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Taissa sits and listens to Shauna’s breathing, slow and measured and occasionally shaky, for a long time before it evens out completely. Then she waits for a bit longer, pretending to try to fight the part of her brain telling her to go to sleep, but she knows it’s useless on a good night—whatever that can mean since the failed expedition (since the crash, really)—and tonight, she has one additional thing on her mind.
Slowly, eyes lingering on Shauna’s sleeping figure, Tai wraps her blanket around her shoulders and makes her way down the ladder.
Outside, the air is so much colder than it was even yesterday.
Taissa takes a breath, shivering slightly, and steels herself to approach Jackie, who’s hunched in her blanket, watching a fire that Tai doesn’t think can really be doing much for her warmth. She looks up when Tai approaches on her right, scowls, and turns back to the fire.
Tai feels her jaw clench but ignores it, even when her more desired response to Jackie’s reaction is something equally biting and angry. She reminds herself there’s one thing she’s out here to do: bring Jackie inside. It doesn’t matter that she and Jackie have never really been anything more than teammates.
“Jackie,” Taissa says as assertively as she can through teeth slightly chattering. “Enough of this shit. Come back inside. You’re gonna freeze out here.”
Jackie ignores her and Taissa breathes through the irritation compounded on countless incidents of Jackie Taylor never just listening to her, even when she has good ideas, going all the way back to Jackie fucking Taylor being named team captain and she’s nowhere near their best player so how did she get it? What is Tai doing wrong?
“Jackie Taylor.”
“Give it the fuck up, Taissa,” Jackie snaps. “As if you actually want me to go back inside.”
“You could fucking die if you stay out here, okay? You understand? Why in the world would I want that?” Tai says sharply, sitting on the log next to Jackie. “Just go back inside. Talk to Shauna—or, honestly, don’t, I really don’t care.”
“Why the fuck should I talk to Shauna,” Jackie fumes, “when she made it pretty clear she hates me. I’m pretty sure she’d be happy if I died out here.”
“Jackie—“
“You didn’t see what was in her fucking journals, Tai!” Jackie almost meets her gaze for a moment but shakes her head and puts her face in her hands. “It’s like she never wanted to be my friend. I don’t know how I could have gotten it so wrong. Gotten… her so wrong.”
Tai sighs. She really doesn’t know how to respond to Jackie and Shauna’s argument, and yeah, she doesn’t know what was in Shauna’s journals. But she knows that Shauna can’t want… this. Knows that she had been unmoving, watching Jackie from the attic window until Tai called her out one too many times, apparently; knows that Jackie dying out here isn’t something any of them want. Including herself, no matter how much she’s butted heads with Jackie over the years.
“You don’t get it, Tai,” Jackie mutters. Her voice is small and more defeated than Tai has ever heard it, and she realizes she’s seeing the shaky core of the girl underneath her team captain. “Just… leave me alone. Go back inside.”
“Come on, Jackie,” Tai just says, an edge of desperation creeping into her voice. “You don’t have to talk to her, really…. It’s safe inside, at least. Please.”
Tai pulls her own blanket tighter around her shoulders and continues when Jackie doesn’t respond, just keeps her gaze on the fire. “Lottie almost pulled this shit the first night we were here and I told her I wasn’t letting her sleep out here after we saw that dead bear. And after… Van,” Tai swallows down the guilt and worry that immediately floods her, “I’m definitely not letting you sleep out here. At least… not alone.”
Jackie shifts on her log, still not meeting Tai’s gaze. “Load of good it did Van not being alone,” she mutters.
Familiar rage and defensiveness rears up to punch a sharp inhale through Taissa. “What the fuck—” she hisses, and she stands up to resist the urge to shove Jackie into her stupid little fire. She exhales slowly, tightly, holding in her fury. “If you want to die alone out here, Taylor, be my fucking guest,” Taissa bites, her vision clouded with anger and every neuron firing with the need to be near Van—
But Jackie’s stony expression finally drops and she meets Tai’s eyes for the first time since she acknowledged her presence. It stops Tai in her tracks, along with her hurried gasp of “Wait Tai—”
Taissa’s mouth snaps shut, the audible click ringing in her ears alongside the quickly dying fire of her anger. The thing about Tai being afraid to sleep these days is that she’s always tired. Tired in a bone-deep, exhausted way, and while she’s as defensive and angry as always, there’s not as much behind it. It ebbs away quickly, especially when faced with the wide, tearful eyes of a shivering Jackie Taylor.
Tai rolls her eyes when Jackie doesn’t say anything else, like she’s pretending the little outburst didn’t happen. But the brunt of her annoyance has faded and she sees through Jackie’s refusal to admit she’s lying and cold and terrified and doesn’t want to be alone, and Taissa supposes she might have more in common with Jackie Taylor than she thinks.
And the hidden part of Tai that is really only seen by Van Palmer, the soft part that was torn up and bloodied alongside Van but still beats strong while Van’s heart does, that part that brought her down the ladder and out of the warmth and safety of the cabin in the first place, screams at her to stay.
She won’t let herself fall asleep this time.
“Just go the fuck to sleep, Taylor,” Taissa says tiredly, sitting back down. “I’ll keep watch.”
Taissa jolts awake. It’s pitch black and she can’t see anything as her eyes focus, and her heart hammers in her throat with rising dread because she was sleeping she wasn’t supposed to be sleeping where is she where is Van where is—
It’s cold. That’s the first thing that penetrates her fear and she takes a piercing and shuddering breath. It’s really cold. It wakes her up a little more. Breathe, Taissa.
Her surroundings have come into focus in the unfiltered light of the moon; she can see the cabin a few feet away. Where Van is, her immediate thought is, relief flooding her from the fact that Van’s safe and she didn’t actually wake up somewhere unfamiliar and she’s on the ground. She can see the fire pit, and Jackie asleep on her side, blanket pulled tightly around her.
As Taissa’s bearings come back to her slowly through the deep fog of sleep and panic, she realizes that the surroundings are light, almost glowing in the shine from the moon, from the dusting of white covering everything around her, covering her and Jackie.
It’s almost peaceful. Everything is quiet, covered in glittering white, and large flakes float down from the sky to create a picturesque tranquil scene.
Snow.
“Fuck,” Taissa whispers, brushing snow off her hair and shoulders, lightly brushing some of it off of Jackie’s blanket. It’s snowing, and it reminds her of childhood winters and snow days, when the flakes would come too big and fast for roads to stay clean. A practical voice in her head tells her this is that kind of snow and it’s not stopping anytime soon.
“Jackie,” Tai hisses loudly, shaking Jackie by her shoulder. “Jackie, wake the fuck up.”
She tries to restart the fire but her fingers are frozen, clumsy, stiff, wet with the snow that melts on her skin. After the third time Tai drops the lighter, her fingers are also shaky with anxiety, so she decides to ditch the fire and gives Jackie’s shoulder another shove.
The snow is already coming down harder and faster. The wind isn’t strong but it hurts through her thin blanket and sweater and she’s shivering more violently than she thinks she ever has. Tai wonders how on earth Jackie is sleeping through this, and starts shaking her harder. Her own voice, from a lifetime ago, echoes in her head. We’re talking “dying feels like falling asleep” cold.
“You better not be fucking dead, Taylor, or I’ll kill you. Jackie!”
Deja vu; heart pounding, hands shaking, nauseous with uncertainty and fear, but Van is safe in the warmth of the cabin and Jackie is the one laying still in front of her.
“Jackie!”
Jackie’s big, pretty eyes finally scrunch and blink open slowly. “Tai—?” she says slowly, eyes flitting around. She shudders violently at the next gust of wind and then sits up, eyes wide, mind seemingly warming up to the situation surrounding her.
“Jesus Christ, Jackie, you’re a heavy sleeper,” Tai says, pushing her shoulder again. “Get up, we need to get back inside.”
“Is it—is it snowing?” Jackie looks around. “Oh, shit.” She shudders again, curling up on herself and pulling her blanket tighter.
“Yeah.” Taissa stands, extending a numb hand down in front of her. “Let’s fucking go, Jackie.”
The cabin’s fallen still again, at least on the inside. Breathing is even and quiet, bodies are still and warm, while the wind outside rustles branches and sometimes whistles through the cracks in the walls, bringing piercing cold along with it.
Tai and Jackie’s return to the cabin brought a freezing wind through the open door for just a brief moment, but it was enough to wake some of the girls who were already alert from Tai’s voice outside, unable to find deep sleep on the hard cabin floor or through the pain in newly closed wounds.
Misty bustled and boiled water for them, which Tai held in her frozen hands, unfamiliar as ever with gratitude felt for Misty Quigley. Nat and Lottie wrapped them in extra blankets, Van tried to give hers up but Tai refused and just helped her wrap it tighter around her own shoulders. Shauna descended from the attic and watched them from just inside the pantry door, eyes sad and fixed on Jackie who wouldn’t return her gaze.
It’s loud downstairs. Tai’s gotten used to only hearing her own and Shauna’s breathing in the attic, but Van asked her to stay by her, in the warmth from the fire and the blankets they shared, and Tai had no reason to refuse. Down here, a dozen girls breathe in harmony and shift in their sleep, and a newly stoked fire crackles softly. Shauna had reluctantly climbed back up the ladder after everyone had mostly settled back down, with one last lingering look at Jackie. Taissa had noticed a hesitance and sadness in Jackie’s eyes that she didn’t seem to have the energy to hide as she looked around the room, at the teammates who left her out into the cold, and she left a space beside her and Van that Jackie willingly took.
Tai’s not asleep, doesn’t want to go to sleep when she’s still so unsure of her sleeping body and she already woke up freezing once tonight, so she watches Van’s face instead—a little out of focus because of how close they are, but completely peaceful and relaxed in a way that wakefulness never seems to afford her anymore. Taissa hovers her fingers over the left side of Van’s face, over the new scars. She realizes then that Van isn’t fully asleep. Tai gently tucks a lock of red behind Van’s ear, and the corner of Van’s mouth quirks slightly as her eyes blink open.
Taissa smiles back at her. “Sorry if I woke you up,” she whispers. “Go back to sleep.”
“You okay?” Van asks, grabbing Tai’s hand and bringing their intertwined fingers between them.
Tai swallows. “Yeah,” she breathes. The night has been a lot. And there’s a lot left, with little to no sleep in sight for her, not that she wants to let Van know that part. She still hasn’t figured out how she’s supposed to tell Van about… all of that, and it won’t be a problem for tonight. “Just a little… shaken,” Taissa says truthfully. She listens for the breathing around them, Jackie’s the closest, even and deep. The cabin is warm.
Van squeezes her hand. “You’re okay. Jackie’s okay. I think you saved her,” she says, “and yourself.” She shifts forward slightly to kiss the tip of Tai’s nose, and Tai scrunches her face in response. Van’s breath is warm on Tai’s skin. “Thanks for coming back to me,” Van says.
Tai kisses her back, on the lips. “Go to sleep,” she whispers with the soft voice that she only finds possible around Van.
Van closes her eyes again, nuzzles her good cheek into the pillow and shifts closer to Tai in the process. She breathes out deeply against Tai’s skin, and even though she’s exhausted and not planning on sleeping (doesn’t feel capable of sleeping), and based on the draft leaking into the cabin, it seems like the cold is here to stay, Taissa only feels warm and alive with Van content in her arms.