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The first breaths Jackie swallows back when she wakes up are wracked by frigid shivers and a cold, billowing fog. She’s still pulling herself out of the darkness that met her that night, the strange dreams that warned of swallowing her waning as she claws her way to consciousness. Her misty breath reminds her, in this hazy state, of when she tried pot for the first time with Jeff and Randy, how her throat stung like it does now with a sharp rasp, how her eyes watered unlike the dryness that afflicts them now, how Shauna moaned and griped about how she shouldn’t–
“Shauna!” she shouts suddenly, though it barely passes a hoarse gasp. That same gasp quickly dissolves into a shivering series of dry coughs, each one tearing upwards like sharp glass shooting up her throat. She grasps at her neck to try and–what? Stop the coughing? In this state, that’s clearly not happening.
And in this state, she’s a fucking wreck. She can barely feel the tips of her fingers against the exposed skin of her neck, the small amount she can sense being cold as ice. Every part of her is dry, from her throat to her eyes to her lips, and probably to the hair she hasn’t gotten to wash in days. Her breaths are shallow, wracked by a dry cold that shatters each gasp into a cough. Each one she struggles to take burns on the way up, buffeted by violent shudders on either side of it.
Her mind groggily races to catch up with her body, still just barely swimming in the fucked-up dreams that had met her as she fell into a deep, heavy sleep. She can’t remember much, other than the warm hope that had filled her chest one moment and the cold dread that had hollowed it the next.
Shit, she might have just fucking died.
She blinks the remnant dream away and swivels to check her surroundings, immediately recognizing the creaky plank walls of their half-stocked, smelly meat shed. Butchered strips and chunks of preserved flesh idly swing back and forth against light gusts, and the rounded log sills of the open windows are dusted with…wait, is that snow?
Sure enough, she glances down at her feet and sees – apart, of course, from the tattered blanket draped over her, one of the heavy woolly ones that always makes her skin break out in hives – tracks in soft, white powder she assumes would be cold to the touch rather than a party to the nose. Since when did it even snow here?
As the thought occurs, another one quickly takes its place: who the hell brought her into the meat shed and put this blanket over her?
“Morning, princess,” is the snarky answer to the silent inquiry, and Jackie’s attention snaps to where the voice came from, spotting a familiar, edgy silhouette leaning against the open doorway separating them from the snowfall.
Jackie’s way too fucking cold to tell if the shiver that wracks her body is from being called princess or if she’s, you know, cold, but in this moment she doesn’t care. What she cares about most right now is figuring out why she’s out here instead of inside the cabin, and why Nat of all people was the one to save her.
“How…how long have…” She struggles to finish the sentence, caught somewhere between a frigid shudder and a sharp rasp. Her eyes clench at the failure, wondering if it’s the first of many to come.
There’s a small sigh as Nat turns in her direction; she can just barely catch the expression she wears beneath the shadow of hatch roof of the meat shed ( Ironic , she remarks snidely to herself), but despite the fact that she can so rarely read Joan Jett Jr.’s features on a good day, she can tell she’s exhausted.
“Just a couple of hours,” Nat relays to her flatly, her voice nearing a whisper. “We still got some time until morning. Are you warm?”
Jackie grimaces as she pushes herself up against the wall, trying her best to level herself with her apparent saviour. “I…I’m cold,” she whines. “What happened?”
Nat shrugs. “You tell me.”
Jackie’s eyebrows point sharply towards each other in confusion. “No, I…you brought me…here,” she manages that last word with a wicked cough she swears will make blood shoot up her throat. “Why?”
Another shrug and another sigh. Geez, Nat’s hardly the best conversationalist.
“Fuck if I know, Jackie. Travis and I came back to the cabin when it started snowing and saw you asleep by the fire pit. It wasn’t lit. You were freezing cold and hardly breathing.” Then, in a smaller voice completely unfit for its owner, “I couldn’t just, you know. Let you die or whatever.”
Jackie gives a small nod. “Thank you.”
If Nat does respond, it’s entirely silent.
The stark, overwhelming silence that follows — broken only by the occasional gust of icy wind and creaks of old trees — allows Jackie the chance to take in more of her surroundings. Sure, she might not have the brain capacity to put everything together like she might normally, but she’s sure as hell not wanting to piss off her teammate after she was so kind as to save her from a chilling fate.
Beyond the scattered tree line, she can just barely make out the silhouette of the outhouse and cabin she’d once called Hell, only to come to know a different Hell that actually managed to freeze over. She wonders if anyone inside knows it’s snowing, or knows that they nearly left her to freeze her ass off outside.
Or maybe Lottie convinced everyone that that was meant to happen, or some other cryptic woodland bullshit. That’s probably how she got Shauna. After all, Shauna would never let her go out like this.
Shauna, who’s spent her life having Jackie’s back.
(Shauna, who wasted no time in stabbing it.)
Shauna, who Jackie always made sure felt her best, her strongest, her most beautiful.
(Shauna, whose final words to Jackie made her feel less than, like utter fucking shit.)
Shauna, whose baby Jackie had been sure to take care of before anyone else did.
(Shauna, who got Jackie’s own boyfriend to put that stupid baby inside of her.)
Shauna, who Jackie kissed weeks ago and realised that’s all she’d ever wanted from her.
(Shauna, who apparently would rather kiss around behind her back instead.)
Shauna. What a fucking friend.
Obviously, even under cover of night, she’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding her conflicted feelings, because Nat breaks the silence she started with a grunt as she rolls closer to Jackie, bumping their shoulders together. Closer now, Jackie can see she’s not nearly as bundled up, save for the blanket she’s tracked outside to cover her shaking body with.
Part of Jackie wants to chastise her for not looking after herself, but she’s quick to shut herself up when she realises the only reason she’s getting any warmer is because Nat’s jacket is stretched across her front overtop her own.
“So I take it you figured it out?” she says suddenly.
Another raw cough. “Figured what out?”
Nat gives her a look. A stoic, bitchy, exasperated look. “Shauna. The baby.” Then, pointedly, “Jeff.”
A small croak of an “Ah” escapes her throat, and simmering fury colours her cheeks; it’s the warmest she’s felt all night, thank fuck.
Nat’s perma-scowl falters for a moment, her puckered lips opening and closing around some unspoken sentiment. It’s rare, Jackie notes, that Nat ever censors or sanitises herself and her thoughts, usually quick to deliver a snappy and tactless yet all the while salient remark about her current situation or someone’s shitty behaviour. It’s something Jackie’s always admired about her, even when said remarks are about herself and Nat doesn’t actually know the half of it, so to see her so cautious in this moment throws her off.
Finally, she settles on what she wants to say, and when she does it comes out uncharacteristically soft. "Did you ever think about it?”
Jackie offers a waning smile, weakened by both the subject and the chill still gripping her. “Duh.”
Nat quirks an eyebrow, unconvinced.
“Obviously I have!” Jackie shoots back defensively through the hoarse cold in her voice.
Nat rolls her eyes impatiently and pulls closer, her fogging breath misting over her nose. “No, like, really, have you thought about how weird it is that Shauna is the one that got pregnant?” When Jackie doesn’t respond, Nat continues. “Shauna, who doesn't have a boyfriend, who's too busy hanging on your arm and holding your attention to even look at boys most of the time? Except, maybe, the one guy just as adamant about spending all his time with you.”
Jackie considers her words — like, really considers them. It’s not that they’re even wrong. Far from it, actually. For so much of their life, their friendship, Jackie’s been a beacon and inspiration, stepping into every spotlight put before her. It’s what she’s always known, really, being the centre of attention. God forbid she have good leadership skills and the charisma to support them.
But suppose that spotlight might have blinded her. Suppose she’d cast a shadow so big that Shauna could hide every dark secret, every silent resentment, every lie and every ambition that Jackie should have been encouraging instead of relegating her to the bench.
And it’s not even her fault! It’s not like Jackie asked for any of this. Jesus never asked to be born the chosen one, and now she’s being crossed or whatever for other peoples’ mistakes. Maybe she should have seen this coming, or maybe she should have listened to Shauna more.
Not that Shauna would even talk to her, anyways.
And now she’s off fucking Jeff in Jackie’s shadow while freezing her best friend out. Literally.
“You knew?” she asks, her voice small. She doesn’t think she’ll like the answer..
“I figured,” is Nat’s dry response.
“Fuck,” she wheezes, sliding back against the cold panel wall that creaks beneath her. “How did I not...it was right there in front of me."
"That’s just not something you think you should watch out for.” Nat bites down into her chapped bottom lip and shakes her head, falling back against the wall. Jackie nearly follows, but just for the warmth. She still has to not be freezing cold. “I mean, obviously you don’t see much beyond your own little bubble, Jackie. Anyone but you can see that.”
“So I’ve heard,” Jackie grunts.
“But, fuck,” Nat hisses in disbelief, cutting her off, “Shauna's weird. Nobody who's normal does this unless they fucking hate your guts. And believe me, there are plenty of people who hate your guts.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Nat’s gaze, held in shadow by the night sky, tracks to Jackie and takes on a gentler glint. “But Shauna doesn't."
Jackie regards her weakly, a small tinge of doubt creeping into her voice. "How do you know?"
It takes Nat a stoic moment to respond, which gives Jackie ample time to plot out how she got here, how much hatred for her guts Shauna must’ve been holding onto, at which point — whether before or after the kiss they shared — she lost her best friend.
Finally, a sense of snide normalcy returns to Nat as she diverts her attention away from what must be the most pathetic pout Jackie’s ever worn. "I don't. Maybe she does. I don't understand how you two work, I'm just an outsider here."
But Jackie knows better. She knows how insightful Nat is, how she picks up on the details most people either miss or ignore entirely. If she’s saying it, it has to be true. Surely, Shauna can’t actually hate her guts.
Which…yeah. That just complicates things.
Regardless, Jackie manages a small, faint huff of a laugh as she leans towards Nat. “You’re too smart for your own good, Nat, you know that?”
“Wow,” Nat scoffs, not even looking at Jackie. “What a nice thing to say about the girl who just saved your sorry skinny ass from freezing to death.”
Got it. Cold shoulder. Jackie’s expression falls and she sinks back down under the heavy, scratchy blanket. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
There’s a small, reluctant sigh before Nat says, “Whatever. Don’t consider this a favour. That’s two times I’ve saved your life, cap.”
Jackie laughs again despite herself. “I’ll be honest, I really thought you hated me for sleeping with Travis. You could have let me die.”
The look Nat shoots her, however, carries none of the same ironic humour she feels. Instead, she looks somewhere between determined, defiant, and a bit offended. “No I couldn’t. That’s not how I do things, Jackie.”
Jackie nods. At least someone out here doesn’t want her dead. Sure, she fucked that someone’s crush last night because she stubbornly refused to face her imminent demise without knowing what sex was like, but somehow that someone is the last person she feels she needs to watch herself around. Nat’s probably more concerned with helping Travis find Javi, anyways, than with petty squabbles between best friends-turned-enemies.
“Where is he, by the way?” Jackie asks quietly, cautiously.
“Travis? He’s inside getting warm. We’re going to head out tomorrow morning to look for Javi again.” Then, with a bite to her tone that sounds much more like her, “Why? Eager for round two?”
“No!” Jackie refutes; even just thinking about pursuing Travis again feels wrong, and it’s not just because Nat’s so clearly obsessed with him.
Jacki had been there, half-naked and on her back wondering to herself why it didn’t feel the way it was supposed to. Like, sure, it was obviously nice, and yet after she’d come down from the high she’d been left hollow, confused, her chest empty and her cheeks pale. Definitely not what she’d expected after.
Of course, she didn’t expect her teammates to go apeshit and try to knife Travis after locking her in a closet, either, so...
Jackie shuffles anxiously, hoping to scrape up some more heat beneath the blanket as her admission warms her cheeks. “If…if it helps, I didn’t even like it.”
“No. That doesn’t help.” Nat’s response is immediate, sharp, and Jackie might have worried she’d crossed a line if Nat's next words weren’t preceded by a heavy, reluctant sigh. “But I guess I can’t blame you. It’s not like Travis and I were…you know…”
“Right.”
Nat snickers. “And it’s not like he’s who you wanted to lose your virginity to in the first place.”
Either Jackie actually is dying this time and those weird dream-visions are back, or Nat is actually smiling. Sure, it’s a devilish smile that pulls her thin lips back and bares white fangs, one that reaches her eyes and colours her expression with an unbearable smugness, but it’s still a smile.
Suddenly much warmer, Jackie pulls the blanket up higher, hoping to hide the blush that prickles her frozen face. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Fuck, Jackie, you know what I mean.” Nat draws closer again, that smile plastered across her face, and when she speaks it's in a whisper she only recognizes from sleepovers gone uber late. “You enjoyed that kiss with Shauna during truth or dare way too much.”
“Bite the bullet,” Jackie corrects way too quickly, then she actually thinks about what Nat’s just said, and she shrinks all over again beneath herself. When she speaks, she lets the cold rasp overtake her voice. “And maybe I shouldn’t have.”
She barely catches Nat’s gaze as it flits down to her lips — she’s reminded of the focus Nat had displayed during their game, parted lips that had drawn her attention way too easily — before it springs back up to catch her dazed stare.
“Doesn’t change the fact that you did,” she teases flatly. “By the way, you have better taste in guys.”
“I don’t even like guys!”
She doesn’t like guys? Fuck, that’s new.
Except it really isn’t, and the unbridled admission is the spark that finally manages to surge heat through her veins.
“I…I mean…” She stammers around a pathetic attempt at a backtrack, but every second she tries to pull the words back into her mouth, dam them behind clenched teeth or swallow them back into her gut, her body sends a chill up her spine. “ Fuck …”
Nat stifles a lucid giggle that has Jackie wishing she could actually move without hurting right now, mostly to punch her in the arm.
“Sorry,” Nat cedes, “it’s just…I think that’s the first time a lesbian’s slept with a guy I like.”
“I’m not a lesbian,” Jackie lies.
Or is it even a lie? Jackie’s not quite sure what she is anymore. After all, every relationship she’s had with a guy has felt like a chore, including all ten of the ones she’s had with Jeff. Fucking Travis gave her some momentary satisfaction, but it was short-lived and something she wasn’t keen on revisiting any time soon.
Any time she caught Van and Tai giving each other goo-goo eyes across the room, or wondered about how much easier it would be to just date another girl — how much she wanted that, actually — and not have to figure a whole other type of person out, a small pang of longing would shoot through her chest, cause her skin to prickle, make her cheeks go rosy and her breaths go short.
Somehow, though, she never bothered putting two and two together. After all, girls could love each other and still want a boyfriend. Boys could still be weird and gross and confusing and still get a girl. And Van and Tai and whatever was going on with them? Well, they only really came out about it a day ago, so how was she even supposed to know that that was an actual option and not just her mind playing tricks on her.
Despite it all, those feelings only bubbled up around one person. One Shauna fucking Shipman. Or Shauna fucking Jeff, rather.
And now here she is, trying to define herself in the shadow Shauna left her as, clinging to an expectation of who someone else saw her as and hoping to god the one person who ever mattered to her actually sees her.
How the tables fucking turn.
Nat moves closer, bumping their shoulders again. Jackie bristles at the motion, strains to feel the faint brush beneath so many thick layers. Nat’s never been a hugger, or a toucher, or anything physically affectionate, really. This is all so new to her, but seeing as she’s probably not gonna be able to hug anyone else she knows anytime soon, or come to rely on any kind of warmth from the people she surrounded herself with and once called friends, she’ll take what she can get.
“What do you think you are, then?” Nat asks, and for once it sounds earnest.
So of course Jackie scoffs and says, “Right now, I think I’m freezing.”
Nat hums in agreement. “I’d offer to take you back inside, but…”
“Yeah.”
“You still haven’t told me what happened, Jackie,” Nat murmurs, her warm breath spilling over the exposed skin of Jackie’s neck. “Like, what the fuck were you doing outside to begin with?”
“They kicked me out,” Jackie grumbles pathetically.
Nat sneers. “Yeah. I got that part. Why did they kick you out.”
A wavering exhale spills past Jackie’s lips. The last thing she wants to do is lie, especially not to the queen of bullshit-detecting, but the second last thing she wants to do is make any excuses for the bullshit her team—
Is it even right to call them that anymore? After all, they were all adamant that she wasn’t one of them anymore. Huddling around the fire, picking at sick bear meat and praying to the fucking forest spirits or whoever Lottie’s been rambling about lately, and none of that is to even mention what they put her through last night.
Wicked, animal snarls. Predatory grunt and howls. Clawing fingers and scratches over her arms. Throwing her in a closet, telling her she’s not…they don’t…
And they almost killed Travis.
Shauna almost killed Travis.
Shauna had held a knife to his throat and drawn blood while Lottie giggled and giggled and giggled even after Nat had pulled the knife away from anyone else who might use it. Jackie had seen it in her best friend’s eyes, an unbridled hunger she’d always wondered about, always been curious if that kind of look would ever fall upon her.
Turns out it was much scarier than she’d expected.
Maybe they were embarrassed, but Jackie knows that this was something they needed to talk about. After all, it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right . And fuck, she’d been so adamant that they were all going to die after months spent in the woods, but she wasn’t going to dare spending what little time they had left tiptoeing around something that wrong .
She never expected she’d be made the villain, but of course she probably should have. After all, Shauna isn’t the only one jealous of all that she’s been given in her spotlight.
Jackie tells Nat everything. She tells her about the crazy unwell bear they ate, and she tells her about how Misty of all people put her on blast for not praying before eating. She tells her about Shauna, and what she said, and what she did, and yeah, it’s fucking hard not to start crying — or crying as much as her dry eyes will allow — when she remembers words like “weak” and “tragic” and “insecure”.
She’s not even sure if she’s crying because it hurt, or crying because of how obvious it is that Shauna was right.
Jackie reaches the end of her diatribe with a dry heave and one last failed attempt at a sob. She’s clutching the wool blanket with stiff, shaking fingers and she doesn’t give a shit how much it irritates her skin. Her teeth chattered from the cold and from barely-contained fury and indignation. Somewhere during all of this, she thinks she might have dribbled a bit on her shirt.
Nat regards her with an unreadable expression that scares Jackie. It’s not like she’s never broken down in front of a friend, but until, like, an hour ago, she didn’t even think she could call Nat a friend. Sharp, focused eyes ringed by dried makeup and sleepless bags study her, and Jackie has no idea what’s going on behind them. For all she knows, Nat might be regretting having pulled her into the meat shed to warm up.
She wouldn’t put it past her, really.
“What a bitch,” Nat says instead, so matter-of-fact that it halts Jackie’s racing thoughts for a brief moment.
“You—you actually think that?” Jackie stammers, to which Nat looks offended that she would even ask.
“Jackie, she nearly let you freeze to death out here.”
Jackie presses her lips together. “I should have gone inside…”
“And why would you? They’re the ones who chased you out.” Nat relinquishes a heavy sigh and draws closer again.
Now their ankles are flush together, Jackie notices, and she thinks about how nice it is to feel something below her neck, how grounding it is to have someone here with her. The affirmation helps, too, inviting a small flicker of warmth to settle beneath her ribs.
“Something fucked-up is happening out here,” Nat continues, gazing just beyond Jackie. “And not the kind of fucked-up I think any of us were expecting being stranded in the woods. But can you really say you’re surprised?”
“I can, actually, yeah.”
“And why’s that?” Nat lets the question hang in the air, buffeted by chilling gusts of snowy wind.
Jackie really tries her hardest to answer, but her focus remains solely on the words Shauna used to send her outside the cabin, into the cold, towards what might have been her death. Her throat isn’t the only part of her that feels torn; her heart, by sharpened, venomous words lanced her way by a spiteful little bitch—and her mind, by the painful and repeating memory of just how each one hurt, tearing into her over and over.
“They said they didn’t need me anymore,” Jackie murmurs, victim to the hurt wracking her body and the tears welling behind her eyes. “They said I’m not needed anymore.”
Nat shakes her head. “What’s so important about being needed, anyways?”
Something sharp, something hot, something angry shoots through Jackie as she springs over to face Nat. “It’s not about being needed!” she tries shouting, but her voice still comes out grizzly. “It’s about…it’s about needing them .”
Nat, however, remains steadfast in the face of Jackie’s anger. “Is there a difference?”
Jackie blinks at her, still trying to parse her thoughts, her hurt , and how Nat’s insight fits alongside it all.
“I…I don’t want to die out here,” Jackie confesses. “I don’t want to lose myself out here. I don’t want to…” And her breath snags on the words climbing up her throat, halting them with a gasp. When she finally lets them past, she swears she’s never sounded this pathetic. “I don’t want to lose Shauna. But what if I already am? What if I already have?”
“You’re not gonna lose yourself—”
But Jackie doesn’t hear her. No, Jackie hears everything else. She hears the wind, and voices within it — probably the same ones that drove Lottie fucking insane — and she hears her own heart desperately trying to keep up as her body freezes over.
Weak , she hears, and her body is already failing her. Will she even be able to stand again? Talk again? Stomach anything not sugared and processed while everyone around her scarfs down whatever food they can find?
Tragic, she hears, wondering just how much worse it can get than what’s already been done to her. Will she be left to the wilds, bones and all, to wither and rot before she ever got the chance to live out her apparently meaningless existence?
Insecure, she hears, and it’s the only one she can find a morsel of truth in.
“What if Shauna’s right?”
The words don’t feel like her own. They feel like they should be said by some lesser girl, like they belong to the type of person who’s never known the spotlight rather than the type to have been there their whole life.
Despite that — despite the acid taste they leave in her mouth, despite the stinging pain that shoots through her chest when she says them — Jackie’s the one to say them, and Jackie’s the one to, even for a moment, believe them.
Brows pinched, eyes welling with tears, she turns to Nat, hoping and dreading to find some kind of acknowledgement, some kind of agreement with Shauna’s words; instead, Jackie reads defiance in her expression. It’s something so characteristic for her, something she wears so well and has worn plenty of times before, but for once the set of her jaw and the thin line of her mouth bring some kind of assurance she’s never before needed.
“Fuck that,” Nat states. “Fuck. That. Jackie, Shauna said her piece, and she can't take it back. She's tired, she’s hungry, she’s pregnant, she’s stranded in the woods with a bunch of other girls, and she’s wrong.”
Jackie blinks as her lips sink into a pout. “How is she wrong?”
It’s surprising how close Nat’s already gotten to Jackie while still having more room to fill. She shuffles along the crunching dirt beneath, bringing their bodies fully flush as she raises a hand to grip Jackie’s shoulder. Warmth seeps through her skin and settles in her bones. For the first time all night, she doesn’t feel so cold.
“Jackie, you’re a bitch–and I do mean that in the best way. You know what you want in life, and you don’t just dream about it. You go for it. You make it yours. You take it. And that can hurt people, and it can piss a lot of people off, but whose fault is that? And, look. Maybe you could do a better job of seeing your impact on other people. Maybe you could work on considering others as well as yourself so that you piss less people off. But we're all stuck in our own little worlds, obsessing over who gets to be in that spotlight and how to tear each other out of it. None of them know how shitty it feels to be on the receiving end of actual hate. They just wanted to treat you the way they felt treated.”
"But I never meant to treat anyone wrong," Jackie confesses, hoping to find salvation within her words.
Nat shoots her a stony glare. "Maybe we all need to be less bitchy and more considerate, even if we never meant to fuck anyone else up. That's love, I guess. It's gotta start somewhere. Even you should see that."
Jackie gives a small nod of agreement before she turns away to face the dirt. That word is no stranger to her, having sprinkled it so casually into every interaction with her team that, somewhere along the way, she must have lost its real meaning. Even with Shauna, the word had only seemed right to say, not a choice she made. And look where that's gotten her, of course.
She drags her vision up and catches Nat’s gaze; a medley of longing, pity, and resolve take turns twisting her gut into knots and releasing it. Nat’s got a good eye, and she never veils her intentions behind sugar-coated words or censoring silence. If she means what she says…
Nat’s breath snags for a moment as Jackie continues to regard her, and once again her eyes flit down to the clouds of fog spilling from her shivering lips. “You’re a good leader, Jackie. You’re a good person. And maybe you haven’t been the best of friends, and you’ve got a lot to work on. So do all of us. The fact that you care so much about what Shauna said tells me everything I need to know.”
“And what does it tell you?” Jackie asks.
Nat gives her a small smile. “That I had you pegged all wrong. We all did. Jackie, you can't let them be right. You have to make it through this.” Then, with a growing lightness in her tone and features, “I mean, who else is gonna fulfill the queen bee archetype if you’re gone?”
Jackie lets out a breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sniffle, and says, “Could be Mari.”
“Bitch? Yes. Queen? No.” Nat shakes her head. “You’re one of a kind, Jackie. Don’t let them make you feel like that’s a bad thing.”
Jackie nods at the advice. It’s nice to know that even someone like Nat — who has never shied away from giving Jackie a piece of her mind (even when it wasn’t fully informed), who has always skirted the social circles Jackie embedded herself within for fear of judgment, who really has every fucking right to hate her after what she did last night — has good things to say about her.
It’s a two-way street, too. Nothing that Jackie said the night before the crash about her was a lie, and none of it was stifled by some need to be polite or respectable. Maybe they’re not friends, but Jackie likes Nat. She likes her obstinacy. She likes her defiance. She likes her view of the world, fractured and bitter as it may be.
And, okay, maybe she likes her whole “bad girl” thing she’s got going on. Pardon a girl for finding a teammate hot.
But, hot or not, Jackie chooses not to act on that idle little thought. She instead chooses to let her appreciation for everything Nat’s given her — the words, the warmth, the second chance at life — show in a frail smile as she lowers her head onto her shoulder, settling just beneath the platinum blonde fringe of split ends that tickle her skin.
“Thank you,” she purrs, then dares to speak again, dares to give Nat one last chance to turn on her. “Are you sure you want to stay here? With me?”
Nat doesn’t say anything in response, but she doesn’t leave, either. To Jackie, that’s more than enough right now.
Still, while silence surrounds them — broken by the occasional gust of wintery wind — Jackie refuses to sleep. Her gaze finds purchase on the wall adjacent to them, noting all the splinters and spots where weather’s warped the wood. Even as the idea of rest crawls back into her mind, she refuses to surrender to it. Even as her eyes feel heavy and her breath slows, she refuses to surrender to it.
She just has to make it until morning.
“Jackie!”
Jackie isn’t surprised one bit to hear Shauna calling out for her after the skies have gone light. There isn’t any sun, of course, but what brilliance it can produce strains through the faint layer of grey clouding the sky.
Beside her, she feels Nat stirring with a groan. She must have fallen asleep before Jackie ever noticed, even though Jackie forced herself to be aware of everything all night.
God, she’s fucking tired.
Nat moves up and away from Jackie — she nearly wants to pull her back down, to cling to the warmth she’d given her all night — and peers outside the window frame, scowling as she does so.
“It’s Shauna,” she grumbles as she looks over her shoulder and down at Jackie. “Want me to talk to her?”
Jackie pouts. “I never want to talk to her again”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Jackie sighs and watches through half-lidded eyes as Nat impatiently awaits her response, then shakes her head and storms out the shed. Moments later, raised voices collapse on each other as what she can only guess is an argument breaks out between Nat and Shauna.
Jackie struggles to hear the words, really only able to make out a harsh and venomous “save it, Shipman” from her saviour, but knowing that she at least has someone in her corner still is all she needs to let her eyes fall closed and sleep finally overtake her.
When she ultimately wakes up again, she doesn’t remember a single dream she might have had, and that’s an even greater comfort than the last.