chuckled. 

“Looks like you’ll be the breadwinner while I’m going through college, then.” Eddie teased. Travis smiled softly, before kissing him on the cheek. Eddie leaned into him. The emotions in his chest rose and fell, euphoria one second, anxiety and guilt the next. All of the things Eddie was talking about were distant; he knew that he would have to endure the reporters and the investigators and his family before any of that. He sighed. “You know, there’s a fifty-fifty chance my parents just get upset that I’m the one who lived.” He spoke without thinking.

“I- I can’t stop thinking about my mom.” Travis whispered finally. “How she’s been, if she’s even-”

“She’s still there. She wouldn’t ever stop waiting for you.” Eddie said. And Javi, was what he nearly said, but had to stop himself. Apparently it was heavy enough on Travis’s mind that he didn’t need to. They had made sure to pack away all of Javi’s drawings and his wolf carving that Travis had run to save in the fire. 

“Yeah.” Travis paused. “That might be worse.” It was barely audible. 

And Eddie knew there was nothing else he could or should say, he just straightened up, letting Travis lean against his shoulder as his arm held him steady. 

“We’ll figure it out.” Eddie said softly. Travis nodded silently.

“We’ll figure it out.”

—

Mari and Eddie were filling up water bottles together. Travis had volunteered to be the carrier.

“I can’t wait to be in, like, air conditioning again.” Mari said dreamily. “And heating. And pools in the summer that make your hair all crispy, and then taking a hot shower in an air conditioned house to wash it out.” She smiled at the thought, and Eddie smiled back.

“And- Oh my God, imagine how good food’s gonna taste once we’re back.” Eddie screwed the lid onto a bottle and set it aside.

“When we get back, the first place I’m gonna go is Fat Frank’s Diner. And I’m gonna get a cheeseburger, and then a massive chocolate shake with a neon red cherry on top, and then I’m gonna clear out all their fries.” Mari giggled. 

“You know Azar’s Bazaar, that Persian place on Ridge Street? They’re gonna have to pry me off the seat with a crowbar or else I’ll eat my way through all their stock.” He laughed. 

“Dude, dude, you, me, Travis, and Akilah, we should do a cheesy-ass double date out there.” Mari said, smiling wide. “Akilah’s, like, really chill with the family that runs that place, we can get mega discounts.”

Eddie chuckled. “Let’s just hope they’re still in business. I might have been single-handedly keeping them afloat.”

“Is it bad that when we were all asking them questions, I was gonna ask what new movies had come out with my celebrity crushes?” Mari accidentally over-poured the water into one of the bottles, and made a face at her mistake. 

“No- I was gonna do the same thing!” Eddie laughed. “Except I was gonna ask about music and stuff. God. My favorite bands better have released some good stuff while we’ve been out here.”

“A new album from each of them, on your desk by Monday.” Mari joked.

Any rationally held apprehension at going home had dissolved after his conversation with Mari. Everyone had clearly spent the afternoon smiling and laughing and chattering about going home. Eddie looked at his and Travis’s hut, their blankets wrapped around his shoulders like a cape, as he slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. He breathed out his excitement. It was real. It was happening. He joined the rest in the clearing as they waited for the last few people to get ready. It was like a huge road trip, where everyone was told to be ready in thirty, and two hours later, they were still doing last minute checks and bathroom breaks. And Eddie didn’t mind waiting one bit. Nat handed him the crossbow, like he knew how it worked. There was a trigger and a clear loading mechanism, so he figured it couldn’t be that difficult. He found her and Travis undoing the ropes on Kodi and Hannah, leaving their hands bound. 

Nat looked back, to check that everyone had filed into the clearing. She pointed at the adults with the rifle. Eddie kept a tight grip on his crossbow in case he should follow suit.

“We’re trusting you to get us home safely.” Nat said. “And I think it’s clear what we’ll do if you try any stupid shit.” She said, with a smirk that she couldn’t contain, showing just how excited she actually was. 

“Yeah, it’s real clear.” Kodi nodded. Hannah nodded along. 

“We won’t try anything. We want to get home too.” She said.

There was a bubble of giddiness rising in Eddie’s chest. He blinked quickly and breathed it out. 

“Alright!” Nat lowered the rifle, smiling. “Let’s fucking do this!” There were cheers through the camp, and Kodi turned around to start the trek. 

Eddie had barely taken a few steps forward when a: “I’m staying.” stopped him in his tracks. He whipped his head around to stare straight at Lottie, who was standing with her bag at her feet. There was a second of unease.

“Cute joke, Lot.” Van scoffed. “Come on.”

“I’m not joking. I’m staying.” Lottie said.

“What?” Nat said in disbelief.

“Oh my God, then we can leave her behind.” Eddie rolled his eyes, trying to hide the way his stomach dropped. 

“Lottie,” Nat crossed the clearing. “I know it’s a lot. It’s fucking terrifying, going back. We all kind of gave up on it, but… this is very real. And it’s happening. This is rescue, this is home.” She pleaded. 

“No… It didn’t look like this.” Lottie mumbled. “What home do any of you have to go back to?” She asked. “Where would you go, Natalie?” 

The comment was so personal, Nat took a step back. Eddie couldn’t help but bristle at the way she said it. 

“Fuck you.” Nat shook her head.

“I can’t go back.” Lottie whispered. 

“Yes you can.”

“If I go back… nothing will be well.” Lottie’s hands twitched. “I won’t be well.” She sniffled, looking at the ground. “And that unwellness that I feel- I feel it so deeply in my bones. We’re safer here.” She urged. 

Nat was silent for a while. Eddie could hear his heartbeat in his ears. 

“Fine.” She said, finally. “You’ll stay here, then. Everyone else, we can head out.” Eddie couldn’t agree more. He knew Nat would never leave any of them behind, they could always just send the rescue team back. She looked at him as she started walking back.

“I’m staying too.” Shauna spoke up.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Shauna, c’mon!” Nat whipped around in exasperation. Eddie saw her nearly raise the rifle at Shauna, just for a split second, before she lowered it back down. Shauna’s eyes narrowed. 

“I’m not staying because of Lottie, or It.” Shauna said. 

“Well, why the fuck would you stay at all?” Nat slung the rifle over her shoulder. 

“I… I don’t know.” Shauna said. 

“Oh, my God.” Eddie looked up at the sky and closed his eyes. Travis shook his head angrily. Lottie and Shauna were the subject of the whole camp’s anger.

“Something just- just doesn’t feel right.” Shauna mumbled. Nat shook her head in disbelief.

And then Tai dropped her bag. And Eddie had to bite his cheek as he realized they weren’t going anywhere. 

“No. Tai, no.” Van shook her head. “Pick it up. Pick it up, no way.”

“No, I feel what they’re feeling.” Tai looked over at Shauna and Lottie. “I’ve been feeling it since those two arrived.”

“Absolutely not.” Van said incredulously. “God, since when has that ever mattered to you?” She waited for a response. “Please, please, Tai, look at me. You are not staying here!” Eddie sat on his heels. He clutched his hands together like he was about to pray. Maybe it was worth a shot. 

“I have to.”

“Why?” 

“Like Shauna said, something just… doesn’t feel right.” Tai couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Everyone started mumbling. 

“Alright, has everyone just gone fucking insane?” Nat shouted. 

“What ‘doesn’t feel right’ is staying here and ignoring rescue.” Travis spoke up. There were hums of agreement from the rest of the camp. Tai, Lottie, and Shauna shook their heads.

“Okay.” Nat said in disbelief. “Fuck it all. You three stay, then. Because you’ve all lost your fucking minds.”

“And then what happens to us?” Shauna asked. 

“Man- Fuck you guys. That’s what happens!” Eddie spat. 

“The rest of us are going. Figure it out.” Nat said, and turned on her heel. Eddie stood up and started walking. 

“No.” Shauna commanded. Rolling his eyes wasn’t a good enough way to describe the frustration. Eddie looked back, hoping maybe God would strike her down if he thought about it hard enough. Shauna’s eyes were fixed on Nat and the adults. “You’re not.”

Chapter Text

“You don’t get to tell everyone what to do, Shauna.” Nat whispered.

“Yeah? Well I already did. And they’re gonna do it.” Shauna responded, also barely audible from where Eddie was standing. 

The girls were all quiet. The looks passed around the group said plenty.

“You’re all going to see that this was the right decision.” Lottie promised. “It has something big in store for-”

“We’ve literally been in hell. You have no fucking right to keep us in it.” Travis said, voice dripping with anger. Eddie’s jaw set, and, slowly, so Shauna didn’t notice, he slipped the crossbow off his shoulder to hold it at his side. 

“No one is saying we have to stay here forever.” Tai said, like she was trying to pry up the final nail that she had hammered into place. “But leaving right now, when there are so many things left to… clean up, isn’t the right move either.”

Shauna looked at Nat smugly, and snatched the rifle from her hands. Nat barely protested, but Eddie felt his blood chill at the idea of Shauna keeping the gun.

Before he could think, Eddie did something incredibly stupid. He raised the crossbow and shot straight at Shauna, but the aim markers weren’t the same as the rifle, so it whizzed past her neck, taking off a few strands of hair. He didn’t get a chance to reload before Shauna shot back. Eddie felt an indescribable pain in his left arm. Everyone in the camp dropped to the ground as Shauna reloaded. 

“Shit-” Eddie knew she would shoot again. He ducked out of her direct line of fire, raising his arm as much as his muscles would let him. The blood was already steadily staining into his jacket sleeve. Eddie looked back up, bracing for another gunshot. 

“Alright. Have fun braiding each other's hair and partaking in some light cannibalism. I’m out.” Before Eddie could get his head blown off, Kodi started walking away. Shauna pointed the rifle at him. 

“No the fuck you’re not.” She hissed. Eddie couldn’t help but notice the way Nat stood in between him and Shauna, so he wasn’t able to take another shot. Like he would be able to.

He didn't want to take his eyes fully off Shauna, but he wanted to know what had happened to his arm, beyond, of course, getting shot, so he could deal with it- if he lived that long. 

“You sure this is the move you wanna make?” Kodi asked, turning around lazily. 

“Don’t do anything stupid, Shauna.” Nat warned quietly. 

“Tell them that.” Shauna responded, tilting the rifle in Eddie’s direction. Travis took the crossbow from Eddie, which had dropped to ghe ground, and switched the safety back on. He slung it over his shoulder and glanced at Eddie before stepping in between him and Shauna. Maybe it was all he knew how to do, or he understood the personal risk of trying to get Eddie out of the hole he had dug, but Eddie’s jaw tightened as he realized he wasn't getting anyone's help. The blood was dripping down onto the ground from his fingers, but Eddie couldn't spare the time to look.

“You sure you know how to use that, little girl?” Kodi didn’t make any attempt to walk back.

“Don’t worry.” Shauna said. “My boyfriend taught me.” 

Kodi chuckled, lifting his bound hands in surrender. Shauna didn’t lower the rifle. 

“Shauna.” Tai started. “Shauna, we can put them in the animal pen.” She said. Shauna looked like she was considering it, then lowered the gun. 

“Fine.” She said. “Someone escort Eddie back there, too.” She turned to look at him, and Eddie met her gaze head on. “He needs a time-out.” She sneered. Britt and Robin took Kodi and Hannah. Nat grabbed Eddie roughly by his good arm and yanked him along. The campground cleared out. 

“What the fuck was that?” Nat hissed. Eddie shook his cape and jacket off to get a look at the bullet wound. His fingers shook as he pulled back the gash in the fabric where the bullet had hit. Nothing was embedded, but it was a deep gash taken out of the top of his left forearm. There were two holes in his sleeve. The problem was the bleeding, which didn't seem to be slowing. The flow of the blood wasn't sporadic enough for it to be a problem. 

“Aw, dude, you needed that shirt.” Javi commented as Eddie tore off one of his long sleeves. Eddie shook his head. He needed it for a bandage.

“Just trying to make our lives easier.” He answered Nat, gritting his teeth as he tied the sleeve around the wound. She took his shoes. 

“You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t kill you tonight.” Nat said, pausing to let Eddie put his coat and cape back on before she tied his hands. 

“Well, be sure to put in a good word to the warden.” Eddie’s lip curled. “Tell her I’ve been on my best behavior.”

Nat’s hand twitched like she was about to throw a shoe at his head. 

“You are un-fucking-believable.” She shook her head and stormed out. 

As the gate slammed shut, Eddie looked up at the structure in the middle of the pen. It still reeked. He could see Ben’s dried blood on the straw. Some of the blood was Eddie’s. The initial adrenaline rush of getting shot at was gone, and Eddie kicked the ground uselessly as he groaned in pain and frustration. He hit his head against the wall and sighed, trying to calm down. Kodi and Hannah exchanged a glance. Eddie settled against the wall of the pen as the animals sniffed around the newcomers curiously. Peter hopped over to Eddie’s lap. He looked back up at the adults, who were both staring at him with expressions he couldn’t understand. 

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “You guys come ‘round here often?” 

—

Eddie was given a week of confinement. That, and he had officially lost all hunting priviledges. Not to mention that Shauna had a hair trigger temper when it came to him. If he said anything incendiary, she would turn him into swiss cheese, and no one would stop her, because she was Shauna. Travis brought him his meals once a day, and usually stuck around to talk. Nat couldn’t walk by the pen without looking at him with a mix of disgust and regret. Everyone who visited made it clear that Eddie was only still breathing after multiple people had bargained for his life. Apparently it had been Tai’s argument that had saved him. 

Eddie didn't know how to feel about the fact that he was still alive. Neither did any of the voices. Jackie said it was a stupidly veiled suicide attempt, even by Eddie’s standards. He supposed that was true. Javi was glad that Eddie was still around to keep an eye on Travis and Nat. Ben worried that the week might pass, then another, then four, and Eddie would end up like him, rotting away in the pen. Pa was of the mind that Eddie had essentially been captured by the enemy. None of them would have any input or feelings on the situation if Eddie was dead. It was frustratingly difficult for him to weed out which opinions to trust, because they all made sense, because it was all him. Eddie stopped listening to them when they got agitated that he wouldn't respond. 

“You think you could pull some strings to get us our shoes back?” Kodi asked Melissa, interrupting her conversation with Hannah. Eddie shook his head.

“If you had them, you'd run.” Eddie said.

“We’re not fucking stupid.” Melissa added. 

“Worth a shot. You and your little girlfriend are clearly running things around here.” Kodi scoffed, then turned away from Melissa. “And you’re clearly not smart.” He mumbled. Eddie tapped his foot against the dried grass floor, thinking.

“You remind me of my uncle.” Eddie said, out of nowhere. Kodi’s eyebrow raised, uninterested. He wasn’t the only one who reminded him of home. Hannah had the same eyes as one of his friends, anxious and observant. The two were so undeniably normal compared to the rest of the camp, or course they would cause memories to surface.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He was an asshole. Made me chug a beer when I was five ‘cause I asked what it tasted like.” Eddie peeled the bark off of the stick he was messing with. That barbecue taunted him with the memory of cigars, meat, and hot summer air. And maybe Eddie was just talking to talk. Kodi wasn’t his uncle. He wasn’t anybody. Kodi would be dead in a month at most, and Eddie knew it.

“You learn your lesson?” Kodi closed his eyes. 

“Yeah, learned not to drink Natty Lights.” Eddie responded.

“What’s your beer of choice, then?” Kodi asked.

“Blue Moon.”

“Faggot.”

“Tough words for a grown man being held hostage by a bunch of teenage girls.” Eddie rolled his eyes.

Kodi opened his mouth to say something, but Eddie felt a sinister presence in the animal pen. And by sinister presence, he meant he heard Shauna’s voice. He glanced over to see her reprimanding Melissa for whatever conversation she was having with Hannah. She looked over at him. 

“You should be careful, talking with these two.” She warned. “Wouldn't want the rest of us thinking you're with them.”

Eddie didn't say anything. 

“Fucking answer me, Taylor. Did you not understand me the first time?” She snarled. 

“I understood you, Shauna.” Eddie dipped his head in defeat, which, to Shauna, looked like respect. She scoffed and turned back to Melissa. 

“Come on.” She ordered, turning on her heel and walking away. Melissa, ever the obedient lapdog, followed. 

—

Eddie’s head barely raised when he heard a gunshot coming from the camp. It was his last day in confinement, he would figure out who it was when he got out. It wasn't like he could do anything. Eddie’s arm hurt in a dull sting by that final afternoon. The cold air bit through his pants and socks, so he spent most of his time curled up in his cape. His wrists burned with the feeling of bound rope around them. 

No matter how bristling the winds got, the three stayed away from Ben's shelter in the middle. Eddie only offered a small explanation: “That was where our coach stayed,” when Hannah asked about it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that their coach was the man they had seen decapitated that night. Hannah seemed interested in the structure of the camp, why the leaders were chosen as the leaders, what they all believed in, how long it took them to start devolving. She didn't use the word ‘devolving’ , but Eddie could tell she was about to. 

—

“Who was the captain?” She had asked, on the third morning Eddie had been left in the pen. Eddie looked over to her, weighing how blunt he wanted to be about it. It wasn’t like she knew. 

“My sister.” He said.

“I’m sorry.” Hannah had said. She looked at the ground. Eddie’s forearm throbbed in pain, but nothing else was new. He paused.

“Shauna left her out in the cold to die.” Eddie said quietly. “She had, uh- They had gotten into an argument. And I didn’t know what had happened ‘til the morning we found her.”

Kodi and Hannah were quiet.

“Sometimes Shauna and I still fight about it.” Eddie added.

“Is that where all those bruises’re from?” Kodi asked. Eddie figured, though he rarely got proper glimpses of himself, that he must still be pretty dinged up from any number of fights. Eddie nodded. “You let a girl do that to you?” He sneered.

“When you’re out here, you let girls do a lot.” Eddie answered bitterly. “You let anyone do a lot.”

“Would you say that, because you’re so outnumbered, that the girls automatically took authority over the men in this camp?” Hannah asked. Eddie looked at her, confused. One of her sociology questions again.

“I- I don’t know. It was just… The people who could lead were the leaders, and no one was turning to Ben and the sophomores for guidance.” Eddie stammered. He had never put much thought into it. “Travis and I just never… had influence.”

Hannah nodded, satisfied by Eddie’s poor answer. Kodi scoffed. Eddie rolled his eyes.

“They’re gonna kill you.” Eddie said. Kodi raised his eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter that you know the woods. You heard what they said. If those three say that we stay, we stay.” He looked at the ground, desolate. “And… I didn’t realize it ‘til I got thrown in here.” He whispered. 

They didn’t ask him much more about life in the camp after that day.

—

Eddie’s head raised when he saw Shauna open the gate. She was carrying her knife. He bowed his head.

“I should have killed you.” Shauna said, looking down.

Eddie was quiet for a second. “I’m sorry.” He practically whispered. Shauna crouched down next to him.

“You know what Natalie said about you?” Shauna asked. Eddie shook his head. “She said you were nothing but a risk to yourself. Said that, given your track record, it’s not surprising how you seem to want me to kill you.” Shauna grabbed his hands, holding them out into the light. The old, whitened scars were still visible.

Eddie looked at the ground. The fact that Nat would bring something like that up, let alone use it to prove… something- made his chest tighten. 

“So I took some time to think about it,” Shauna continued. It was the longest she had actually talked to him in over a year. Maybe it was because Eddie’s hands were tied and Shauna had the rifle on her shoulder. “And I realized that killing you would be playing into whatever you want me to do. You’re not the smartest, Taylor. I know you have an angle.” Her voice dripped with poorly faked sincerity. Eddie nodded. He wasn’t going to be killed. 

“Don’t trust her.” Ben whispered. Eddie kept a straight face, though he wanted to tell his head to be quiet.

Shauna’s grip on his hands tightened, and she practically pulled them into her knife. Slashing upward, she cut the ropes. She also very intentionally sliced his wrist in the process. Eddie didn't protest, just looked her straight in the eye. She pulled him to his feet aggressively, and he stumbled up. Kodi’s eyes bored into him.

“I think we can work with each other. Don't you?” Shauna sneered, close to his ear. “Why don’t you use your manners first?”

Eddie’s head dipped. “Yes." He mummbled. "Thank you, Shauna.” She smirked, then walked away, leaving the gate open. Eddie stood, unsteady on his feet for a moment, before following her. Despite what certain movie tropes had led him to believe, he wasn’t gunned down the second he stepped out of the pen.

—

Nat didn’t talk to him for a day and a half. The girls avoided him. Travis wouldn’t look at him until they got back to their hut. Even Misty’s ever-lingering eyes were always focused on something else. There was a quiet tension in the camp, like a string about to snap in two. 

“I need your help with something.” Travis said, late one night. Eddie hummed. “Do… you think Lottie was the reason that we stayed?” He asked quietly. Eddie took a second to think.

“She set the chain reaction with Shauna and Tai off.” He tilted his head. “I’d say so. Why?”

“If she died, do you think everyone would snap out of it?” Travis asked. Eddie raised an eyebrow. 

“Are you-”

“Do you want her dead?” Travis continued.

“Well- I wouldn’t…” Eddie looked up at the roof of the shelter, unsure how to answer. “I wouldn’t care one way or another, I think.”

“If I killed her, would you help me set the trap?” Travis looked over to Eddie. Eddie looked back. Travis’s eyes were uneasy, barely visible in the low light.

“Yes.” Eddie answered honestly. Travis visibly relaxed.

The next day, Travis led Eddie out into the woods, to the pit Mari had gotten stuck in those months ago. Logs with double-sharpened sides were hidden in the bushes around the pit. He wanted Eddie’s help to stake them into the ground. And Eddie, true to his word, helped him.

“I could help with the trapping part, too.” Eddie offered.

“You know how Shauna’s been these last few days, you shouldn’t be out too long.” Travis said, grabbing the log Eddie handed to him. “I just figured… this part would take the longest.”

Eddie sat back on his heels as Travis hit the stick into place. “You gonna layer sticks and fabric like I do?” He asked.

“Leaves.” Travis answered. Eddie nodded. 

“Just be careful you don’t layer it too thick.” He lugged over another log to hand down to Travis. “And don’t report it right away. Better to let someone else find her or report it the next day.” Travis nodded. 

“You should stay at camp for the next few days.” Travis said. “I don’t want to involve you.”

“Too late. But I don’t mind.” Eddie set the last few logs into the pit and jumped in to help set them up. 

Trying to avoid splinters was the hardest part of staking the logs into the ground. Eddie looked at the rope they would climb to get out. His left arm could probably handle that kind of exertion. When the stakes were set in the ground, Eddie turned to Travis.

“It’s not just ‘cause she kept us from leaving, isn’t it?” He asked. Travis’s eyes said enough. Eddie nodded. “I’d kill her too, if I were you.” He hoisted himself out of the pit, Travis following. They stood at the edge, looking down into the death trap.

“Now, well…” Travis said hesitantly.

“Just come back safe, alright?” Eddie said, a hand on Travis’s shoulder as he stepped away. “I’ll stop implicating myself.” Travis looked at him gratefully. 

“Thank you.” He whispered. Eddie smiled tiredly over his shoulder, and made his way back to camp, making sure to circle around so it looked like he came from a different direction. He splashed some cold water from the river over his hair and face, letting it dry in the wind. He scrubbed the dirt off of his hands. If anyone asked where he had gone, he would tell them he had gone for a bath. He hoped Travis was sure about his plan. 

—

About a week after he got released from the pen, Shauna’s watchful eye started to ease up. Eddie kept his head low. So, of course, trouble found him in the form of Nat’s plan. 

“A group is escaping with Kodi and Hannah.” She whispered, bringing him his food in his hut. Shauna had forbidden him from eating at the firepit. “We’re gonna head South and find help with the radio they brought. Van’s been repairing it.”

Eddie nodded, though most of that was news to him. “Why are you telling me?” He asked. 

“Because when we escape, Shauna’s gonna look at you first.” She looked behind her, as if someone would appear at the doorway. 

“So you might as well.” Pa mused, finishing her sentence. 

Eddie took the plate from her. “When?” He asked.

“Tomorrow. Pack light, or nothing at all. And,” She took a knife from her pocket and spoke quickly. “Shauna won’t let me near Hannah and Kodi, but you can bring this. Your hut is furthest from camp, so you’ll be walking around far from the main clearing. Give it to Kodi. Hannah knows the plan. You just wait by the pen for them to come out, then lead ‘em to the West cliffs.”

“And then what happens?”

“We’ll be waiting there. You just make sure Kodi doesn’t try anything.” Nat explained.

“Who else is in on this?” Eddie asked, accepting the knife. His own pocket knife had been confiscated and was in Shauna’s hut. Nat must have been hiding hers for a while. 

“Ask Gen and Akilah at the dish station tomorrow. I have to get back.” She turned and left the hut, leaving Eddie staring at the knife in his hand.

A hushed conversation with Gen and Akilah the next morning told Eddie that the plan wasn’t as rushed as Nat had made it seem. He decided to hold onto the knife. Apparently most of the people involved had been banned from entering the pen. In an unexpected twist of events, Eddie found himself on the list of people Shauna assumed she could trust. Shauna, of course, was operating on the faulty assumption that Eddie actually feared her, and wasn’t just biding his time. 

“So you’ll be the one giving them the knife to escape?” Ben asked suspiciously, once Eddie was alone in his hut. “That sounds like Nat’s trying to reassign the blame.”

“Or that she’s just thinking rationally.” Jackie countered. 

“I think you should stay out of it. They’ll escape anyway, and send a team back.” Javi said.

“Did you not hear what Nat said about Shauna getting suspicious of him?” Jackie asked. Eddie lay flat on his back on the bed.

“He’s not done anything yet, he just needs to get rid of the knife.” Pa interjected. “Then stay in her sight, and away from the plan.”

“What if I stay out of it,” Eddie decided. “but I give them the knife. Does that please the jury?” 

“Hell no.” Jackie said. 

“You heard our suggestions, and picked the worst parts of each option.” Ben laughed dryly. 

“So then, I trust Nat.” Eddie whispered. “I’m going along with her plan. 

“Boy, you hardly know her plan.” Pa sighed.

“Well, forgive me for not being a military-grade strategist.” Eddie said. “They’re doing it no matter what. I should-” He cut himself off and the voices went quiet as the door opened. 

Travis looked at him tiredly. “Were you-” He started. “Nevermind. I don’t… It doesn’t matter.’’ He closed the door and let his coat fall to the floor. Eddie sat up and made space for him on the bed. Travis rested his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. 

Eddie rested his hand on Travis’s back. “Did you…”

“No.” Travis answered. “It wouldn’t let her. It fucking- She just…” He held his hand out, gesturing like that made Eddie understand. “Just walked right over.” He looked at the floor. Eddie wondered for a second if Lottie would rat Travis out, then he remembered that it was Lottie. 

“Shit.” Eddie sighed. 

“I’m hearing Javi again.” Travis said quietly. Eddie looked at him. When had he ever heard Javi? “I mean… not like your voices, I don’t think. But, fuck, man- It’s like he’s in the trees, or- he’s trying to find me.” He stammered. 

Eddie was quiet for a second.

“Maybe it’s your mind trying to tell you something.” He said. “That’s what my voices are.” I hope that’s what they are, he thought.

“Lottie kept talking about-”

“Fuck what Lottie says.” Eddie interrupted. “You were about to kill her earlier today.” It felt overly harsh, even as it left his mouth.

“It’s not insane- It’s just, sometimes, she makes sense, and I don’t know how to feel about it.” Travis mumbled.

“It isn’t insane.” Eddie agreed. “I’m not saying you’re not hearing things. And I’m not saying that she doesn’t offer explanations. I’m just saying all those voices are coming from you.”

“And then what? Just… just ignore it?” Travis’s voice shook.

“Listen to it, use your best judgement.” Eddie said. “It’s still you.”

Travis looked straight ahead. “I don’t want to hear him again.” He whispered. 

“I know.” Eddie whispered back. “I don’t think we get a choice.”

—

Eddie had to slowly pry himself out of Travis’s arms, late that night after the sun set and the air got frigid. He opened the door up slowly, set it back quietly, and slowly walked around the campsite, giving a wide distance to the huts that were still illuminated by the ever-flickering firelight. He tiptoed around to the animal pen. Without announcing anything, he tossed the knife over the wall and heard them scramble for it. He stood back, waiting for them to come out. 

“Cut me loose.” He heard from Kodi.

“I thought I heard something.” Hannah whispered back. 

“Eddie.” Kodi said back. “Toss it to me.”

“No- no.” Hannah shushed him. Eddie crept back into the forest. If they were listening for something besides him, he was in just as far up shit’s creek as they were. He could hear Hannah and Kodi whispering something, between periods of silence. He could hear the odd twig snapping. His spine prickled in anticipation. 

“Hannah.” Kodi urged, hushed. “You have to hurry- I heard that shit about your kid.” Eddie shook his head absentmindedly, sinking into a nearby bush. As the two in the pen started to move, he heard something in the bushes on the other side. 

The rifle cocked. “I fucking knew it.” Shauna snarled. Eddie looked around, wondering if he could make a quick escape through the sparse trees that surrounded the camp without Shauna finding him. 

“Who gave you the knife?” He heard her demand. 

“It was Kodi.” Hannah stammered. “He got the knife.”

“You lying, fucking cunt!” Kodi growled. Eddie only had a moment to breathe in the relief that he hadn’t been named explicitly, before there was a sick squelching sound, and a gasp from Shauna. Eddie heard a heavy body fall to the ground, and judging by the breathing that came from the pen, it wasn’t Hannah. 

“So you were off a bit, when you said he'd be gone in a month.” Ben commented. Eddie looked around for a route to escape, when Hannah’s words stopped him in his tracks.

“Please.” She said. “I want to be a part of this.”

Eddie felt his ears start ringing.

“Who gave this to Kodi?” Shauna asked. “It’s one of ours.”

Hannah paused. “Eddie and Natalie.” She said. Shauna laughed coldly. Eddie wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t. 

Eddie stood up, hands raised, fully aware that Shauna might take him out before he threw the one bargaining chip he still had. Sure enough, she pointed her rifle up at him as he walked out from behind the pen. 

“One reason why I don’t shoot you dead right now.” She ordered. 

Eddie swallowed. He looked up at the sky. Soft snowflakes had started to fall. He closed his eyes. Curse his ebbing and flowing will to live.

“Because I know exactly who’s planning against you right now. And I’ll know when they’ll try again.” He said.

Chapter Text

Shauna didn’t fall for Eddie’s bluff. She quickly realized that all he knew was where they were meeting, nothing about the actual plan. And, after turning them in, after spending that night with the rifle pressed into his back, there was no way they would trust him again. He had lost any leverage he might have had with either group. But Shauna’s paranoia outweighed itself. She seemed to have realized that, no matter how much she waved the rifle around, she wasn’t able to kill anyone without the rest of the camp turning on her. So there was no mass punishment; instead, Nat and Eddie were made into examples. Because they were so heavily involved -or, Shauna insisted Eddie was, at least- they were subject to random bed checks, along with any number of demeaning tasks; which were just excuses for Shauna to humiliate them in front of the camp. 

The first time, the whole camp had been awake after the failed escape attempt. Shauna had ordered Britt and Melissa to rifle through their stuff, leaving it to Nat and Eddie to pick up the pieces. The second time, Eddie had been dragged off of his bed and into the cold air, still half dressed and half asleep. 

“Search it.” Shauna ordered, and two girls, dressed in animal pelts and masks, ran into the hut and grabbed his and Travis’s stuff. Travis was also pulled out of the shelter, sputtering and disoriented. As Eddie tried to stand up from the dirt, he was kicked back to the ground. He accepted defeat as Shauna’s boot pressed into his back. All of his things were strewn on the ground, and more and more of the camp gathered to watch. Before Eddie realized what was happening, he felt a hand twist in his hair, pulling his face from the dirt. The slice of a knife sent his head crashing back down, and the weight was lifted from his back. 

Eddie scrambled up, holding a hand to the back of his head. He looked at Shauna, who was holding his hair with a smug look on her face. At her side was Hannah, with the crossbow pointed at him. He couldn’t see her eyes through her mask, but he hoped she felt sorry for what she was doing. He and Travis stood there, shivering, until they decided that their stuff was fine. Shauna gave Eddie a kick to the back of the knee for good measure, sending him falling to his knees as the group dispersed. 

Eddie knelt on the ground, curling up as he tried to steady his breathing. He heard Travis gather their stuff. When Travis helped him to his feet, Eddie brushed the dirt and leaves off of his pants and joined him back in their hut. The lack of weight at the back of his head was new. Eddie couldn’t remember the last time his hair had ever been that short. He ran a hand through it, cringing. It was the only thing he could focus on to keep himself from crying. Travis definitely noticed.

“Hey, you know, I can cut the rest of it to match.” He offered quietly. Eddie looked at the ground, at the wooden planks he had finally set into the floor, some of which had been pried up. “Using our razors.” Travis clarified, though it went without saying. Eddie nodded in agreement. It was too long, anyway, it nearly touched his shoulders in most parts. Or, that was all he could tell himself. It felt like hours later when they finally fell asleep, inches of Eddie’s hair laying swept outside the doorway of their hut. He shouldn’t have been surprised that, just a few days later, Nat finally lost the blonde ends of her hair to match.

Eddie found himself unable to sleep after the first few weeks. It was one thing for them to drag him out into the dirt every other night, it was another thing for Travis to get caught up in it as well. So, Travis started sleeping in Robin and Britt’s hut. Which really meant that neither he nor Eddie slept. When they saw each other in the day, Travis was always increasingly drunk, only able to finish a portion of his tasks before Eddie or someone else stepped in. Travis would stumble back to their hut and curl up on a familiar bed for hours while the rest of the camp stayed busy. Meanwhile, Nat barely glanced at him, and Eddie caught himself being grateful for that more than once.

It was enough for Eddie to lose track of the days, each one blending into the next in a whir of misery, hunger, and the returning pain in his side. He stayed in the hut, emerged for chores, and kept his head as low as possible. 

—

Eddie was lying on his side in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, when he heard Akilah’s blood-curdling scream from across the camp. He sat up quick enough to hit his head on the wall of the hut, and rushed out, emerging along with everyone else to find her in the animal hut. 

Eddie heard her sobs before he saw what she was sobbing over, but he knew immediately. Akilah was crouched over Barry the goat, the rest of the animals lying dead around her. Eddie ran into the pen, kneeling by Peter. His speckled fur was stretched over his tiny bones, and no sign of life came from his small body.  Eddie bit his lip as tears filled his eyes. Mari and Tai rushed to Akilah as everyone crowded around her.

“He was so cute.” Javi said sadly. 

“Now you all have food to preserve, though.” Pa mumbled. Eddie shook his head. He didn’t want to have to eat them. Naming the animals on the farm had been a stupid idea, and the fact that the voices in his head were having their own opinions on it was infuriating. 

“They’re gone.” Akilah wailed as Tai wrapped a blanket around her. “My- My babies… They’re just…” She doubled over as a sob choked her. Eddie stood up, cradling Peter in his arms. 

Mari mumbled something to her, but Akilah shook her head vehemently.

“Why?” She asked Lottie, looking up. “Why would It do this to us?” She demanded. Lottie was silent. “It was just like in my vision, why would It let this happen?” 

“Maybe It wants us to leave.” Nat said. There was a pause while Shauna looked around the pen, clearly thinking. 

“We got too arrogant.” Lottie mumbled. “We took and took from It, and never gave anything back.”

No one said a word. The only noise Eddie could hear was the cawing of birds and the whistling of wind through the trees. Tai held Akilah as she cried.

“It’s upset with us. We have to prove our faithfulness.” She said. Eddie shook his head silently. “It wants blood.”

“We’ve done nothing but spill blood.” Nat said. “Coach, the scientist, the guide… we can’t…”

“But, they were all outsiders.” Mari interjected.

“Mari- what the hell?” Robin whispered. Eddie agreed with her. Mari’s face was stone cold as she called for another hunt. He looked at Nat. 

“Mari’s right.” Lottie decided. “We need to offer ourselves to It. Our people. It’s not a real sacrifice until we do.” Her eyes were emotionless as she looked at the dead animals at her feet. Her cape dragged over one of the ducklings, whose feathers had just begun to turn.

“We’ll have another hunt.” Shauna whispered, her face unreadable. “We have to do it right this time. We have to show the wilderness our respect.” The animal pen was silent. 

“That’s- That’s bullshit!” Eddie stuttered. Nat held his arm as a warning, but he shook her off. “No- There’s still food here, you can’t just-”

“I can, actually.” Shauna cut him off with a sneer.

“It’s not fair, Shauna.” Eddie said.

“Isn’t a randomized draw not fair enough? You want something better?” Shauna asked, getting in Eddie’s face. “You want a fair chance?”

Eddie and Nat looked at each other, unsure of where Shauna was going with that. If she was changing the rules, she had the power to do any number of things. Nat’s eyes were cautious. Eddie felt like a cornered animal. Shauna paused, looking around at the group like she was thinking something over. 

“Shauna, why don’t we-” Tai started, but a glance from Shauna quieted her.

“The queen and king of hearts will decide a sacrifice. We’ll use the full deck, around the group as many times as it takes for two people to draw them.” People started murmuring, but Shauna held up a hand to quiet them. “Both chosen will be hunted, but only one will die. That just depends on how well they can run. Is that fair enough for you, Taylor?” She stared into him with a cold look in her eyes. Eddie swallowed nervously, backing up.

“No. No, I'm out.” Nat shook her head in outrage. “You don’t get to change the rules, you don’t get to-”

“What do you think, Lottie?” Shauna asked.

Lottie looked up, like she just returned back to the conversation. “We would still be offering one of our own.” She said. Eddie could only stare at the ground. 

“We’ll draw later today.” Shauna announced.

Shauna’s cape dragged on the frosty ground as she stepped over to Eddie. “And if you’re chosen, I will gut you like a fucking pig.” She hissed in his ear. 

—

“Should I…” Van stuttered. 

“You can start.” Shauna said. Van nodded, and brought the deck of cards from her pocket. She shuffled them for a moment before handing the first one to Misty. Van drew her card from Misty, before she continued around the group. The wind was strong, blowing through Eddie’s cape and stinging his ears. 

Eddie’s head was dipped in acceptance. Acceptance that he was the one who brought the new set of rules around, and that whatever happened in the hunt following was partially on his conscience as well. The looks from around the circle told him exactly what everyone was thinking about that. He wanted to be grateful that each person would be given a fighting chance, and maybe it was naïve to assume Shauna’s rules had their best interests at heart, but every person in the circle looked at him like all of them had drawn the queen. Nat glanced at him with tears in her eyes. He stood next to Travis, who was swaying on his feet, absolutely wasted. They went around the group, Eddie pulled twice before it got back to him. 

His hand shaking, he looked down at Misty. She refused to meet his eyes. Swallowing the bile in his throat, Eddie pulled the card at the top of the pile. He looked at it for a moment and showed it to everyone. The queen of hearts’ design made the group shiver. Nat looked at the ground. There was only one more to go. Eddie knew that, save for a few select people, there was no way he was outliving whoever else would get hunted alongside him. He couldn’t look at Travis. Eddie's fingers worked to undo the knot of his cape as they shook.

“You called for this.” His voices jeered.

Before Misty got to Tai, Shauna stepped in between her and Mari. She had been looking around the circle suspiciously for the last few rounds. Tai and Van’s eyes widened. 

“Something wrong?” Shauna asked. Tai paused before shaking her head.

“You just shouldn’t be taking unnecessary risks.” She said finally. Shauna crossed her arms like she was pretending to think about what Tai said.

“You were in AP statistics, right?” She asked. Tai nodded. “So you of all people should know that no matter where I stand, it doesn’t affect the probability one bit. Besides, I trust whatever It wills.” She stared Tai down, before holding her hand out to Misty after Tai drew her card. Shauna practically snatched the card from the deck, proudly showing off an ace of spades. Mari fumbled with her card, before flipping it towards herself. Her wide-eyed expression told Eddie everything he needed to know. In case anyone missed it, though, she turned the card around to the circle, the king of hearts on full display. 

Her disbelief that she had been chosen, the disappointment that radiated off of Misty and Tai, and Shauna’s knowing look at Hannah made it clear to Eddie that something was wrong; though he couldn’t understand what it was just yet. He felt something prickle at his spine as he realized it.

“Tough break, Mar.” Shauna said with a smirk. Mari seethed before ripping the card in half. “Take off your cape.” Shauna ordered. “You might get it back at the end of the day.” 

Shauna stepped towards Mari, clasping Jackie’s necklace around her neck. “The king’s higher than the queen.” She whispered.

Mari lunged at Shauna the second her arms were no longer around her neck. Tai, Misty, and Hannah had to step in as she thrashed and kicked. Shauna stood where she was, and spit at Mari’s feet. Lottie started the count. They had one minute. Eddie unfroze from his position, pulled Travis into a quick kiss goodbye, and ran away while Mari stumbled out of the girls’ grasp. He couldn’t hear anything that was being yelled between Shauna and Mari over the sound of snow crunching under his feet. 

It was one thing to think he had accepted death, with all the times he had baited Shauna; Eddie realized it was a whole new thing to stare it in the face and welcome it. He was running for a specific tree, one he knew he could climb fast and find what he needed inside. 

A stick from Lottie’s trap, one that had been too thin to put into the ground there. It was still carved to a sharp point, and was easy to move. The rules of the hunts never technically stipulated that the sacrifices couldn’t fight back. Maybe it was implied. Maybe Eddie would be killed for the betrayal once he came back. But then again, unless Mari got caught, he was a dead man anyway. His fingers tightened around the wooden spear at the thought of being able to kill Shauna with it. Eddie felt like a rabid animal. Maybe that was how Shauna always felt. 

“You have to keep moving.” Javi urged.

He dropped back down to the ground, disoriented by the whoops and animal calls from all around him. The sounds reverberated along the mountains they were nestled in, making it impossible to tell where they were coming from. Eddie picked a direction and ran. Mari was faster than him; everyone was faster than him, but he had the advantage of knowing the woods well. He just had to pray Gen wasn’t on his trail. He found the river, still flowing despite the early-winter cold. He crouched by it and grabbed handfuls of mud. The mud by the river was practically glue. It stuck to anything and held there. He splattered it all over the green lower half of his puffy jacket, along with the yellow cuffs and pockets. He smeared it across his pants as well. He made sure to secure Travis’s white shirt that he wore around his neck. Dusty brown and white: the colors of winter. And Eddie was camouflaged. He picked his spear back up and jogged away, minding the tracks he made. 

A caw from above made him startle. Van was in the trees, staring right at him. Eddie sprinted away, not even daring to look back. He knew she had jumped down and was running after him, but the fact that she wasn’t catching up made no sense. 

“Count your blessings.” Pa said.

He lost her after a while, as he approached the lake. Ben gave the occasional commentary on his running like he was watching a football game. He didn’t need commentary. He didn’t need company. He needed to go faster.

A shooting pain in his side made him double over, and he trudged to a large rock overhang. 

“Not now. Not fucking now.” Eddie muttered desperately, heaving to breathe. Hunts could last hours. Nat’s did. Tracking down Kodi and Hannah had taken a whole night. Eddie needed it over immediately, the pulsing agony in his stomach made that clear. He caught his breath shakily, mulling over a plan. Something fucking sick, that not even his voices gave their input on.

The plan stumbled to him. Mari crashed into view from the brush, barefoot and half naked. She had lost the rest of her clothes, everything save for her nightgown. Eddie got to his feet. 

“Mari!” He called, a half-whisper. She turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide, like the deer Eddie found in his traps. He raised his hands and dropped his spear, hobbling closer to her.

“Mari. I can keep us safe. You have to follow me, I know where we can go to wait this out.” He said. If she ran, he was dead. He needed her to listen unlike anything he had ever needed before. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something. Eddie grabbed her hand desperately. “Please. Don’t die like this. We can escape, I know how.” 

“But the caves-”

“Not the caves, Mar. For the love of God, trust me.” He felt tears form in his eyes. She hesitated, then nodded. And that was her fatal mistake. 

Eddie led her far out, to a place she knew well and he knew better. The girls were more concentrated in that area of the forest, he realized. Mari hissed and fell to the ground with a thud. Eddie turned around, and saw that she had sliced her foot open on a rock. 

“C’mon, c’mon, we’re almost there.” He whispered, helping her to her feet and continuing the sprint. Eddie kept her on his left. He was hearing the rest of the girls, but he wasn’t seeing them, and that was almost as bad. The uncertainty was driving him insane. His side throbbed, and he was heaving out breaths. Mari wasn’t doing much better. She shivered and huffed, and Eddie knew that even if he was telling the truth, she would die of hypothermia anyway. His chest tightened, and he didn’t know if it was in physical pain, or if it was at the thought of what he was going to do. 

They were almost there when Mari tripped again, and instead of Eddie, it was Lottie who appeared to help her. Eddie had to keep running, though. He passed it before slowing to call back for Mari. Lottie held a hand out, whispering something to her, before Mari slapped her hand away.

“Oh, fuck off, Lottie.” She spat, and she was back on her feet and running for him. Eddie tensed, but gestured for her to hurry up. She stayed on track. 

One of her footsteps was bloody, and was undoubtedly leading the group to them. One, two. One, two. One- crash. 

Eddie slapped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from gagging at the wet thud that came from the pit. Backing up slowly in horror, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he had done, he turned and ran, Lottie’s knowing eyes boring into him from behind. He didn’t run back to the camp, he collapsed against a rock in a clearing not more than five minutes away. His breathing ragged, the pain in his side unable to be ignored, Eddie tilted his head back against the rock and held it there. He bit his lip and hissed in air through his teeth, trying not to cry. 

Eddie hit his head against the rock as the tears started to fall. He was alive, only after doing something so deplorable it proved he didn’t deserve to be. 

“I’m sorry.” He whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He brought his hands to his eyes. His lip shook. The only thing he heard was the sound of wind in the trees. No one was talking.

“No. No, no, no.” He muttered desperately. “No, please.” Still no reply. He looked up at the branches above him. 

“Please. Please don’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, come back.” Eddie cried into his palms, the tears freezing on his skin. “Mari- I didn’t want to, please. I’m so sorry.” He drew his knees to his chest as he sobbed. He fell to the ground, and the snow melted underneath him, but he stayed until he heard that horn. And even after that, when he knew he was supposed to come back, he wished he could step into that pit himself, feel a fraction of her pain, die like a coward and go to hell the way he always knew he would. His life and death would be a lot easier if he could stay consistent in that regard.

—

Eddie could smell the difference between animal and human meat. He could smell the difference from a mile away. When he closed his eyes, he could hear the snap of the sticks and the squelch of her flesh in the popping fire. When he opened them, he could see the girl that he had killed, in pieces, over a fire. The mask he was wearing kept the others from seeing the way his eyes were filled with tears, and he assumed theirs did the same. 

“Eat, and never forget this.” Shauna’s words echoed in Eddie’s head. They echoed with every bite he took, every time he touched the meat on his plate. He finished his plate. He cleared his place. He knelt at Shauna’s feet. He walked back to his hut when the rest of them did. And he walked beyond his hut, far beyond, to an area where he could stick his fingers down his throat without anyone hearing. 

When he walked back to the hut, his mouth burning and stomach empty, Eddie wasn’t surprised to find that Travis hadn’t waited up. He was sprawled out on the pelts and furs and blankets, and Eddie knew he didn’t deserve the company, but he shucked his shoes off anyway and collapsed onto the bed, the usual throbbing in his side that would have brought tears to his eyes, if he hadn’t cried them all away hours ago. Eddie stared at the wall for what felt like hours.

—

No one looked at Eddie the next morning, though he could hear them whispering. He left the hut as Van, Tai, Britt, Travis, and Gen were coming back from filling in the pit. No one asked questions about why it was there, or why it had spikes. 

The ominous figure of Shauna in her robes and crown slinked through camp periodically. She seemed like she was looking for someone. If the draw had been as suspicious as Eddie had thought, then she wasn’t considering him; otherwise, she wouldn't still be looking for someone. 

Eddie knew when he wasn’t wanted or needed. Nat shrunk away from him when he tried to talk. Van gave him a sad look and nothing else when he returned a mended shirt of hers. Akilah was nowhere to be found, and Eddie didn’t know if that was a new development, in the quiet disorientation that followed the hunt. The one time he left the camp, he stumbled upon the place that they had bled Mari out in, and he would have been sick to his stomach if there was anything left. Some girls continued on as normal, or attempted to. Others waited anxiously outside their huts. The sun was high in the sky when Nat walked across the clearing, her head low. Shauna followed her. 

Eddie watched as Shauna grabbed Nat’s shoulder, turning her around to face her. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but by Shauna’s increasingly agitated tone, he assumed that Nat was staying silent. 

“I’m talking to you!” Shauna snatched the mask from Nat’s face. Eddie squinted at the unfamiliar features. 

“Hannah.” Shauna said it at the same time Eddie realized. Hannah looked around at the camp, like they were supposed to know why she was dressed as Nat. Maybe they did. Shauna whipped around, locking her eyes on Eddie, instead of any of the others who apparently knew what was going on. He opened his mouth to say something in his defense, but he didn’t know what he was defending himself against.

“What the hell is this?” Shauna demanded. The camp was silent. Hannah’s lips twisted into a small grin. Shauna looked around, outraged and confused, like she was putting something together. Her yell echoed through the trees. “Where the fuck is Natalie?”