Chapter Text
As she sits out there in the cold, her skin tingling with the leftover adrenaline and eyes stinging from the tears that won’t come out, Jackie thinks vaguely of Julius Caesar. While the rest of the class groaned at the assigned reading, Jackie had always secretly enjoyed the play, the idea of betrayal, the idea of power. Everyone turning on each other just for a chance at something bigger than them, the way a crowd is so easily swayed by the best speaker. Jackie thought it fascinating, the balance between fate and free will, the fickleness of public favor. But now, sitting on a log outside the cabin, exiled by the one person who means anything to her, Jackie thinks only of the tragedy. The tragedy isn’t their circumstances, it’s them. Jackie would always be this person, Shauna would always grow to hate her, and--plane crash or no plane crash--Jackie would always end up here. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
She sits there and thinks of how easy it would be to close her eyes, Taissa’s words echoing in her head: dying feels like falling asleep. And, wouldn’t it be nice? After all, without Shauna, Jackie doesn’t think she can last another day in these woods. Face it, she’s useless, weak, tragic. She can’t even carry a bucket of water on her own, can’t do anything to help this group, a group that hates her either way. What difference does it make if she goes now rather than later? At least this way, it’s on her terms, and she has the benefit of Shauna forgiving her. She still knows Shauna, though clearly not as well as she thought she did, and Shauna would forgive her in death, would mourn her. If she closes her eyes right now, maybe Shauna will love her again…
That’s when she hears it. Nat and Travis are calling out for something that Jackie can’t really hear. She sits up, closing her eyes briefly at the surprising amount of energy it takes, looking at them with curiosity that quickly morphs to concern at the look on Travis’ face.
“What’s going on?” She asks, her voice rough from the cold and the after effects of her fight with Shauna. Nat gives her a once over, furrowing her eyebrows at the sight before her, and Jackie feels uncomfortably exposed, like she always does when Natalie Scatorccio looks at her.
“We can’t find Javi,” Nat explains upon Travis’ look, who moves restlessly beside her.
“We have to go back out there,” He says, looking to Nat frantically, barely giving Jackie a second glance. (She can’t say she really minds, she has to apologize to him for the other night at some point.)
“Travis, we can’t-” Nat starts, when Jackie speaks, surprising herself.
“I’ll go,” She says, standing up and brushing herself off with a determination she wasn’t expecting. The two give her strange looks, and she continues. “Travis, Nat’s right. You’re in no condition to go back out there, and we need you alive. I’ll go look in the direction you guys haven’t gone, and if I don’t find him, the three of us will go back out in the morning.”
“The three of us?” Nat raises an eyebrow, torn between skepticism, utter confusion at the sudden initiative from Jackie, and gratitude that it seems she’s successfully convincing Travis to go back inside with her.
Jackie nods, unperturbed by the stare as she gains conviction. “Yes, the three of us. Javi’s my responsibility too, and I’m going to help you find him.” She means it, too, she realizes. Earlier, she was ready to let herself sink into the snow, but now? She thinks of Coach Martinez, and how he often placed the Yellowjackets over his own family. She recalls him, in those final moments, putting an oxygen mask on Shauna as the plane went down, and knows that that’s what killed him. She owes it to Travis and Javi to put them first in his stead. Maybe she owes it to Coach Martinez, too.
Nat studies her, trying to find excuses to protest whatever this is. “You’ll freeze out there, Jackie.”
“Then offer me your jacket like a gentleman, Scatorccio,” She rolls her eyes, looking at the girl expectantly. “Let me help.” She says, and Natalie acquiesces, shrugging off her coat and handing it gruffly to Jackie, who takes it and sighs in relief when the warmth envelops her.
Travis looks at Jackie gratefully, about to say something, when she cuts him off. “Go back inside, Travis. We’ll reconvene in the morning.”
The two go back inside, and Jackie pretends not to notice the way Natalie looks back at her the whole way into the cabin. Now alone, Jackie falters. What the hell does she think she’s doing? Wasn’t it just established that she is the weakest possible choice? Then, she spots it. It’s a brief flash, blink and you’ll miss it, but she sees something shining in the snow. She bends down, digging for it, and it’s a fucking knife. A big one too, one of the ones Shauna’s been using to cut up the animals Nat and Travis bring back. Jackie has no idea how she didn’t see it before, right beside one of the logs she was sitting beside. The log it’s leaning against has one of those stupid symbols on it, which Jackie tries not to read into. Circle, triangle, line, line, line, line, hook. She glares at it for a moment before pocketing the knife and walking into the woods, deciding that if she’s going to give up on survival, she might as well do it while trying to do something for the others. She can do this. She can find Javi, or die trying. Or both, she thinks, both would be good.
“ Javi! ” Jackie screams for the upteemth time, her voice growing hoarse as she squints into the trees, hoping that the boy will reveal himself. “It’s me, it’s Jackie! Where are you, kid?” She asks desperately, pausing when she hears a rustling behind her. She whips around, but finds nothing. She frowns, eyes wide, trying again.
“Javi? If that’s not you, I’m going to be really pissed off,” She warns, as if that will do anything. Speaking was the wrong choice, apparently, because that’s when she sees it: A moose. Honest to God, a huge white moose is standing in front of her. The two of them stare at each other for a good few seconds before it remembers its nature, and charges forward. Jackie screams, hitting the ground with a dull thud as she thrashes beneath its hold, cursing herself for not dying in the snow when she had the chance, for choosing this, choosing violence. She turns her head to the side, screaming desperately, calling first for Natalie, then Javi again, and even Shauna’s traitorous name escapes her lips as she panics under the animal, who is unbothered. Hot, searing pain shoots through her as she feels its teeth close in around the side of her head, and she lets out a guttural cry, remembering belatedly the knife in her pocket.
She fumbles desperately for it, ignoring the pain on the side of her face as she locates the knife. She feels the animal, strangely growing still above her, chewing on what she realizes is her ear as if satiated. She doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though, jabbing the knife into what she hopes is the animal’s heart. It lets out a pathetic little cry, not unlike the sound she made moments before, but Jackie isn’t satisfied. She’s too scared, too cold, too angry, and she keeps going, thrusting the knife in and out a few more times until she’s satisfied, crawling out from under the animal just before it hits the ground. She stands up shakily, looking down at it as she gasps for air, and thinks for a brief moment of thanking The Wilderness, before she grunts in frustration at the thought. She settles on thanking Laura Lee instead, looking to the sky with a shaky smile.
Adrenaline coursing through her, she lets out a manic sort of laugh as she looks down at the huge animal that she has, against all odds, just killed. “ Fuck you, Jeff Sadecki!” She screams, just because she can. “You couldn’t satisfy a woman if the instructions were in neon fucking lights!” She says, breaking off into another fit of exhausted laughter, before she regains her bearings. She has to get this thing back to the cabin, if nothing else. But Javi, she remembers, is still missing, and if the boy is around here, he’s probably hungry.
“Okay, Javi?” She calls out, unsure of herself but still banking on the chance he can hear her, somehow. “I don’t know if you’re here and just scared to come out-which I wouldn’t blame you for, but you’re going to get hungry out here, so…” She trails off, wincing at the thought that occurs to her. She looks at the knife in her hand, and the back leg of the animal in front of her. “If you can figure out what to do with this, it’ll last you a few days, in case we can’t find you for a bit,” She says, and closes her eyes before thrusting her arm down, wrinkling her nose at the sound of the knife cutting through bone. She leaves the leg there, throwing it a little off to the side, an offering to Javi as much as it is a warning to anything else that may be watching her.
“Well, shit,” She mutters, hands on her hips as she once again stares at this pitiful heap of a thing before her. “How am I going to get this back to the others?” She says helplessly, before squaring her shoulders, putting her hair up with the elastic she finds in the coat pocket. Thank you, Scatorccio, she thinks. She mumbles something akin to a prayer, grabs the animal’s two front legs and pulls , the corpse moving slowly but surely, Jackie grunting from effort all the while. She’s breathing heavily, and she thinks of giving up, but she’s wearing Natalie’s jacket, and she should at least make it back to return it, right? So she pulls, and pulls, the moose’s blood leaving a smear on the freshly fallen snow in a way that feels ritualistic. Her arms burn, the side of her head is actively bleeding from where the ear has gone missing, but Jackie forces herself to keep moving. If she dies out here now, they’ll waste time looking for her instead of Javi, who might actually still be alive, and she can’t be responsible for that.
Eventually, things start to look familiar, and she gasps at the realization that she can smell smoke from the fire she’d left burning before she left. She laughs, a desperate, manic little thing, and drops the moose legs she’s holding, running over to the cabin, screaming.
“Natalie! Travis! Get the fuck out here!” She yells, not caring who she’s waking up or that everyone else in there hates her. Natalie comes rushing out, eyes widening at the sight of her. Jackie figures she must look a little frightening, snow all over her hair, head leaking blood from the side, covered in blood from the moose itself.
“Holy shit,” Nat mutters, just as Travis appears behind her.
“Did you find him?”
“No, but I found something else, and you need to come help me,” She says, running back to where she left the moose without waiting for them to respond, hearing their footsteps behind her.
“Jackie, what the fuck? ” Nat says breathlessly, staring between the moose and Jackie like she can’t decide which sight is crazier.
“Trust me, I am just as surprised as you are, but help me carry it back over,” Jackie says impatiently, spurring both Nat and Travis into action. The three of them drag the wretched thing back into the cabin, ignoring the gasps of the other girls.
“Where did you find that thing, Nat?” Mari asks, freshly woken up and eyeing the moose with comically wide eyes, only for Nat to shake her head, pointing at Jackie in wonder.
“That wasn’t me,” She says simply, eliciting another round of reactions from the girls.
But the warmth of the cabin has just hit Jackie, and she feels the weariness creeping into every fiber of her being. Something is distinctly wrong, and she feels herself falter, stumbling in Nat’s direction, the other girl reaching her arms forward to catch her.
Jacqueline Taylor passes out in Natalie Scatorccio’s arms, her right ear missing and a knife on her belt, feeling like her entire body is on fire. After all, the Sun always burns.