Chapter Text
Shauna thinks that there should be more of a relief when it’s Jackie that’s sent outside, not her. And it is. It’s a relief, a sense of power, almost. Shauna gets the final say. Shauna’s in control. She’s never felt in control . It’s a victory she never thought she’d win.
It doesn’t taste as sweet as she thought it would, though.
Even still, Shauna doesn’t go after her. She thinks the rest of the team expects her to. Of course they do. Shauna has trailed after Jackie for years. She knows they think she’s the weak one, the follower, the one to always give in. But Shauna goes back to eating her meal, and, hesitantly, everyone else does, too. She expects Jackie to burst in at any moment, ready to sit in silence like a child or start the argument back up right where they left off. She can try. Shauna will just shut her down again, and she thinks, maybe, the other girls would be on her side.
If they weren’t out there , in that cabin in the middle of nowhere, Shauna knows that the others wouldn’t be on her side. Look, okay, she gets it. She gets it. She slept with Jackie’s boyfriend. More than once. Once would be a mistake, right? Like, that could be excusable, maybe, if you tilt your head and squint. It’s hard to explain more than once. Especially because she doesn’t even like Jeff. She doesn’t.
Shauna doesn’t know why she did it. Maybe the not knowing is the explanation. She didn’t know why she was doing it in the moment, just that Jeff was there, and she wasn’t supposed to have him, and that made her want him.
(And, if she closed her eyes, she could smell Jackie’s perfume on both of their clothes. Jeff’s lips were soft; not as soft as she wanted, but still soft, like he actually took Jackie’s advice when she told him he needed to use some ChapStick because she didn’t want to kiss him if his lips were all gross. He said he loved her, and those were words that she ached to hear because they hadn’t been returned when she said them in so long , and she just wants to know why Jackie won’t say them back. Shauna won’t tell Jeff that she loves him, but at least he says them back.)
The rest of the team would think she’s such a bitch and a slut and just the fucking worst if they were back home, but they weren’t. They’re in the middle of the woods trying to fucking survive, and Jackie may have been captain out there, but she’s struggling here, and everyone can see that. She’s struggling, and Shauna can’t keep pulling her weight. She hasn’t, for a while, come to think of it, since Jackie started pulling away, but Jackie still does the least, and she can’t keep getting away with that. They won’t let her. They won’t let her not participate in chores and prayers and howling at the moon if it comes down to it. (Shauna thinks it might come down to it.)
Maybe a night outside will do her some good, Shauna thinks as she finishes her food. The bear isn’t bad. At least it’s warm. At least it’s filling. At least it’s not hallucinogenic mushrooms and rancid wine. Not that Jackie ate that. Not that Jackie’s eaten much of anything these days. Shauna’s noticed, of course she has, because it’s Jackie, and she notices Jackie whether she wants to or not.
She looks outside and notices the way Jackie struggles to start a fire with a lighter , and it’s pathetic in a way that bites at Shauna’s insides. She calls it annoyance. Some of it’s pity, too, and she wants to go out there and help or just fucking bring her in. Instead, Shauna checks to see if she could possibly get something more to eat, if there’s enough for seconds. She’s pregnant, okay? She’s hungry. They’re all so fucking hungry .
The conversation is stilted, mostly just a few of the girls thanking Lottie for the bear. Because Lottie killed the bear, got them food, something they’d been lacking the last few weeks, and maybe it was the wilderness, and maybe they should thank the gods of the dirt or whatever, but Lottie’s the one that had the knife. Even Coach Scott keeps looking at her with that expression adults get when kids do something they don’t know how to respond to.
Though, Shauna thinks Coach Scott is looking less and less like an adult the more time they were out there. Adults could do something. Adults could help get them out of this. It was cool that he showed them how to shoot and showed Shauna how to use the knife, but there was only so much he could do. He couldn’t get them back home.
Fuck, would they ever get back home?
The world is so much different out here. Shauna’s not really sure she buys into the whole praying to the woods shit like some of the girls do, but she’s not gonna rock the boat, not like Jackie. They might never get home. They might never get home . They have to find a way to make it out there. They’ve got to find a way to remain sane.
Though, Jackie was right. Sanity isn’t exactly what she’d call what happened last night. She remembers waking up and feeling like shit , feeling even more like shit as some of her memories came back. The look of judgment Jackie gave, that she keeps giving her. She’d be judging Shauna now if she was inside. Maybe she was right to. Maybe Shauna didn’t give a fuck.
Because why should she? Her first thought is always Jackie, always. And Jackie’s never hers. Never, never, never. Jackie never thinks about Shauna as Shauna , just as an extension of Jackie. She’d been honest, she knows she’d been honest, when she called Jackie out.
(That’s what she’s telling herself, at least, to keep from going out there and getting her and being the one to apologize yet again. If Shauna holds onto her anger, then she doesn’t have to feel guilt.)
“We should put some food away for Nat and Travis and Javi,” Akilah said, the first sound other that the scraping of spoons against bowls, of hungry mouths being fed.
Coach Scott nods. “That’s a good idea. Hopefully, they’ll have… everything sorted by the time they get back.”
Another thing to be guilty about.
Several things to be guilty about, really, from whatever the fuck they were going to do with Travis to whatever the fuck Javi saw. And Nat, too, Shauna should apologize to Nat, even though she isn’t Jackie’s keeper, even though she couldn’t control what was going through Jackie’s head to make her think she needed to sleep with Travis.
It makes sense, though, didn’t it? All of the little jabs Jackie had given her over the last few weeks, the way she’d pulled away. Shauna imagines this is what Jackie looks when she’s given up. Admittedly, she’s never seen that much before. She’s seen Jackie give in, and she’s seen her backtrack, but never give up, not even when they were getting their asses handed to them by Park Ridge their freshman year. Jackie doesn’t just give up.
Except, of course, in failed survival situations after finding out that her boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend.
And, like, Jackie had read the entire journal, apparently, so she knew about Brown, and she knew about Shauna’s feelings. It’s such a fucking violation of Shauna’s privacy. Those words weren’t meant for anyone but her , but of course Jackie thinks that means that she’s entitled to them, too. She’s entitled to everything that’s Shauna’s. She’s entitled to Shauna’s whole life.
She’s just getting angrier, scraping the last bits of bear out of her bowl and shoveling them into her mouth. As long as she stays angry, she doesn’t have to think about the soft little “fuck you” that left Jackie’s mouth. She doesn’t have to think about the way she could find so many ways to hurt Jackie, but Jackie couldn’t really seem to return the favor. She doesn’t have to think about Jackie, cold and so fucking stupid as struggles to light a fire.
Lottie nudges her. “Are you…” She doesn’t have to finish the sentence, though. No, Shauna is not fine, or okay, or whatever synonym Lottie might have traded out. She didn’t want to talk about it. Lottie clears her throat. “Things are going to work out.”
“Sure,” Shauna mutters. Will they? Or will she and Jackie just die out here, fucking angry at each other? She can’t see either of them getting over this. Jackie for Shauna sleeping with her boyfriend, Shauna for Jackie invading her privacy, along with over a decade of grievance on top of that which all culminate into the simple fact that Jackie has no regard for anyone that isn’t Jackie.
Maybe it’d be for the best if things didn’t work out, if the two of them could carve out lives for each other without each other. Shauna thought she’d get a chance to do that in college, maybe, if she could tear herself away from Jackie. Jackie would never have a hard time finding her footing out in the real world. She’d be okay without Shauna there. But, as Shauna puts up her bowl and looks out the window at Jackie at the fire pit, struggling to use a lighter, Shauna thinks that Jackie wouldn’t be okay without her here .
(There’s this little something in the back of her mind, a thrill at the knowledge that Jackie needs her, a thrill she’s always felt when Jackie needs her. She ignores it. She has to.)
Maybe it’s time that Jackie learns to stand on her own two feet. It’s about time she starts pulling her own weight. Shauna can’t do it for her anymore. She just fucking can’t.
“She’s not coming in tonight,” Lottie says with that strange certainty she’s always had.
“She’ll come in if she gets cold enough,” Shauna replies, brushing off the twinge in her stomach that makes her feel like she’s lying.
The rest of the team is cleaning up and settling down for the evening, and Shauna decides to head up to the attic. She tries to write in her journal but stares at the page, vision blurring the lines. What can she write that won’t get read by Jackie later? What can she say that’ll still be hers and only hers? Is she even allowed to have something that’s only hers?
Tai comes up and starts getting ready for bed. If they were home, they’d all be getting ready to go out, or doing homework, or watching a movie. But they were all so tired, and there’s no movies here, just the few books and magazines they had to share between them all. Sometimes, it was easier to just go to bed, even if the sun was only barely setting.
Shauna goes to the window and watches Jackie. She’s always watching Jackie, even when she knows she shouldn’t. Her back’s to the cabin, but Shauna can make out that wisps of a tiny fire that Jackie’s managed to make herself, all bundled up in her blanket and letterman jacket.
There’s really no way for her to tell how long she’s been standing there when she hears Tai’s voice say, “Just go talk to her.” As if that’s Shauna’s responsibility, as if she’s nothing more than Jackie’s keeper. She’s not Jackie’s keeper, and Shauna doesn’t even look at Tai as she goes over to her pallet and lays down, sparing one last glance at the window, unable to see out of it, before she turns away.
Sleep doesn’t come easily, but it does come, and Shauna opens her eyes to the inherent knowledge that she isn’t Shauna anymore. She’s Jackie, in Jackie’s skin, feeling Jackie’s emotions, seeing through Jackie’s eyes. She’s cold and hurt and trying so very, very hard not to cry, so she wraps the blanket a little bit tighter around herself.
It’s strange, being Jackie and knowing that she’s still Shauna. It’s a dream that she knows is a dream, even if it feels so real. Jackie’s pain doesn’t feel like her own, isn’t laced with bitterness and waspish anger. It’s just sad. Kind of pathetic, a needy little thing that begs for attention, any kind of attention, a hint of affection.
This kind of feels like retribution, even if Shauna knows it isn’t real; Jackie read about Shauna’s feelings, so Shauna’s getting to live Jackie’s.
“Hey.” Shauna hears her own voice, and Jackie glances up (feeling hope and sadness and fear and something big and so much hope, hope, hope that it aches) before looking away, back at her puny fire. Jackie is a wet napkin. She’ll crumble first. She doesn’t want to make it easy, though. So the dream Shauna continues, “This is stupid. I’m sorry, okay? I– I’m really sorry.”
That’s all it takes. It’s that simple. Shauna’s always been the one of them to hold onto shit. Jackie can’t keep a grudge once an apology’s been laid out. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly good one. Shauna’s given some shit apologies over the years, and this one’s at least accurate in that. She knows herself too well. There’s no specifics. Just a “sorry.”
Sorry is all Jackie needs. She looks at the dream Shauna, her too large eyes looking at Shauna’s face, her mouth, her chin, not really focusing anywhere even as the dream Shauna speaks again. “Come inside.” A hand touches her shoulder before it brushes through her hair. “Please?”
Shauna can feel Jackie’s resolve crumble, even as she tries to put on a mask. A mask to hide what? She’s already giving in. There’s nothing to hide. She doesn’t say a word because if she does, she knows it’ll come out choked, so instead she stands, letting Shauna wrap an arm around her and guide her back inside.
Jackie’s still so fucking cold, but the hand on her back, the body at her side, Shauna, Shauna, everything about Shauna, is enough to make her warm. The dream Shauna lets her go long enough to open the door, and Jackie wants to stop her, to cling to her, to ask for one more moment to touch. But she doesn’t. She can’t.
The inside is warm, and everyone’s still awake. Jackie’s embarrassed, but Akilah wraps a blanket around her shoulders, and Jackie weakly says, “Thanks. I was freezing out there.” The typical raspiness of her voice has been worn down to something wispy and cracked, but Shauna still thinks it’s nice. She thinks it’s inherently Jackie.
The Jackie dream experience has to end soon, but Shauna can’t pull herself away from it. She literally can’t. The dream won’t end, whether she wants it to or not, and she watches herself lead Jackie to sit in front of the fire, brushing a hand through Jackie’s hair, and it’s so nice.
(Is that a Shauna feeling or a Jackie feeling, the contentment and yearning for these touches. Well, no, not a real Jackie feeling. This isn’t the real Jackie, just Shauna’s dream version of her. But if Shauna thinks about those feelings, especially related to Jackie, she thinks she might scream.)
“I’m so tired,” Jackie whispers, barely even a sound.
Lottie kneels in front of her, a mug in hand and a soft smile on her lips. “Here. This will help.”
Jackie takes it, and the smell of it hits her before the taste. Warm and sweet and rich, the hot chocolate is thick when it touches her lips without a single thought. She’d drink more, but she doesn’t think she can stomach too much at once. Still, she smiles and laughs. “Hot chocolate? How?” she asks, her voice a little stronger. “Where did you find this?”
She goes to take another sip but is stopped by the dream Shauna. “Does it matter?”
Looking up, Jackie sees Shauna, and she doesn’t want to look away. There’s so much she has to say, guilt churning in her stomach that’s full of nothingness and the taste of hot chocolate. Shauna apologized. Jackie knows she needs to apologize, too. “Shauna…”
“It’s fine.” The dream Shauna’s hand brushes against Jackie’s arm, and she smiles. “It’s all gonna be fine. I love you, Jackie.”
Those are the words that Jackie wants, needs , to hear, and there is a split second where everything is right, and everything is okay. Jackie’s had so much trouble returning the words over the years that it should be a crime how much she needs to hear them, but that’s just the way the world works. She wants to return them, feels them resting in her throat, nearly choking her. She doesn’t even know why they won’t come out anymore. She wants them to come out.
It’s still fine as Jackie looks away from the dream Shauna and to the rest of the team, all of them agreeing, “We all love you, Jackie.”
This is the part where Shauna wants the dream to end. It’s getting kind of stupid, now, this Jackie lovefest. Creepy, too, kind of like Shauna’s pregnancy dreams of giving birth to food. She can’t wake up, though, no matter how hard she tries.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” the dream Shauna says, squatting down and leaning in. “You know that, right?”
It’s such a cliche. Aren’t those the same words Jackie said to her all the time? It’s silly and totally unrealistic. At least Shauna thinks she’s more original than that.
But Jackie says, “I know,” with a kind of softness that she hasn’t been capable of in a long time. None of them have been particularly soft, though Jackie certainly hasn’t hardened in the ways that the rest of them have. But there’s a vulnerability to this. Jackie should know better than to be so vulnerable.
It’s not safe.
It’s only when Jackie sees Laura Lee that she seems to realize that something might be wrong, and Shauna thinks maybe the dream will end soon. Laura Lee smiles and says, “It’s not as bad as you thought, is it?”
The dream will end soon. It has to. It has to. But not before it becomes a nightmare.
“So glad you’re joining us,” a masculine voice comes from the pantry. Jackie looks over, and she realizes that something is wrong, very wrong. She isn’t cold anymore. She isn’t warm, though, either. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Shauna snaps awake, her eyes opening to see her breath fogging out in front of her face. She sits up, confused and cold , the light from the attic window almost blinding. White. Overcast. Snow. It snowed. She’s having trouble processing that it snowed, but it finally sinks in, and she looks down at the fire pit.
Her stomach drops. “No.”
Any residual anger from the night before is gone. Any annoyance or pity or even guilt is gone, and it’s replaced with pure panic. Panic like a plane tumbling out of the sky as Shauna looks out the window, heart trapped in throat as the inevitable end approaches through the trees.
She’s racing downstairs without bothering with her shoes, with warmer clothes. She doesn’t care if she wakes anyone up. There’s only one thing on Shauna’s mind. Jackie . Jackie . Jackie . She has to get to Jackie. She has to. She has to.
Shauna yanks open the door and can only stare at the pile of snow around the pit as she whimpers out, “Jackie?” There’s no movement, no sound except for the pounding of her own heart in her ears. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Rushing to the pile of snow, all she can do is beg and plead for it to not be as bad as she thinks. Jackie’s okay. She has to be okay. Shauna can’t do this if Jackie isn’t okay.
Jackie isn’t okay. Shauna brushes the snow off of her, but she’s covered in it, buried in it, and her features are too pale, too stiff, too cold. The logical part of Shauna’s brain knows what this means, but that part of Shauna’s brain also died in the number of steps it took for her to get from the porch to Jackie’s side. “No, Jackie! Wake up! No!” She’s digging in the snow until her fingers hit dirt, trying desperately to grasp onto something. There’s nothing. There’s nothing.
If Jackie is dead, then Shauna’s dead, too. At least a part of her is. Because this is her fault, isn’t it? It’s her fault, if Jackie’s dead, if Shauna killed her, if Shauna died, too. If Jackie’s dead. She can’t be, though, can’t be gone, can’t be taken from Shauna by something as silly as the cold. Not while they were mad at each other. Not before they got the chance to do something about it.
Arms wrap around her as she wails, and Shauna knows it’s Tai. She knows it. That’s not a comfort. The arms are too tight, too much, and they try to pull her away. Shauna can’t be pulled away. She can’t leave Jackie. So, when the arms get too tight, when they pull too hard, Shauna does the only thing she can think of: she leans forward and bites down hard.
(There is something to be said about spilling your own blood in service to another, but what about spilling someone else’s blood? Is that not a sacrifice in its own right? Shauna doesn’t really know what she’s doing. That doesn’t matter, here. She just knows that she needs to be with Jackie, and she needs Jackie to be okay, and she’ll do anything to keep her. Anything. Everything. Even if it hurts her. Even if it hurts everyone around them.)
Tai cries out and jerks away, shock and pain coloring her features as the blood from where Shauna bit her arm falls first on the patch of dirt Shauna uncovered and then on Jackie’s slightly parted lips.
Van moves to help Tai, but she doesn’t grab Shauna, a mistake that no one seems to want to make again. Shauna tastes blood in her mouth and is reminded of Akilah pointing out how blood would make her sick. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care . She leans down, whimpering, “Jackie.”
There’s nothing in that moment but Shauna and Jackie and the space in between them. It’s practically nonexistent on the surface, with Shauna pulling Jackie to her and cradling Jackie’s head in her lap, but it feels like it grows larger with each second that passes. It aches. Shauna feels like she’s holding a piece of herself that broke off. She can’t find a way to fix it.
And then she hears it. The shaky sound of an inhale, barely there but still there , and she pulls back, shocked, hopeful, desperate. Desperation clings to her voice as she says again, “Jackie?”
She thinks it wasn’t real because how could it be real? There’s no way that it’s real. Jackie spent all night out in the cold. She was buried under the snow. The logical part of Shauna’s brain knows she couldn’t have survived.
But remember: the logical part of Shauna’s brain is dead.
Jackie’s frozen lips move ever so slightly, rubbing together and spreading the droplets of blood around before she lets out a barely there groan.
“She’s alive,” Shauna whispered, a little in awe, and apparently Tai and Van heard as they both looked at her, Tai with pity and Van with shock. But then Jackie groaned again, a little louder, and it was real. It was real. She was alive.
“Misty! Akilah! Get over here!” Tai yelled. “She’s alive! We need help!”
Shauna’s working overtime to try and get all the snow off of Jackie, and Misty fucking Quigley’s never going to miss an opportunity to be needed, rushing up and attempting to push Shauna out of the way. She stops when Shauna snarls at her, an animal thing reminiscent of two nights before during Doomcoming.
Misty still tries to instruct. “We need to be gentle with her. Can we get some help moving her inside? Gen, Mari, help lift her. Come in, come in, get inside. Move her pallet near the fire, Melissa. Near, but not too close! If she heats up too quickly, it’s not going to be pretty. Lottie, she needs extra blankets. Shauna, when we get inside, I need you to help me and Akilah strip her of her clothes, and then if you’re going to keep her warm, you’ll need to take yours off, too.”
There’s so much happening in between orders, with the team rushing about trying to help, but Shauna manages to get out, “But she needs clothes to get warm.” Surely Misty knows that. If she doesn’t, and she’s the best option that they have for a medical professional out there, then they’re all doomed.
“Body heat’s gonna warm her up a lot faster,” is all that Misty says in response as Jackie’s laid down on her pallet. It’s a struggle to get her out of her frozen clothes, but eventually Jackie’s in her underwear and trembling, trying to curl up into a ball. Akilah puts her fingers against Jackie’s wrist and frowns before doing the same thing against her neck. She looks at Misty, who follows suit.
Shauna can’t interpret their facial expressions. “What?”
“It’s probably just from being too cold,” Misty tells Akilah before looking at Shauna. “Her heart’s a little slow, that’s all. Are you going to keep her warm or not?”
Lottie brings more blankets than would seem necessary at any other time but hardly seems like enough now. She’s looking at Jackie with a curious expression, and a hazy, muddled memory of Lottie telling Jackie that she doesn’t matter anymore comes into Shauna’s brain. Lottie was wrong. She’s wrong. Jackie matters . She matters so much it hurts.
Shauna pulls off her sweatpants and her hoodie, laying next to Jackie in just her tanktop and her underwear. She knew it was going to get cold. She knew that. She never should have told Jackie to go. Jackie never should have listened. Shauna pulls the blankets around them and then wraps an arm around Jackie, and it’s a bit like holding a trembling block of ice, but she doesn’t care. The trembling means that Jackie’s still there, and that’s all that Shauna can fucking ask for.
“Shauna?” Jackie manages to rasp out. She wiggles, turning in Shauna’s arms enough to face her.
“Hey, don’t strain yourself,” Shauna says. “Just rest.”
“I’m sorry,” Jackie murmurs.
Shauna shakes her head. “I’m the one that should be apologizing.”
“No,” Jackie says, her eyes fluttering closed. She licks her lips, tongue darting over a hint of red stain remaining behind on the rest of her still too pale skin. “You’ve already apologized.”
Before Shauna has a chance to comment, Jackie’s fallen asleep, and she can hear Misty and Akilah muttering near them. She can only faintly make out the words as Jackie curls closer in a way she hasn’t since they were kids, facing each other and wrapped around each other all at once.
“… feel it either?” Akilah whispers.
Misty shakes her head. “... probably just… too cold and it slowed… live without it.”
Were they talking about Jackie’s heartbeat? Shauna lets her fingers drift to where Jackie’s pulse should be on her wrist, wrapping her hand around the soft, cool skin and feeling for a pulse. Nothing. There’s nothing.
Shauna almost starts to panic, leaning up to look at Jackie, the taste of blood and bile in her throat. Did she die? Did she wake up only to die just when Shauna thought that she’d saved her? But Jackie curls into her more and pulls her close, fingers grasping at Shauna’s shirt, and, oh. There it is. A singular sluggish beat, fluttery and barely noticeable, but still there.
Jackie’s still alive, and that’s what matters. She’s cold, so cold, and clearly not out of the woods, but she’s going to be okay. All Shauna needs is for her to be okay. Everything that happened is something they can work through as long as Jackie is okay. Jackie mumbles in her sleep.
“What was that?” Shauna asks, as if Jackie can hear her.
Maybe she does. Quietly, Jackie repeats, “ Il veut du sang .”
Shauna tastes blood in her mouth. In her sleep, Jackie licks her lips again.