Chapter Text
Cold.
She’s so cold.
It’s the kind of cold that doesn’t feel cold anymore, but she was shivering violently a bit ago and now she’s not, and she can’t remember much from health class but she’s pretty certain that’s a bad sign. She knows she’s not warming up, her pathetic fire making a few pathetic crackles, so she must be frozen enough to not feel it anymore.
Through groggy, half-lidded eyes, she tries to unfurl her fingers from the tight fists they’re in, pressed against her chest in an effort to preserve core heat. Vaguely, she realises they’re not moving, and her muscles don’t feel like they belong to her anymore. She can’t really concentrate on why that’s concerning.
Maybe she should go to the meat shed. It at least has walls, a solid layer between her and the snow that has started falling in flurries. It’s like a blanket of white settling on top of the thin one she’s hunched under. Maybe the wilderness is tucking her in, she thinks blearily.
She wishes it were Shauna instead, but Shauna’s not here. Shauna’s inside, where it’s warm, and Shauna hates her and had exiled her outside even though she is the betrayed party here because Shauna had slept with her fucking boyfriend and is pregnant with his fucking child, and yet Shauna had turned it all around and made her into the villain who kept Shauna in her shadow and never listened and was basically the worst fucking friend in the entire universe, and now instead it was her outside with nothing but a tiny fire that’s since been doused by the snow and a tattered blanket that’s growing steadily stiffer, and she cannot go back into the cabin, not when Shauna’s in there, with her pouty lips and harsh words and hatred of her.
She thinks that’s the worst part of it all — even worse than her boyfriend cheating on her with her best friend. She can’t stand when people don’t like her, and knowing the girl she met at age five despises and pities her is too much.
Tragic, boring, insecure.
Not a single person had stopped her—not genuinely—as she stormed out. Taissa spoke up, but she’s not dumb enough to think it was for any reason except appearances. They’ve never been friends, but it got worse when she became captain of the Yellowjackets team. Jackie knows when she isn’t wanted. Story of her life, really.
Not a single person had come out to get her. She thinks maybe they won’t. She knows she’s useless out here, just dead weight using up supplies and eating food they’d be better off conserving, although she hasn’t even been doing that anymore, not for days. Still, it hurt being left outside by everyone, even Van who knew better than anyone the dangers of sleeping outdoors.
Her eyelids are heavy and with each blink her eyes stay closed longer. It’s no use trying to make it to the meat shed; she doesn’t think she can move, and she doesn’t have the willpower to test it.
We’re talking ‘dying feels like falling asleep’ cold, she remembers Tai saying, and oh, okay, so she’s probably dying right now.
She hopes the cold takes her before wolves or any other wild animals find her. They wouldn’t come this close to the cabin, right?
She’s always been good at falling asleep. Her father swears she was the perfect baby, never waking in the night to disturb them. Her mother made sure she always got her beauty sleep, enforcing it with medication when necessary. Even when she finally came off of it, her body knew that laying down meant sleep.
She leans to the side and lets herself topple into a fetal position from her seated one. It’s the most movement she thinks she can make.
Be a good girl and sleep now.
It’s the only thing she’s good at out here.
• • •
“I think I see the cabin!” Natalie shouts, gesturing wildly to get Travis’s attention through the gales of snow. He nods and they continue forging towards the faint light in the distance. They’d long since attached themselves to one another at the waist with rope so they wouldn’t separate in the blizzard.
Wind whips around them and snow falls with vengeance, already up to their shins, forcing them to squint. The uncovered parts of their faces sting with cold.
They stumble past the meat shed into the clearing, and breathe a sigh of relief that they made it back. In these conditions, it’s like a blessing.
“Fuck!” Travis trips over something half-buried in the snow, almost falling but managing to keep his balance. Thank god, because they’re still tied together and Natalie would’ve gone down with him. He glances down at what he tripped over, and then, more forcefully, repeats, “ Fuck!”
Natalie looks, too, and it takes a second to realise that the thing in the snow is actually Jackie, eyes are closed, snowflakes building up on her lashes, skin pale enough to blend in with the snow. Her lips are blue. “Shit, shit, shit ,” she panics. She drops to her knees and tries to find a pulse, brushing snow away from Jackie’s neck. “What the fuck is she doing out here? Oh god, she’s alive, she’s alive—Jesus Christ, okay, we need to bring her inside, now.”
She fumbles clumsily to untie the rope around their waists so Travis can kneel to grab Jackie’s body underneath the arms— no, Jackie, she’s alive, she’s still alive. Natalie is used to her being larger than life, full of complaints and bitchy comments, always ironed and curled to Barbie perfection which Nat both envied and despised, but now she’s too still, too small. She looks fragile, like a porcelain doll. What the hell was she doing sleeping outside?
Natalie grabs her ankles, and they hoist her up and towards the cabin.
And it’s not even that she likes Jackie—she thinks she might hate her, really; primarily for sleeping with Travis, her whatever-the-fuck-he-is, and for never chipping in with chores around here, and she’s always resented Jackie’s expensive clothes and wide smiles and constant pep talks because news flash, Taylor, sometimes a group hug isn’t enough to fix shit — but fuck, she was absolutely not gonna freeze to death on Natalie’s watch.
What was a team without its captain?
Like a chicken with its head cut off.
Jacqueline Taylor could not die. The Yellowjackets would never recover.
She drops Jackie’s legs to burst through the door ahead of Travis, waking almost everybody in the main room. Good .
“Get the fuck up! Help!”
Sleepy grumbles come from the floor as Travis follows Nat inside, dragging Jackie’s still form over the threshold. Nat’s already adding wood to the fire as he pulls her over, and Misty, for once, seems to grasp the severity of the situation, jumping up to bustle around and bark instructions as people wake up further.
“Travis, put her down here. We don’t want her too close to the fire. Nat, Akilah, get her out of those wet clothes; we need to get her body temperature up. Lottie, grab blankets. Mari, heat some water up—warm, not hot, or it’ll shock her system. Everyone else, stay out of the way!”
They listen, jumping to their assigned tasks. Doctor Misty fucking Quigley, everyone; the best chance they have out here. Natalie kneels beside Jackie and begins tugging her wet shoes and socks off. Akilah starts on her jacket.
Misty peers over their shoulders, eyes eager. “Frostbite on three toes, two fingers, and the right ear. Early stage, thankfully, so we’ll get her warmed up before we see if we need to amputate.”
“Amputate?!” Taissa appears from the door that leads to the attic. “Who the fuck is losing limbs now?” She spots Jackie’s blonde hair by the fireplace, shining with slowly-melting frost. “Oh, shit. Shauna, don’t come down!”
Too late.
Shauna has descended the ladder and gasps as she spots her best friend— ex best friend? —prone on a pad, covered by a veritable mountain of blankets with only her head poking out. “No…” Her hand flies to cover her mouth and she barges past Tai, who’s trying her best to block the doorway, dropping to her knees beside Jackie, hands fluttering nervously over her as though wanting to check on her but not knowing how. She presses a hand to Jackie’s cheek and flinches at how cold it is. “No, no, no, no—Jackie? Jax, wake up! Can you hear me? Jax?”
Jackie doesn’t even so much as twitch in response. Shauna’s face crumples, though tears refuse to come.
“I did this,” she says numbly. “I sent her out there, and I left her there, and now she’s… I never should’ve let her leave. She hates me. She thinks I hate her.”
Misty comes bustling over. “Either help me or get out of the way,” she orders. “We need to raise her core temperature—carefully. Warm water bottles are great, but they can only do so much at this point.”
Stupid, helpless Jackie. Why hadn’t she just come inside? Was their fight seriously worth dying over? But her anger is what got Jackie into this mess and she refuses to let it hurt her more, so she swallows it down and asks, “What do you need me to do?”
“Strip and get under the blankets with her. Body heat is the best way to warm her up.”
Shauna does as she’s told, removing every layer of clothing with precision and draping them over the back of a chair. She slips under the pile of blankets and scoots closer to Jackie, who has also been relieved of her clothes. Her skin is like ice, and Shauna hisses as she comes in contact with it, but sucks it up and holds Jackie even tighter against her because this is only secondhand exposure, Jackie was out there in the cold and snow and wind for hours.
God, this is all her fault. If only she was a better friend. If only she’d kept her fucking legs closed and not slept with her best friend’s boyfriend. If only Jackie hadn’t read her journal and found out. No, that wasn’t fair; this was on Shauna. She fucked Jeff, she lied to Jackie, she yelled at her and threw her out of the cabin, their only shelter, in fucking November or whatever fucking month this was. What the fuck was wrong with her? What was happening to them all out here? She knows she has issues but they were never as bad as they have been in the wilderness.
She never would’ve said those things to Jackie back in Wiskayok. She never would’ve had the nerve.
It’s like something from the forest has crawled into her chest and festered there, making mountains out of molehills, making her angry and bitter in a way she never has been before.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into Jackie’s ear. “I’m so sorry, Jax. I love you, I love you , and I’m not leaving you again, I promise. Don’t you dare die on me, Jax. You don’t get to die hating me. I’ll—I’ll fix this.”
She continues to murmur platitudes and promises, running her hands through Jackie’s tangled, blonde hair to free it of remaining ice crystals. It’s a soothing motion, reminiscent of better days and better them. Tai brings more warm water bottles over and tucks them under the blankets, then strips down to her underwear and slides in on the other side of Jackie.
“Two bodies should be better than one, right?” She shrugs when Shauna sends her a questioning look. “Go to sleep, Shauna. We’ve done all we can for her. It’s up to her now.”
Shauna nods in response, but her heart feels heavy. It’s up to her now. So death could come at Shauna’s hands but survival was on Jackie? That didn’t seem right. She almost froze because of her, so she better warm the fuck up because of her, too. She cuddles closer, trying to almost envelop Jackie with her own body, and prays to God, to Yahweh, to the spirit of Dead Cabin Guy and whatever forest spirits or deities Lottie thinks are out there. If Jackie recovers from this—no, when she recovers—Shauna swears she will be a better friend, a better protector.
Because back home, she was the one who needed Jackie—but out here?
Out here, Jackie needs her.
Everyone else has returned to their sleeping spots by now, the adrenaline of their captain almost freezing to death having worn off now that she’s out of immediate danger. The cabin is quiet except for the crackling of the fire and sleepy snuffles from the girls.
Shauna falls asleep with her best friend in her arms and a familiar refrain of Jackie, Jackie, Jackie running through her head.