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She and Tammy both get their monthlies at twelve, on the very same day. Dad blushes a lot and rushes out for pads, sits them down for a long, confusing talk about boys and men and marriage and God and being good girls and down there, hands jabbing awkwardly through the air.
That's okay; Dad's never been too good about talking about sex. Sometimes Jane thinks that's why Mommy--and her brain buzzes out for the rest of the conversation, fingers flexing gently in her lap, like her mother's. Before she discovered knives and guns, she's always had a hard time figuring out what to do with her hands.
Later on, she and Tammy sit in the bedroom and her brainy sister talks about everything she's been reading up on in preparation for this day, about tampons and condoms and fertility rates and clean clothes and all the useful stuff. She brings up a pamphlet about healthy adolescent sexuality and Jane nods and rolls her eyes in the way that means she's actually paying attention and doesn't mention that she knows most of this already.
(Tammy has the school smarts, but Jane knows things, too. Mommy taught her, before she left).
They end up watching that ancient werewolf movie for the first time that night, probably too young for it, but then the universe didn't think they were too young to bleed out of their down there all of a sudden, did it. Tammy makes popcorn and they sit with hands clasped, squealing in each other's ears whenever something particularly gross or sexy happens.
They watch one girl turn into a monster and menace the other, growling you know, we're almost not even related anymore. Sly, lascivious, more dangerous for her sexual appetites than the fur or the fangs.
"Gross," Tammy whispers giggling.
Jane giggles, too. "Gross."
(She felt gross a lot before blood started coming out of her down there, and she'll probably feel gross a lot afterwards. But Tammy makes being gross feel okay, the way she makes everything feel okay).
Jane's bleeding from her nose, and she's bleeding from her cunt, and she'll gouge the eyes out of the first fucker who suggests the two are related, because she and Tammy didn't smack the shit out of each other because they were on their monthly, they fought because her genius sister's a self-righteous idiot and Jane's an even bigger idiot who left her pad out with the enlistment file pulled up where Tammy could see.
(out at sixteen or dead on this scene, but even the girls in that stupid movie never got out together, they should both know that by now. they should know that)
She mutes her buzzing phone and goes to find the kind of bar where the bouncer's too strung out to properly scan her fake ID. She swans across the stained floor, feels every eye flicker over her skin, werewolf-confident, demon-strong, teeth bared in a monster's grin.
The lucky lady turns out to be sitting on the back, pale and scrawny and wearing too much makeup, ten years her senior (mommy was older, mommy was better), whose eyes follow one girl stepping out of the bathroom, another adjusting a bandaid. Jane downs a shot, grits her teeth, and scoots her ass onto the lucky lady's lap, whispering a lame joke about shark week into her ear.
Mascara-drenched eyes go wide. Bingo.
She gets her bloody pussy eaten in a strange apartment while a TV next door drones about advancements in xenocloning. Her heels flex against the mattress, head sliding back as fire twists in her guts, lips forming around Tammy's name like a prayer to the only god she ever thinks about these days.
Her new friend grunts and trembles, frenzied, animalistic, and afterward Jane fingers her off more out of pity than anything. She wonders if her new friend, whatever her name is, wishes she had the guts to feed on Jane's corpse, nibble down to the hot steaming meat of her. Crack her bones and suck out the marrow, leave her clean for the very time in her life.
When they kiss, Jane makes a point of licking every drop of blood off the older woman's lips, sucking her sister back into her stomach, back into her veins. Their blood woven together like it should be, even when nothing else about them is. She can offer her sister that much, at least.
She gives a fake number and leaves without looking back, ringing up Tammy as she walks down the street. She just hopes that her sister will understand, one day.
They've got all the menstruating people on pills in the Marines, but those disappear pretty fast after she gets shot, along with the rest of their promises. Jane doesn't even think of that shit until she wakes up one night with the feeling of something wet seeping up under her back and a familiar smell that makes her think of splintered bodies in Venezuela.
Tammy left her prepared, of course, but the shit's in the bathroom so of course she's going to have to get blood off her wheelchair at some point, figure out what to do with those stains. Still, she manages to set herself up okay with the necessary supplies, a heating pad, some of the emergency chocolates because she's fucking earned them.
She calls her sister. Tammy answers sleepily, mumbles something about Norma (a roommate, a roommate, and even if she wasn't Jane doesn't fucking care, she's certainly fucked around more than her sister ever has, drowned herself in girls and boys and everyone in between).
Of course, her sister isn't bleeding right now. Their cycles haven't been synced for a very long time, Jane knows this, knows that there's something fucked-up about the way it stings.
She presses her thighs together and savors the ache in her gut, the sting. Thinks of Mom silently washing blood off her sheets when she was little, even though Jane was far too young for a monthly, she was matched to Tammy, she was--
"Janey?" A rustle in the dark, she can see it with her eyes closed, thinking of the girl from the movie leaning over her sleeping sister, flashlight dancing over her bare skin.
"Yeah, sorry." She laughs, tosses her head even if there's no one to see it. "Zoned out for a minute, you know how it is."
"Oh, do I--" And they commiserate for a little while, laugh and bitch and dance around the edge of more serious topics, fragile little ballerinas spinning across the void together. Jane licks and bites her lip raw until the memory of too-big mommy-kisses turns into blood, her blood, her sister's blood, shining like a promise.
They talk a few times after that, but none of it’s as long or as easy as the conversation the night Jane got her blood back. And then her sister is dead, blood dribbling across festering concrete, and they're never going to talk again.
Jane bleeds in the link bed, about a week after moonfall, a week or six years after her sister was murdered by some asshole who overdosed in an alley three hours later. It's all been a bit confusing, time-wise, so she isn't keeping track the way she should.
She wakes up with the last of that buzz still dancing in her veins--working legs, Tammy's legs--and doesn't pick up on the trickle until she's hauled herself back into her chair, until she feels the eyes looking her way. Great, as if these people needed more reasons to think she's a fucking moron.
Patel swears in soft Gujarati, fumbling at her desk, but it's Spellman who hands the pads over first. Jane takes them with a stiff nod, keeping her eyes on Augustine, daring him to start shit. He just shrugs and lights one of those cigarettes that have got to be breaking half a dozen regulations, flame sparking as red as his stupid beard.
She's still bleeding later on, as she and Colonel Mila Quaritch make their way towards their own upload room. Quaritch's tight, swollen belly hangs at Jane's eye level, shown off as proudly as her pistol.
They both know damn well a woman Quaritch's age isn't getting pregnant by accident, and probably not without some professional help, either. It's a choice Jane doesn't fully understand until she sees the way the woman sweeps through Hell's Gate like a queen, the way she had them modify the AMP just so she could use it while carrying--this is her kingdom, and it'll need its heirs.
Even if, of course, they take precautions, like the one Jane just signed a contract for at Paris Selfridge's desk. The techs don't so much as twitch to "help" her when she climbs in, and she wonders if Quaritch told them to keep their hands to themselves. The thought leaves a warm bloom in Jane's stomach, a strange contrast to the dull ache she's praying doesn't turn into a full-blown cramp.
Quaritch lowers the lid herself, free hand braced on her stomach. "Good luck, Corporal," she says, light flickering off her scar like a caress. Her eyes shine electric blue, and she looks nothing like Tammy, but there's that same sense of being seen down to the core that Jane's only ever felt from her sister.
"Ma'am," Jane forces out, doing her best to keep her voice steady. Quaritch smirks and closes the lid the rest of the way, leaving her in coffin-heavy darkness.
It's strange; instead of blazing down the line into Tammy's increasingly familiar skin, Jake just lies there, conscious of blood and sweat and distant heat, the Drive's rumble like a father's rumble or a sister's sigh, a colonel's steely order, a wolf's distant howl. She closes her eyes, breathes in, breathes out.
Thirty seconds, or sixteen years later, she wakes up screaming.
Jane (not Jackie, never fucking Jackie) will never menstruate again. Na'vi have a different biological system, apparently--one more change, one more loss, one more thing stolen along with her name and her life and her sister's body, stolen along with the respect of her fellow soldiers and her ability to recognize her own face in the mirror.
It's not like she mourns "sacred womanhood" or any of that bullshit (getting a permanent dick is one of the few real benefits from this shitshow) but...that was Tammy's blood, coming out of her. Tammy's blood, Tammy's lessons about how to handle it, Tammy woven into her from the other side of death and the universe. Synced, even when they weren't.
And now it's gone. Her body, their body--their wounded, bleeding, survivor body--ditched like so much trash. Abandoned by a woman who gave Tammy's body (heart, cunt, womb) up to a man Jane's never met, who turned it against their people, their world, their Colonel. She's torn open, sucked dry, just like Mom did, just like Mommy--
She rages. Snaps at any human with the audacity to bleed as they walk by, nostrils flaring at all the dark rot they thought they'd hidden so carefully. Harrier's bleeding before Jane kills her, sinks shaking fangs into her throat and feeds and feeds, desperate for something she can't name.
It's the Colonel who saves her. Colonel Quaritch with her tight blue body that's never carried a single child, flesh-memories of pregnancy stolen along with the baby girl she never talks about. Quaritch, who drags Jane into the training room by her hair and throws her to the ground, slaps her when she struggles, shoves her legs apart and fingers her roughly enough to spill blood (the way Mommy used to, once upon a time).
"Suck," she growls, thrusting her fingers down Jane's throat, and Jane does what she's told like a good girl, good student, good daughter. Her own blood blossoms on her tongue like a rose, like a blessing, and she mewls greedily, legs sliding farther apart as the colonel's free hand guides her cock inside.
It hurts, but the good kind, the kind that stabs up into her stomach like a memory, a cramp, a sister-wolf's gentle teeth. Biting into her neck: wrists are for girls, I'm slitting my throat. Head arching back, pushing into the holy death, the bone-splitting resurrection, and when the colonel snarls who am I Jane knows the answer like her twin sister's smile.
"Mommy," she gasps, legs wrapped around Quaritch's waist in a death grip. "Mommy, Mommy, please--" And Mommy gives her everything she needs, gives her a pounding cock and clever fingers and breasts to suck and bite until her gums ache; Mommy makes her little girl cum until she's weeping, before filling her up with precious, holy seed.
Afterwards Quaritch rubs on healing cream, to keep away the infection, but there's still blood heavy in Jane's mouth, her and Quaritch's both. She licks her lips and weaves her fingers through her Colonel's short hair, pulling her into a deep red kiss.
Mila-- Spider, she'd snarled, all flashing brown eyes and adorable pout, and Jane had loved her from the first syllable--is bleeding. Jane can smell it, warm in the air, the kind of drug that hooks you from the first breath.
She drops to one knee in front of the girl, same way Quaritch had, like knights swearing their fealty. Lets her eyes drift over the careful tangle of leather wrappings, six feet of curvy, muscled beauty left in the woods for them like a gift, the only one fate ever gave them.
(easier to look at her than Augustine's creepy teen recom, than the sniveling little boy, than the five-fingered Na'vi girl who's a spitting image of Jane at that age, down to the jagged snarl. easier to avoid thinking about what happened while she was under, her sister's body turned into a broodmare, easier easier easier)
"The fuck do you want?" the girl spits, head high, cheeks tinting the faintest red. Cranky, Jane thinks, and smiles.
"It's okay," she says, reaching out to tuck a pretty golden lock behind Spider's ear. "We're going home, all of us. We'll take care of you." The girl hisses, jerking her head away, but Jane keeps on smiling. She'll understand, soon.
During the fight the girl flees with Augustine--it makes Jane sick, it really does, that creepy old fuck pouring himself into teenage skin so he can run around with young girls who don't know better--and Jane chases them down, hooked on the scent. Sister-wolf running through school halls and swaying trees, fast and deadly as a hurricane.
She's there when the tree shakes and Spider falls, burning streak through the dark; she's there to catch their baby and hold her close, breathing her in deep. Spider's head presses against her breasts, fitting so perfectly it makes Jane want to weep.
Later on, they strip those filthy rags off and lay Spider down on a soft bed, kiss and touch her all over. They lap her unladylike curses away and nudge her plush thighs apart, feeding on the slick crimson flower between her legs, the sweet rush of young-woman blood making Jane dizzy.
Spider curses them, calls them crazy fucking bitches, but they kept at it, relentlessly licking at their little wolf pup until the first mommy bubbles out, soft and wet and helpless. Jane moans at the sound, shoving her tongue even deeper into Spider's cunt as a reward, heaving for air around her blazing-hot cunt.
It's perfect, Spider's perfect, the Colonel's perfect, they're all so perfect. And being here like this, with them, makes Jane feel perfect, too, for the first time in a very long while.
She dreams of Sully a lot, and it gets worse after the Sea Dragon. After blood sliding down Spider's breasts because of Sully's insane fucking boytoy, after blood pouring from Jane's eyes and nose and ears because of that stupid Augustine recom, after being left on that ship, burnt out and whimpering, wolf choking under the weight of silver bullets.
In the aftermath, she hunts and fights, she plans and schemes, she sharpens her knives and keeps loaded guns close at hand. She and Quaritch fuck each other like wild animals, rough and punishing, and afterward she lies bruised, aching, fresh blood between her legs, tracing the outline of her implant and knowing she won't even consider tearing it out until Spider's left to greet her baby sister.
And she dreams. Dreams of Sully, Toruk-fucking-Makto herself, grown softer and older like Tammy never got to do, Mom's spitting image and Jane wonders if that makes her avoid reflections, hope it fucking does.
She dreams of fighting Sully in a basement, a bar, a school, a forest, a base, a lab, a burning ship, a million different bedrooms. They rip at each other in a swirl of claws and fangs, edges sharper than any Na'vi's, blood hot in each other's mouths.
Jane wins every time, of course she does, mean young wolf to Sully's puppy-swollen, house broken bitch. She pins Sully down with a victorious howl, loud enough to shake the goddamn universe to bits around them. Loud enough to make Sully shrink back, ears flattened, like that'll keep out the sound of her own death.
Jane rakes sharp claws down Sully's belly, Tammy's belly (vicious joy at that, see what you get when you fucking leave, Tam). Her head plunges between Sully's legs and there's no blood coming yet, but Jane can fix that, she can open her jaws and bite deep, split Sully's cunt like an overripe fruit.
Sully screams, thrashing, that line between pleasure and agony they both know so well. Jane doesn't care, close your eyes and take it babygirl, she keeps fucking tearing, splitting Sully open, let her be the one learning what's it like to be a goddamn time capsule.
She claws her way inside her sister's body, shrinking as she goes, although she keeps her teeth sharp to rip aside hamstrings and hipbones. Deep enough and small enough she find the steaming womb, the pulsing heart, the twisted double fetus that's been trapped inside since they were both five years old.
Jane curls up tight, lets all those aching, spewing organs press in tight around her. Opening her mouth to let the blood in, filled up with her sister again, like nothing ever changed and the cycle wasn't stopped, like the sisters got to be werewolves together instead of one kneeling over another's body on the cold, hard floor.
I missed you, she thinks, quiet as a spreading stain. And the red roar in her ears feels like some kind of answer, like something close to forgiveness.