Chapter Text
A pleasant breeze highlights a wave of yellow spreading through swaths of forest, leaves clinging to the last vestiges of the season. Light glints off the lake’s surface, the heat of the day belying the frigidness of its waters. One final heat wave before autumn, summer finally leaving them behind with a final parting gift.
“You sure you don’t want to join them?” Jackie asks, back propped against a tree as she carefully weaves strands together into a chord.
Lottie shakes her head, legs crossed with a pile of foliage in her lap, stripping it free of leaves and supplying new strands for Jackie to incorporate into her work. “I’m good.”
It’s been like this every day since Lottie started remembering. Comfortable silences and easy conversations. It wasn't like they hadn't talked before—French class would've been way duller, and probably far more productive, without Jackie's company—but they had never been close. Now though? Both of them have changed in so many ways since they got here. The others have too, but they can't see it yet.
The two of them bit by the treeline, enjoying the quiet while most of the others make a game of washing clothes. There's a manic energy to the group, the finality of the season spurring on some last grasps at joy—the promise of winter steadily approaching to rip it all away.
Lottie, however, couldn't feel more differently. Jackie has barely left her side since the day of her drowning—a solidity to her that the rest lack. Every day of stability feels better than the last. For the first time since the crash—maybe for the first time ever—she feels safe from the rushing waters around her.
Still, there’s a pain there in Jackie. She can see it so clearly every time she finds Jackie looking at her old best friend. When she spends too long talking to someone and knows it won't matter.
She’s also seen it in herself; a child staring back at her, practicing her happy expressions to pretend for her parents. As a teenager unable to truly hide what's there. And in her dreams, an older woman blinking away the loneliness as she tries to smile.
She understands Jackie. She wants her to be happy. She wants the others to share in this blessing. To share in the both of them.
It doesn't take much for Jackie to agree to try her plan.
In the first storm of the season, Jackie drowns.
The entire valley is drowning, slick with mud and gasping for breath. Rain lashes at her, pelting Lottie’s borrowed, and already-soaked baseball cap. It barely keeps her vision clear as she hurries back to the cabin as safely as she can, careful not to slip and ruin the timing.
Bursting through the door, it takes only a half-lie to have a crowd of them following her to the lake.
When they get there, Jackie is already laying still on the bank. Shauna tries to resuscitate her. Grief fueling a determination that Lottie has never seen before.
Shauna tries to save her friend for half an hour before Tai finally pulls her off, the only results being bruised hands and broken ribs.
Lottie feels the suspicious looks she's given before the questions come. pretending to be in a state of shock, her answers pre-planned and practiced.
When Jackie trudges in the next morning, soaked through by the remnants of the storm still raining down on the valley, nothing changes.
The grief, so strong the evening prior, has washed away in the storm. An empty space where a corpse once existed.
The bruises on Shauna's hands remain.
“None of this feels real,” Jackie whispers to her one night, breaking the silence of sleeping bodies.
Lottie doesn’t respond immediately with words, reaching out from under her blanket to grasp Jackie’s hand. Staring into those large eyes, she whispers back, “Do I feel real?”
Lottie turns in her bed to stare Jackie directly in her eyes, visible even in the dark. “Am I real?” she repeats, a demand that needs an answer.
Sometimes Lottie worries this will all slip away again. She sits safe in the eddy that Jackie ushered her into, but what if something happens; forgetting it all—smoothed down and lost to the flow, just like the others. Driftwood figures taking the places of the people she knew, lives smoothed down in the wake of Jackie’s returns.
“Yes,” Jackie breathes, caught entirely in her eyes.
It doesn’t feel like a lie, and so Lottie holds tight onto that almost-promise, breathing easier. She wordlessly tugs Jackie in, rolling her over and holding her from behind.
“Good,” she whispers into the top of Jackie’s head.
The others can be made real too. Otherwise what is all this for?
There must be a way, drifts through her thoughts in the moments before sleep.
On a dry autumn morning, Jackie dies.
Dry leaves blanket the forest floor, crunching underfoot as the four of them make their way to a lie.
Lottie can’t help glancing at nat every so often, making sure she hasn’t caught on. She’s always been good at this type of lying; a childhood of masking her differences prepared her for a lot. Appearing normal, appearing calm, appearing like she hasn’t got a stolen dress shoved into her bag.
She stays silent as Jackie, in her own words, ‘sweet-talks’ Travis into letting her hold the gun—a skill Jackie has also acquired through years of practice.
“What, you think I’m too weak to hold it?” “Yes, I know where the safety is.” “No, I’m not an idiot.” “Unsafe? You’re the only person here to point that thing at another person, Flex.”
It doesn't take much of Jackie's pestering before he hands it to her with an annoyed mutter. Jackie turns back to give her a smile and it takes all Lottie’s will not to visibly brace herself.
Just as Nat is starting to ask, “Are you sure you saw a–”
A shot cracks in their ears. A wet thud as Jackie bonelessly hits the earth, barely cushioned by leaf litter.
Nat freezes. Travis retches, spilling some of their dwindling food supply for the earth to take. Lottie ignores them, looking on in awe. Jackie is missing a chunk of her head, neck bent unnaturally, hair saturated with darkening red. And still, she seems to smile up at Lottie, promising tomorrow. There’s an odd beauty to it all—lifeblood seeping into the earth. A connection to the forest that she hadn’t seen before.
The thought isn't long-lived, however. thoughts are ripped away from her as Nat shouts something at her, accusing her of lying, of this bear cave being bullshit, of conspiring with Jackie for this sick display.
Lottie barely defends herself as she helps Travis carry Jackie’s body back; Nat is right, after all.
The rest of the day is miserable, just like every time this happens. She feels Jackie’s absence in that space beside her that night.
In the morning, for the briefest moment, Lottie thinks she sees a flicker on Nat's face as Jackie walks through the cabin door, and something surges inside her.
It’s gone in the blink of an eye.
Some days are worse than others.
Thoughts just out of reach, squirming away when she tries to focus on any of them. Lost to herself when doing even the simplest of chores. Conversations slipping by with the barest notice.
The world around her passes by in a slow rush. It’s during one of these spells when she sees Jackie dead for good.
Her decaying form lays in the bed next to Lottie. Mould eats away at her skin, blooming and pulsing with growth. She begs and pleads for Jackie's blessing to return, but nothing she does helps. In her heart, Lottie knows she isn’t coming back this time, and the others pass by without care or notice. Their dead captain, forgotten to the world—forgotten to all but her.
Someone holds her gently, whispering calming nothings that Lottie can barely understand. The embrace is comforting, soft in a way she’s unused to.
She turns to look and sees Laura Lee, smiling at her through burned flesh. Warm blood soaks into her back, spreading through her clothing.
It’s too much.
Lottie tries to shove her away, to protect Laura Lee from what must be seeping out of her own skin. Tries to apologise, incoherent apologies for killing her—half of them in languages that not a single person speaks.
But still, Laura Lee holds on, continuing to soothe.
It takes a long time for lucidity to return to the world. Jackie patiently sits with her while the fog passes, holding her, unwilling to leave but unable to truly help.
Lottie is silent for days afterwards, refusing questions from her worried friend. It isn't the first time she’s had a bad day, and it won’t be the last, but Jackie would look at her differently if she truly knew.
Treated like a child who can’t help themselves. Dismissing every word and every thought. It’s happened too many times before by people she loved.
Still, Jackie stays, only leaving her side for the most desperate emergencies. She takes up the space, chatting about everything and nothing. People Lottie nearly forgot from back in Wiskayok. Gossip, favourite flavours of Lip Smackers, and a thousand other things that drift by.
One evening, while most of the team plays poker—Mari is ahead by quite a bit by the sounds of it—Jackie nudges her and nods towards Tai and Van, whispering between themselves in the corner.
“Don't tell anyone, but I saw those two making out behind the cabin once.”
It's what finally gets Lottie to break. She turns to Jackie, wide eyed, looking for any sign of a lie.
Jackie brightens at the wordless question, her mouth twisting into a self-satisfied smirk. “Yup. Cross my heart.”
Lottie wonders how she hadn't seen it before. All the looks, the secret conversations, the way they gravitate toward and circle around each other.
“Listen,” Jackie continues, a seriousness to her now, “you don’t have to talk if you want. Just–” She pauses, collecting herself. “It works both ways. I have you and you have me. I'm not letting you go, Lot. We're a team.”
It's a glimpse of that old Jackie, of her team captain always giving too-earnest pep talks. Lottie used to roll her eyes with the others, but the talks always worked anyway, Jackie's sincere attempts and genuine care enough to win over even the most cynical.
It works now, too.
Taking a deep breath, Lottie leads Jackie into the forest and begins to talk. Childhood tests and endless doctors. There are frank questions and honest answers. And, bringing relief enough to cry, trust lacking judgement.
A true friend.
I have you now.
On a frigid autumn evening, Jackie dies.
The hunters find less and less game to feed them. The nights grow longer and the days shorter. That tang of rotting foliage is steadily being replaced by the sharp bite of the arriving season. Winter is closer than ever.
Everyone does their part; hoarding firewood and laying traps while they still have the energy. Every day of Nat and Travis returning empty-handed is a blow.
Even Lottie feels the dread now; death by degrees, wasting away from within and eaten by the cold from without. Punishment for a blessing wasted?
Jackie no longer eats, expertly hiding the fact, refusing to take food away from—in Jackie's words—those who actually need it.
It pains Lottie to watch it happen, but she goes along with it, helping in any way she can. The thing that gets at her most is that this isn't what Jackie's gift is meant for—fading out so she can be forgotten once again.
Lottie can feel it isn't right. It's in the wind and in her bones. So it isn't surprising when Jackie gets sick.
It starts with a slight cough and ends with breath gouging its way out of her. Brief gasps between raking coughs, each one painful enough to bring tears to Jackie's eyes—painful enough to bring them to Lottie's, too.
It isn’t fair that Jackie should be the one to go through this. She already has so little left, other than Lottie herself, and she knows that's never been enough for anyone.
And so one evening, when Lottie brings in Jackie's meagre rations—which Jackie always makes her eat—into her quarantine, she brings something else with her too.
Jackie sees the knife, white-knuckled in Lottie’s grip, and simply smiles and nods—too weak for much else. Lottie approaches, presenting a calmness that she doesn’t feel.
Standing over Jackie, Lottie hesitates. What if this is it? Jackie tainted by her hand, blessings recoiling back to the earth at her touch.
A hand grasps her wrist weakly, stilling a shaking she hadn't noticed.
“Come on, Lot,” Jackie says in a broken whisper. “Never seen you back down before. Don’t start now.”
A deep breath.
She presses a kiss to Jackie’s forehead—the first of many.
“See you tomorrow, Lottie.”
A sad smile.
A lurch.
A crack, and Shauna's knife is buried in Jackie up to the hilt.
As Lottie watches the light dim in Jackie's eyes, she realises something; this isn't Shauna's knife—not really. It's the Butcher's, and tonight Lottie takes that role in every ounce of her being. Hers.
It’s different this time. This isn’t a tragic accident, or another pointless attempt to bring the others around. It lacks the emptiness of all the others.
No, this death is life. It's a burn to nourish the land. Freedom and rebirth. It's helping a friend in the only way she can.
Lottie stays—she isn't sure for how long—still embedded into Jackie's chest. It’s how they find her; straddling a corpse, hands slick with blood, and a comfortable smile on her face.
Someone screams.
They pull her off, and she tries to tell them it's going to be okay. She tells them that Jackie will be back. She tells them that this isn't the end.
For her efforts, someone—Shauna maybe, it's all a blur—shoves her into a wall, jarring her shoulder painfully.
They won’t listen. Can’t listen. Over and over again the two of them have tried, but not a single one even has the edges of their memories.
That night, Lottie weeps alone, locked in the attic, praying to anything that will listen for a sign.
Her dreams are red and yellow.
Her back is warm, the chill that's been seeping in steadily over the past weeks kept at bay by the crackling fireplace. But despite the comfort and safety it brings, Lottie still has mixed feelings when she gets near it.
That flash of heat and terrible sound is still burned into her. The memory clear as the day it happened, always vivid, even while her mind was being washed away by the force of Jackie’s returns.
The death of a friend—of someone she loved. The death of a piece of herself.
Hands tangle in her hair, gentle tugs and teasing pulls, expertly weaving back and forth, threading yellow through black.
That grip fire has on her heart might never truly leave, but new growth sprouts from the ashes of who she was.
“There,” Jackie ties off the plait with her last ribbon. “What do you think?” Whole and healthy, just as she was the day of the crash, only a day into her starvation.
She holds out a small make-up mirror for Lottie to inspect her work. It stirs something in her; a lost piece of herself—forgotten between pines and smothered by acrid smoke—slotted back into place.
“I love it, Jackie,” Lottie breathes, and presses a kiss to her cheek—the first of many.
Maybe this is enough? It could be, if it was just them, but as Lottie looks around at hollowing faces, each one losing hope by the day, she knows they are meant for more.
On the first snow of autumn, Jackie dies.
Every few days Jackie wanders off hungry and then comes back the next morning, sated again. Nobody finds it strange that she's still as strong as she was after the crash while the rest of them hollow, subsisting on whatever dwindling forage they can find.
Nat tries so hard, scouring the valley as much as she can. When Travis needs a day to rest, someone else takes his place. There's a singular drive to her, one that Lottie knows will break her if she doesn't find something.
So it's a terrible irony when a meal comes to them while both Nat and her gun are nowhere to be seen.
A bear stalks into their clearing. Flakes of snow stick in its fur—slow death on quick. It should be hibernating. It shouldn't be watching her so intently. There shouldn't be a feeling to it, one that Lottie can't quite place but knows well.
As the others retreat inside, Lottie unsheathes the Butcher's knife from her coat pocket—taken again and again from Shauna. But when Lottie tries to approach it, a tight grip stops her in her tracks.
It's Jackie. An unspoken exchange happens in moments, and Jackie takes the knife from Lottie's grip, another one of those sad little smiles touching her lips.
Without fear, Jackie approaches the bear, and something in Lottie feels that it recognises her. Smell, sight, taste, or something more—it knows Jackie well.
A lunge.
A crunch.
Jackie falls almost immediately as a great paw caves her chest in, knife still uselessly clenched in her fist.
A failed breath.
A sputter of blood.
The crush of jaws.
Lottie hears panic from inside the cabin, but it feels so far away. Sitting down on the porch, she watches in silent awe as Jackie unfolds. It's beautiful, in a way. She is enthralled by it as the bear reveals Jackie, layer by layer, sating itself on her friend.
When the animal finally finishes, lumbering back to where it came from, Lottie approaches her friend.
A mess of flesh, blood, and bone. There’s a vividness—a vibrancy to her—even in death. Fingers still clutch at that knife limply, as if trying to make a killing blow, even in death.
But Jackie was never the butcher. Prying the knife from what’s left of Jackie’s fist, Lottie heads to the lake to wait for Jackie's return. The snow that comes that night is not nearly enough to keep her away.
They have been starving in slow silence, but now? The wilderness has imparted cruel meaning on Lottie. She understands now.
This is her gift.