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Chapter Text

Natalie can still hear the echoes of her mother’s shouts haunting her as she struggles to trudge the slippery pavements of Wiskayok’s suburbs. She’s far away from the trailer park, how is it that she can still hear her mother’s voice from here? 

It’s not like Nat expected a wholesome family dinner but she didn’t think she’d be walking around the streets in her t-shirt and sweatpants with only a flask of cheap rum to warm her up under the snow on Christmas Eve. 

She certainly didn’t even realize that her legs were taking her to one particular destination that she probably shouldn’t go to. But she’s kind of getting shit-faced so she could actually make a worse decision than this one. Maybe, she just wants to go there and see her. And hope that she’s actually there. Either way, she’s still going and honestly, it’s not like Christmas could get any worse. 

Jackie is absolutely sure that she hadn’t uttered a word in the past 36 hours. No singing in the shower, no ordering pizza for delivery, no phone calls to and from anyone, no vocal muscle movement at all. It’s gotta be some record for Jackie. She considers continuing this vow of silence until New Years just for the sake of it. She is going to be alone either way. 

She’s laying on her bed, staring at the ceiling hoping to hypnotize herself as she imagines the plaster swirling and looping. The spell is immediately broken when she hears small knocking noises on her window. 

What the fuck? She thinks to herself, still adamant on not saying anything. Jackie only knows one person who would throw pebbles on her window, and so much for a vow of silence since she yells out a pretty loud “Ow! What the hell?!” When a pebble hits her shoulder. 

Jackie leans her head out and meets eyes with a fucking ghost; extremely pale, white-ish blonde hair, and shivering hands, that’s what Natalie Scatorccio looks like right now several feet below her. The white t-shirt doesn’t help, she looks camouflaged with the snow. The only things standing out are the gray sweatpants and black converse.

Still, what the fuck is she doing?

Natalie looks up at her confused and surprised like she didn’t expect to see her at all, then her flushed face just brightens up. She lifts an arm and basically sings, “Repunzel, Repunzel, let down your hair.”

It takes about three seconds for Jackie to realize that Natalie’s drunk. 

Fuck.

“That joke was only funny the first three times you said it,” Jackie says to her bluntly, trying to mask her worry with snark and bite.

Nat just chuckles and puts her hands in her pockets. “Yeah uhm— I thought you liked it,” she looks away with an awkward smile. “Sorry. I Uh— I didn’t think anyone was home. I didn’t see the cars.”

“It’s just me,” Jackie sighs. Then, a bulb lights up in Nat’s seemingly delirious head and she grabs on the pipe on the wall to start climbing, as she’s done quite a few times before, and Jackie immediately stops her and exclaims, “use the front door!”

“Oh,” Nat lets go and plants her feet on the ground. “Right.”

Jackie sees her taking a swig from her flask before walking away, and she immediately rushes down stairs to open the door.

“Hi,” Natalie says. It’s not just her hands, she’s shivering head to toe.

“Hi,” Jackie says back monotonously. 

A beat.

And she grabs Nat’s very cold arms, brings her inside the house, and closes the door behind them. Jackie’s trying not to feel too much, but it’s not in her nature. 

“What are you doing here?” Jackie widens her eyes at her and puts her hands on her hips as she tries to scold her. 

Natalie walks ahead of Jackie and looks around the house as if to check if she was truly all alone here. Then, she turns to Jackie and says, “I just missed—“ she interrupts herself for a moment. “My brain kinda missed you.”

Jackie wants to be endeared, she wants to blush and feel shy. But how dare she come into her house and say such things when she’s the one who—

“Where are your clothes? It’s freezing out there,” Jackie ignores Nat’s statement. “Do you have a death wish?” 

That’s when Nat’s face twists and her eyes suddenly look away, upset, like she’s remembering something, and Jackie realizes that she’s unable to stay angry with Natalie. She can’t be angry at her when she’s looking like this. The one who unintentionally snaked into her heart and nestled so quietly in it that Jackie can’t find it herself to make her go. 

“Oh, yeah,” she looks down at her white t-shirt. “Didn’t really have time,” she sniffles from the cold. “Mom was acting kinda crazy and she was— she was like, throwing out furniture and stuff,” she just casually sighs like she’s bored. “Shit got annoying.” 

Jackie wants to say something but the words are stuck on her throat and her heart twinges. She remembers that Nat’s pretty close to turning into an ice cube, so she just inhales, takes her hand to guide her upstairs. 

“Where are we going?” Nat asks as she follows along. 

“I’m gonna run you a hot bath.” 

“Right,” she says, slightly sobering up as she’s starting to feel a bit embarrassed. 

She’s not sure why she helps Nat out of all of her clothes and watches her carefully step into the hot waters of her huge tub. 

They’re both awkwardly looking at each other; Nat in the steaming hot water covering her shoulders but there’s no bubbles or oils so is it really covering anything? And Jackie’s sitting on the closed-lid toilet. It’s kind of weird. 

“Thanks,” Natalie says quietly. “Thanks for looking out for me.” 

“Yeah,” Jackie laughs a little bit. “Would’ve hated to go back to school and hear about Scatorccio freezing out on the snow,” she jokes morbidly. “On Christmas Eve.”

“Really?” Natalie genuinely asks. So fucking earnest. 

“Yes, really,” Jackie laughs, baffled, softening at Nat’s expression. “What, did you really think I wanted you dead?” 

“Kinda felt like it a few weeks ago,” she shrugs. 

“Nat,” Jackie sighs. “You’re crazy if you actually believe that.” 

“I dunno,” Natalie looks away with a small smile. “I mean, dead in the snow. That’s a cool way to go. Like a movie scene or something.”

“Now why would you say that?” Jackie lets out a hearty laugh. Natalie feels accomplished by that. “Just stay here. It’s warm.”

“Okay,” Natalie nods.

Then it’s silent again. It’s still awkward that Nat’s particularly vulnerable while Jackie’s just sitting there. She offers an arm and gestures to Jackie to get in the water with her.

“No,” she declines.

“Why?” Nat pouts. “It’s not fair.”

“This is medical procedure to warm you up,” Jackie shyly explains. “Nothing more.”

“Come on,” she softly pleads. “Nothin’ I haven’t seen before,” she smiles up at her. Jackie wonders if Nat’s aware that this is her undoing, her weakness; her inability to make her go. 

Alas, Jackie stands up, strips down, and joins her on the other side of the tub where they’re just facing each other. 

“Where are your parents?” Nat curiously asks her. 

“Spain.” 

Nat raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t wanna go to Spain?”

“No,” she shakes her head. She’s been wallowing for a while now, she has no taste of being away from home, stuck with her parents for two weeks. 

“And they left you all alone? On Christmas? In this big fucking house?”

“Why are you making it seem like I’m Kevin McAllister or something?” Jackie sincerely laughs at Nat’s confusion. 

“Spain or Wiskayok?” She holds out her palms like they’re a scale. “I think there’s a right answer here, Jack.”

Jackie lets the nickname echo in her head. No one calls her that except for Natalie. 

“This is my Christmas present,” she explains. “Time alone and away from them.”

“And they just left?” Nat frowns. Jackie can’t understand why she seems upset about it. 

“Yeah,” she shrugs. It’s really no big deal.

“But it’s Christmas.”

“They already gave me my presents.”

“You shouldn’t be all alone,” Nat says pretty sadly. 

“And you, hot shot?” Jackie smirks at her. “Drunk, barely wearing anything, walking around, doing whatever. You’re winning the shittier Christmas, not me. So stop the funeral.” 

Natalie just breathes out a laugh and shakes her head. “Whatever.”

She takes a deep breath and sinks her head underneath the water before Jackie can protest. Just dulling her senses for a few seconds before she goes back up and now her whole hair’s soaked too.

“What’re you doing here anyway?” Jackie asks seemingly unfazed by Nat’s antics.

“I dunno,” she swipes water from her face and pulls her hair back. “I was just walking around the neighborhood and your house was in my face.” 

“Nothing to do with missing me?” Jackie tilts her head, challenging Nat, reminding her of what she said earlier downstairs.

“Oh, don’t think you’re so special,” Nat playfully snarls at her. “Lottie’s house is a few blocks away. I could’ve gone there but yours came first.”

“I’m not special?” Jackie feigns innocence when she asks Natalie, pretty eyelashes fluttering. Purposely breathing in, letting her chest rise, making her see. Natalie doesn’t say anything. She swallows and bites her inner cheek while looking sideways.

Jackie stands up, letting the water droplets fall from her naked body and walks away, leaving her alone to fend for herself. When the bathroom door closes, Natalie draws her knees up and presses her eyes on them. She slaps her hand on the surface of the water and groans wondering how they both got here.

Jackie’s right. What the hell is she doing here? 

She goes into Jackie’s bedroom in a soft white towel. She sees that there’s warm clothes for her on the bed. As she waits to dry up, she looks around her room, checking all the trinkets and details of the place. There’s pictures and traces of everything and everyone, all these memories that she’s seen many times before. Natalie tries to not feel the sting when she’s probably one of the few people whose picture isn’t there, only in the group photo with the team. 

So much for wanting to feel special. Jackie’s just confusing like that; putting her on a mighty high pedestal and then doing absolutely nothing about it.

It scares the fuck out of Natalie.

She shrugs it all off and goes to get dressed, even wearing the socks Jackie left for her.

Natalie has resigned to her fate that she’s spending Christmas Eve with Jackie Taylor. It could be a whole lot worse than this if she’s being honest, and actually, this idea would’ve thrilled her a month ago maybe but now, there’s this uncomfortable wedge between them. 

What was playful fun turned into an emotional investment that Natalie could not handle. It was never supposed to go this way, and she’ll blame herself partially because she should’ve known that Jackie doesn’t do casual, she doesn’t do flings or hookups.

“Christmas Eve special,” Jackie playfully announces when she sees Nat descend down the stairs to the kitchen. “Spaghetti and red wine.”

“Is it ready? I’m starving.” 

Jackie, in her matching pink and white striped pajamas, walks over to where she put Nat’s plate and puts her share of the meal. “Here you go,” she smiles at her. 

“Thanks.” Natalie walks to the exact right drawer to get them forks because she has been here before.

“You know, this is the first meal in a few days where I’m not eating bland spaghetti noodles with butter,” Jackie laughs as she wipes some of the red sauce from the corner of her mouth. 

“You got the sauce out just for me?” Nat jokingly asks her. 

“It’s Christmas Eve and you’re still a guest,” Jackie casually explains. 

“Hmm,” Nat hums. “I’ve never felt like a guest in your house before,” she mutters with obvious negative connotation to her words.

Jackie just looks at her without saying anything for a moment. “I didn’t know what to do,” she says shyly, ashamed. “It’s better if my parents never met you.”

“Even as your friend?” 

“How would I explain why my friend was sneaking into my bedroom three, four times a week?”

“Shauna comes here often, doesn’t she?” Nat’s almost surprised at herself for taking the conversation here.

“No,” she quickly shakes her head. “I go to hers.” 

“Why?” 

“It’s not good here,” Jackie solemnly says. 

“But good enough for me?” She bitterly counters.

“I asked if I could go to yours,” Jackie rightfully reminds her. “Guess how that turned out?”

Natalie wouldn’t dare allow Jackie to step foot into that double wide trailer. She is too good for it.

“Doesn’t Jeff come here?” Natalie deflects, and Jackie knows what Nat’s implying.

“Not anymore,” Jackie looks away. “Hasn’t been here since the summer.”

Since we started hooking up.

“Why are you still in a relationship with him then?”

“Since when did you care about relationships?” Jackie looks at her pointedly. “Especially mine.”

“Since I figured out that you liked girls and you’re basically torturing yourself with that dimwit,” Natalie bluntly says her piece. 

Jackie takes a sharp breath and takes the glass of wine to her mouth. “I will break up with him,” she says quietly when she puts the glass down. “After New Years.”

“Seriously?” Nat genuinely asks her. Because with their own personal record, they’ve probably said “this is the last time.” about thirteen before doing it again and again and again.

“It’s time,” Jackie presses her lips and shrugs. 

“Are you telling your parents?” Nat carefully asks her.

“What?!” Jackie whips her face towards her. “God, no! Why the fuck would I tell my parents I’m gay?!”

“Because you are,” Nat explains as if it’s that simple.

“That’s not happening,” she quickly shakes her head with an embarrassed laugh. “Not for many years. Maybe never”

“Jack,” Nat sighs in defeat. “You can’t be serious.”

“Well, I am,” she casually says, already surrendering to a bleak future. “I mean, what would even happen, you know?” She snarls at Nat, but she’s mostly feeling shitty about herself. “They’d cut me off? Disown me? Never talk to me again? I’ve never had a job, I can’t pay off college by myself,” she explains in a bit of a freak out. “They’re gonna get so angry, Nat. I can’t even think about it.”

It’s hard to think of Jackie as an abused kid; the perfect, prim, and proper way she presents herself, there’s little to no cracks. It’s not like her parents hit her, except for that one time when she was younger when her dad did in fact lay a hand on her after too many drinks but they never really speak about that. It’s not the call-the-CPS type, but there’s something rotten inside this mansion.

She can’t forget Jackie’s fainting spells from sophomore year when she practically refused to eat anything. She was a late bloomer, only got her period when she was almost sixteen, so when her body started changing and gaining some weight beforehand, it freaked her the fuck out. Something about the perfect weight and meal plans and her mother. Natalie never really understood.

Or how she was visibly nervous and her hands were shaking when her dad came to pick her up from school even though they had practice. Jackie forgot to tell him, but she didn’t argue. She made up a sorry excuse and went back home, and Jackie never missed practice.

Or how it took her a while to stop flinching whenever Coach Bill raised his voice, especially towards her since she’s their responsible captain.

A yelling house, Nat calls it in her head. Not a beating one. Jackie’s not exactly the poster child of abused kids, not the way Natalie is, but there’s something unfortunate there.

“You don’t know that,” Nat tries to reassure her. “They might surprise you.”

“I’m gonna disappoint them. But what’s fucking new?” She bitterly laughs. “Maybe I should tell them, huh? I’ll just piss them off as usual, and go find someone’s couch to crash in for a while—“

“Mine,” Natalie interrupts her. The words escape her mouth before she even considers it. “You can just come and find me— if you ever need a place to stay, just find me.”

Jackie looks up at her with her mouth slightly parted and her eyebrows up. The look on her face goes from softness to confusion to contempt, and she shakes her head to say, “this is the worst breakup ever.”

How dare she come into her house, ask her to join the bath with her, wear her clothes, tell her everything she wants to hear, and still expect her to get over everything? 

“It’s not a break up,” Natalie still insists. “You can’t break something that’s never been…” then she just trails off because they argued about this before.

“Well, it fucking hurts like one,” Jackie somberly mutters. 

“It hurts me too,” Nat confesses quietly. They let the statement linger and keep their eyes on each other. 

“Then, why?” Jackie sadly whispers, so childish and immature that she restrains herself from stomping her feet.

“We can’t have everything, Jack.”

They both want different things, each of those things weren’t tangible deliverables by the other. This will only end badly and Natalie would gladly take the hit if it meant lessening the hurt later. It’s fine, she’ll live with it.

“Whatever,” Jackie scoffs and finishes her dinner.

A few glasses in and some weight off their shoulders, Jackie’s in front of their huge sound system in the living room. She’s shuffling through the CDs and picks out Chet Baker, unsure which album it is but she’s always liked how soft he sings. 

Natalie stands at a distance behind her with her hands in her pockets, watching Jackie’s back as she sways left and right to the jazzy melody, obviously a little loose from the drinking but at least, she doesn’t seem upset or pissed at her. 

Jackie turns around looking happy, a dazed kind of happy, and she’s slowly making her way towards Natalie. Pacing herself to the beat of the song, Natalie snaps her fingers as she meets her in the middle with a small grin on her face. 

“It’s gonna take a while until I make you go,” Jackie says, wrapping her arms around Nat’s neck. They’re swaying together to Dancing On The Ceiling. 

“I’m sorry,” she sincerely says. 

“No,” Jackie shakes her head. She continues humming the tune into Natalie’s ear. 

“I really want it to be different,” Nat confesses. Her arms are wrapped around Jackie’s waist. 

Jackie’s forehead is on Nat’s, their chests are pressed together. She’s taking slow breaths that Nat can hear, she wants to kiss her parted lips. She didn’t lie about missing her. But Jackie turns her head ever so slightly just to resist the temptation. Instead, she just mumbles the lyrics until another song plays. 

“Merry Christmas, Natalie,” Jackie sweetly says to her, gently caressing her cheekbone, all glassy-eyed. 

“Merry Christmas, Jackie,” she responds, allowing herself to indulge in all the softness within Jackie’s hands. 

They both know how this will go, because they pull apart so they’re face to face, eye to eye. They look into each other as Nat’s hand wrap around the side of Jackie’s neck; four fingers putting slight pressure where her spine begins, and her thumb underneath her chin, going up to her graze her lower lip. Both of their hearts are thumping, and Jackie can’t wait any longer. She stands up on her toes and finally, she kisses her. 

It’s been far too long, and Nat will forever excuse the lights to explain why there’s a tearful trail down her right eye. Jackie holds her tighter and relishes as their tongues collide as they go deeper into each other. 

When they pull apart, their pupils blown and still in each other’s arms. “This time—“ Natalie says breathlessly, “this time is the last time, okay?”

“Yeah,” Jackie says, almost dismissively, with a smile. “Of course.”

She guides her upstairs to her bedroom again. The room is mostly dark, only the moonlight and Jackie’s dim nightlight to offer illumination. 

When they pick up where they left off and the kissing turns more heated, Jackie trips into her bed and lays on her back with Natalie on top of her. More and more clothes get taken off of each other and fall onto the bedroom floor. Nat’s got a hand underneath her shirt on her chest, palming her as Jackie moans into her mouth. 

As their hands wander further and further, Jackie stops and holds Nat’s shoulders so she can look at her. 

“What is it?” She asks, slightly confused at the interruption. 

“Nat?” Jackie nervously asks. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you love me?” Her big eyes stare up at Nat’s, blinking and pleading. That’s the crux of the matter; the scary part, the emotional investment that Natalie is incapable of returning.

“I want to,” she truthfully answers, because she really wants to. More than anything, she really wants to fall in love with Jackie Taylor but it’s unfair for the both of them. They come from different worlds, different everything. The crash out is inevitable and it all promises itself to be painful.

Nip it by the bud. That’s the best course of action.

“I really want to,” Natalie breathes out again, and Jackie believes her, because that’s enough for her to fall. She’s greedy for more, and more, and more but she’ll grab on what she can get and hold on for dear life.

After, just as they’re starting to doze in each other’s arms, Natalie reminds her, “I was serious about finding me if you ever need a couch to crash in for when the day comes.”

“What if it’s in fifteen years?” Jackie yawns, lazily playing with Nat’s hair.

“Still,” Nat kisses her head. “It’s a promise.”

Jackie nods. “I’ll hold you to it.” 

They fall asleep very shortly after. 

This is the last time. It has to be.

__________

They remain pretty cordial with each other afterwards. It’s not like they ever stopped being friends, and Jackie stopped being so butthurt and avoidant one week into the spring semester. 

My brain kinda missed you. It rings pretty true for both of them. 

Nat’s still sort of an asshole because half an hour before their first match of the season, she jokes to Jackie about a kiss for good luck. Jackie grabs her wrist and drags her away from everyone, pretending to be bothered and reluctant by the joke when she would hold her face in her hands and happily kiss her. 

Hey, it’s only a kiss. It’s not like they broke protocol. 

Jackie laughs when they pull away and she covers Nat’s smug face with her whole hand to give her a playful nudge.

When they win that first match, it’s the best excuse to carry on that tradition. When they go the whole season undefeated, Jackie tells Nat that she wholeheartedly believes that it’s their doing. 

__________

The night before nationals, Shauna and Tai argue about something, Nat’s head is far too in the clouds to even give a fuck on what’s going on, and before she knows it, she’s ushered away with the rest of her teammate for a Jackie-made team bonding activity. 

It’s endearing, but it’s also annoying.

Except Jackie looks her in the eye and says, “I love that you don’t care what anybody else thinks. You’re so completely yourself.”

And the words weigh heavy on Nat. She feels guilty, she feels like she’s lying to Jackie because where the hell did she get that from? It’s that pedestal again. If Nat didn’t care what anybody else thinks, what Jackie thinks, she would’ve never let her go. 

She cares to the point where she refuses to let Jackie drown to rock bottom with her.

__________

There’s no easy way to say this. The team never makes it to Seattle, to nationals. Their plane literally fell from the sky into the wilderness. It’s actually shocking that so many of them survived the descent. 

It would’ve been sweeter to think that Jackie and Natalie were thinking of each other when they were going down, holding on to memories of each other as they took their last breaths but that didn’t happen. Jackie was passed out pretty much the whole time, she barely felt it happening all thanks to her mom’s Valium. Nat, on the other hand, has unintentionally dug up her dad’s skeleton from the depths of her brain, not sure why that asshole’s the one to greet her into the afterlife. 

Jackie won this round. 

But they both survived, and it took them about thirty minutes until they found each other amidst the chaos. Just a short lingering gaze for reassurance.

Are you okay?

I’m okay. Are you? 

Yeah. 

Good. 

and a nod from a distance. 

__________

It got weird really fucking fast in the wilderness, probably immediately after the realization that no rescue team is on their way to find them. Everything felt blurry. Even Jackie and Natalie got blurry. They all did unspeakable things and slowly started to lose it. 

None of them, eventually, return the same. Not all of them return. 

Natalie doesn’t remember much from when they got rescued, she just nodded her way through everything without even properly listening. She’s sure she fucked her hearing with that gun that also fucked her shoulder from the kickback. 

She remembers her chronically haunted blue eyes finding Jackie, as she’s being guided away from the hospital by her parents, her mother’s hand wrapped around her twiggy arm, rushing her out.

Jackie looked back at her, walking away, with those same pleading big eyes. Nat would never forget her; her dreary brown that she swears looked golden-hazel before, her marred face with badly treated ice burns from that fateful night, and her slightly open mouth almost saying “wait.” as the door closed behind her. 

Wait? Wait for what? Nat thought to herself. There’s nothing. Maybe we finally let each other go now. 

Natalie doesn’t leave for another three days. Not because her mother finally showed up, but because she never did. She gets escorted back all the way to that damned trailer. 

Nothing feels real. 

It’s probably best to just forget, huh? 

__________

But no one really forgets. How can Natalie ever forget? Not when she has to lean her head to hear better from her left ear, or how she gets all crampy when she carries heavy things, or how she gags every time she smells meat, or how she hasn’t had a single peaceful sleep ever since without taking something for it. 

So yeah, even years later, Natalie doesn’t forget at all. She tries to remember the nice things sometimes; it helps. 

Every now and then, she’ll remember Jackie and wonder how she’s doing. They’re both still in New Jersey, but they kinda just lost contact with each other. She often wonders if Jackie thinks of her too. 

“They chose you, but they would never let you do what you wanted,” Jackie says quietly to her. They’re so close to each other that Nat’s breathing is caught in her throat. “They don’t know that we can stand right here, and I’d let you do anything to me.”

Nat still shivers at the memory; the two of them alone in the snowy woods after she followed her out and Jackie's emotionless way saying things that, out of everything, scared her the most. That fucking pedestal. 

She remembers the redness of her nose, her slow blinking, how the fog came out when they exhaled, how her lips felt on her own; so good, her heart almost stopped working.

But still, even years later, when Nat’s living with Van in an apartment in the city, a wedding invitation is mailed to them, but directed solely to Van. Natalie feels the world tip over on its axis when she reads the names of the happy couple. 

Edward Danes & Jacqueline Taylor

What the fuck? 

Jackie and some dude?!

And all she can vocally say is, “that fucking bitch.”

Chapter Text

“You’re overdoing it, Nat,” Van laughs at her from the couch.

“I’m underdoing it actually!” She exclaims, pacing around their shared apartment.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Am I, Van? Am I really?” She exasperates, throwing her arms up.

“You’re seriously getting all torn up over Jackie Taylor’s wedding?” Van’s trying to kill the laugh that’s stuck on her throat.

“I mean, after all that we’ve been through,” Nat disappointedly shakes her head. 

“I’m willing to bet a hundred bucks that you wouldn’t have shown up at all—”

“You risk your life every day to bring food to someone in the middle of fucking nowhere and they don’t even invite you to their wedding,” Nat passionately rants. She walks up to the wall where Van has put up pictures and posters all over it and she just stares at it, turning her face away from Van with her arms folded. “How come you’re getting invites with Tai and not me?” She asks. Playing the butthurt role is easier than admitting why it’s actually killing her inside.

“Do you want me to call her or something?” She nicely asks, seeing how Nat’s big reaction kind of caught her off guard. “She could’ve just forgotten.”

Forgotten? Absolutely no way. 

“No, that’s pathetic,” Nat declines the offer. “Do you even have her phone number?”

“I could find it somewhere.”

Nat’s eyes focus on that one picture on the wall; senior year, in training outfits, Jackie smiling like the sun while hugging Nat’s shoulders from the back. Van used to carry a camera around everywhere just to take random pictures. To this day she regrets not bringing a camera in her suitcase, something about having some memories from the wilderness, although Nat can’t be sure why Van wants to remember anything from that time.

“Whatever,” she quietly mumbles, still looking at that picture on the wall. She only saw it when they first moved in together. What a shame. Nat would’ve loved having it on her back then. 

“Well,” Van stands up and announces, “I really gotta start packing. If I’m late again, Tai won’t be too happy.”

“Right.” Nat just mindlessly nods, so deeply lost in her thoughts. 

What the hell is Jackie doing? 

She wonders if Jackie had some sort of sexual revelation and realized she’s bisexual or something, because she can’t be marrying a guy just like that. Nat hopes that’s the case, or else Jackie’s just doing a repeat with the unfortunate Jeff situation. 

What are you doing, Jack?

Is someone forcing her? Is she just doing it out of her own will? Natalie has always had a good record of figuring Jackie out, she was difficult to explain but always readable to her. She’s trying to remember if this Edward Danes guy is someone they went to school with but it’s not ringing any bells. She gets a shiver when a thought crosses through her brain. 

What if he’s some gross old dude? 

She physically shakes the thoughts away and turns back to go to her room to get ready for work. 

No way. Jackie likes pretty girls. That’s her whole thing, right? Nat makes herself laugh when she thinks that.

Jackie didn’t invite her, so she shouldn’t even think about it. Not her monkeys, not her fucking circus. She’ll tell you that much. 

Nat goes to Van’s room after she gets dressed up for work. She knocks on her door and finds her sitting on the floor sorting out her small suitcase. 

“When are you leaving?” Natalie asks her, leaning by the door. 

“Soon as I’m done with this,” Van pats her bag. 

“So, I’ll see you next week?”

“Just until next Saturday.”

“So four whole days?” She pretends to be all sad and pouty. 

“You’ll live,” Van simply shrugs and then she says in a more serious tone, “you sure you’ll be alright?” 

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“You know you can join,” Van offers and Natalie sees the subtle look of guilt flashing through her face. The same look every time she leaves for a few days. “There’s room.”

“Ew. No,” Natalie pretends to cringe.

“Oh fuck off,” Van scoffs and rolls her eyes.

Natalie huffs out a laugh and goes in to hug Van goodbye since she’s gotta go now if she doesn’t want to be late.

“Drive safe,” Nat tells her. 

“Of course,” Van nods. “And don’t do anything crazy. You better be in one piece by the time I’m back.”

Van’s going to Washington to stay with Taissa for the week and they’ll come back together for Jackie’s wedding. Nat’s secretly sad now about all sorts of things; being alone and Jackie’s thing too. 

“I’ll be fine,” Nat reassures her. 

“Call me if there’s anything.”

“Sure.”

Nat takes her leave and makes sure to give her parked car a knock for luck before she walks to the library. It’s not really a place Nat thought she’d like or enjoy, but the quiet has been a safe haven for her. She didn’t realize how much her partial hearing loss would affect her until it meddled with her previous jobs. She’ll take the library job for now until she figures something out. 

She knows the compensation money from the crash won’t last her forever, but the checks will do for now since she already paid a lot of the rent money in advance. 

Jackie follows her mother into the boutique store on the other side of town. She always lets her mother take the lead, always finding herself unsure how to act and think in front of her. It’s Jackie's way of playing safe rather than sorry. 

“Good morning,” the lady in the store immediately greets them. 

“Good morning,” Susannah Taylor says back. She takes off her sunglasses and looks around the boutique. 

Jackie stands next to her mother and says, “morning.”

They’ve been to this store several times, and this lady is new to them. It’s apparent when she looks at Jackie for three more seconds than she should. She’s used to the lingering first gaze; it’s the red, wrinkly, mottled burn scar on half her right cheek until the bone by her ear. The whole area under her right cheekbone, down to her jaw, and going up to her ear and behind it. Yeah, it’s a bit of a sight. 

“We were told her dress is ready,” Susannah says pointing to Jackie.

“Oh, yes,” the lady perks up. “Taylor, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s ready to go,” she smiles politely. “Let me go get it for you.”

“Of course.”

They go to stand by the counter together, watching the lady disappear into the backroom. Susannah takes a bored sigh and looks at Jackie. She gently combs through the hair that’s tucked behind Jackie’s ears with her fingers so it frames her face. She can’t help herself.

“You know it makes it itchy,” Jackie swats her mom’s hand away. 

“She was staring,” Susannah explains, trying to sound empathetic. She really does try, but she’s just one of those people who will always sound too formal and rigid. 

“Let her,” Jackie whines in a low voice. “Who cares?” 

“I care,” she simply responds.

“Why?” Jackie frowns. 

“Because it upsets you,” Susannah bluntly says, looking ahead and putting her sunglasses back on. “That upsets me.” 

Jackie doesn’t say anything to that. She hates how different they both are; Susannah’s nature is cold and pragmatic, while Jackie’s emotional and requires obvious displays of love. They couldn’t be a worse match. She wonders if her mom’s bluntness is why she feels the need to be shown love, rather than it being an inherent family difference. 

God, I can’t open this can of worms today. 

“I’m not upset,” Jackie mumbles, walking away to see the dresses on display. 

They’re here to get the dress for the reception, not the wedding gown, that’s all ready and stored. This one is lighter, comfier, and softer. She’ll wear it after the ceremony so she can easily walk around later. It’s been going back and forth to get the size fitted and tailored. For some reason, it just never stuck the landing. 

When Jackie looks at her reflection in the mirror, she pulls back her hair and tilts her face to look at it better. 

“There. Pretty.” She tucks her hair behind her ears with both hands, and rests her hands by her neck to hold it warmly, softly. “That’s more like it.”

“Does it look okay?” Jackie hesitantly asks. She can feel the wrinkles when she traces it with her fingers even if Misty told her not to touch it. 

“You kidding me?” Natalie gently smiles. “You look badass.” 

That’s basically a confirmation for Jackie that it’s actually not okay. She hasn’t seen it yet, wouldn’t dare look into the mirror. 

“No, it’s not,” Jackie sighs and removes Nat’s hands. They’re outside, just idly walking by the edge of the frozen lake. 

“Are you calling me a liar, Taylor?” Nat smirks at her. 

“No,” she shakes her head. “I just think you’re being nice so I don’t freak out.”

“I’m gonna need you to trust me. It’s not bad, it’s okay. You look good.”

“You think I look good?” She sincerely asks. 

“Is the sky blue?” Nat asks her with a silly grin, showing off the dimples Jackie always loved. 

She knows it’s a rhetorical question, a way of expression, but the sky’s gray and she hasn’t seen that shade of blue in a while. Things are getting hard. Jackie’s sure that Nat’s exerting energy by entertaining her over here; she’s been going out hunting every morning with Travis and coming back with nothing. 

If Jackie’s starving then Nat must be burning holes and losing sanity by the second. 

She occasionally wonders how much of these memories are real. It feels like from a different lifetime. She wonders if Natalie was being truthful that day. Would she think she looks pretty today?

Jackie looks down at the diamond ring on her finger and feels her chest tighten and constrict. This suffocation has been a reoccurring event for her ever since Eddie slipped the ring on. She thought that it would go away with time but it’s more apparent than ever that she’s sinking further down the deep end. 

What am I doing? 

She feels like every object of this room is enlarging, slowly forcing her into a corner until she’s squashed into the wall. She’s not supposed to live like this, Jackie suddenly thinks. 

I didn’t die to come back drowning. 

“Jackie,” her mother calls her out of her thoughts. “Let’s go. A lot on the schedule.”

I need to leave.

There’s a buzz around Nat, and it’s not the buzzing that she’s used to hearing in her ears. She’s walking around the shelves to return some books to their places and Jackie Taylor is buzzing around her like an annoying, menacing wasp. 

She went from someone that Nat wistfully thought of four to five times a week, into the only existing thought in her head in a matter of hours. She can’t focus on anything else. 

Just Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, and also Jackie. 

God, she hasn’t seen her in so long, didn’t hear her laugh in so long. Does that Edward Danes guys make her laugh? While Natalie never really thought of herself as a particularly funny person, she always had an easy time making Jackie laugh. 

Natalie inhales the scent of lacquered wooden floor, and she tries to remember something nice.

It’s obvious Jackie’s not super thrilled when they hike for this so-called lake but when they eventually find it, she’ll forever be secretly glad about being wrong about this. She won’t admit it to anybody though.

She sees all the girls run to water. She takes off her clothes and stands near Nat and Mari, she’s still pissed about Shauna not siding with her earlier.

Nat sends her a small smile and she returns it. When Mari walks away from them, Jackie hears Natalie laughing to herself.

“What?” Jackie asks her, amused. 

“Nothing. Just—“ she shakes her head. “Just thinking that maybe I shoulda kissed you before the flight. Maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“You think that’s why the plane went down and like ten people died?” Jackie sarcastically says but it doesn’t help since she’s laughing too.

“I mean, we never lost a game,” Nat shrugs. 

“You’re insane.”

“Just a stupid idea,” Nat presses her hands to her face to let go of the silly thoughts. 

Jackie just sprays her with water and gives her a playful shove as she laughs. Maybe if they weren’t in front of an audience, Nat would’ve truly kissed her then. 

It’s dark by the time Nat clocks out of work, and no amount of layers will ever truly warm her up. It is December but she’s also kind of accepted that she’ll always have a funky relationship with the cold. It’s probably more psychological than physical. 

She considers taking the car to work instead of roughing it out in this weather especially since she’s barely driven it since she bought it, but work is close enough that it actually feels stupid to do so. She’ll never fully understand why she did, it was an impulse purchase; a huge wad of money suddenly dropped on her lap and she went a little bit crazy.

But the car is in a basement parking lot, and the rest of the money is comfortably sitting in the bank, and everything else is slow and quiet. Nat’s had a hard time making new friends, a harder time making sense of her old ones. She knows that Van loves her and likes living with her but she also knows that Van feels like she owes her, or else why would she stay in New Jersey when Tai is all the way in Washington. There’s nothing here for Van except Natalie, and she’s still trying to figure out how to feel about it. The rest of the survivors are scattered and floating around, she’s not in direct and constant communication with them. 

Everything is so quiet, so slow, and certainly waiting for something to happen.

Jackie drags her feet down the hallway, lazily unlocking the door to go into her apartment with Eddie. She’s got the suit bag with her dress flung over her shoulder and she kicks off her shoes without really looking. 

“Eddie?” Jackie calls his name. She knows he’s here since his jacket is neatly hung by the entrance with his shoes tucked in the little rack. 

She walks to the living room and sees coming out of the bedroom.

“Hey,” he greets her with a grin. “Let me get that for you.”

“Thanks,” Jackie says as she hands over the suit bag. 

“How’s your day?” He asks her. 

“Too much,” she bluntly whines, leaning on the back of the couch and folds her arms. “Absolutely too much.”

He huffs out a little laugh and looks down. “Just a few more days.”

When Jackie’s face stiffens and her eyes subtly widen, Eddie takes notice of her posture and he walks forward to put a hand on her shoulder. He opens his mouth to say something but Jackie beats him to it. 

“Why are you all dressed up?” Jackie takes sudden notice. He’s wearing a dress shirt, trousers, and socks. He’s usually all showered and changed as soon as he can but they’ve been living together just over a month now, so maybe Jackie doesn’t know all of his habits. 

“Oh.” he looks down at his clothes, and wears a sheepish look on his face. “There’s something I wanna tell you.”

“What is it?”

Her heart leaps, a forceful wish bubbling in her stomach that Eddie will break the news, that he’ll break the engagement. Maybe he will take this burden off of her.

“I have to go on a work trip tonight. It was last minute. I’m so sorry,” he sincerely apologizes, scratching the back of his curly ginger hair. He’s been excitedly growing it out for the wedding so he can have a nice haircut. “My hands are kinda tied but it’s only until tomorrow evening.” 

Oh. Of course he wouldn’t. Wishful thinking.

“I was kinda hoping we’d have dinner together,” Jackie says with a small pout. She really does enjoy her time with him. They actually get along pretty well.

“I really am sorry.” He offers his hand for Jackie to hold, and she does. “They couldn’t have chosen a worse week.” 

“It’s okay,” she says with a small smile, swinging their hands slowly. 

Jackie knows he’s been working his ass off for this law firm and he desperately would do anything to secure his spot considering he’s a fresh graduate. His higher-ups kind of take advantage of that or else why would they drag him away on his wedding week. 

He’s a bit of a pushover like that. Unfortunately, Jackie does see herself in him from that particular angle, especially as if late.

“I was just waiting for you to come back,” Eddie tells her, looking into her eyes. “Say goodbye and I’ll have to go to the airport.” 

“Did you finish packing?” 

He nods. 

Jackie inhales.

“Are you upset?” He meekly asks her. She feels bad knowing how bad he feels. 

“No, I understand,” she smiles at him. 

“Ugh, you’re the best.” And he pulls her in for a hug. She closes her eyes and rests her head on his shoulder. The hug lasts slightly longer than their usual hugs do. Eddie bites his lip in worry when he feels a tremor coming Jackie in the embrace, so he takes a moment to put on a brave face and slightly pulls back. 

He looks at her and wears a crooked smile. “Jackie, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s gonna be okay.”

As reassuring as that sounds, it makes Jackie want to cry even more. She wishes, deep down, that Eddie was a cruel and terrible man; it would have made the thoughts in her head sit easier, but she doesn’t know she ended up here? Doesn’t know how she dragged him all the way to this point? 

But she swallows and nods. “It’s gonna be okay.”

When Eddie leaves, Jackie’s pacing around the apartment manically with shuddering breaths and feels her heart rate gradually accelerating with every step she takes. It spikes when she wears the dress to try it on. She looks at herself in the mirror, tidies the dress, sorts her hair, and she touches her face. 

Jackie takes a moment to look at herself until she realizes that she’s been holding her breath and that her heart is drumming in her ears. It’s silent in her head, she can’t think anymore because it’s all been laid out for her; she’s alone, Eddie’s gone, her mom won’t call her until tomorrow, and she’s got a fucking itch to scratch. So impatient and restless. 

I need to end things. 

The only way she can do it is by operating on autopilot mode. If she thinks too hard about anything else then she’ll cower back. The only consoling thought is that thinking about Eddie makes her want to do it more. 

This is her way of making it okay. 

She quickly writes a letter and folds it to put inside the first page of his journal because she knows that he’ll be the only one to find it there, along with her ring that she took off and put it inside the drawer. The letter is brief because she fully intends on seeing him again and properly explain herself but for the next few days, this will do. 

Jackie doesn’t even change out of the satin, knee high white dress. She doesn’t even pack anything at all. She only grabs her purse, discards everything from inside it and puts a good chunk of cash, ID card, her moisturizing ointment for her face, and a pack of gum. She takes one last look at the apartment before she takes a deep shaky breath, grabs her coat, and out she goes seeking one person, running after that one promise she secretly held on to for years now. 

Natalie considers working longer hours for the next few days, just until Van comes back. Not to sound too codependent but she really doesn’t know what to do with herself. She hadn’t known what to do with herself ever since they were rescued. For the first time in her life, she had money, like a substantial amount. Nat could’ve gone anywhere, done anything, but she stuck around in the same spot.

The drinking is kept at bay to a degree and the sleeping pills luckily still work, although that mix is absolutely horrible. Van keeps an eye on her so she doesn’t do anything stupid with either. 

But she’s all alone at this moment. She’s not telling anyone what to do, she’s not running after someone, she’s not trekking the freezing and snowy terrain looking for a morsel of protein, she’s not carrying that gun. She’s alone, and everyone’s gone one way or another, but why is the crown still heavy? 

Natalie sinks into the couch, watching the sky fade into darkness. The tv is playing Buffy the vampire slayer on mute and she's thinking about dinner, her work list for tomorrow, and getting a drain opener for her clogged sink. She thinks about her mother whom she has to visit soon since she fixed up a schedule to see her once every two months in her head. 

Did she really survive what she survived for this? 

When Nat’s melting into her couch, the silence is interrupted by thundering knocks on the door. It frightens her that she jumps up and just stares at the door.

Huh? Who the fuck?

She’s not expecting anyone. Did Van come back? No. She has her own key.

Nat walks to the door. She doesn’t check the peephole or ask who it is, but she keeps the door chain on when she hesitates as she opens the door, and her heart plummets to the ground when she meets eyes with the familiar hazel irises looking back at her with the same unnerving surprise. 

Jackie Taylor. 

her minds races and she almost blurts out I’ve been waiting for you. 

When she blinks at her, mouth slightly parted like she wants to say something that’s just not coming out, Nat wonders if she thought about her too much that she just manifested in front of her.

They silently stare at each other through the small door crack, unmoving, before it starts getting ridiculous. 

“Is Van here?” Jackie says quietly but it’s enough for Nat to hear. 

“No,” Nat breathes out, still kind of shocked. 

When Jackie nods, Nat closes the door to unlock it properly and fully opens the door. The picture gets more confusing when Nat sees Jackie wearing a white dress underneath her brown trench coat with a look on her face that’s pretty frazzled and panicked. 

“What?” Natalie mutters. “How— Jackie? What?”

And just like that, Jackie walks into the apartment, and somehow back in her life. Nat closes the door behind her and they’re standing face to face with each other for the first time in three years. 

How is she more beautiful than I remember? Natalie stupidly thinks. Things are usually better in fantasies but Jackie’s always been different for her, not even the ice burn scars could take that away from her. 

“Jackie,” Natalie finally says out loud. “What are you doing here?”

Jackie turns to look at her nervously; playing with her fingers, biting her lips. “I need you— I remember when you—” Jackie starts to say but she’s fumbling with her words. 

“What is it?” Nat asks, keeping a distance between them. She notices her scratching her finger, the one that’s noticeably without a ring. 

“Remember when you said that I should find you the day I come out to my parents?” Jackie finally says, although a little breathlessly. 

Natalie widens her eyes slightly because of course she remembers, but she also knows there’s a wedding happening this Saturday. 

“Yeah,” she slowly drags out. 

“I know that you keep your promises,” she says hopefully, wearing a small smile for good measure. 

“You told your parents?!” 

“Not exactly,” she winces at the idea of it. 

“What is it then?” Nat’s getting pretty confused. “I don’t get it.” 

Jackie takes a deep breath and tries to look confident when she says, “I’m leaving my fiancé and I need your help.”

Pause. 

They don’t see each other for years and this is what Jackie comes back with? Why does that tick Nat off? Why is she pulling the words out of Jackie’s mouth?

“Jackie, I’m gonna need you to stop speaking in tongues and tell me what the fuck’s going on.” 

“I can’t get married, okay?” She says with sudden sharpness. “I dunno how else to do it.” 

“Do what?!” Nat’s getting agitated too. 

“Run away.” 

“Jackie. What the fuck are you talking about?” Nat sighs. 

“I can’t marry Eddie. I need to leave this city right now before I chicken out and ruin both mine and his life,” she says desperately with tears threatening to fall. 

“Surely there’s better ways to do it,” Nat tries to talk her down. 

“I can’t face my parents about this, Nat,” she shakes her head. “You know this. I really need your help.”

“Where do you even wanna go?” Nat asks, trying to get information out of her. 

“I don’t know. Just anywhere that’s far away.” 

“And what’s that got to do with me?” Nat puts her hands on her hips. Why is Nat suddenly involved in this? All she knows they cut each other off the minute they left the hospital, finally letting each other go.

“Because you promised,” she reminds her, sounding like a little girl. 

“I promised a couch, Jack. Which you can happily sleep in if you want,” she walks to the living room. The nickname slipped out of her mouth too easily. “I didn’t promise the great American road-trip.”

“I really need to leave, Natalie,” Jackie almost cries when she says it. She looks tired too. 

And Nat sees her. She really empathizes with her, but coming out of nowhere to throw this on her face is wild, especially with the lack of context. 

“Do you want my car?” Nat offers. “I’ll give you my keys.”

“No. I need you to take me away from here until the wedding day passes.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I know— I trust that you’ll never let me walk back there when you know that I really want to leave,” Jackie tells her with conviction, and the confidence catches Nat off guard. 

“Why don’t you ask Shauna?” Nat plays kinda dirty by throwing that name. “You know she’ll do anything for you.”

“Because You know me, Nat.” Jackie says and does a great job at hiding the grimace off her face at the mention of the name.

Do I?

“You want me to drop everything to take you across the country because you wanna cancel the wedding?” Nat explains, “instead of just calling your fiancé about it?”

Jackie’s face just drops, her lips are all wobbly. “You promised.”

“I promised a couch,” Nat tiredly repeated. “Why are you dragging me into your bullshit?” 

“I didn’t know where else to go.” 

“Don’t you think I’ve been through enough? Especially out there? You know this, Jack,” Nat’s voice cracks slightly. “Why am I still involved?” 

“I’ll take care of everything,” Jackie promises. “I just want you there, because I need someone who actually cares about me.”

“And that’s me?” Nat bitterly chuckles, although it sounds rather sad. 

“Please,” Jackie walks right in front of her and holds her wrists. “It’s me. It’s Jack,” she looks into her eyes, and Nat notices her red nose and swollen lips. “You care about me— you cared about me at some point and I’m begging you to look at me and find that Jack again, because I know that you cared. I can’t do this alone.” 

Natalie’s stumped. She looks into Jackie’s eyes and can’t say anything; they’ve always been hypnotic to her. 

“Please,” Jackie says quietly. “You’re the only one I trust. You wouldn’t make me go back.” 

You wouldn’t make me go. You can’t make me go. 

Even after years, they can’t make each other go. How terrible. Nat’s been waiting for something to happen, and here it is. She’s been thinking about this girl for years and she suddenly appears at her doorstep begging her to run away with her days before her wedding. 

Isn’t this an answer to her question from earlier? She wasn’t wrong about Jackie then; she was right to feel weird about her wedding because she knows her.

“You’ll owe me big time,” Natalie finds herself saying.

Nat’s life has never been conventional. Not her family, not her home, not her survival, not her soccer team, not her relationship, and not even their breakup that wasn’t really a breakup because it wasn’t really a relationship.

“I’ll owe you my whole life,” Jackie says with absolute certainty. Those huge statements that Jackie famously says to Nat that just scare the living daylights out of her. She never grew out of them.

Nat picks up her car keys from the coffee table and says bluntly, “so, where do you wanna go? New York? Pittsburgh? Cleveland?”

Jackie finally wears a genuine smile of relief, and Nat’s pretty much a goner; the first thought in her head is that she’d do anything to make Jackie smile again. 

What a fascinating turn of events.

Chapter Text

There’s no amount of ‘what the fuck am I doing?’s running through Natalie’s head seem powerful enough to stop her from actually doing this. She’s haphazardly throwing clothes into her duffel bag trying to rationalize what the hell is even going on. 

She’s starting to realize that Jackie doesn’t really think things through; how’d she get involved with the guy? How’d she ended up engaged to him? How’s she in her apartment right now asking to run away? 

What the fuck am I doing? 

She’s looking for warm clothes to quickly pack and when she glances behind her, there’s Jackie standing by the door. Natalie wonders if she knocked and she missed it. They stare at each other in silence for a few seconds until Nat’s eyes fall on Jackie’s purse, and it occurs to her that she came all the way here asking to be whisked away for several days without packing any clothes. Just a white dress and a trench coat. 

Again, it seems confirmed to Nat that Jackie didn’t think this through. 

She turns back around and packs clothes for Jackie’s sake, but it seems like they’ll have to shop for more regardless.

When the silence is too awkward, Nat breaks it and asks, “how’d you even know where I live?”

“Tai told me that you and Van live together,” Jackie says, slowly entering the room. 

“She gave you the address or something?”

“No. She told me a long time ago it was the name of this building. I didn’t even know where it was, I just told the taxi.” 

Nat turns around. “So how’d you figure out the apartment door?” She asks, confused. 

“I knocked on a few doors and asked for your name,” Jackie shrugs. 

“Huh,” Nat’s sort of stumped at Jackie’s persistence. “Ballsy.” 

They’re quiet again and when Nat recounts the conversation in her head, she lands on something. “You asked Taissa about me?” She inquires with her back turned, pretending to sort her clothes in the bag to hide from how embarrassing that question sounds. 

“Of course, I did.” 

She zips her bag and throws it over her shoulder. They pause for a moment and stare into each other’s eyes. They’re hazel again. Like the ones she remembers from her dreams. 

But there’s something different. She can’t tell if the difference is in herself or in Jackie. 

“Are we leaving now?” Jackie meekly asks, knowing that she can’t be too demanding from now on. 

And Nat remembers that she’s confused again; what the hell is she doing? How did they end up here? As much as she wants to be pissed at Jackie, she’s aware that Jackie can’t actually force her to do this. Yes, she can be stubborn, pouty, and childish but that’s kind of her limit. Nat can sit her ass down on the couch and Jackie would eventually leave. 

But Nat promised. Even if the promise has been repurposed, she still promised. And she’s always been weak staring at those eyes. 

“Yeah,” Nat sighs, fingers threading through her dark hair. “Just a few minutes.”

They’re not hunting today. They managed to catch a skinny dear and a few rabbits yesterday so they’re taking the day off. Nat still feels antsy staying inside the cabin, even hanging around it. So, she picks herself up and walks towards the lake. 

The large trees greet her from every direction, engulfing her, while sunlight sneaks through the leaves and she reaches out to touch the light with her fingers. Time moves so slowly here, it would’ve been so nice if she had her Walkman right now. 

She’s kicking on a rock, following its trail when she hears a twig cracking behind. She instinctively turns around and almost goes for the rifle that’s not on her shoulder. 

It’s just Jackie walking behind her. 

They don’t say anything, but Nat just sends her a small smile and Jackie does the same thing except there’s a sneaky crinkle in her eyes that only she can see. Quietly, she turns around and continues walking. 

She knows what Jackie is thinking. This is on purpose. The same way it’s on purpose when Nat diverts her trail away from the lake and walks further into the thick trees, knowingly away from any possible eyes. 

Nat finally stops and leans by a tree. She’s wearing an amused smirk. “So, what’s up, Taylor?”

Jackie’s a few feet away from her. “I’ve been thinking—“

“Uh-oh.”

“Shut up,” Jackie makes an annoyed face at her. “I’ve been thinking that we might die here.”

Okay, so she’s a bit too casual about this.

“What, you got no faith in Tai’s master plan?” Nat asks her, it’s a little pointed.

“Nat,” Jackie huffs out a small laugh and walks closer to her. “If we were just a hike away from civilization then they would’ve found us a while ago.”

“Who wore you down, huh?” Nat asks jokingly. “Since when were you the cynical one?”

But if she’s being truthful, Nat didn’t even have the heart to tell Van that she had the worst gut feeling about their mission. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that this won’t work. 

“Well, our circumstances aren’t exactly fancy and luxurious,” she vaguely waves her arms towards the trees surrounding them.

“Hmm,” Nat shrugs. She leans her head on the tree. “Why’d you follow me out here, Jack?“

Nat already knows. 

“I was just thinking that it doesn’t really—“ she stops and looks down, biting on her lower lip like she knows this is maybe a little embarrassing, a little vulnerable. Then, she inhales and looks into Nat, “our agreement from back home doesn’t really make a difference here.” 

“That was a pretty sturdy agreement though.” She steps towards Jackie. Her hand going to her hip, a faint ghostly touch. They haven’t been this close in a while. Jackie can see all the sunburn marks on Nat’s face. Nat got it worse than most of them, she’s never been able to really tan with how pale she is. 

“It didn’t include a clause for a plane crash in the middle of nowhere.” She keeps her stare right into Nat’s eyes, pulling the hand from her hip, putting it on her back underneath her stupid sweater vest and shirt. “I think we can mess around a little bit,” she says with a sly grin, arms going to wrap around her neck. “It won’t really matter.”

It’s Natalie who cuts the distance between them and finally connects their lips. Oh, they’re both so hungry and eager, already tripping back that Nat’s back hits the tree again. She barely feels it as she’s too enthralled with Jackie being in her arms again. 

She’s right. It doesn’t really matter. They’re all dying anyway. At least there’s no expectations this time, truly. 

Nat’s waiting for Jackie in the living room. She’s staring at the picture again, realizing that this happy version of them will only ever exist in the confines of the picture frame, just like how they couldn’t exist in the wilderness without the promise of imminent death. What’s holding them together this time? 

Jackie exits the bathroom and wears her coat again. “Ready to go?”

Nat looks at her as she takes her hair out from the collar of her coat. She remembers the picture Van took of them, remembers Jackie walking behind her in the woods, and it clicks in her head about what’s different this time. 

“Yeah,” she nods and heads to the door with her duffel. 

I can’t read your mind anymore.

“This is your car?” Jackie asks with a shocked face. Her eyes looked at the keys in Nat’s hands just to make sure. 

“Yeah,” she laughs, finding Jackie’s wonder funny. “That’s my baby.” 

It’s really not her baby. She’s barely driven it if she’s being honest. It’s just what people say about their precious cars. 

“Nat, why the hell do you have a red Corvette?” Jackie looks at her with a genuine smile, very truly amused by it.

“I thought I deserved a little something after all that,” she coolly shrugs. 

“It’s definitely something.” 

“Do you like it?” 

“I love it.” Jackie looks at her with a glimmer in her eyes. At least Nat knows that the nervous frown wasn’t a permanent feature on her face.

And for a moment, this all feels like it could be fun and lighthearted. In a way, the invisibility Jackie is asking for might be an escape, where they’re playing a weird reiteration of Thelma and Louise. 

“Well, hop in.” 

Nat goes back to throw the duffel bag in the truck, wishing this car had backseats but then again, it was a spontaneous purchase, she wasn’t thinking about the practicality of everything. She goes to the driver's seat and puts her trusty small shoulder bag by Jackie’s legs, and she drives off from the parking lot into the darkening skies, accepting whatever’s to come her way.

“So when you said you’d take care of everything,” Nat says. “What does that exactly mean?”

“I’ll sponsor this whole trip,” Jackie says surely. “I got like six hundred dollars on me. Hard cash.”

“Cash?!” Nat repeats in shock. “Why the fuck are you walking around with six hundred dollars cash?! Are you nuts?! Why is Jackie Taylor not swiping her credit card left and right?”

“I told you,” Jackie shrugs casually. “We’re going off the grid. It’s cash only.”

“That’s actually a relief to hear.”

“Why?”

“My debit card expired a few months ago.”

Jackie lets out a hearty laugh and shakes her head at Nat. She’s glad there doesn’t seem to be this crazy suffocating tension between them. She almost forgot that, at some point, Jackie was like her best friend. 

So, Natalie can’t be blamed when she says, “you know, I’d actually really appreciate it if you told me why you’re here.” It’s free of malice and judgement, the tone indicates no frustration. 

“I told you.” Jackie sits up straighter. “I can’t get married.” 

“Not that part.”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you even get engaged to that Edward guy?” Nat glances at her. 

Jackie shrinks into herself, shuddering a little bit. Nat wonders why she didn’t ask for a change of clothes, she feels bad for forgetting to offer something. 

“We get along pretty well,” she replies meekly. “Just so you know.”

“That doesn’t mean you should marry him,” Nat says. “Even date him, Jack. Like, I thought you didn’t even like guys. Did that change or something?”

“No,” Jackie says quietly, her head facing the window.

They stop at the red light and Nat’s just staring at Jackie, baffled. 

“What?”

“What?” Jackie repeats, getting annoyed.

“What the hell were you doing with him then?” and when Jackie doesn’t say anything, Nat’s head just jumps into the worst conclusions. “Jackie,” she says, alarmed. “Is someone forcing you? Is he forcing himself on you—“

“No!” Jackie exclaims through gritted teeth, feeling pissed at Nat’s insinuations. “Eddie would never do that to me.” 

Nat takes it in, even though it makes everything more confusing. “I don’t understand.”

Jackie leans back on her seat. Elbow propped by the window, right hand carefully palming her scar, hiding it. “He knows,” she admits while looking forward. “He knows about me.”

Oh. 

Out of every possibility in the world, a lavender marriage wasn’t really on her bingo card. How didn’t she think of that?

Oh, Jack. 

“And he’s just cool about it?” Natalie inquires, awkwardly. 

“He’s actually really kind,” Jackie defends him. 

“Doesn’t mean you marry him,” Nat sighs. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jackie says, sounding childish. 

“Is he gay too?” 

“No.” 

“Sure?” 

“Absolutely sure.” 

Nat feels like that’s hard to believe but Jackie’s seems certain. “What the hell, Jackie?” Nat whispers. 

“I know it sounds crazy, okay?” 

“I’m glad you know,” Nat retorts. She’s feeling frustration towards Jackie for Jackie’s own sake. “So what? You two are in cahoots?”

Jackie nods. 

“And he wasn’t like your boyfriend? Your fiancé?” 

“Just a label. Nothing more,” Jackie frowns and looks upset the more she talks about it. She’s only ever spoken about this with Eddie.

“And the physical stuff? Making out and screwing? Nothing?”

“I tried in the beginning, before you know—“ she looks down, feeling ashamed. “But I couldn’t go further and I told him.” 

There’s millions of thoughts on Nat’s head but looking at Jackie like this; clearly upset and distressed, tugs all of her heartstrings. Maybe, she should take it down a notch.

“Jackie,” she calls for her and she resists the desire to hold her hand. “How did it become like this? You could’ve just stayed friends with him.”

When Jackie doesn’t say anything and just sucks on her lips while looking out, Nat sighs and says, “Eddie sounds like a good guy. I think you can just call him and explain.” 

She whips her head towards Nat. “That’s not happening!” 

“Why?!” 

“Because I’ll backtrack on everything the second he answers!”

Jackie’s not good at confrontation. She absolutely sucks at commiting to something when there’s an element of danger involved; her relationship with Nat is a fine example. Nat’s also glad she missed out on the fatal Shauna-Jackie screaming showdown, she never got the full picture but context clues tell her that she didn’t exactly put up an honorable fight. Van told her she was quoting fucking Beaches. 

And now this. 

Jackie cannot for the life of her face the fire she ignited, and Nat’s out here blowing on the flame accidentally making it grow. 

“Why can’t I just drive you to the Hilton, and you just hole yourself there for a few days, huh?!” Nat's frustration seems to be growing.  

“I could’ve done that without you!” Jackie matches her volume. “I told you! I need to be far away to fully end this!”

Nat’s ready to lash out back at her but she steadies herself. “Let me get this straight,” she says calmly, her eyes blinking at the red lights burning her eyes from the cars in front of her. “Life sucked after you left the hospital— I presume. Shit must’ve been too much. You met this decent guy. You both elaborate this genius lavender marriage—“

“The fuck’s a lavender marriage?” 

“It’s exactly what you’re doing,” Nat says, interrupting her flow. “So, you elaborate this insane plan to get hitched but it’s a sham. Move to fucking Barbie’s dreamland or whatever. Pretend that this could actually work? Divorce by thirty?” 

Jackie folds her arms and sinks herself further into the seat. “Pretty much.” 

Nat doesn’t say anything. She only think in her head, fucking stupid. But it’s like Jackie hears it. She takes a deep breath and says, “I was lonely. We were both lonely, okay? People were saying things about us when we were rescued, you know. It didn’t take long to realize that the rumors, my scary-looking face, and everything else from that stupid fucking plane crash was gonna ruin everything in my life, okay?” Her lips are wobbling and her voice is cracking. She’s talking like every word coming out of her throat is painful. 

“I met Eddie in one of those country clubs both of our parents go to and he just didn’t care; not about the crash, or the gossip, or my face— and it was fucking lonely.” Jackie turns to look at Nat, her face colored with anger and sadness. “This marriage was our ticket out of this place because his parents suck too, he literally has to wear glasses because of the stress. Two birds, one stone. Why do you think he’s traveling today, hmm?— me and one of my best friends moving someplace sunny and warm for a few years and then we would just get divorced when we’re all set. I know it sounds stupid— I know! I felt like I was drowning and suffocating, and Eddie just happened to be there for me!” 

“Jackie—“

“Judge me all you want, okay!?” A few tears fall from her eyes. “I know that this is a shitshow and I’m sorry for dragging you along with my bullshit. But you have to understand—“ she takes a difficult deep breath. “I have to leave because it could’ve been a whole lot worse than leaving.”

Nat’s frozen, her eyes firm on the road. She’s feeling a little lightheaded. It’s easy to ignore everyone when you’re not seeing your fellow crash pals, and she knew they all suffered to some degree upon their return. But hearing it like this? From Jackie? From her Jack? 

“I understand.” That’s all she says, sincerely.

“Really?” Jackie sounds miserably doubtful.

Natalie gives in, she reaches her hand and just gives Jackie’s left hand, that’s on top of her thigh, a little squeeze. It’s electrifying. 

“Yeah,” she nods. “I’m not judging you. I’m sorry.”

Jackie doesn’t say anything, she looks at Nat’s hand covering hers like it’s this alien thing. But she takes a massive breath of relief and threads their fingers together for a moment before letting go. 

There’s so much Natalie wants to say, she wants to grab her shoulders, shake her like a bobble head, and tell her, like really tell her, that no one’s ever been more beautiful than her in Nat’s eyes. She keeps quiet though, her hands firm on the wheel, almost choking it. 

“We should grab dinner.” Is all she can muster.

When Nat parks her by the Taco Bell drive-thru, she only gets as far as “hello” before she realizes that the speakers aren’t broken, she just can’t fucking process the sounds. It’s all muffled and scratchy. 

She looks at Jackie and says, “you order.”

“Why?” She asks. “You’re closer.”

“Just—“ she waves a hand around, shrugging. “You do it.”

Jackie stares at her for a few seconds before she leans forward and says, “okay. What do you want?” 

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Vegetarian?”

“Obviously.”

“Diet Coke?”

“Obv—“

“Obviously.” Jackie beats her to it while wearing a smirk, and Nat just breathes out a small chuckle, her eyes slowly blinking at her.

After eating in the car, Nat drives to a CVS close by since Jackie didn’t even pack a toothbrush. She considers buying snacks for herself as well. 

They go their separate ways, the fluorescent lights lead the way. It’s so empty inside, Nat’s starting to feel weird because suddenly everything feels empty like herself and Jackie were the last people left on earth. Did Jersey desert itself to make space for the two of them? Surely, there were people around but Nat’s barely paid mind to anyone for several hours now. 

She goes to the makeup aisle and looks at her reflection; sleepy and exhausted. Great. She looks at the tester products and thinks about fixing herself up for no reason at all. There’s the mascara, the liner, maybe some blush. 

No. No. That’s dumb. 

She walks away and picks up a cold can of Red Bull and Pringle’s. Then, she finds Jackie, wearing a small smile, walking towards her and Nat’s dizzy again; you’re real. You’re here. You’re walking towards me. 

“You know that’s gonna make your heart explode,” Jackie tells her, almost seriously, while pointing at the can. 

Don’t worry, I’m not far from it right now. 

“That’s not a thing,” Nat bluntly replies. 

“Totally is.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

Jackie lets out an amused scoff and walks to the cashier counter. Nat looks at her little basket and see that it’s mostly hygienic products she didn’t pack, she also notes that she looks ridiculous with that buttoned up trench coat with the white dress poking out from it. Nat goes to put her two items along with Jackie’s stuff. 

Jackie checks them into an alright three-star hotel in a room with two twin sized beds that are so close together that it might as well be one bed. 

“I’ll go take a shower.” Nat calls dibs first. 

“Okay,” Jackie absentmindedly nods while staring out the window. Nat throws her bag on the armchair and takes her sweats, leaving some out for Jackie to change into. 

She feels incredible when the hot water hits her body. It’s turning her body red but she’s doesn’t give a fuck. Nat will always love a hot steamy shower washing her body until it’s wrinkly. It brings relief to her shoulder and now, she wonders how she’ll manage to drive distances if it’s going to make her shoulder this inflamed and uncomfortable.

God, that stupid fucking car. 

When she’s all done, she goes to the room and finds Jackie already asleep in the bed, still in her trench and dress with her folded hands squished between her thighs to keep them warm. 

Huh, old habits die hard. 

Nat knows that Jackie’s deeply asleep right now, it all shows in her face. If there’s one thing Jackie gained in her time out in the wilderness was this incredible ability to just sleep. She did it so well, she slept so deeply and barely stirred. It made everyone jealous that Jackie seemed to sleep through the starvation and freezing cold. 

If Natalie remembers correctly, she had to check a few times if Jackie was still breathing in those slumbers. Because sleeping was the only thing to be jealous of when it came to Jackie’s survival; she had done terribly in every other aspect. Nat heard a comment from one of the girls, she can’t remember who, that they wished Jackie would never pick the card because ‘there’s barely anything’ since she was the thinnest and always sick. Nat’s sure that girl is dead now. She doesn’t hear that voice anymore. 

She contemplates whether to wake her up or let her be, but she’d be way more comfortable and warm if she wore actual clothes. She hates it but she makes her decision. 

Nat leans down by Jackie’s bedside near the window view and gently grabs her arm. “Jackie?” She whispers. 

Nothing. 

“Jackie,” she whispers and gives her a little shake. 

A very deep sleeper, still. 

She shakes her harder and says, “Jackie.” in a slightly louder voice, and it takes a couple more times until Jackie slowly opens her eyes. When sees Nat’s face, she flinches back and startles a little bit like she forgot that Natalie was there with her. 

“What is it?” She mumbles. 

“Get changed,” she tells her, handing her the clothes. “Don’t sleep in that dress. It’s cold.”

“Oh,” Jackie nods. She sits up and straightens her back. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Natalie walks over to the radiator to double-check if it’s on and then to her side of the bed and settles herself. They’re back to back; Nat facing the door, Jackie facing the window. She hears clothes falling on the floor and some shuffling around. 

Natalie takes her sleeping pills and Jackie rubs moisturizer on her face. Neither of these products can be bought from the pharmacies without prescription, they’re the real deal. That’s satisfying to Nat; at least their traumas are worth a little more than over-the-countertop meds. 

Eventually she hears Jackie plop back into the mattress and Nat does the same. It’s gonna take a hot minute until she falls asleep and it won’t be easier with Jackie suddenly beside her. So she waits, busying her brain with movie plots, lyrics, bookshelf aisles. Then, something distracts her…no, something startles her. It’s a tiny little sound, very hushed, but familiar and haunting; Jackie’s hums. 

Woah. 

She still does that. 

She still hums in her sleep. It pulls Nat back right into the woods, the lake, the cabin. In the first winter, Jackie started humming in her sleep while she breathed. It sounded like she had some trouble letting air in and out, Nat had no idea what it really was and Jackie wasn’t aware of it when she told her about it. She just does it. 

Those awfully familiar little hums, she grew so used to them until it’s been too long that she actually forgot about them. She wonders how she’s hearing them with how quiet they are. 

God, her heart constricts. This sound that lives between rest and pain, it used to lull her to sleep. 

How the hell is she still doing that? Did Eddie notice? Did her parents notice? Her doctors? Is it actually a minor, insignificant thing that only I fixated on?

Natalie shuts eyes tightly and buries her head on the pillow, trying to calm her beating heart. 

Fuck. My heart might actually explode. Goddamn it, Jackie.

Sounds can take you to places. 

Natalie never thought that death would be this slow and boring. She’s intimate with the cold and quick type; her dad, the animals she hunts. One shot, gone. 

But when she’s here lying on the snow by the frozen lake with Jackie right next to her, time doesn’t seem to move at all. Nothing’s moving at all. They’re all just waiting for something to happen, and if nothing happens, they might start falling like flies soon enough.

It was Jackie who went out for a walk and Natalie followed her this time. They made it to the lake and are resting on their backs. It’s freezing but it’s not windy so it won’t kill them…at least that’s what Nat hopes. 

Jackie’s been walking out more ever since she slept outside and almost died. Everything about that cabin agitates her, and Nat follows her out every time.

When Natalie turns her head to see her, she’s got her eyes closed with her chest going up and down, a little hum coming out of her mouth every time she takes a breath. 

“Don’t tell me you’re sleeping out in the snow again?” Nat teases her with a quiet voice, her eyes fluttering from the icy cold air. 

“Not sleeping.” Jackie smiles, it still hurts her face to do that. 

“What are you doin’?”

“Thinking about stuff.”

“Like?”

Jackie opens her eyes and gives Nat a sideways stare with a subtle smirk. “You’re gonna hate me for it.”

“Quite literally impossible.”

Her smirk turns into a sad little smile and she whispers a confession, “I dunno if I have more time. I’m tired.”

The curious look on Nat’s face morphs into concern. “Actually you’re right. I do fucking hate that.” The tone she uses is light but it’s only to ease the tension. Only to pillow the plummeting of her heart. “Why would you say that?” 

Jackie only shrugs, and Nat stretches out an arm so she can come into her embrace. She likes having her up close and likes feeling the tip of her nose touching Jackie’s. 

“Seriously, Jack,” Nat says softly, playing with her hair as she’s laying her head on her arm with her shivering fingers. “What’s going on?”

Their glassy eyes staring into each other, slowly blinking. “Everything hurts now,” Jackie whispers tiredly. 

“I know,” Nat says with a frown. “I’m sorry.”

Jackie just shakes her head, and Nat leans her head to kiss her lips, which Jackie seems to respond to eagerly, because this will always be warm, it will always feel like home especially when Jackie holds her to pull their bodies closer to each other. They’re practically hiding in each other. 

“Tell me what to do,” Nat pleads into her ears. “Anything to make it better.” Jackie buries her face in the crook of her neck, her lips grazing at her skin and Nat wraps her arms around her frame. Her shrinking frame, to be precise. 

“There’s not much to do here,” Jackie says half-whining, half-sarcastically. “I just wanna sleep.”

“You’re always sleeping.”

“I wanna do it more.”

Nat breathes out a small laugh. She kisses Jackie’s head and says, “I’m sure there’s something I can do.” 

“Nothing,” she jokes, and Nat appreciates that Jackie’s humoring her. It’s better than the doom and gloom. 

Jackie pulls back and they’re looking at one another again. Jackie’s right; everything hurts. Every little thing. But she hopes that in this minuscule moment where it’s only them, staring into each other, it hurts a little bit less. 

“You want the moon?” Nat cheekily says into her ears, doing her best George Bailey impression. “I’ll throw a lasso around the moon and bring it over to ya!” 

That makes Jackie giggle, like an actual laugh. It’s the cute impression along with the misquoted line but it’s fucking close enough for her to hold her cheek and kiss her. 

“The moon, hmm?”

“Anything you want,” Nat says between kisses. 

When they pull away, Jackie tucks Nat’s hair behind her ears and traces her brow and the shell of her ear with her fingers. Jackie notices some movement in the sky from her periphery. She turns to look up and says, “I think I wanna be a bird.” 

Nat follows her eyes and sees the two birds flying together in the massive sky. She can’t shoot them for a decent meal. Too far.

“Right now?”

“Yeah.” 

“I don’t think I can do that,” Nat tells her with a pout. 

“Maybe in another life,” Jackie sighs. “Maybe we’ll all fall asleep tonight and wake up in another life.”

Natalie tries her hardest to ignore that Jackie seems too eager about the prospect of leaving this place, one way or another. “And you’ll be a bird?” She asks, instead.

“Yeah,” Jackie nods. “I’ll go real far.” She can’t even understand why something as free as a soaring bird would be doing in a godforsaken place like this one.

“Take me with you?” 

“Yeah,” Jackie smiles lazily at her. “I’d really like that.”

Nat doesn’t dream anymore, the pills just suck her into a still void, but sometimes she’ll remember something and it’ll play like a film reel. Some nights, like this one, her slumbering eyes will shed tears into her pillow, in spite of herself. 

She doesn’t dream anymore. But it’s overwhelming when her unconscious self remembers things. 

The whole world is asleep, Jackie hums, and Natalie travels into a memory. 

You should’ve taken me with you.

Chapter Text

Jackie wakes up early in the morning to Nat’s grumbles on the phone. She pokes her eye out from the pillow and sees Nat’s back as she’s sitting on her bed.

“I told you!” She exclaims annoyingly. “It’s a family emergency. I can’t make it today.”

There’s no light out. It’s still very early.

“Whadya mean I don’t have a family?! I never said that!”

Jackie thinks about that for a moment and reckons that Nat did probably say that at some point. 

“Well, I’m already out of town. I can’t make it either way.”

Jackie shifts in her place and Nat’s glances back to look at her. She quickly shuts her tired eyes before Nat can notice.

“C’mon Linda,” she sighs. “I’ve never ever taken a day off since I started working. It’s been so long and I’ve covered a lot of shifts before.”

She never asked Natalie where she works. Jackie wonders why she’s calling this early in the morning.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll see you on Monday— yes, I’ll be there! Okay. Bye.”

Nat stretches her arms over her head. She massages her shoulder and moves it in a circular motion while groaning. “Fuckin’ bitch,” she scoffs under her breath as she walks to the bathroom. 

A sudden thought occurs to Jackie just as she’s trying to fall back asleep. Why did I ever fall in love with you? Out of everyone, why was it you?

It’s not like Nat was particularly romantic in the beginning. They weren’t even courting each other or anything in that fashion, it’s actually embarrassing how attached Jackie had gotten so quick. This purely physical relationship where they were both enjoying each other and blowing off steam, but the feeling slowly snuck up on Jackie without even realizing it, barely a month into their escapades. 

She remembers Nat in her bedroom that August, she remembers her looking at the dresser with all of Jackie’s stuff scattered everywhere. Her hands reached out to a perfume. She picked it up and put it near her nose, just to take a small whiff without spraying it. 

Jackie was quietly tracking every little move, finding it all so fascinating. As Nat inhaled, she closed her eyes and smiled with a hum. “It smells like you.” 

That’s all it took. Jackie was absolutely gone. She decided that she loved her at that very moment. 

She forced her mom to take her to Macy’s and get the same scent as a body lotion and mist. The first week back to school, Jackie lathered herself to smell like that sweet subtle vanilla that Nat’s crazy about. She actively seeked her out the whole day until she succeeded and found herself slammed against the changing stall walls in the locker room. 

“I could eat you up,” Natalie would say as she kissed down her neck, and Jackie’s spine would shiver.

Jackie thinks if someone ever said that to her nowadays in a suggestive manner, even Natalie, she’d probably lose steadiness and faint in bed while trying to keep the bile down. 

Oh, how the times have changed. 

She chokes down a laugh as she remembers and sinks right back into sleep. It’s not even seven am, and she usually wakes up in the afternoons. But she doesn’t quite close her eyes until she sees Nat back in bed. 

The next time Jackie wakes up, she doesn’t see Natalie in the bed next to her, but finds her sitting on the armchair by the window with the curtain cracked open just enough for her to read a book. 

Jackie still didn’t move from her spot in bed, she’s just staring at Nat, lazily blinking her eyes awake. She doesn’t say anything, she’s just fixated on Nat’s intensely focused face, scrunched eyebrows, and the way her fingers trace the paper. Even after all these years, she’s still fascinated by everything Natalie does. 

Is this what love is? She genuinely wonders. Did I love you right? Am I loving you right? 

She lets out a yawn and sits up to rub her eyes from the sleep. She could guess that it’s probably ten am, still early by her own metric but she probably passed out twelve hours ago. 

“Good morning,” she rasps out. 

“Morning.” 

Jackie gestures with her hands for Nat to open the curtains to let the light in, and she quickly does it, probably eager to do that since she woke up however long ago. It’s not sunny outside, it’s like a light shade of blue and maybe some white suddenly entered the room.

“Sleep okay?” Nat asks her, seeing how Jackie’s still unsteady and rubbing her face with her palms. 

“Yeah,” she nods with her head in her hands. “Just a slow starter.”

“I know.”

Jackie drops her hands and looks at Nat, breathing a small laugh and shaking her head as if to shake the feelings away, shaking the thoughts away. 

Easy, Scatorccio, she thinks. Don’t let me get used to this. 

“What are you reading?” Jackie points to the book. She never knew Nat to be a reader. This is new. Natalie shows her the cover, and it’s ‘to the lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf. Yeah, Jackie knows this book, she hadn’t read it but she remembers seeing the cover around. “I didn’t know that you liked her books.”

Nat purses her lips and shakes her head. “I dunno if I do. It’s hard. I’m barely thirty pages in and I keep having to go back to reread sentences and paragraphs to make it make sense.”

“What made you wanna read it?”

Nat looks down at her copy and bites her lip, contemplating whether to say this or not. “This is stupid,” Nat awkwardly chuckles, but Jackie looks intrigued. “I just randomly saw it on the shelf and I remembered Shauna reading this book back in school—I don’t really remember when, but she had her nose buried in it like it was the best thing in the world.” Nat looks at Jackie to read her face; she looks neutral, waiting to hear more. “I figured Shipman knew her stuff, and well,” Nat laughs at herself. “Now I’m stuck feeling stupid.”

“Shauna was in AP English for a reason,” Jackie teases her, “and you’re not stupid, like at all.”

“I have a long line of Wiskayok High teachers who would tell you otherwise,” Nat playfully raises a brow. 

“I don’t care,” she shrugs and says earnestly, “I never thought that you weren’t smart. Not once.”

Nat backs away, shrugs back into the chair, mostly just stumped by Jackie’s genuine way of saying things. It’s too early in the morning for that, so she diverts the topic. “Do you still talk to Shauna?”

“Sometimes,” Jackie says in a quiet voice. “It’s mostly calls, I don’t see her as much.”

It took the both of them dancing too closely with death to come to terms with the fact that whatever they did wrong is forgivable in the face of doom. Jackie nearly froze to death, and Shauna…Shauna has lost too much. It was naive to assume they could be as close as they used to be, but they were not cruel. Too much was already going on, their brains couldn’t fathom the grudge.

“Was she gonna come to the wedding?”

“I sent her the invite, but she didn’t say anything about it,” Jackie says. “She never mentioned it though.”

“Did you invite the entire Wiskayok population except for me?” Natalie scoffs, and shit, maybe she is offended.

“Do you think there would’ve been a wedding if I saw you there?” Jackie glares at her like Natalie asked the most ridiculous question in the world. 

A part of Nat wished that Jackie was never serious about her feelings towards her, even from the beginning .

In a weird way, Jackie’s always been braver in that department; in her admission that she’s in love with Nat, because Natalie has never uttered those words, not in Wiskayok, not in the woods, not anywhere. What was the point? Jackie was never going to do anything about it, about them. That’s the exact idea she gave Nat back then. But it feels like they’re in a whole new plane of existence now. Could Nat let herself dream? 

When Jackie feels like Nat has been staring at her silently for too long. She gets up and heads to the bathroom to get ready for whatever they’re doing today.

The familiarity is returning to them like a wave to the shores; the whole waking up together, in close proximity. It’s brilliant how fast the human brain can wire and re-wire itself. It’s been three years, but Nat walks to where Jackie slept, chases the heat emitted from Jackie’s body in the mattress, and she can’t help but smile; still warm, still soft. 

It’s been so long.

Natalie started getting excited to wake up in the morning for this reason alone; the flowers. There are days where she would wake up at the crack of dawn for her hunting trips and see a bundle of tiny white and yellow flowers right by her pillow. It wasn’t everyday, that’s what made the surprise precious.

She picks them up and raises her palm to her nose to smell them. Only Jackie would surprise her with something so sweet. Nat decorates her pocket with them and Travis enjoys teasing her about them.

“These are my good luck charms,” Nat tells him. “Fuck knows we need ‘em.”

It’s fall now, and they’re not finding as much game as they used to. They really do need the good luck.

She finds Jackie by the fire trying to warm up which is a rarity since she’s usually asleep with everyone else. Before she heads out the door, they briefly look at each other. Nat smirks and points to the tiny flowers hanging on her pocket, and Jackie only shrugs and pretends not to get it, except Nat can see the small smile that she’s trying to hide but fails to do so. 

She leaves the cabin with that image etched in her brain to carry her for the rest of the day, along with the tiny petals falling off that will guide her back home.

“We need to get you some real clothes,” Nat tells Jackie in the car. They’re both enjoying Reese’s peanut butter cups for breakfast. Maybe, not the smartest thing to do, but they’ve done worse for breakfast before. 

Jackie looks down on her outfit; Nat’s hoodie, Nat’s sweatpants, and her trench coat along with her cream-colored loafers. She looks ridiculous. 

“I need underwear too,” Jackie suddenly remembers. 

“Wow, you really didn’t bring anything, huh?”

Jackie just grins and looks away, finding humor in Nat’s grumpiness. She drives in town until she finds a Target and lets Jackie go buy her things. 

“Don’t go crazy shopping in there,” Nat warns her. “We don’t have a lotta room.”

“Socks and underwear,” she turns around to her. “Promise.”

“Right.”

Nat waits by the car and smokes a cigarette. It’s the last one in her box. She looks up at the sky and guesses that it’s going to snow soon. If not today, then tomorrow. 

Keeping her word, she came back with a small shopping bag and within twenty minutes. Then, they go to a goodwill store to get Jackie some warm clothes, all from one place.

Jackie has made a list in head; pants, one sweatshirt, one sweater, two tshirt, one jacket, one scarf, one hat, gloves, and shoes. She’s trying to spot Natalie while going through the racks but she hasn’t seen her in a minute. 

For a weird moment, she wonders if Nat abandoned her here. She lets the thought sit in her head and tries to make sense of it. 

No. She would never do that to me. 

But Jackie’s not sure on how to keep people around her anymore. The thought simmers and she instinctively covers her scar with her palm, something about it feels soothing, and she takes haste steps around the store looking for Nat with clothes hanging off her arm. 

What if Nat left her here? She did track her down and showed up at her doorstep out of nowhere, after three years of zero contact. Jackie was insane for doing that, for assuming that Natalie would find it in her heart to still care about her after all this time and inconvenience herself this much for her. 

Why did Natalie even agree to this? 

What if she just cornered her in her home and yanked her hand to leave. 

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. 

As she’s running around looking more and more frantic, she finally halts and takes the biggest breath of relief. 

There she is. 

Jackie’s about thirty feet away from her but she sees her looking over the VHS tapes container, picking one case up after the other, minding her own business.

She stays put for a second, trying to grasp on that nonchalant energy that Nat always seems to carry with her, it used to be more cool and edgy but now there’s a sense of calmness around her. In a way, she’s jealous of how well she seems to be carrying herself after everything. 

Finally, Jackie lets go of the terror on her face and walks up to her casually like nothing happened. 

“Hey,” Jackie says as she approaches her but Nat doesn’t respond. “Nat?” She asks again, tapping on her shoulder, and she flinches back, caught off guard. 

“Oh.” Nat realizes. “Hey.”

Jackie was going to joke if her hunting instincts were gone but she decided otherwise. Instead, she looks at the container and asks, “did you find anything cool?”

“Yeah!” Nat surprisingly beams at Jackie, her dimples on full display, and her heart skips a beat. “Look! The Iron Giant.”

She remembers her question from early this morning; why am I so in love with you? Jackie swallows and takes the tape from Nat. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“You’ve seen it?” Nat repeats excitedly, hearing her wrong.

“No,” she shakes her head.

“You should. It’s probably the most perfect movie ever,” Nat hypes the animation movie up.

“We should watch it tonight,” Jackie tells her. The fascination is never ending today. “Is it sad?”

“A real tearjerker.” 

“Oh,” Jackie presses her brows, not really in the mood for something upsetting. 

Nat notices the less-than-excited reaction and digs through the pile to find something else, and finds one to show Jackie. “You probably liked this one.”

“Notting hill?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Never seen it either,” Jackie confesses, staring at Julia Robert and Hugh Grant on the cover. 

“Seriously? You’re lying,” Nat blinks at her.

“I’ve never seen it. Is it that good?”

“It’s not that. I just feel like you’d love the whole knocking on someone’s door and saying something totally insane,” Nat cheekily smiles at her. “Kinda sounds familiar. I dunno.”

“Ease up, Scatorccio,” Jackie teases her with a light punch to the arm. “I’m just about the best thing that came knocking on your door.”

Natalie wants to respond with something just as snarky and playful, but all she can build is a small smirk and a breathy, “yeah.”

Jackie raises a questioning brow at her like she didn’t expect that, and Nat says, “I mean, you’re umm— you’re a pretty tough act to follow.”

She doesn’t say anything to respond to that, Jackie’s ears only turn a deep shade of red. Yes. It’s visible. 

Oh, this old waltz. How easy it is to dance those same steps again. Nat would be lying if she said that there isn’t a very specific high she feels when Jackie’s particularly flustered by her.

It’s kind of evil in a way; she had always known that Jackie had ‘bigger’ feelings for her, and Nat appreciated that someone thought that highly of her. If anything, she thought that Jackie had poor judgement of character for holding Nat to that high of a regard. 

It was definitely an odd time, and maybe she relished in being wanted like that.

Why were we so serious? Nat wonders. We were only seventeen.

Jackie takes that interaction as an invite and she loops her arm around Nat’s. She only looks at her before Jackie says, “c’mon, I need an expert to choose my new boots.”

“Right.” She tugs Jackie closer without even thinking. This is nice. Being close again is nice.

Natalie takes the road towards Pennsylvania, but she’s not exactly sure if they’ll get there. Her plan is to drive less than an hour everyday into that direction. There’s no need to go so far, the goal is to go far enough. 

“I think we should sit down and have an actual meal today,” Nat suggests. “I don’t wanna eat in the car.”

“Sure,” Jackie agrees. She takes out the cream from her bag and applies a tiny portion to her face. Nat quickly glances at her. “It gets extra dry when it’s cold,” Jackie explains herself. 

“Does it still hurt?”

Echoes of Jackie’s wails run through her head. Held down with the help of taissa, and Misty holding a hot knife to treat the blisters all over her cheek. It’s hard to believe that these are real memories.

“No.”

Natalie schools herself and blinks away the thoughts. 

“It gets itchy.” Jackie looks out the window. “People stare sometimes but that’s the worst of it now.”

“Did you see a doctor for it?”

“Did I see a doctor for it?!” Jackie repeats with a laugh. “Here I thought you thought of me as pretty.”

“I do!” Nat quickly defends herself, even at the expense of some exposure of inner thoughts. She clears her throat and adjusts her seat, eyes fixed on the road. “I mean, obviously I think you’re pretty. You know that.”

Jackie feels victorious as she just heard what she wanted but she immediately softens and elaborates, “I saw doctors but they all said that the only way I’d have it fully fixed is by getting a skin graft from my thigh or something. I didn’t want that. It’s not like my face wasn’t working anymore.”

“Your face is working just fine,” Natalie teases her, glancing at her just to see Jackie looking back at her with a tight-lipped grin.

“Your face is pretty alright too,” Jackie nods, sharing that same playful remark.

“Shut up,” Nat laughs, and feels her cheeks going red.

When they arrive at the diner, Jackie opens the door that rings a bell and she presses her back on it to make way for Nat and have her walk in first. She snatches two menus and finds them an empty table by the window.

Luckily, Jackie seems to have caught on that Nat will not do the talking, so when the waiter comes to take their orders, she says, “two grilled cheese sandwiches, two French fries, and..” she trails off to look at the menu some more to find something else. 

Natalie notices the guy look at her face intently, probably trying to guess how the scar got there; birth? Accident? Sickness? Burn?

There’s just absolutely no way he’d be able to guess, even in a hundred years, and if his gaze bothered Jackie, she didn’t show it. Maybe she is used to it, or hadn’t noticed at all. 

He snaps out of it when Jackie says, “—and onion rings!”

“Right,” he fumbles his pen as he writes their order. “Any drinks?”

“Diet Coke,” they both say simultaneously. 

“Coming right up!”

When their orders are served to their table, Jackie just looks at the food curiously. She’s scanning the plates and looking around other people’s tables just to see what’s there. 

“What is it?” Nat asks her.

“Should we have ordered ice cream?” Jackie seriously asks. “I’m craving ice cream.”

“We’ve been eating junk food all day. Our bodies are probably crying for the other food groups.”

“It’s all fried food over here,” Jackie points to their plates. 

“We’ll get a salad,” Nat deadpans. 

“And ice cream.”

“You’ll get sick.” Nat leans forward to tell her.

“No, I won’t.” Jackie leans as well.

“You’re overestimating yourself.”

“You’re underestimating me,” Jackie confidently says. “I can handle sub zero.”

“Whatever, Jackie,” Natalie lets out an amused scoff. “Just eat your food.”

Jackie’s expression suddenly morphs into disgust. She leans back and folds her arms, trying to hide her grimace, and Nat’s just confused.

“What?” Nat asks, slightly frustrated but mostly still confused.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she says in a low voice.

“Like what?”

Jackie looks at her warily. “Like we’re still back there.”

It happens in an instant, a single blink and Nat feels sucked right into a different dimension. She has said those words before and no wonder Jackie’s feeling a certain way about it. 

“Where’s Jackie?” Natalie asks everyone by the fireplace. The mood is somber and there’s not a sound except for chewing. She realized that she hadn’t heard that sound in a while. 

“Sleeping, I think,” Akilah meekly answers, wiping some grease from the corner of her mouth. “Said she was sick.”

“What else is fucking new,” Van scoffs from the side. 

Nat just glares at her before taking a deep breath and taking Jackie’s food portion on a page ripped from the porn magazines and heading to the boys’ room. 

She swallows and tries to organize her thoughts. A lot has happened in the past twenty four hours, so much has changed, but she composes herself and goes in. 

She expects to find Jackie curled into herself underneath the thin blanket on the bed, but the moment she opens the door, she hears some movement and she comes face to face with a skittish Jackie, gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes, standing on guard by the bed while holding a half broken piece of log, ready to hit.

With how shaky and furious Jackie is looking, Nat knows she’s only got a few seconds to properly act before Jackie does something incredibly stupid.

Just as she predicted, she sees Jackie’s toes twitching and she immediately goes into action; Jackie charges to the door, hoping to run out but Nat manages to forcefully grab her with one arm, drops the paper-covered meat on the floor, and she drags the rickety chair to lock the door with. 

“Jackie, what the fuck?!” Nat groans, now having two free arms to properly manhandle her. 

“Let me go!” Jackie grunts.

They’re practically whisper-screaming at each other.

“This won’t end okay!” Nat wraps her arms around Jackie and presses hard so she drops the wooden log. “Just stay put— holy shit!” 

“Fuck you! Let me go!” Jackie cries.

Jackie is sick and weak. It doesn’t take long for Nat to pin her down on the floor. She doesn’t want to hurt her, but if she runs out to the rest of the team looking like that, she’ll seem like the opposing feral one. It doesn’t matter what they’re— who they’re eating. 

Everyone is tense.

She’s trying to resist but eventually gives out. Her chest is pressed to the floor with Nat on her back keeping her still. She can feel Nat’s head dropping to her shoulders. 

Jackie props her chin to the floorboard and feels the callousness of Nat’s hands around her wrists. It’s freezing cold, so she can’t really get a good grip on her. If she wasn’t so weak, she might have a chance at running off, but everything is so terrible; her face is healing badly, she can hardly feel her fingers and toes, and she’s fucking starving. 

But she just can’t do it. So, the tears fall freely from her eyes. 

“Jack,” Nat whispers to her weakly. “You have to eat.”

“No,” she stubbornly shakes her head. 

“Please,” Nat begs her. “It’ll be better. Just eat your food.” 

“Food?” Jackie repeats, bitterness laced in her cadence. “That’s not food. That’s Javi.”

Nat tiredly sighs and moves to lay beside Jackie, holding her from the back. She closes her eyes and presses her forehead on the back of Jackie’s neck. 

“I know.” She doesn’t know what else to say. They just stay there until Jackie stops whimpering. It’s tiring to be emotional these days. 

“I don’t wanna do it, Nat,” Jackie rasps out. 

“We don’t have anything else,” Natalie’s still pleading. “I know it was terrible. I did an unforgivable thing, but let me help you. I want you to live.”

“Why? Why are we trying so hard to live that we killed a kid over it?” Jackie spits out.

“You didn’t. It was my fault, you weren’t even there.” 

“No, fuck you,” Jackie responds. “You don’t get to play martyr. They were gonna kill you today and you wanna take the blame for it?” 

It was an accident, but it was really her fault. She could’ve pulled him out. It was him or her. 

“Jackie,” Nat says firmly, willfully trying to block out the noise in her head. “It doesn’t matter. It happened. What matters is that I need you to fucking eat because I don’t want you to fucking die.”

“I don’t understand! Why is everyone still trying?!” Jackie restless questions, hitting the side of her head on the floor. “Why am I the only one who’s just so fucking tired?”

“We just have to get through the winter.”

“And then, what? Happily ever after?” 

“I’ll find you some real food.” Nat plays with the ends of Jackie’s hair. “I need you to get your shit together, Jack.”

She moves to lay on her back and Nat quickly hovers above her, straddling her body so she doesn’t escape. They’re face to face, staring at each other. Nat notices how vacant Jackie’s eyes look. Everything in her just drained away. 

“That night, when I slept out and it snowed,” Jackie starts. “If Shauna didn’t drag my body back, I would’ve died. I know that. I guess a part of me is still waiting.” 

Nat’s body goes ice cold. It’s starting to feel like Jackie did actually freeze that night, it just grew from the inside and found its way out. 

“Shut up,” she grits through her teeth. 

“It would’ve happened to me, right?” Jackie asks, looking right into Nat’s eyes. Her voice is monotonous. “The same thing that happened to Javi. I mean— it can still happen.”

“You think I would let anyone touch you?” Nat says angrily. 

“Maybe you’d try to stop them, but we’re all hungry.”

“Fuck you, Jack. I’m actually running shit around here. Whatever I say goes.” 

It was a weird fucking ceremony, but somehow Nat’s been crowned as their leader. She has power now. She’s the judge who passes the sentence. 

Jackie tilts her head and asks her, almost innocently, “you actually believe that they’ll listen?”

Nat’s perplexed by Jackie’s read of the whole situation. She has lost all faith in her team. Any notion of her authority as a caption is gone with the summer breeze, while Nat’s anointment is smeared with blood and snow. 

“Are you going to eat?” Nat asks her, choosing to ignore Jackie’s interrogation despite how hard her heart is drumming. 

“Don’t make me do this, Nat,” Jackie begs weakly. 

“I just want you to live. Nothing else. No ulterior motive,” Nat explains desperately. “You have to eat”

Jackie doesn’t answer. She cradles Nat’s cheek, and pulls her closer so she can wrap her arms around her, her fingers threading through her hair. Natalie just closes her eyes and lets herself drown into her. She can feel Jackie’s heartbeat as she presses her chest into hers. Nat memorizes the rhythm, she holds on to the sound of it. It’s what matters to her.

They end up working something out; Nat covers Jackie’s eyes with a shirt and feeds her the portion. At least she doesn’t have to look at it or touch it, but the smell alone can make someone jittery. 

Luckily, she eats it and lives to see another day, even if Nat has to constantly keep an eye on her the whole time. 

Natalie twists her mouth, and looks out the window. “I was really scared that day,” she admits with a small frown.

Jackie looks at her side profile and understands that it was just as hard for Natalie out there. It was hard leveling her head when she was constantly in bad shape. Looking back, she wishes she helped her more. 

“I know,” Jackie nods. “Me, too.” After a while of silence, Jackie says under her breath, “I wish I made it easier for you.”

“You’re alive.” Nat’s answer should be a sufficient explanation.  

“Thanks to you.”

Nat just scoffs to shut her up. “I wasn’t exactly nice about it.”

“I never thought you weren’t nice.”

“You’re a bad judge of character then,” Nat jokingly says.

Jackie laughs and shakes her head. “You know, I’ve never met anyone who’s worse at self-perception than you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nat gets all defensive.

“You’re just—“ Jackie smiles, surprisingly all giddy, “you believe that you’re like the devil’s reincarnate or something, when you’re actually the best person I know. I’d follow you anywhere with no question because I know you’re that good.”

Nat pauses because she didn’t exactly expect this sincere answer. Unsure what to do, she just chuckles and says lightheartedly, “you’re crazy.”

She looks at her and their gaze to each other’s eyes linger. She considered saying sorry to Jackie about it all, but the look on Jackie’s face tells her enough; It’s okay. For all of it. 

Jackie takes the first bite. A small gesture to show Nat that she won’t be trouble this time, that she’s always understood Nat’s intentions when it came to dealing with her back there. 

“Their fries are good,” she nods. “Crispy.”

After eating a few pieces, she picks one up and holds to Nat, meaning to feed it to her. She reluctantly leans forward and takes it in her mouth. Nat huffs out a small laugh at how silly this all feels, but it weighs more like a feather now. 

“Looks like it’s gonna snow today,” Jackie points out while looking out the window. 

“Yeah,” Nat agrees. “I thought so too.”

“I never asked what you do for work,” Jackie tells her in the car. “I heard you talking on the phone this morning.”

“Oh, shit. Did I wake you up?“ Nat worries. Her hands are on the steering wheel, but every few minutes she stretches out her fingers and cracks them. 

“No, I fell asleep quickly after that.” 

“I work in the library.” 

Jackie brightens and widens her eyes in wonder. “Oh my god! Are you like a librarian?!”

Nat’s feeling awkward at Jackie’s enthusiasm, she kind of shrinks into herself. “More like a library assistant.”

“Do you wear skirts and sweater vests and stuff?” Jackie cheekily asks, wiggling her shoulders.

“Wouldn’t you just love that?” Nat sarcastically says.

“Well, do you?”

“No, Jackie,” Nat sighs. “I don’t go through your closet before work.”

“Wouldn’t you just love that?” Jackie throws her words right back at her.

Natalie scoffs amusedly and changes the topic. “Do you go to college or something?”

“Nope.”

“Work?”

“No. I haven’t really been doing anything since we came back,” she says indifferently. “I was gonna go to college after the wedding— after we move, but that kinda blew up, huh?”

“There’s still time,” Nat quickly glances at her. “For college. I don’t mean the wedding.”

Jackie just hums. “I have to call Eddie tomorrow morning.”

“Why?”

“I wrote a letter. I had some instructions for him and I told him I’d call on Thursday morning.”

“What are you gonna say?” 

“That I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” Nat whispers under her breath. She kinda forgot about him.

“Yeah, shit.” Jackie purses her lips. “Why isn’t Van calling you? I thought she’d ask where you went.”

“She doesn’t know. She’s with Taissa,” Nat tells her. “They’ll come back together for the wedding,” she says with a grimace.

Jackie’s facial expression just get stuck and she widens her eyes and nods a little. “Fuck.”

“For what it’s worth, I think people generally would go easy on the girl who was rescued from the woods after being missing for a year and a half,” Nat presses a smile to reassure her. 

“Yeah, I’m counting on that one,” Jackie giggles at that. “I’ll milk it until it’s dead.”

“Exactly. That’s what you should do.”

“Why doesn’t Van live with Tai?” Jackie suddenly asks her. 

“Because she’s living with me.”

“Yeah, why?”

“Sheesh, I’m not a shitty roommate, okay?”

“You know what I mean,” Jackie nudges her arm.

“I dunno. We get along well and look out for each other,” Nat explains. “Well, it’s mostly her looking out for me.”

“Why?” Jackie worriedly asks.

“In case I do something stupid.”

“Like?”

“Helping Jackie Taylor run away from her wedding.”

“Shut up,” Jackie sneers at her, but Nat just chuckles.

Jackie takes a deep breath and the car is silent for a few minutes, but she’s got something to say.

“You know, I almost did something pretty stupid today,” Jackie starts, amusement drawn all over her face. 

“What?”

“I figured we’d get bored, so I went around Target looking for a game or something,” Jackie says sheepishly but there’s a chuckle growing in her throat. “And I literally picked up playing cards, like the whole deck, just put in my basket like it was nothing.” She puts her palm on her forehead and shakes her head. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Jackie laughs. “Can you imagine that?”

“What, did something crazy happen? Do you have card-related trauma?” Nat sarcastically asks her, leaning to Jackie’s humor in all of this. Her own smile is slowly growing at Jackie’s demeanor.

“I dunno, Nat,” Jackie exaggerates her shoulder shrug. “I just got the shivers when I looked at ‘em.”

“Jeez, Jack. You gotta see a therapist or something.”

“You think so?” Jackie raises her brows. “I mean, I was thinking I should unpack that with a professional.”

“Uh, totally. Duh.”

Jackie leans on the headrest and laughs as she glances at Nat, who looks at her just as fondly. 

“I got us something else instead.”

“Show me.”

She grabs the bag and takes out a small box. “Uno cards.”

“Now that’s an upgrade.” She holds out a hand for Jackie to high-five, which she happily reciprocates. 

Jackie’s looking at the two VHS tapes that they got, deciding what they should watch tonight. The motel room they got has a tv with a DVD and VHS player. She’s waiting for Nat to come back to decide with her but she’s been gone almost thirty minutes now. Although she said that she’ll just walk to the corner store across the street. 

What’s taking her so long? Her car keys are here. 

When she looks out the window, she finds her leaning on the back of her car with a cigarette between her fingers.

She takes a sad deep breath and thinks one more time; why am I in love with you?

She puts on her jacket, pocketing a few things and heads out to meet her. She doesn’t announce her presence, and just stands beside her. Nat looks at her, purposely puffing the smoke away from Jackie. “Did you decide on the movie?”

“Nope.”

She throws the cigarette on the ground and steps on it. “Wanna do both?”

“Yeah, that’s cool.”

Jackie swaying left and right and she’s got her hands shoved in her pockets. She works up the courage and tells Nat, “I got you a present.”

She raises a brow and smirks, “a present?”

“Yeah,” she quickly nods. She licks her lips and goes to take Nat’s hand, and she takes a pair of fingerless leather gloves from her pockets.

“Where’d you get those?” Nat asks her with a nervous chuckle.

“Goodwill.”

She takes it upon herself to put them both on Nat’s hands. She’s very slow and careful, wanting to savour in this moment of closeness. When they’re both worn, she grabs both of her hands near her mouth to blow some air on them. Nat’s immediately flustered, the air is stuck in her throat.

“There,” Jackie says softly. She gives Nat’s hands a gentle squeeze before letting go. “Now your hands are warm.”

“What’s this for?” Nat looks at her new gloves, hiding the blush on her cheeks.

“Just a thank you,” she shyly shrugs, trying to play it cool. “And they match your cool jacket.”

Nat smiles at her and takes a step back. She puts her own hands in her pockets and looks at the street view. “It’s snowing.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m really hoping that I won’t regret this,” she playfully tells Jackie.

“Regret what?”

Nat pulls out a chocolate and vanilla ice cream sandwich and shows it to Jackie. “You still want ice cream?” 

Jackie’s face lights up and she gasps out of surprise. When she excitedly looks up at Nat, she immediately turns into mush and without really thinking about it, she throws her arms around her and gives her the tightest hug. 

To say that Natalie was caught off guard would be an understatement, she remains still in her place, arms unmoving, stunted by the meteor strike of having Jackie Taylor in her arms again. She smiles a little when she finally moves and holds her back. Her fingers coming up to play with her hair like she used to. 

She’s trying to remember why they didn’t work out, why she didn’t follow her out the hospital, why she didn’t flip New Jersey upside down trying to reach her again. 

She’s coming up short. 

And Jackie finally gets her answer to her question. 

She loves Natalie for no other grand reason other than the fact that she loves her. It only took the sight of her in her bedroom to trip and fall. That’s Jackie’s nature; she doesn’t require rationale. A possession comes upon her and she surrenders to it, she surrenders to Natalie. 

But if she was working with reason and logic, she’d probably think that she’s the luckiest girl in the world, because whether Natalie was meaning it or not, she gave Jackie every good reason to fall in love. 

It was fated.