Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-That girl, she holds her head up so high I think I wanna be her best friend, yeah-

She gripped the glass of cheap whiskey, her hand trembling as she sat at a counter in a dimly-lit bar, the first she stumbled across tonight. Her reflection on the almost empty bottle looked like it was judging her, like it was disgusted by her. Nothing new there, she couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t disgusted by herself.

The song playing on the radio, the chatter of people in various states of drunkenness, they all faded into the background as she stared at the wooden counter, unfocused and hunched forward.

“Nat,” she groaned at the sound of your voice, burying her face in her hands out of shame and frustration. Why did you have to come now? Why when she was like this?

“Go away,” Natalie pleaded, not having the strength to deal with this right now.

“Okay,” you accepted it, and she felt her heart beating faster as she abruptly sat up, grabbing your sleeve before you could leave. She reached further than she intended, grabbing onto your forearm instead of the edge of the sleeve, her hand nearly wrapping around your entire forearm and she let go of you like she was burnt.

“You gotta make up your mind, Nat,” your voice sounded so distant, your face blurry from the alcohol she drank and bad lighting, and yet she could still hear the exhaustion you could no longer hide.

“Stay,” the word slipped past her lips before she could even consider it and you hopped onto the counter, sitting there and blocking one of the few wall sconces with working light bulbs. She watched as you brushed your fingers against the whiskey bottle, not pushing it away or taking it from her. “Don’t. Please,” she whispered, recognizing that look in your eyes even in the dim light.

The bartender brought a drink to someone a few seats away from her, not bothering to tell you to get off the counter or trying to get your order.

You opened your mouth, but a coughing fit stopped you from speaking, getting louder and forcing you to grip at your chest as you hung your head low. And Natalie sat there, frozen in place, only capable of waiting until the coughing fit passed. Finally, after what must have felt like eternity your coughing stopped and you wiped a bit of blood from the corner of your mouth. “Nat, don’t drown in this,” you said, smiling softly at her, like you pleaded with her to stop ruining her life.

“Y/N,” she tried, your name feeling heavy on her lips, like a word she no longer had the right to say as she struggled to even look at you, at the fragile state you were in, your body ravaged by what happened out there.

Suddenly she felt arms on her shoulders, pulling her from the bar counter. “She’s gone, Natalie,” Jackie’s voice broke through her drunken haze, and you disappeared just as suddenly as you appeared.

“Jackie, she was, Y/N was,” she tried to grasp onto Jackie’s arm, to stay on her own two feet but she drank too much and instead just stumbled back into Jackie’s arms. “She was-“ she needed Jackie to see you, to just for a moment pretend you were still there.

Yet Jackie just shook her head, she had that look in her eyes, that distant look of resignation that always broke something in Natalie. “Come on, burnout, this one is on me,” Jackie tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

All the fight in her body evaporated and she surrendered to Jackie’s will.

She should have argued against it, but just like she always did she always backed away when it mattered the most, she went along with what others chose, and this time as well she went along with Jackie’s decisions, stumbling to Jackie’s apartment to sober up. “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know,” she slurred as the cold night air hit her, she hated cold now.

Jackie hated it too, passionately. She was always passionate about everything she loved or hated, Natalie guessed that was one of the things that drew you to Jackie. She remembered the glances, the softness in your eyes when Jackie wasn’t looking, the teasing grins when Jackie was looking, the way you had eyes only for Jackie, no matter how hopeless it was.

And now here your Captain was, dragging her through the cold streets of New Bedford. She never would have guessed Jackie would choose Massachusetts, it was always the place she thought you’d end up in, you certainly wanted to live here, once upon a time. Maybe that was why Natalie ended up here as well, chasing your ghost.

They stumbled up the stairs leading to the front doors, completely Natalie’s fault for being this drunk, but they made it to the elevator and Jackie slumped against it, huffing like she always did when she wished she was somewhere else. “You don’t have to do this, you know?” Natalie asked, leaning most of her weight on Jackie so she wouldn’t drop to the elevator floor and repeating the same old conversation like it was a poorly written script,

Jackie smiled, though it was forced, almost broken. “Y/N didn’t have to either,” and the same old answer came out of Jackie’s mouth, and even as drunk as she was Natalie still noticed how Jackie’s voice trembled when she said your name.

“Yeah, well, quit trying to take her place, I’m not looking for a new best friend and neither are you,” she spat drunkenly, though she still didn’t resist as the elevator doors opened slowly and Jackie physically dragged her into the apartment. She’d regret it in the morning, maybe even sooner, for now she was being her bitter, drunken self.

Before she knew it, she was unceremoniously dropped onto a sofa and Jackie took her shoes off and tossed a blanket over her without any sympathy, she guessed she deserved it for that comment.

“Don’t throw up over my sofa,” Jackie bit out as she stomped into the kitchen, and yeah, Natalie figured she most certainly deserved that. She glanced toward the corner of the room, it was still there, your old, damaged guitar, still in as good of a condition as it could be all things considered, and above it a single framed photo of you and Jackie.

You were happy, your arm loosely hanging around Jackie’s shoulders as she held the camera and took the photo. It was right after practice, and both of you were sweaty and still wearing your jerseys, but what always got Natalie’s attention was how healthy and strong you looked, a stark contrast to the shape you were in before…

Jackie coming back with a glass of water and Advil broke that train of thoughts. “I could give you some of her photos,” Natalie offered, knowing that was the only photo Jackie had of you that wasn’t a team photo. She sounded a lot more sober than she was even minutes ago, the memories of those times usually did that to her as she fidgeted with the sleeve of her jacket nervously.

“They are your memories with her,” Jackie shook her head softly, approaching the guitar, her fingers hovering mere inches from in, as if she feared the guitar would shatter if she touched it unnecessarily.

Natalie nodded. “Okay, Captain,” she said, and Jackie gasped at the way Natalie called her before she gave her a hollow laugh.

Jackie hugged herself, trembling and if Natalie had to guess biting her bottom lip. “Who is acting like her now?” Jackie’s voice trembled, and Natalie caught the sight of a tear falling from Jackie’s eye as Jackie fled into her kitchen, but she didn’t say anything. What could she possibly say? If only she stopped you that night, if only she was there with you, maybe things would have turned out differently.

Natalie approached the photo, looking at the number ten on your jersey, at the grin on your face. It’s been so long since she saw that grin, she forgot how it looked like. Her hallucinations were always of you at your weakest, barely hanging on, and imagining this wide, cheerful grin on your face in that state felt impossible.

She heard Jackie’s muffled sob from the kitchen, reminding her how hard Jackie took what happened to you out there.

Natalie had her own guilt to wrestle with, but Jackie’s was different. Unlike her, Jackie was right there when it all went wrong.

~X~ 7 years ago, June 1995 ~X~

You looked down as a pebble fell from the cliff, hitting the rocks before sinking underneath water, and you grinned, your heart beating wildly against your chest as you took a step closer, standing on the edge of the cliff. The light breeze against your back felt like a gentle nudge, a small boost of courage you needed as you jumped head first and dove into the river.

Just for a moment you felt that adrenaline rush, the sensation of being completely free before you collided with the water, plunging in with practiced precision and emerging a few moments later with a loud cheer. “Hell yeah!” you pumped your fist above water, splashing your palm against the water surface, still very much feeling that rush of adrenaline as you looked at the cliff about 20 feet above you.

“Have I told you that I think Y/N is an adrenaline junkie?” Kevyn asked as he sat on the rock with his feet in the river, rolling a joint and lighting it up.

Nat looked at him blankly as she sat on a rock a bit higher up. “Have I told you that weed gets you high?” she asked sarcastically, and he huffed as you swam toward them and climbed up to the rock Nat was sitting on.

“You should try it sometimes,” you said, massaging your shoulders and wrists, almost enjoying that familiar sting of jumping into the river from high up.

“Oh, no thanks, I’m good with my feet on the ground,” Kevyn immediately rejected the idea, without even wanting to consider it. He offered you the joint but, just like he refused to jump, you shook your head. He shrugged and handed it to Nat.

You sat still for the whole of five minutes before you got restless again, jumping to your feet despite Nat groaning and starting to climb up to the cliff again. “Y/N, come on, you’ll get hurt sooner or later,” she argued with you, and logically you knew there was a chance she was right.

“At least I’m not jumping from the bridge,” you smirked as you looked down from halfway up the cliff. You really were an adrenaline junkie, but you were not dumb enough to jump into the river from 30 feet up in the air. The cliff would do. It wasn’t risk-free, but there weren’t as many risks.

“Oh, yeah, now I’m feeling a lot better!” Nat yelled at you, exasperated but well aware that having this conversation never led to you being more responsible.

You knew exactly what the risks were, one bad step, one slip, one bad jump, and you’d be in pain or worse. You knew all that, yet as you looked down toward the water you felt this unexplainable pull, this need to jump. There was simply something about water drawing you to it, and you felt like you wouldn’t be able to break free from it even if you tried.

You climbed to the top of the cliff and heard a familiar laughter. For a moment you looked above you, to the bridge, and sure enough there Jackie was, laughing at something Jeff said as they walked across the bridge. You looked away, ignored that stubborn feeling in your heart, like it was being squeezed, like you were in pain. “Fucking idiot,” you muttered under your breath, cursing yourself for not yet getting over your crush on her.

You jumped, letting the brief flight clear your thoughts and letting the river carry them away. You swam for a bit under the surface before resurfacing, laughing as the water cooled you down.

“Y/N!” you heard her shout loud and clear and looked up to the bridge, shielding your eyes from the Sun that was setting behind where Jackie had stopped, probably due to hearing you jumping into the water. She was waving at you while Jeff stood by her.

“Captain!” you pushed your feelings aside, knowing you had no chance with her. Besides, crush or not, you felt genuine admiration for her even before you got to know her on the team. “Come on down! The water is perfect!” you couldn’t see her, but you knew she was grinning, Jackie always grinned when you called her Captain.

It took Jackie a bit to answer, and you could see Jeff taking a few steps away. “Another time!” she yelled back and went after Jeff. “Hey, Y/N! Come to the party tonight!” she yelled as Jeff sped up ahead of her before you could answer.

You let out a sigh and splashed a bit of water into your face to cool off before swimming back to the shore, rolling your eyes at how annoyed Nat looked. “I know, I know,” you rose your head above your head in surrender.

“Trust me, that’s not the kind of thrill you should seek, Y/N,” Kevyn echoed Nat’s thoughts regarding your feelings for Jackie.

“It’s not thrill-seeking,” you pouted as you got out of the water and lied back on the rock Nat was sitting on.

~X~

“What the fuck, Jeff?!” Jackie demanded, annoyed at her boyfriend as he kept stomping ahead like a petulant child. “Hey, stop!” she grabbed his forearm, now honestly considering going back to the river.

Jeff turned around, frowning as he looked in the direction of the river. “Why did you invite Y/N to the party?” he demanded, unreasonably jealous.

Jackie threw her arms up in the air. “Did you forget we’re on the same team? Or that she never comes to the parties?” did she want you to come to a party? Very much, because she wanted to hang out with you and hopefully bridge the gap between you and some of the other girls on the team. But that was all there was to it! Jeff had no reason to react like this!

Jeff stood there silently, like he usually did when he ran out of arguments and Jackie sighed, cupping his cheek and pulling him down to kiss the other cheek. “She’s just a teammate, okay? I’m the captain of the team, I feel responsible for them,” she added, softer now that her own annoyance was fading. “I just think she’s fun to be around,” and immediately Jeff had an unreasonably annoyed reaction.

“Sure, that troublemaker is really fun to be around,” he muttered, and Jackie sighed.

“Look, you and Y/N got off on the wrong foot,” well, that was one way of putting it. “But that was like two and a half years ago, she’s not like that anymore,” and you really weren’t. Joining the team sort of calmed you down, or rather focused all that energy somewhere else, she supposed. It certainly did wonders for the team.

Jeff looked away again, and for a moment Jackie thought this wasn’t about you, that something else was going on. “Are you still angry that I don’t want to have sex yet?” she asked incredulously, thinking that they were over that argument they had before the party in Holmdel.

His face went red at that. “Why are you mentioning sex when we’re talking about Y/N?” he demanded and Jackie rolled her eyes, he could be so infuriating at times.

“Why does she bother you so much?!” she demanded, turning away from him and forcing her mouth shut so she doesn’t say something she’d actually regret. “You know what, I don’t care!” she stormed off in the direction of her home and Jeff didn’t follow. And just like that, her and Jeff broke up again after being together for three whole days.

They’d get back together tomorrow or the day after, but tonight she’d be spending the party with Shauna.

~X~

When you returned home that night the Sun had already set a while back and you grinned when Blitz, your 4-year-old rottweiler, perked up on the porch and then immediately rushed toward you, zooming around you like he hadn’t seen you in weeks. You laughed, dropping to one knee and he rushed into your arms. “Easy, easy, buddy! I’m home!” you laughed as he licked your cheek and nuzzled against you.

The big bad guard dog, turning into a big cuddly baby. The irony.

You went into the house, with Blitz happily following next to you. “Wade, I’m back!” you called out and went to the kitchen and getting two cups of ice cream from the freezer. “Sorry, buddy, not for you,” you told Blitz and instead gave him his own treat.

The kitchen was a bit messy, some dirty plates, a cracked egg remained on the counter, and from the looks of it whoever used the toaster burnt the bread. You sighed at that as you heard the sound of light footsteps coming down the stairs. “Hey, sis,” Wade whispered apologetically, looking at the floor, yet the first thing you noticed was a paper towel around his thumb.

“Come here,” you picked him up into your arms and lifted him into the air. “Let me see,” you said gently and he nodded, taking the paper towel off and showing you a small cut on his thumb. “It’s not too bad,” you ruffled his hair and reached for a Band-Aid from the drawer.

He put the Band-Air on his thumb, and you gave him his ice cream cup and began cleaning the kitchen. “Y/N,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have sweets before dinner.”

You halted entirely at that. “What did dad do?” you asked and then sighed. “Actually, don’t answer that,” you lowered your younger brother down and opened the fridge. You’d need to go grocery shopping soon, it was starting to look like a barren wasteland in the big white box. “Want some eggs? Breakfast for dinner kinda deal?” you suggested, and Wade nodded, clinging to you as you heat up the pan and went to prepare his, and your own, dinner.

“Does dad hate me?” Wade mumbled quietly and you honestly weren’t sure how to answer that.

“No, of course not,” you tried, you honestly tried, but Wade was nine, he was piecing things together. “He’s just, you know, dad,” you added lamely and put the eggs on the plates.

For now, he nodded, still pretending he believed you, for both of your sakes, as you ate dinner together. You glanced through the window, toward the backyard, where your dad was tending to his fishing boat and gear, not because he needed to, but just so he doesn’t have to come back inside and deal with having a son.

“Want to take Blitz out for a late-night walk?” you asked, smiling when Wade’s eyes lit up and Blitz perked up as well and Wade jumped from his chair to go and get the leash. “Whoa! Finish the dinner first!” you exclaimed, making him pout and sit back down. You patted Blitz on the top of his head. “You wait a bit longer buddy,” the dog nuzzled against your hand in response.

More or less, it was the same old routine, a constant rush from one thing to another, always keeping yourself busy. Tonight would be no different.

~X~ July 1995 ~X~

You never thought you’d fly all the way to Lollapalooza festival mostly for the Bikini Kill performance, but Nat wanted to go and you didn’t feel like letting her travel that distance all alone. But here you were, definitely enjoying yourself and singing along to a couple of the songs you knew.

The band began performing ‘Rebel Girl’ a song you happened to know actually.

~That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood she's got the hottest trike in town~

“Good time?!” Nat yelled over the music and you nodded, putting one arm around her shoulders while she had her arm around your waist and rising your drinks up high in the other hands.

“That girl, she holds her head up so high I think I wanna be her best friend, yeah! Rebel girl, rebel girl!” you sang along pointing a finger at Nat, grinning widely as Nat rolled her eyes.

~Rebel girl you are the queen of my world, Rebel girl, rebel girl, I think I wanna take you home~

“Thanks for coming with me,” Nat yelled into your ear and pulled back a bit to smirk at you. Her piercing green eyes mesmerizing you for a few seconds before you nodded.

~That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood I got news for you, she is!~

Nat leaned closer to you, pressing her side against yours. “Love you like a sister always, soul sister, rebel girl, come and be my best friend, will you, rebel girl?” she sang, looking directly at you as the song reached the final part.

“I really like you I really wanna be your best friend! Be my rebel girl!” you finished the song, singing along with the band, but very much singing to Nat.

The two of you burst out laughing as the show continued. You didn’t notice eyes on the two of you, or rather on Nat, though, you’d soon remember the feeling of being watched.

~X~

You didn’t notice him. Of course you didn’t.

“You ditched your friend?” the man approached her after she went down to the motel bar to try and get herself a drink. The fact that he followed the two of you to the motel was creepy as fuck, and she should have known better, but she still didn’t complain when he sat down next to her.

She could have lied to herself, came up with this excuse that she wanted to shield you from this. Regardless of how impulsive you were, regardless of how much of an adrenaline junkie you were and regardless of how often you rushed headfirst into things you shouldn’t have rushed into, you were never truly in a dangerous situation.

A normal, loving father, a brother you adored, no desire to get high or drunk, you never had to look over your shoulder, never had to listen for footsteps, never had to cover your head with a pillow so you’d be able to fall asleep. You’d have no idea how to recognize trouble coming for you, and this guy was trouble.

Yet, the truth was, Natalie simply saw an opportunity to get drunk and get drugs. He was a sick fuck who saw two girls and decided he was interested. “Maybe,” she finally answered when he poured her a drink, his intentions clear in his eyes, and frankly, she didn’t care much. She already felt broken either way.

One drink turned to two, two to three, and soon enough alcohol turned to some drug she hadn’t tried before that messed her up really quickly. Her vision was getting a bit too blurry and she tried to shake it off and focus and then there was a thud next to her and someone splashed water in her face.

“Come on, Nat,” oh, shit, you actually woke up and were standing between her and the guy who was getting back up, a lot less drunk than she was.

“Y/N,” she mumbled your name, too out of it to really know what was going on. She was vaguely aware of an argument, and then a fight, and some other people getting between you and the guy and before she knew it, she was leaning on you, her arm around your shoulders as you dragged her up the stairs to your motel room.

“Should have let me,” she mumbled drunkenly, now thinking a bit cleared, but still leaning most of her weight on you. “What? It’s just sex,” she really believed that, besides, maybe she’d be able to get more drugs.

“You are way too messed up to think clearly, Nat,” you sighed, giving up on dragging her and just pulling her onto your back to carry her to the room.

“I’m always messed up, only now I’m also high,” the thoughts in her head, especially the ones when she was all alone, yeah, definitely not something someone normal would be thinking.

You reached up, ruffling her hair a lot like she saw you doing to Wade. “I’m not letting you drown in it, Nat,” you promised her, and she wrapped her arms around your neck, clinging to you as you climbed up the last flight of stairs and headed down the hall to the motel room.

She glanced at your cheek, swelling slightly already and closed her eyes. Once again you got into a scuffle for her. “You need to take better care of yourself,” rich, coming from her, especially when she was so messed up you had to carry her.

You didn’t reply, you never did when she phrased it like that, but she knew you had that distant look in your eyes, the one she got really familiar with over the years she’s known you.

~X~ September 1995 ~X~

Right before the first soccer practice of the school year you and Shauna were at it again, running after the ball and trying to outdo one another. You kicked the ball back with your heel, smirking as Shauna ran by you and you kicked the ball into the empty goal.

Shauna stood there for a moment, looking at the ball as you went to retrieve it, intending on running toward the other side of the field with the ball and getting a nice early lead in this game you and Shauna always played.

You jokingly winked at Shauna, grinning, until you noticed a genuine frown on her face. “Come on, can’t win them all,” you nudged her side gently and she rolled her eyes, but she looked less bothered by being outplayed now.

“So, lose every now and then,” she muttered grumpily and then suddenly stole your ball, making you chase after her.

She was really fast, definitely the fastest on the team and you had to actually sweat to catch up to her, but you did and managed to get in her way. You watched the ball and then looked into her eyes, into that satisfied glimmer in them when she was the one in control.

It made you pause for a moment. There was that competitiveness again, that need to be the best, and that moment of distraction gave Shauna the chance to slip past you and score a goal. “You’re right, L/N, can’t win them all,” she said a bit smugly and your smirk widened.

“Oh no, here they go again,” you heard Mari sighing, but it was already too late as you ran off with the ball, silently daring Shauna to come after you.

And she did, she always did. It wasn’t proper training, it was messing around before the rest of the team and the coach got here, but you both took it seriously, way too seriously, especially if Jackie wasn’t around to calm things down. Fifteen minutes later you were both panting slightly, staring into each other’s eyes, the urge to win burning within both of you.

“What score is it?” Tai asked as her and Van arrived as well.

“9-6 in Y/N’s favor,” Lottie told her and Van groaned.

“Shauna won’t like that,” Van pinched the bridge of her nose as the three of them and six other girls watched you dribbling past Shauna and running toward the goal.

You didn’t hear Shauna running after you, but you didn’t think much of it, until you heard her rushing behind you and heard the sound of something sliding across the field. Your eyes widened and it was more of a miracle than anything else that you managed to jump over her tackle without injuring yourself. You stumbled a bit before landing on the field, managing to for the most part control your fall.

You got back up and brushed the grass from your shorts and knees. “What the fuck, Shauna?!” you exclaimed, spreading your arms in disbelief as other girls rushed over.

“What? You dodged it,” Shauna defended herself as she kicked the ball aside.

“That would have been a foul in any situation!” and that wasn’t even taking into consideration how dangerous it could have been.

“What is going on here?” you both froze as Jackie, not even in her full kit and still wearing a regular shirt, ran over with Mari right behind her. You and Shauna remained silent, refusing to meet Jackie’s eyes like two guilty yet stubborn brats. Jackie clapped once, startling Shauna and making you frown. “Both of you look at me!” Jackie demanded.

From the corner of your eyes, you saw Shauna turning to look at Jackie, yet you remained stubborn.

“Y/N,” Jackie warned you, and with an exasperated sigh you turned to look at her as well. “I know you two get heated and competitive,” she said, her tone calmer now that she had your attention. “And I know giving you a pep talk won’t do shit,” Jackie teased, smiling softly at you and Shauna, especially when the corner of your mouth twitched up.

Jackie placed her hands on her hips and let out a soft sigh, getting between you and Shauna and putting her arms around both of you. “So, instead,” she looked at Shauna mischievously and you saw the color draining from Shauna’s face, which made you worry as well.

“Jackie, no-“ Shauna tried, but it was already too late.

“You two are going to be on the same team during the practice all month, no matter what we do, you two will do it together,” that was it, you were quitting the team, you could not do this.

“Captain, please no,” you tried and for once Shauna and you were on the same page.

“We’ll quit being competitive,” Shauna promised and if you were smart you would have promised the same, but that would be one hell of a lie.

Jackie released you and flicked Shauna’s forehead playfully. “Liar,” and Jackie saw right through Shauna’s lie. With her arm still around Shauna’s waist Jackie turned to address you as well. “Listen, Shauna, Y/N, we are aiming for nationals this year, aren’t we?” she reminded you and begrudgingly both you and Shauna nodded.

“Yes Jackie/Captain,” you both said at the same time, though you still glared at each other.

“You two are the core of our team, defensive and attacking midfielders, we need the two of you to not be at each other’s throats,” Jackie said and you sighed, knowing she was right. “Okay? Do it for me if for no other reason,” she was really confident that both you and Shauna would be willing to put aside your differences just because she asked you to.

The worst thing was that, at least as far as you were concerned, she was right.

Chapter Text

-And I scream from the top of my lungs "What's going on?"-

Frightening. That’s how Jackie would describe what it was like to play against Shauna and you. She wasn’t giving the two of you a pep talk when she said the two of you were the core of the team. Her team had the ball, she passed it to Natalie and for a moment she dared to hope Natalie knew you well enough to break through and head to the goal.

Natalie was really good too, one of the team’s top players and she easily dribbled past Allie, making it look like she wasn’t even putting in effort. Passing Allie wasn’t the problem though, it was you and while Natalie tried to feint you you saw right through her, stealing the ball and passing it to Shauna with frightening precision.

You ran by Natalie and Shauna passed the ball back to you. Jackie stopped running, she was too far anyway, and she just watched as you danced with the ball. One moment it was between your feet, the next you were kicking it up with your heel and making the girl in front of you look like she had two left feet, only to then pass the ball to Shauna who just as easily broke through what was left of the midfield of the team Jackie was on.

And by that point it was already over. The defensive players of the JV team her and Natalie were currently on to make things a bit more even scrambled to stop Shauna, but she passed the ball to Tai, who passed it on to Lottie and soon enough Lottie scored the goal as the practice came to an end.

Jackie wasn’t stupid, she knew how this team worked. She knew their best players were mostly offensive ones. Lottie, Tai, Nat, of course Shauna, all playing offensive positions, all of them focusing solely on scoring goals for one simple reason.

You were the first line of defense, the Yellowjackets defensive midfielder, the link between the defense and offense, the start of most of their counters, passing the stolen balls to Tai, Allie or Shauna, or sometimes ever further ahead to Lottie or Nat. And if the other team somehow made it past you Laura Lee, Mari, Melissa and Van usually stopped them.

Now if only you and Shauna could put aside your differences a bit more often this road to winning states and going to the nationals wouldn’t be so challenging! But no! The two of you were like cats and dogs and Jackie still wasn’t sure which one of you was a cat and which one was a dog.

Well, that wasn’t quite right, you were probably the cat of the duo, stubborn and difficult and graceful and often grinning like a Cheshire cat. Yeah, you were definitely the cat of the duo. Jackie huffed, amused as you and Shauna bickered while clearing the field, since you were still forced to do everything on the field together after that little incident at the start of the school year.

Some things were never going to change, so, she jogged over to the two of you and got between you, leaning on both of you. “The day you two stop bickering the world will end,” she joked, ruffling Shauna’s hair and smacking you on the shoulder playfully.

“We better save the world then,” you smirked mischievously as Shauna rolled her eyes.

Shauna glanced at you with a glint in her eyes that Jackie rarely saw. “You can barely save a game on Super Nintendo,” Shauna’s reply was quick and to the point, merciless and precise strike, catching you by surprise.

“Wow, Shipman,” Jackie gasped, laughing a bit as your jaw dropped.

“You did not just burn me like that,” and your reaction made Jackie burst out laughing without any restraints. If only you could see your face right now! You were flabbergasted and impressed at the same time, and honestly Jackie was surprised as well. Shauna was smart and quick-witted, but she was usually too reserved to show it like this.

“To a crisp, I can even see some steam coming out,” Jackie said, still chuckling a bit as she straightened her back and patted you on the back.

You looked at her seriously and she swallowed the lump in her throat, for a moment thinking you were actually angry, but then you burst out laughing and gently kicked a ball into her hands. “Help out since you’re here, Captain,” you said, as always calling her Captain, and Jackie let out a sigh of relief.

“Come on you two, put your backs into it, the sooner we do this the sooner we can go home!” she exclaimed, getting the two of you pumped to work so she didn’t have to do as much. She’d help, but only enough to count.

It didn’t even bother her that both Shauna and you would notice, you’d both forgive her anyway.

You both forgave her for a month of being paired together for everything; not putting in as much effort into helping when she wasn’t even supposed to would easily be forgiven.

~X~ October 1995 ~X~

You wiped the sweat off your forehead as you stood on the soccer field, hunched over a ball, a few drops of sweat dripping from your chin onto it. It was getting cold, so cold you could see your breath and you knew you should just head home, you had no idea what time it was, but you knew it was late, and the only source of light were the stars and the flickering lamp post near the field.

It didn’t matter though, you still haven’t accomplished what you were after tonight. You began sprinting, kicking the ball ahead and looking to your side. You kicked the ball hard, immediately running after it to the other side and grinning as an empty can fell off the box you set on the field. You ran to the ball and repeated the process, kicking it at different angles to the other side of the field, each time aiming for an empty soda can.

You knocked four cans down and made the fifth shot, but the sound of a can falling never came and all you heard was the ball rolling across the field. “Again,” you said to yourself, going over to the boxes and searching for the cans, placing them on the boxes again. And again, and again, and again, and again, until all five of them fell in a row.

You fell back on the grass, reaching to the side and placing the ball on your abdomen as you caught your breath. The sky was clear tonight and you could feel exhaustion catching up to you, but you pushed yourself back to your feet, jogging back home despite how heavy your legs felt.

When you finally came home you had to let out a quiet laugh as you stared at the clock in disbelief. It was nearly two in the morning.

~X~ November 3rd, 1995 ~X~

Today was going to be the best day of her life, the soccer practice went well, everyone was paying attention to her, there was going to be a party tonight, and tomorrow night, and maybe even Sunday night, and everything was perfect.

Jackie smiled, going all over the field and taking a photo with everyone individually with the camera her parents bought. “Misty, come here for a second,” she said as Misty put the balls away. “Birthday photo,” she grinned, her gaze softening when Misty blushed, taken aback.

“Oh, sure, sure Jackie!” Misty stepped into the frame next to Jackie, looking a bit awkward as she pushed her glasses up a bit and grinned while Jackie took the photo.

“Thanks, and make sure to come tonight,” she said, already looking around the field and finally noticing you with Allie, putting away the last pieces of equipment. “Y/N!” she exclaimed as she jogged over to you. She already had a photo with Allie so you were one of the few girls she still didn’t have a photo with.

“Captain,” you met her halfway and tilted your head when you noticed the camera in her hands.

“Before you say no, it’s my birthday,” and that was all the reason anyone should need to let her be in charge, well, more in charge, today. “And I want a photo and you at the party tonight,” she demanded, leaving no space for arguments.

“Demanding much,” you teased and stood next to her, waiting for her to take the photo.

“Y/N,” she looked at you, not amused one bit.

“What?” you asked, like you didn’t know what the problem was.

“Arm around me, silly,” she smiled cheekily, very pleased when you put your arm around her shoulders.

“Happy, Captain?” you ask, grinning at her confidently.

“Very happy,” she moved a bit to the right, leaning into your side and placing her free hand on your back as she snapped a photo. “And don’t forget to come to my place tonight,” she reminded you as she reluctantly pulled away.

The grin fell from your face and you look to the side, uncomfortably. “I don’t know, Captain, you know I’m not crazy about parties,” you were looking for a way out, and normally she’d let you miss out on the parties. Not tonight though.

“Hey, Y/N,” she whispered as she stepped closer to you and placed her hand on your shoulder, pulling you a bit closer. “Just for an hour, please,” she gave you her best puppy eyes look. “Just this once, I promise,” she’d keep inviting you in case you changed your mind, just like she did over the past couple of years, but just this once she’d do her best to convince you.

“I don’t know, Jeff isn’t my biggest fan,” you were making excuses, even if it really was true that Jeff didn’t like you much.

“That’s his bruised ego, and I’ll handle him,” she promised you. “I really want you to be there tonight,” she could see your defenses crumbling as her smile widened. “Okay? You’ll do it for me, Y/N?”

You let out a sigh like she asked you to give up soccer for her instead of spending an hour in a crowded house at a party. “Okay, but just one hour and no alcohol,” you set your conditions and sure, Jackie could work with that, though she had no idea how you were Nat’s best friend and refused alcohol.

“Thanks,” she whispered but didn’t pull away, there was just something about you that made her a lot more comfortable than she was willing to admit.

“Jackie! Let’s go!” she heard Shauna calling her and sighed, stepping away from you.

“Tonight!” she reminded you and you gave her a thumbs up.

~X~

As you promised you showed up, greeted everyone and were present at Jackie’s birthday party, though you were mostly sticking close to Nat and Van.

“So? Nerd in jock’s clothing, the Yellowjackets’ party evader, how does it feel to crack under pressure?” Van teased you and, with one arm around your neck and the other gesturing to the crowded room you were in. “All this could have been a part of your life way sooner, Y/N, if you only listened.”

“You are too sober to be that dramatic,” Nat shook her head, already on her second beer.

“Touché,” Van agreed and handed you a beer bottle. “Live a little, Y/N,” she urged you to drink.

You pushed the bottle back gently. “Hard pass,” you were not about to drink and drive, even if it was just one beer.

“More for me,” Van shrugged as the music started and you were amazed at how loud it was.

“I can’t even hear my own thoughts!” you shouted.

“What?!” Nat, who saw your lips moving, yelled back.

“Exactly my point!” and so you gave up on talking, instead just waiting for the hour to pass.

About ten minutes later you caught Jackie’s eye and grinned, raising your glass in a quiet cheer and you could have sworn her eyes softened a bit, or maybe you were just imagining it.

And finally, exactly an hour after you arrived, you stepped outside, letting out a sigh of relief at finally being able to hear your own thoughts. For what it was worth it it was fun, hanging out with everyone, especially once music stopped being so loud, and Jackie kept her word. The worst Jeff did was look annoyed when he saw you arriving, something Jackie quickly fixed with a stern glare.

“Y/N,” you stopped in your tracks right at the bottom of the stairs. You didn’t expect her to notice, to lose track of time and realize you are gone after you left. Yet Jackie noticed the moment you stepped out of her home.

You turned around and there she was, wearing a rather nice light blue dress, looking ridiculously beautiful without even trying. “Captain,” you smiled apologetically. “An hour passed,” you said.

“And you’re leaving without saying goodbye?” she asked, though she didn’t sound hurt, more amused than anything. “That’s just like you, you know?”

“I figured you were busy,” you shrugged, when you saw her a few minutes ago she was having a talking with Lottie and playing beer pong with Shauna, Tai and some of the other girls from the team.

“Never too busy for you,” she said, reaching up to touch her necklace, it was a habit she had, from what you noticed. “Were you not having fun?” she sounded surprisingly insecure when she asked you that.

“No, it’s not that, not at all,” you shook your head, your gaze softening. “The best party I was ever at,” she laughed at that.

“It’s probably the only party you were ever at,” caught you there, red-handed and you could just raise your hands in surrender. “You are really leaving right now?” she asked, leaning slightly against the pillar on her front porch. You agreed to spending one hour here, and maybe, just maybe she hoped you’d lose track of time.

“Venison, vibe, victory, or something,” you shrugged, messing up the old Latin phrase very much on purpose.

Jackie rolled her eyes and went down the stairs, approaching you. Your eyes widened as she placed her arms loosely around your shoulders. “Acting all cute now, are you?” she still looked amused as she looked into your eyes.

“Girl, I’m adorable,” you said with the confidence you had no idea you had outside of adrenaline-fueled situations.

“Sure, you are,” she smacked your shoulder playfully as you got lost in her eyes. “That’s the first time since you joined the team that you called me anything but Captain,” she pointed out.

“You’re keeping track?” you inquired, and she looked away for a moment before shrugging.

“Maybe,” she said, biting her lower lip as the party continued inside the house. “I can’t convince you to stay any longer?” she asked, looking at you hopefully.

“Sorry, Captain,” you apologized.

She stepped back a bit, raising her hands in surrender. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

You chuckled at that, the ghost of her touch lingering on your shoulders. “I’ll see you next week,” you said and before you could change your mind and give into what she wanted turned around and got into your car.

“Y/N,” she called out to you just as you started the engine and you looked at her. “Thanks for coming tonight,” she was smiling at you and you smiled back, waving her goodbye as you drove off.

~X~

You parked the car in front of your house after driving Wade to school and smiled mischievously.

You could have done this like a normal person, but where was fun in that? You were both late anyway. So, with the most infuriating smirk on your face, you walked outside and went to the side of the house, stopping right under your window and singing at the top of your lungs. “And so, I wake in the morning, and I step outside, and I take a deep breath and I get real high, and I scream from the top of my lungs: What's going on?” three, two, one…

“Shut up!” and right on cue Nat screamed from your bedroom.

Mission accomplished.

You went back inside, stopped by the kitchen to get your coffee and water for Nat and went upstairs. “You’re awake! I’m on my second coffee!” you exclaimed, coming into the bedroom and showing Nat an almost empty mug of cold coffee. She tried to glare at you as you placed a glass of water next to the bed for her.

“You drink too much coffee,” Nat groaned, turning around and burying her face in the pillow.

You glanced at the almost empty mug and downed the rest. “Guilty as charged,” you shrugged, fairly sure it wasn’t even waking you up anymore. Maybe it was just placebo. Maybe you already drank all the effective coffee you could. No, actually not, your thoughts were a bit too hectic and you felt a bit too jittery for that to be the case.

Nat reluctantly turned her head to look at you. “You already had your morning run?” she asked and glanced at the alarm clock on your bedside table. “Yeah, you already did,” she figured, much to your amusement. You did have your morning run, with the soccer ball and Blitz by your side.

“Come on, up and at ‘em, I’m gonna make us breakfast,” you snapped your fingers a few times, already walking out, you already missed the first period, and you’d probably miss the second as well, but most teachers probably expected that, since it was Jackie’s 18th birthday on Friday and it was no secret that most of the class would be too drunk to wake up in time even after the whole weekend. Hell, you were sure there were parties all weekend.

Nat groaned. “You know I’m not used to having breakfast this early,” she complained and reluctantly sat up, opening the small drawer under your table and getting an Advil for her hangover.

“I’ll pretend we had the whole breakfast conversation to save time,” you chuckled and went downstairs. You didn’t even have to be in the room with Nat to know she flipped you off.

~X~ January 16th, 1996, ~X~

For once you didn’t spend the last night playing soccer, no, instead you were lying on your bed, looking at the ceiling as the cold air came in through the open window. You were already dressed, ready to go at any moment; in fact, you’ve been ready for over an hour now, even if every year went the same way.

And just like last year, just like every year prior to it over the past seven years, at 4 in the morning you heard a knock on your doors and got up, letting out a heavy sigh as you got up and opened the doors.

Your dad was there, all set to leave. There weren’t any greetings, there weren’t any words exchanged between the two of you, you just silently went down the stairs and into the garage. You started the engine and drove away with your father in the passenger seat. The music was turned off, like it always was when you and your father were in the car.

An hour later you parked by the graveyard in a town north of Wiskayok and walked down the familiar path to your mother’s grave. You stood there, shivering slightly as your father wiped some dirt off the headstone. Ten long years without her, ten years of your father being like this, refusing to hear any music, refusing to raise Wade or spend any time he didn’t have to with him.

“Dad,” you spoke up for the first time today and he looked at you, his eyes filled with tears. “You can’t keep doing this,” you told him, desperately hoping he’ll understand.

“He doesn’t belong here,” your dad said, his voice gruff, actually filled with resentment and you let out a humorless laugh.

“Are you even hearing yourself right now? Can’t you for once in ten years look past your grief and think about us?” you were getting angry, you were running out of time, and he wasn’t changing. “I’m going to college this year! How can I do that knowing you’re not taking care of Wade?” you demanded, and he at least looked ashamed, not that it changed your situation in any way.

“Let’s not do this here,” he tried to ignore the problem, like he always did, even though there was no one else here with you.

“There isn’t a place you’d ever want to do this in,” you spat out, yet you still gave in, following him back to the car and driving back to Wiskayok.

Four hours later you were in the kitchen, making waffles and making sure Blitz doesn’t pop balloons that were in the living room. Blitz suddenly ran up the stairs, and you grinned, setting two plates of waffles on the table with hot chocolate for Wade and a coffee for you.

“Y/N!” Wade ran into the kitchen, jumping into your arms as Blitz ran around the two of you.

“Hey, birthday boy!” you ruffled his hair and spun around. “Excited for today?” you asked, hell bent on giving him the best birthdays you could, no matter what.

“Yeah!” all the sorrow in your heart faded away at the sight of his wide grin, the same grin your mom had. “You’ll keep your promise, right?” he asked happily and you nodded, come hell or high water, you’d never break your promise to him.

“I’ll teach you how to swim today,” you confirmed as you lowered him back down.

He didn’t even sit down to eat, he grabbed a box and stuffed waffles in it and just began dragging you to your car, and you let him, he was in charge today, after all. “Come on, come on!” he said, bouncing on his feet as he waited for you to unlock your car.

You just chuckled, letting him in and making sure he put the seatbelt on. “Eat breakfast,” you said as you ruffled his hair.

You’ve been driving a lot today, since Wiskayok did not have an indoor swimming pool, because there was no way you’d take him swimming in the river, but it was worth it as long as Wade was happy. And he was, he’s been rambling and singing in the backseat of your car since he got in the car.

The parking lot had plenty of empty spaces, so you figured not a lot of people were inside, which made sense, it was the middle of January. “We’re here buddy,” you grinned and turned to him, handing him his first swimming goggles, the ones with wide one-piece lenses because they looked cool and he, like most boys his age, liked things to look cool. “Here you go, soon to be teenager with attitude,” you teased him. Now that you thought about it ‘teenagers with attitudes’ fit the team quite well.

Wade pouted. “Y/N, it’s Power Rangers,” he complained as he put on his goggles and the pout vanished, replaced once more with a wide grin.

“You can teach me all about them later, let’s go now,” you stepped out of the car and locked it, and he immediately ran off. “Now, remember, I am here, but you also have to be careful and take it slow,” you warned him again when you caught up to him.

Yet Wade just grabbed your hand, dragging you inside. “I’ll be fine, sis, you’re with me!” he was so certain of it, and between how much he trusted you and how much he relied on you, you actually considered taking him with you to college, because with the way your dad was there was no way leaving Wade behind would be a good choice.

Would it be difficult to organize everything? Yeah, but you figured you were used to hectic schedules by now. So, you made a silent promise to yourself, if it was the last thing you’d do, you’d make sure he wouldn’t be on his own while you go to study.

He was a slow learner, at least as far as swimming went, but by the end of your stay in the pool he was swimming mostly on his own, with you right next to him just in case. “Am I just bad at this?” he asked, and you realized he spent better part of his life listening to your dad praising your swimming.

“It takes practice, buddy,” you reassured him as you helped him get out of the pool. “Besides, you were swimming on your own just now, weren’t you?” he nodded at that and looked at the diving platform.

“Will I ever be able to jump like you?” he asked as you got out of the pool as well.

It was hypocrisy, but you felt a shiver run down your spine at the thought of Wade jumping from cliffs like you did. You couldn’t explain it, but you just had an awful feeling about it, but you pushed it aside and got down on one knee, lifting your pinkie finger to his eye level. “How about I pinkie promise I’ll teach you how to do it on your twelfth birthday?”

And even then, you’d be careful, teaching him just the technique, nothing more, at best he’d jump from the one-meter platform, and you were not letting him get anywhere near even the three-meter one until he turns fifteen or sixteen.

But that was enough for him, as he hugged you tightly. “Carry me?” he asked suddenly, and you let out a weak laugh, carrying him on your back to the car once you both got ready to leave, and then carrying him inside the house in your arms as he fell asleep on the backseat of your car.

~X~

While Wade got to rest for a couple of hours you had to tend to other tasks, such as driving to get the dinner for the birthday party because there was no way you were cooking tonight, especially since Wade had a couple of friends over, as well as renting a cartoon movie for them to watch.

And ever since dinner you’ve been watching the boys like a hawk while they played in the snow, desperately hoping none of them slips and breaks something. “I’m gonna sleep like a log tonight, Blitz,” you complained to the dog who was lying next to you.

The Rottweiler yawned and rolled onto his back, awaiting belly rubs like he spent the day working two jobs instead of being about as involved in the birthday preparations as your father. “That was too harsh, you’re an awesome dog, you didn’t pop any balloons!” you crouched down, giving him his much needed belly rubs and feeding him some chicken.

“Boys! Dinner time! Don’t make me use my adult voice!” you yelled from the kitchen and by some miracle it worked. “Wash your hands first!” you yelled, which, of course, caused some groans and complaints that they were playing in the snow, but other than that and the regular kid complaints and random noises, the dinner went by fine.

And then Wade blew out candles, and you sat them down in the living room to watch the cartoon, and you could finally, finally just close your eyes for five minutes. That is until Wade walked into the kitchen and hugged you. “Thanks,” he whispered, looking at you like he knew exactly how long today was for you.

“Don’t mention it,” you said, wrapping one arm around him. “I’m here,” and that meant you’d protect him from everything you could protect him from. “I’ll always be here,” you whispered, kissing the top of his head.

He didn’t even ask where your dad was, he was used to him spending today at your aunt’s, his sister’s house.

The front doors swung open, and you knew it was Nat, walking in like she’s been doing over the past two years. “Nat!” Wade exclaiming, running into the hallway to greet her, and Blitz perked up next to you, sitting up instead of lying down and patiently waiting for Nat to come and pet him.

So much for scary Rottweiler.

“Come on, Blitz, let’s go,” you said, choosing to walk to the hallway. The Rottweiler obediently followed right next to you, and you smiled at the sight of Nat kneeling and hugging Wade.

“Happy birthday,” Nat’s voice was a lot gentler than it was with anyone else, and the feeling was absolutely mutual. Wade adored her. “And of course, it’s not a birthday without gifts,” Nat said and handed him a copy of The Jungle Book with a bow wrapped around it.

Wade looked at the book with awe, and you already knew you’d be reading it together as soon as tomorrow night. “Thanks, Nat!” he hugged Nat again and Nat smiled, visibly relaxing.

“Don’t mention it, just don’t stay up too late reading it,” she teased him though she wiped the corner of her eye nonchalantly and then turned to pet Blitz as well.

Meanwhile you just leaned sideways against the wall, feeling at peace as you watched the three of them. In a different world your mom would have loved Nat, and so would your dad, if he wasn’t so stuck in grief, but that wasn’t your life. This was, and no matter how much you yearned for that different world, you had to accept that this was all you had right now and that it had to be enough.

Wade and Blitz ran into the living room, leaving you and Nat alone in the hallway and stopping your train of thoughts.

“You really didn’t have to, you know he’d be happy with just you being here,” you whispered to Nat, but she nudged you with her elbow.

“Don’t argue with me,” she ordered, and you rolled your eyes and, with one arm wrapped around her shoulders, led her to the kitchen. “Any chance I can get beer?” she asked hopefully.

“If you’ll tell the brats its apple juice,” you said and looked over your shoulder, making sure no kids were coming your way before pouring half a bottle of beer into a glass.

“I’ll tell them anything you want,” Nat said, downing the entire glass immediately and gesturing with her hands for you to refill it.

“The things I do to avoid being driven crazy by a bunch of kids,” you chuckled, thankful you at least had Nat by you side to help you survive the glorified task of babysitting a bunch of ten-year-olds.

“Oh no, you gave me a beer, how will anyone ever top that sacrifice,” Nat mocked you sarcastically as you handed her a piece of cake and went back to filling up snack bowls for the boys.

“Keep talking, Scatorccio, I’ll get one of the brats to call you aunt,” you threatened between yawns, and she visibly shivered at the thought of that.

“Don’t you dare, I’m serious,” Nat glared at you, like she could ever seriously threaten you. “How did you two spend the day?” she asked, noticing you were just about ready to drop.

“I taught him how to swim,” you’d fondly remember today for a long time. Nat stood up and took over the task of filling the bowls with snacks.

“I’ve got the brats, take a nap,” she pretty much ordered and you weren’t even going to argue, you hugged her for a few seconds and sat down, falling asleep the moment you were given permission to sleep, and if Nat noticed you and Wade had the same tendency to hug people you loved then she wasn’t going to say a word.

~X~

Jackie envisioned tonight going a lot differently, for starters the party would have lasted a lot longer, instead of cops showing up and her, Shauna and Jeff scrambling to escape in Jeff’s car. And that she could take. Most of the parties ended that way, seven times out of ten she fled the party with someone, and the other three she’d just leave before the frantic escape had to happen.

No, that wasn’t the issue. The issue was Jeff not taking a no for an answer now that they dropped Shauna off.

“I am not losing my virginity in the back of your car,” she rejected his advances instantly, crossing her arms defensively and leaning against the doors.

He mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, not that Jackie needed to understand him to know what his problem was. And frankly she was getting sick and tired of it. Since summer vacation last year, he’s been getting more and more persistent, slowly chipping away at her resistance and pushing her further and further.

She reached up, tugging gently at the golden heart necklace as she bit her lower lip. “Stop the car,” she suddenly said, knowing how this would end. He’d drive her home, park a few houses away and sneak in through the window because she’ll let him. She’d say she’s tired, he’d say she’s fine, she’s stop arguing to avoid waking up her parents and he’d sneak back out after getting a blowjob.

“What?” he sputtered, acting all confused like he couldn’t possibly understand why she was irritated.

“Stop the car, I’ll go home on foot,” Jackie said, ignoring how cold it was, ignoring that it was snowing and that she had roughly two and a half miles to walk at half past ten at night. All she wanted was to get out of Jeff’s car and avoid what would inevitably happen if he drove her home.

“Jackie-“ he wasn’t listening, he rarely listened when he was in the mood.

“Stop the fucking car, Jeff!” she shouted, and he stopped the car so abruptly the tires screeched. And that was all she wanted, she stepped out of the car and slammed the doors shut behind her. He argued, he whined, she broke up with him again, it was the same old argument that would leave them broken up for a day or two.

Always the same old boring story with her. At least she wouldn’t have to aggressively brush her teeth tonight.

She walked across the bridge when a car stopped on the other side of the street and for a moment her heart skipped a beat. “Captain?” oh she was going to smack you for nearly giving her a heart attack and then hug you because it was you and not some creep.

“Hey, Y/N,” she tried to smile, put on a mask, she really did, but she just wasn’t in the mood for that.

“Hop in,” you said and she shook her head, not really in the mood for explaining why she was walking alone this late at night, in this cold and dressed to impress instead of to stay warm.

You parked the car at the bus stop right after the bridge and stepped out, running up to her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Captain, you’ll catch a cold if you walk home,” you weren’t asking questions, and she finally noticed how tired you looked.

Fuck, it really was freezing outside and she hugged herself. “Promise you won’t ask any questions,” she pleaded, definitely not in the mood to talk about her relationship problems. Though, no matter how fond she was of you, she didn’t exactly see herself telling you about her aversion to giving Jeff blowjobs.

“No questions,” you promised immediately, and she let out a sigh of relief and began walking by your side to your car.

“What are you doing out this late at night?” she thought you’d be the last person she’d run into tonight. Hell, she was almost certain her birthday party was the last party you attended, not that she kept track of your activities, she just went to a lot of parties, and you weren’t there. The fact that she asked you not to ask any questions and then went to ask you questions went unnoticed.

You groaned and Jackie was sure she never heard so much exhaustion in one single groan. “I had to drive a bunch of kids back home. Today is Wade’s tenth birthday and yeah, you can figure out the rest,” that made sense, knowing you.

“Sounds like you,” she commented, surprised by how much she relaxed already. There was just something about you that made her feel more comfortable and for once she allowed herself not to think about Jeff or anything else and just stay in this moment.

This very cold moment.

You noticed how cold she was, because of course you did. “You are not dressed for this cold,” you shook your head, but you still took your jacket off and handed it to her, and considering she’s been freezing since she stepped out of Jeff’s car Jackie wasn’t about to argue with you.

“You know what they say, you can’t be hot and hot at the same time during winter,” she joked, sighing in utter relief as she put your jacket on. You smelled nice, not that she paid much attention to that. Not at all. Just crossed her mind that the perfume you used was pleasant.

“Sure, Captain,” you smirked and opened the passenger doors for her. That was new. Jeff did not do that. At all. It was nice.

“It’s true! There was even a study about it!” she declared boldly as you got into the car and laughed, though it didn’t sound as energetic as it usually was. You really were tired, and she could see that even better now that she was warm and in your car instead of out in the cold.

“A study?” you asked incredulously, and she feigned an offended gasp and even dramatically placed her hand over her chest. This felt right, easy, there was no pressure, no expectations of anything sexual happening once the ride back home was over. There weren’t any expectations whatsoever.

“I can’t believe you’d doubt me, Y/N,” she looked out the window, hiding the grin on her face. “I’ll have you know I put in a lot of effort into that study and Shauna helped by being hot,” she had to stifle a laugh as she said that.

You got back on the road and from the corner of her eye she could see you grinning. “Which hot are we talking about here?” you inquired.

Jackie stuck her tongue out. “Not telling.”

“Oh, great, like I haven’t spent enough time with ten-year-olds today,” you teased her as you turned left.

She gasped, feeling the genuine sting at being compared to kids. “Wow. Is that how it is?” she crossed her arms and leaned back against the seat, pouting. “I’m a ten-year-old? And here I thought we had something special, Y/N.”

“Those two are not mutually exclusive,” you chuckled and she scoffed, rolling her eyes at you.

“You’re so lucky I like you,” she wasn’t even joking as she, just to be petty, changed songs, and you let her. Just like you let her drag you to the team all those years ago, choosing her as your captain long before she was chosen by coach Martinez.

And somehow, without her even properly noticing it, she was no longer thinking about her argument with Jeff. Here, in your car, she could just be your captain, without any masks or expectations weighing on her.

~X~ April 1996 ~X~

Kimberly leaned against a locker, a large wooden board filled with papers in front of her. Instinctively she brought her thumb to her lips and bit her nail as she remembered the tapes she got from one of the most recent games. “Hey,” she heard Yumi’s voice, she felt wrapped chocolate bar being pushed into her hand, but she didn’t turn around, she continued staring at the team formation of the Yellowjackets like it would give her answers she needed.

But Yumi, her best friend and fellow striker, was nothing if not stubborn. “Come on, Kim, you have to eat something,” Yumi said, reaching up and gently grasping Kimberly’s hand, releasing the chewed-up nail from her teeth. “And you have to quit worrying so much.”

It was easy for Yumi to say, but she still gave in, taking a bite of the chocolate bar and feeling the sweetness relax her, if only for a minute. “I hoped someone would have won against them,” she admitted as she stared at what might as well be one of the most offensively playing teams in the championship. And they came out of nowhere three years ago, captained first by Ashley Richards and now Jackie Taylor.

“We can match them, our offense is stacked,” Yumi was confident, and in most cases she would have been confident too.

She hit the play on the old video player and fast forwarded to the first counterattack of the game. “Watch,” she said as you stole the ball from right under the opposing team striker’s nose, passing the ball to easily the worst player on the team, since the girl lost it nearly immediately. It didn’t matter though, you got it back before the opposing team could advance far.

You passed the ball to another player, way further ahead this time, the girl, who Kimberly learnt was Charlotte Matthews, dribbled past two defensive players and passed the ball to the team captain, and Jackie scored a goal. Kimberly fast forwarded the tape further ahead, to a similar counterattack, this one also started by you stealing the ball.

“Shit,” Yumi cursed as Kimberly sat down and tossed the remote aside. “You have a plan, right?” she asked and Kimberly wanted to exclaim that this wasn’t something she should do on her own, that their coach should have been right here with her, making plans for the game next week, for the fucking semifinals that might as well be the finals because whoever won the other semifinal would not be nearly as much of a challenge as Yellowjackets.

But no, that guy couldn’t be bothered.

“I do,” she said, because she did have a plan, though it had nothing to do with changing their tactics or approach.

That night Kimberly stepped out of her car near the soccer field that belonged to Wiskayok High, she didn’t think she’d ever come here, but here she was. And there you were, practicing on your own. You didn’t notice her yet, so focused on the ball everything else faded away. Well, that definitely didn’t change.

You were going to take a sharp turn to the right, and then another one to the left, and sure enough, moments later you did just that. Your movement was more refined, sure, but at its core, not much changed.

She took a couple of steps forward, her eyes still on you as you kicked the ball and ran after it, and just for a moment she wanted to run by your side, to be the one you pass the ball to. And then that fleeting desire turned into bitterness as she walked onto the field. “Y/N!” she exclaimed your name, finding it difficult to say it again after so long.

You froze and turned to look at her, your eyes wide as you looked at her. She didn’t say anything, and for a long time neither did you, you both just stood there, her by the bench and you in the middle of the field. “Kim,” you dared to call her by her nickname, like you didn’t betray her all those years ago.

~X~

Since you moved to Wiskayok halfway through the freshmen year Natalie had a lot of time to get to know you, and in her humble opinion she believed she could read you fairly well. Not that it mattered how well she knew you, since she was sure someone could write a whole book about anxiety solely based on your body language.

“You okay, Y/N?” if Allie who knew you for like three months at this point caught on then there was no doubt in Natalie’s mind that everyone was seeing something was wrong with you.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you lied, tugging on your collar as the rhythmic sound of you tapping your foot as if you wanted to dig a hole in the floor continued on.

Natalie caught Jackie’s gaze, the subtle nod toward you as if telling Natalie to talk to you, yet Natalie just spread her arms and shrugged, she tried, you just wouldn’t say a word. All morning, since you came to pick her up and she saw you were clearly running on too much coffee, she’s been trying to make you open up and tell her what’s wrong, but you were like a vault.

“Y/N,” Laura Lee sat down next to you and placed her hand on your bouncing knee and if she wasn’t worried Natalie would have been amused by the sight of Laura Lee’s hand moving like she was trying to send a message on an ancient telegraph machine. “Whatever is going on, Lord will guide you,” she offered you the comfort the best way she could.

Personally, Natalie’s been disillusioned with faith, or at least the idea of a benevolent higher power, but they’ve all gotten used to Laura Lee’s strong beliefs. You patted Laura Lee on the back, your hand shaking a bit as you refused to even look anyone in the eyes. “Thanks,” you told her and got up, heading to the sink and splashing water in your face just as coach Martinez arrived.

“Alright girls, listen up! We’ve got semifinals in a week! Let’s talk tactics!” he exclaimed but the whole team still looked at you as you ran your fingers through your hair and took several deep breaths.

“I’m not playing,” you said, and Natalie swore she could hear the pin drop.

Chapter Text

-Livin' in ruins of a palace within my dreams, and you know, we're on each other's team-

~X~ April 1992 ~X~

Children are cruel.

You were sitting in the hospital, waiting for the nurse to come out with Wade, you knee bouncing as you sat there, eyes locked on the doors as if you could possibly miss Wade coming out.

“Y/N,” you heard Kim calling your name, but you didn’t look to the side, not right away. Something squeezed at your heart, and you clenched your jaw, tightening your grip on your knees. “Look at me, you traitor!” you heard her running up to you, still breathless from the game and probably running to the hospital.

You didn’t resist her when she grabbed your collar, when she made you turn to look at her, at the fury in her eyes that had no place in the eyes of any fourteen-year-old. “Wade is sick,” you said simply, not as an excuse, not as a way to defend yourself, just as a fact, and it angered Kim even more.

“Then your dad should have taken him to the hospital,” she was barely restraining herself from yelling again, since you were still at the hospital. “We lost, Y/N, and it’s your fault,” you knew that the moment she got here, the moment she said your name the way she did. “The finals, we would have been the champions, but we didn’t have our striker,” she released you like she was disgusted to even hold your collar.

“One player doesn’t make a team, Kim,” you sighed, looking to the side.

“And this isn’t professional soccer,” she snapped, her tone sharp and accusatory. And it wasn’t professional soccer, come high school most of the girls would never even touch the ball again, the teams weren’t made up of relatively even players, they were made of a couple of exceptional players and others who treated it as what it was at this level, a game kids played.

The silence between you and Kim grew, the sting of loss festering, corroding the years of friendship away. Your priorities were clear, and her fury couldn’t be quelled. “Don’t you ever play soccer again, you don’t have that right,” she didn’t have the right to take it away from you, but you were kids, and you just lost your best friend.

Her footsteps echoed as she walked away and you resigned yourself to being alone for the rest of middle school.

True, most of the girls playing soccer would quit playing it. For now though, the loss would sting every time they look at you.

~X~ Apil 1996 ~X~

Four years later you were in an eerily similar situation, once again choosing between two things you loved, once again choosing one person over the team you felt like you belonged in, even more than you did back in middle school. “I’m not playing,” the words barely came out, you had to force yourself to say them, to force them become reality, fearing you’d crack at the last moment if you didn’t say them.

The silence that followed was deafening, the usual buzz of the locker room gone and you could feel every pair of eyes on you as you turned away from the sink and looked at them. Most of them were too stunned to even speak up. Even Nat and Jackie looked like they were rendered speechless, even Shauna who you didn’t usually get along stared at you like she was certain someone else took your place.

Was Laura Lee muttering a prayer? Well, all things considered maybe that shouldn’t have surprised you as much as it did.

“What?!” Taissa was the first to recover as she jumped to her feet and came up to you, her eyes already flashing with justified anger. “Y/N, this better be a dumb joke,” she glared at you and though there was less than a foot between you she didn’t try to grab you.

“I’m sorry,” you had no intentions of resisting, whatever Taissa or anyone else did, you were fine with it. They had every right to be angry.

You watched as one by one your teammates got over their initial shock, demanding explanations as one. The only ones too surprised to act in any way were Nat, Jackie and Shauna. The locker room was filled with cacophony of questions, confusion and anger, all three bringing the temperature up in the already heated room. And you were in the middle of it, and as hard as coach Martinez tried he couldn’t regain control over the team.

“You’re sorry?” Taissa’s laugh came out as hollow as she turned away from you, clearly doing her best not to flip out right away. “That’ll fix everything! Don’t you worry, Y/N, at least you’re sorry!” she slammed her palm against the locker, making some of the girls flinch as the lockers rattled.

“Everyone calm down,” Jackie said firmly, and the silence engulfed the room instantly, as she finally stood up and approached you slowly. “I’m sure Y/N has a reason,” she said, looking into your eyes.

“Jackie, this is semifinals,” Taissa reminded her and you could see Jackie’s face twisting in a frown.

“I know!” she snapped, just as on edge as Taissa and you, only hiding it a lot better as she took your hand and began pulling you outside. “The rest of you start the drills, Y/N and I will join you soon!” she ordered with a sense of finality in her tone.

“Yeah, sure, Jackie, we’ll just pretend this isn’t happening,” Van spread her arms in disbelief.

“I said start the drills!” Jackie ordered, tightening her grip on your hand.

“Captain, there’s no use talking about this,” you said as she dragged you around the corner of the gym, away from prying eyes. If the circumstances were any different you might have even felt nostalgic.

And from the looks of it you weren’t the only one. “This is where we first talked, remember?” she asked you, much to your surprise. Not only that she remembered, but that she considered that ‘talking,’ it was more like her splitting you and Jeff up and telling you to back off while you glared at her boyfriend.

That little scuffle was also why Jeff couldn’t stand you to this day, in your defense, him and Randy started it. Not that it took long for you back then to get in a fight.

You chuckled, leaning back against the wall and looking a bit to the side where you stood that day, wiping blood from your chin. “I left an awful first impression,” yet you fondly remembered that moment.

Jackie huffed, leaning against the wall next to you, your shoulders nearly touching. “Tell me about it. You were so angry and unapproachable,” she recalled. “I don’t think I saw you without at least three band-aids on your face the whole freshmen year, or well, the second half that you were here,” and it was true. You kept getting into fights, into all sorts of trouble.

“And then you dragged me to the soccer practice the first week of sophomore year,” you chuckled, remembering how much you protested that day, yet Jackie was persistent, and you never learnt why she was so adamant on getting you on the team.

Jackie sighed, like she knew it was time to get to the point. “Why aren’t you playing?” she asked and you could have sworn her voice cracked a bit. He big, expressive eyes made you wish you could sink into the wall behind you and you crossed your arms, looking away just to avoid her gaze.

“I can’t,” you wished you could tell her, tell the whole team, in fact, but you couldn’t. Hell hath no fury like woman scorned. Only this time it was a teenage girl who was scorned and was causing you to invoke the wrath of close to two dozen girls.

“Why?” Jackie demanded weakly. “What happened all of a sudden? Y/N, you love soccer, more than any of us, so why now when it’s our most important game?” if you won this there was no way you’d lose in the finals, you’d be state champions, you’d go to nationals.

“I played soccer in middle school,” you couldn’t stay completely silent.

Jackie raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I figured that one out. You were really good from the beginning,” she said, not sure what that had to do with anything.

“I played as a striker, with Kimberly, we had everything figured out, once either of us got the ball chances were we’d score a goal. She’s on the team we’re going to play against in semifinals,” you swallowed the lump in your throat. “I,” you pinched the bridge of your nose, taking a deep breath as Jackie listened. “I made her mad, Captain,” you never thought she’d still be mad at you, but that old fury was still burning bright enough.

“Wait, what? What does that have to do with you not playing?” Jackie asked, approaching the middle school drama like a normal person would, believing it would have no consequences right now. “Sure, she probably knows how you play, but you being off the field is a lot worse than her knowing how to play against you.”

You shook your head, wishing it was that simple. “She blackmailed me, if I play she’ll do something I can’t let happen,” you weren’t about to say any more details, and luckily it was enough as Jackie slumped against the wall.

“Oh, boy,” she whispered, digging her fingers into her hair. “Oh, fuck, that’s so messed up,” yeah, you agreed with that.

“I’m sorry, Captain, playing next week is not worth the cost,” it broke your heart, you knew you were making things a lot more difficult for the team, but you couldn’t play, no matter what, you couldn’t play.

Jackie placed her hand on your shoulder, squeezing gently. “We’ll kick her ass for you as well,” she promised you, and you felt like you didn’t deserve this much understanding from her.

“Thanks, Captain,” you replied, despite how you felt some of the weight was taken off your chest.

~X~

Jackie came back to the field alone and the team had what was perhaps the tensest practice in all the years they played together. It was clear now that you wouldn’t be playing and the only option was to hope Gen would be able to take your position. Though, with Allie and Gen so close to one another it was clear they’d have a huge gap there, one that a team around their level would easily be able to exploit.

But there was no point in trying to convince you to play now, which is why Natalie just dropped by to check up on you. She found you playing your guitar, the look on your face distant and almost empty, and if she had any doubts in the first place, now she knew for sure you were the one who was taking this the worst. Especially after the initial shock passed.

She didn’t say a word, she just sat down next to you and hoped her presence would comfort you, at least a bit. “I’m sorry I didn’t speak up in the locker room,” she apologized, feeling guilty. She was too shocked by what you said to react when most of the team descended upon you with their anger and confusion,

You smiled, though it didn’t quite reach your eyes. “I deserve their anger,” you truly believed that, having no idea the anger was no longer directed at you.

“Y/N-“ she began, but before she could tell you what happened when Jackie came back you were interrupted.

“Y/N!” Wade’s shout broke the melody you were playing as well as interrupted Natalie, and it made your priorities crystal clear as you immediately set the guitar aside and looked out the window and saw your younger brother standing under your window with Blitz by his side.

“What’s up?” you asked, doing your best not to sound like you were breaking internally. Natalie had long since learnt that the only thing more important to you than soccer was Wade, no matter what, and she dreaded the thought that maybe the blackmail had something to do with the boy.

“My kite got stuck in the tree,” she heard Wade telling you and despite everything going on, she smiled. The kid knew exactly when he needed your help, and this was one of those times.

“Wait for me,” you told him and immediately headed outside. You didn’t invite her to come with you, or tell her to stay in your room, it was entirely up to her.

“I’m coming with you,” Natalie said as she joined you, walking by your side to old, tall tree in your backyard where Wade was sitting on the grass, waiting for you with Blitz. She looked up and there the kite was, almost at the top of the tree. Chances were it was already torn by the branches, but knowing you that wouldn’t stop you. “Y/N, maybe this isn’t the smartest idea,” Natalie told you even as she knew she was wasting her breath.

Wade ran up to you. “Can you get it?” he asked with that ridiculous childish naivety, like you could make everything better. She remembered she was annoyed by that when she first started hanging out with you, but now it was kind of endearing that he had so much faith in you.

You looked up at the kite, your mouth hanging slightly open as you probably contemplated your life choices. Maybe this time you’d act reasonably and just let the kite stay up there.

Natalie watched as you reached down, covering Wade’s ears. “Shit,” you cursed under your breath and Natalie snorted at that, amused that you still tried to keep Wade from hearing curses.

Poor, naïve, friend of hers.

She missed it at the time, the moment of uncertainty in your eyes, the moment when reason and logic clashed with recklessness and the reason and logic crumbled to dust, giving way to something Natalie couldn’t quite name, especially now. You were a thrill seeker, sure, but this was something much more intense. “I should probably just get a shovel and dig a hole, skip a few steps,” you said randomly and took a few steps back to get a better at where the kite was exactly.

Natalie frowned, confused, as Wade ran off somewhere. “What?” she asked, baffled.

“Dumb joke, since there’s a good chance I might fall and break my neck,” you brushed it off and you were right, it was a really dumb joke.

“Don’t even joke about that,” she scolded you, really hating when you joked about that. “Listen to me, it’s not worth the risk.”

You looked at her, already determined to do this, no matter how dumb it was. She recognized that stubborn look, she knew it all too well by now. You opened your mouth to answer, but the sound of running caught your attention and both you and Natalie turned to the side to see Wade running with a shovel in his hands. “Well fuck me, neither one of us needs a college fund,” you said and Natalie burst out laughing at that.

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologized when she noticed you were staring at her blankly and somehow managed to calm down by the time Wade ran up to you again.

“Here!” Wade proudly presented the shovel to you and Natalie nearly lost it again as you slowly took the shovel and looked at it, as if actually considering if there was something you could use it for.

“On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t skip steps,” you said slowly and handed the shovel back to Wade and then you just moved, like thinking about your approach would just be the waste of time and before Natalie could even try to talk some sense into you, and much to her horror, you were already climbing the tree.

“And there she goes, as always,” Natalie sighed, knowing she was never going to get used to this side of you. The sound of branches moving, the thinner ones cracking under your feet made her anxious and for a moment she was back home, looking at the consequences of recklessness.  

“She’ll be okay,” Wade said so casually she felt like she was the crazy one for being worried.

She couldn’t help it. No matter how many times she watched you climbing up to that cliff over the river and jumping she still feared things would go wrong. “Yeah, she will be,” she said, convincing herself more than Wade.

“Got it!” you yelled from twenty feet up and slowly began climbing back down, only now with the kite in your left hand.

Natalie watched you carefully, and now that she wasn’t panicking as much, she saw there was no drama, no tension, you just carefully climbed down, testing your footing before each slight descent.

Natalie let out a sigh of relief as you safely jumped down from the lowest branch, safe and sound, with the kite in your hand. And sure enough, it was torn. All that for nothing. “You really love giving me heart attacks,” she complained as she brushed leaves off your shirt.

“Big sister duty,” you shrugged, smiling at her apologetically and handed Wade his kite. “It’s broken,” all for nothing, a completely unnecessary risk, but she shouldn’t have expected anything else from you of all people.

“Fuck,” Wade cursed and Natalie really wished she had Jackie’s camera because the face you made was priceless.

You stared at your brother and let out a long, heavy sigh. “Nat?” you asked and Wade looked away, his lips pursed as he denied the accusation and she innocently whistled, knowing she got caught. You sighed again. “Well, what the fuck, you were going to hear it sooner or later,” you accepted it and Natalie patted you on the back.

“No use crying over spilled milk,” she told you wisely with the most obvious shit-eating grin on her face. It was an accident, she didn’t know the kid came into the kitchen while she was making the two of you coffee, and he heard her cursing.

“You’re so lucky I love you,” you said with a hint of amusement in your tone as Wade ran off to play with something else now that his kite was fucked up beyond all repair.

The two of you went back inside and sat in the kitchen. “So, what’s the blackmail?” Natalie asked now that you were alone again. There was no point in beating around the bushes with this.

“Jackie told you,” you sighed and leaned forward, burying your face in your hands. “Kimberly’s mother works for CPS, and, well, dad isn’t exactly a model parent,” Natalie’s heart sank as you said that, the gravity of the situation dawning on her.

It didn’t take a genius to see your dad wouldn’t even fight it, he’d probably be happy, as sick and twisted as it was to think that. “Can’t you adopt him?” she asked, thinking that would solve everything if it got down to it. “Not that I’m telling you to play, just, in case it ever got to that point,” she quickly added.

You shook your head. “I checked, I need to be at least ten years older than him.”

“That’s bullshit! You’ve basically raised him!” and even if nothing happened, if he wasn’t taken from you it would still be traumatic for both you and Wade. Natalie got up and hugged you, pulling your head against her chest. “Nothing bad will happen, okay? You’ll skip the game, we’ll play twice as hard and win against that psycho bitch, I promise you,” and she’d do her damn best to keep her word.

~X~ May 1996, day of the semifinals ~X~

The number 10 on your uniform never felt as heavy as it did today. “You shouldn’t have come today,” you heard Jackie saying as she sat down next to you, ready for the game.

“Maybe,” you agreed, the weight of regret made you unable to even sit straight and you never felt as undeserving of Jackie’s hand on your shoulder. Jackie suddenly snapped her fingers in front of you.

“Hey, eyes on me,” she ordered in that firm captain tone she used whenever she wanted the team to listen, and you looked at her, unwilling to even try resisting her. “Everything will be okay,” she promised you.

“What Jackie said, they’ll regret resorting to blackmail,” much to your surprise Shauna joined in, sitting down next to Jackie, acting like she had no intention of comforting you in any way, but still being there.

And you had no idea how to react to it. For almost three years now you and Shauna were tolerating each other for Jackie’s sake, hearing Shauna say anything positive to you, even if it was a poorly hidden threat toward Kimberly and her team, frankly freaked you out. “Fuck, if you’re the one comforting me I’m sure I look like shit,” you tried to joke and earned yourself a playful shove from Jackie.

“Behave,” Jackie teased you. “Both of you,” she added when she saw Shauna grinning like she was rather pleased by Jackie teasing you.

“Yes, Jackie/Captain,” you both mock saluted before Jackie and Shauna left you sitting with the rest of the players on the sidelines.

~X~

‘The girl would have been beautiful if she wasn’t so ugly on the inside,’ those were Jackie’s first thoughts when she saw the captain of the other team. “Jackie, don’t do anything hasty,” Shauna warned her, she even grabbed Jackie’s wrist.

“Oh, it’s not hasty,” she said as she glared at Kimberly. “I’ve wanted to do it for a week now,” she said and despite Shauna’s grip on her wrist tightening a bit she marched her way to the girl the moment both teams were on the field.

“Jackie, no,” Shauna desperately tried to stop her and Jackie wanted to curse her for being stronger than her. And to make matters worse Kimberly noticed and actually dared to smirk.

“Let go, I’m gonna wipe that nasty little smirk off that bitch’s face,” Jackie hissed, for a moment glancing toward you, seeing you still slumped on the sidelines, emotionally wrecked by the blackmail. It didn’t matter that no one but Natalie knew what the blackmail was, knowing the bitch blackmailed you was enough.

“Wipe it by scoring a goal, not by slapping the shit out of her,” Shauna told her. “Or at least slap her after the game,” yeah, that sounded very tempting. Obliterate them in the game and then slap the bitch as a cherry on top of a karma cake.

“Fine,” she relented, still glaring at Kimberly as she got in her position and the game started with a blow of the whistle.

~X~

The moment you heard the whistle blowing your first instinct was to start playing, but you gripped your knees instead, feeling restless mere seconds into the game. “Come on, you can do this,” you weren’t even sure if you were telling yourself that, or if you were cheering for your team.

Gen in particular looked nervous, playing in your position when she was usually meant to play even further back. And it was showing from the very first moment Kimberly’s team got the ball.

They weren’t blind, they spotted a massive gap between Allie and Gen, forcing Shauna to fall back and move closer to their side to compensate for two weaker players. Which then left a gap between both your middle of the field and Nat and Lottie, and especially Jackie, but even worse than that it created a gap between Shauna and Taissa.

They were still doing fine. Shauna and Taissa doing miracles with what little they had and against a weaker team, it would have been enough. Against a weaker team those two could have ran circles. But the moment Kimberly got the ball the entire middle field of your team shattered. She passed it to the second striker in her team, doing the same tactic the two of you would use in middle school, short, quick passes and feints let them get through.

“Shit!” you cursed, gripping the bench underneath you as Kimberly dribbled past Mari and shot the ball toward the goal. “Left, Van!” she wouldn’t be able to hear you, but you still exclaimed.

Luckily, Van managed to dive for the ball and deflect it just in time.

You let out a sigh of relief, but in all your years playing on the team you’ve never seen them scrambling to stay in control like they were doing now. Fifteen minutes passed, coach Martinez was shouting from the sidelines, Jackie was doing her best to hype them all up, but the ball remained on your side of the field.

“It’s only a matter of time,” coach Ben said, running his fingers through his hair, already on the verge of wanting to pull his hair out.

“Don’t say that, coach!” Misty exclaimed, just as on edge as everyone else, and then, just as she said it, Kimberly scored the goal. “It’s just one goal, they’ve come back from tougher situations,” she tried to stay positive, but you could see the faces of the players closest to you.

Taissa’s determination, poorly hiding the lack of bounce to her steps, Laura Lee dreading yet another failed attempt to stop Kimberly and the other striker. Jackie, Nat and Lottie helplessly watching as they did their best to seal the gaps in the team’s defenses, but they simply weren’t used to having to do it for extended periods of time.

They were well aware of their weaknesses, and the other team was exploiting them without mercy.

Allie lost the ball, again; this time due to the other player kicking the ball between her feet and passing it to the opposing team’s other striker. For all their efforts they were too scattered, too used to you being there, too used to clearly defined roles in the team.

You didn’t think much about it, you didn’t consider the consequences, or if there was a sliver of hope Kimberly was bluffing. It was just pure impulse driving you to get up from the bench.

“Coach Martinez, substitute me in,” you said as Van barely managed to save another goal.

~X~

As the twentieth minute went by the whistle was blown and both teams looked to the side and Jackie stopped in her tracks.

“What is she doing?!” Natalie grabbed the sides of her head and Jackie had the exact same thought as she watched the board with numbers 16 and 10 on it.

“Being reckless,” Jackie saw this coming, she told you not to come, knew you wouldn’t be able to sit still if you saw their game was falling apart. It was too late to change anything now, Gen couldn’t be substituted back in, and the truth was the team really did need you. But she’d be damned if she didn’t scold you after the game.

Extensively as well. And probably after hugging you.

“Let’s make this count, girls!” she clapped her hands, pumping the rest of the team up as the game started again.

And damn, was it noticeable that you were on the field. Shauna was back in her usual position, her and Tai no longer had to cover half of the middle of the field, and now there was no longer a gap between Shauna and Lottie and Nat.

And it was noticeable in the enemy team as well, as Kimberly glared at you, seething with unreasonable levels of rage.

Kimberly had the ball and attempted to pass it to the other striker, but you simply rushed in, intercepting the ball before it could reach the other girl and it was like someone flipped the switch on the entire team as you, like you’ve been doing for several seasons now, started the counterattack. You dribbled past one girl and did a quick heel kick over the other before passing the ball to Shauna, and from there all it took was a couple of quick passes for the ball to reach Natalie and for her to score the goal, evening the score.

The rest of the first half was a more even back and forth, a soccer game beyond what should have been expected from high school soccer teams.

By the time the first half ended most of the players were getting tired, but Kimberly’s team looked like they needed rest more. With you leading the defense it was easier for the offensive players to catch their breaths, but the game was still even.

“What were you thinking?!” Natalie asked you the moment you all went to the locker room during the break.

“I couldn’t sit back and do nothing,” you said, leaning back against a locker and taking a few sips of water.

Taissa patted you on the shoulder, smiling. “We appreciate it. Whatever the bitch has on you, we’ll figure it out,” she promised, but Natalie slammed her palm against the locker, angry, but still not saying what the actual blackmail is.

You didn’t believe it either, from the looks of it. “There’s no going back now, let’s just focus on the game and I’ll cross that bridge when I get there,” you said, looking at Jackie and grinning a bit. “Captain, what’s the plan?”

Jackie smiled, her heart racing a bit faster due to the intensity of the game. She nodded and smiled at you. “Okay everyone, huddle up,” she said and before they knew it, the second half began.

The game continued to be even, with neither team getting a good attempt.

And then it happened, the decisive moment of the game.

For the first time in over thirty minutes Kimberly’s team made it past you and got the ball to Kimberly just as she was running toward the defenders. Yet for some reason all Jackie could look at was you, running toward your own goal instead of trying to intercept Kimberly.

Kimberly made a feint, tricking Van into leaping to the left and instead went for a bent shot, aiming the ball at the top right corner of the goal. Jackie watched the ball as if in slow motion, it was going to be a goal, there was no doubt about it, there was nothing Van could do, yet you kept running, and right as the ball was about to go over you, you leapt into the air, leaning back and twisting to the side before you kicked the ball with your right foot.

The ball shot through the field, miraculously reaching Shauna but all Jackie could look at was you, lying on the ground and pumping your fist up in the air.

“Jackie!” she heard Natalie yelling and blinked a few times, snapping out of her momentary daze just long enough to accept the ball and score the goal.

The score was 2 to 1, in their favor, but more importantly the game may have as well ended at that very moment. A display of skill followed by a flawless counterattack and scoring a goal broke the opposing team entirely and the rest of the game went by without much struggle, ending 5 to 1 with Jackie scoring twice and Shauna, Natalie and Lottie scoring once each.

~X~

With the game over and a definitive victory over Kimberly’s team officially behind you, you took a deep breath, approaching the other team while you were all still on the field. The other team moved out of your way, making a bit of a path toward their captain.

“You actually decided to play,” Kimberly sighed, the anger still burning in her eyes, perhaps even brighter now that she lost to your team. You didn’t think anyone could ever look at you with so much unconcealed rage, yet here Kimberly was, glaring at you like she wanted to tear you into pieces bit by bit.

“I did,” you nearly begged her to consider what she was about to do, to try and plead for her to have humanity, to grovel at her feet if needed, just to avoid losing your brother. “So, are you going through with what you promised?” you asked instead.

The silence stretched out uncomfortably, keeping you on edge as if you weren’t already tense.

Eventually, you got your answer. “I wish I could, I really do,” Kimberly sighed, looking toward the bleachers where Wade was. “It would punish you, and you may not get it, but I do think you deserve to be punished. He doesn’t though,” she said and looked you in the eyes. “Congratulations, Y/N,” she said and walked away. “You kept both things this time,” both your brother and your team.

You stood there, watching her back. No matter what Kimberly thought you’d never forgive her for this threat, for using Wade against you in any way, but, at the very least, she couldn’t go through with it. Maybe it really was just a hint of humanity within her breaking through her rage, convincing her Wade wasn’t the one to blame. Or maybe it was for the sake of your years-long friendship before everything changed that day four years ago.

Maybe it was something entirely different. You’d probably never know.

Either way, something told you neither you nor Kimberly would be eager to see one another in years to come. And you were fine with that, especially after this whole unnecessary drama.

From the corner of your eyes you saw Jackie walking up to you, smiling as she wrapped her arm around your shoulders. “I have a feeling things turned out fine,” she said and you nodded with a grin on your face. “So, arm around me then,” she demanded in the way only she could.

‘She’s straight, she has a boyfriend, this means absolutely nothing,’ you kept reminding yourself as you wrapped your arm around her waist and headed toward the rest of the team with Jackie by your side. Nat met you halfway, looking hopeful since you weren’t looking like your world was falling apart. “It did work out in the end, turns out she was bluffing,” you said and Nat actually ran the remaining few feet, jumping into your arms and knocking both you and Jackie down.

“Ow, watch it, Nat!” Jackie complained and sat up a bit, leaning back on her elbows as Nat got off you and sat down on the grass on your other side.

You laughed for what felt like the first time since Kimberly threatened you with CPS, the relief you felt was almost euphoric. Tonight, when adrenaline fades away and you go back home, when you see Wade again, at home, playing with Blitz, then everything will probably catch up to you.

When you finally see, once again, what you put on the line for a mere soccer game, regardless of how important it was, then you’ll be in for a sleepless night, for the guilt and regret and more empty promises that you won’t be as reckless and that you’d start thinking things through more carefully.

But for now, here on the soccer field, following an incredible victory and your own display of skill, you would be happy.

“Alright, team!” coach Martinez approached all of you, pleased and for a moment you dared to say proud. “I’m not saying you’re already state champions, but you’ve overcome the hardest obstacle, and I am proud of you girls,” he said as you, Nat and Jackie stood up.

The team gathered in a circle and as one the chant began. “Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz!” everyone chanted, celebrating the biggest victory to date.

~X~

The finals really were a walk in the park following the drama during the semifinals. The game ended with Jackie heading the ball into the goal, sealing the complete victory of Yellowjackets.

Considering what would happen mere days later maybe losing in semifinals would have been better, but as you all hugged each other, celebrating for all the right reasons, none of you knew what was waiting for you.

~X~ June 2002 ~X~

It was the same dream all over again, the snow-covered woods, the dark, cloudy sky, a girl dragging you as your vision faded in and out.

“Just a bit more, okay? We’re nearly there!” the girl encouraged you, but you could hear the panic in her voice, the fear and desperation were etched on her beautiful face, tears freezing halfway down her cheeks as she dragged you along.

You opened your mouth to speak, but no words came out, neither a plea to be rescued, nor her name, it all just faded to black, leaving only an overwhelming longing for the girl holding you in her arms only in your nightmares.

You sat up, screaming, cold sweat washing over you in the warm apartment. By now you were certain those nightmares were memories, but you didn’t dare to even think about them, hoping they’d fade away by the time the morning comes.

A/N: Did I intend to give Reader’s dad a bit of a redemption? Yes. But I ended up changing my mind. Did I intend to include episode 1 here? Yes, but the chapter would have been absurdly long if I did, instead.

Chapter Text

-The path to home is long and winding, I'll keep the flame alive for you until I am back-

Sex better be incredible if this was the taste she had to put up with.

His turn.

The bristles on the edge of her toothbrush dug into her gums.

His, fucking, turn.

Jackie spat out furiously, the foam looking a bit pink as she washed her toothbrush and applied more toothpaste on her toothbrush and trying to get the damn taste out of her mouth and throat. Her eyes were hollow, void of emotions aside from disgust in herself, the mirrors in her bathroom felt like yet another mockery of her perfect image.

It would feel better when they go all the way, it would be perfect, romantic, gentle, well, as long as Jeff manages to learn what that word meant. She won’t get up immediately after it and abuse her toothbrush the way she was doing right now.

And they’d do it after the nationals, after she comes back, celebrating the victory, crowning the end of high school with a perfect night. The entire team would gather at her house, the trophy set on the table, you’d keep your promise and play the guitar in front of her after Nat hyped you up so much, the entire team would talk about their future, they’d swear to stay in touch, to never forget the bond forged on the soccer field. It would be the best party ever.

Yet as she glanced at her toothbrush, at the edge of it stained with a bit of red, she caught herself dreading the fantasy that should come after the party. She washed the brush and finished brushing her teeth. Jackie spat in the sink and looked at herself in the mirror, forcing herself not to see the miserable look in her eyes.

“Babe, do you want me to drive you to school?” Jeff asked from her bedroom.

“Don’t worry, Shauna is picking me up,” she replied, trying to sound sweet, not that he’d notice, especially in the state he was in.

“Oh, okay, I’ll get going then,” he told her loud enough that she was thankful her home was as big as it was.

“Go out through the window,” she still reminded him, not wanting to risk her parents noticing him. She could get away with a lot of things, a guy in her bedroom behind their back wasn’t on the list.

She went through the motions, getting ready, purposefully getting dressed in the bathroom. She’s been doing that a lot, unless she was playing soccer or unless Shauna was with her. Classes, time with her family, dates, even parties sometimes, it all felt less exciting than it used to be, like it was all a routine, a habit she relied on because it was familiar.

Jackie went down the stairs, knowing Jeff was already running across her front yard, she counted seconds it would take him to get out of her eyesight, clinging onto the thought that Shauna was waiting for her outside, that she had practice after pep rally, that this time tomorrow they’d be in Seattle.

As she counted down the seconds and concluded Jeff reached his car and was on his way to school she picked up the pace, finally getting some bounce in her steps, and by the time she placed her hand on the doorhandle she was the Jackie Taylor, through and through, and whatever plagued her mind and robbed her of her joy would remain buried deep within her mind.

The forced smile turned genuine the moment she saw Shauna’s car and Shauna in it, placing her journal in the backseat. It was just like Shauna to spend her time journaling. Personally, she never had it in her to commit to it, never really knowing how to put her genuine feelings onto the paper.

Jackie took her red denim jacket off and got into Shauna’s car, taking a deep breath as relief flooded her. This felt a lot more like home than anything in the house she just left. “We’re gonna be late,” and to that Jackie just gave Shauna an innocent, yet cheeky grin.

“It’s fine, relax,” they’d be a bit late, it won’t be a big deal, these things always started later than intended anyway. Besides, there’s no way the pep rally could start without the two of them.

~And you fuck like a volcano~

Liz Phair’s Supernova played in the car and she knew how much Shauna liked the song, she knew exactly what she was doing and she bit her lower lip and looked to the side, her finger already hovering over the button to switch to the radio. Her attention was on Shauna’s face, already anticipating the reaction, and Shauna didn’t disappoint.

The moment Jackie pressed the button, before the songs even properly switched Shauna looked at her, that adorable ‘are you for real right now’ small incredulous smile predictably making its way to her face as Jackie giggled.

“Were you listening to that?” she teased, her mood instantly lifted.

Shauna rolled her eyes, but her smile widened ever so slightly. “No, it fell into the tape deck and I accidentally pressed play,” oh, if only the rest of the team knew how Shauna could get.

Well, there was something special about being the only one who knew this snarkier side of Shauna. Well, you brought it out every now and then when you annoyed Shauna, but that didn’t quite count.

Jackie reached into her bag, pulling out a mirror and searching for her lipstick. She heard Shauna clearing her throat and getting more comfortable in her seat and she mentally prepared for the question Shauna was probably going to ask. After all, the chances of Shauna seeing Jeff when he snuck out through Jackie’s window were high.

“I saw Jeff,” and there it was and Jackie busied herself with her lipstick to hide her smile fading away. “What happened to no distractions before nationals? Ripping off the band-aid on all that?” she guessed that was one way of putting it.

“I decided that,” she paused, convincing herself more than Shauna of what she was about to say. “showing up to college a virgin is a mistake. No offense,” she quickly added. Her and Shauna’s situation was different in her mind. “We’ve been together for so long that if we’re each other’s first we’ll be linked forever. It’s more poetic that way.” Jeff was her boyfriend for so long, they’d likely go their separate ways once college started, and their relationship would likely end sooner rather than later. At the very least she wanted to leave it without any regrets and have the perfect first time.

Maybe she was hyping it up too much, but it just had to be perfect, she convinced herself of that.

“Oh, that reminds me,” she abruptly ended the conversation, not wanting to hear Shauna’s opinion on her sex life. “I decided on a color palette for our room at Rutgers next year. Pink and green. It’s, like, classic preppy meets Palm Beach. It’s very Lilly P,” yeah, this was a lot more comfortable and pleasant to talk about. The future, away from this town, away from the pressure, the perfect image. At Rutgers her and Shauna would spend even more time together.

“Wait, Jeff’s a virgin?” yet Shauna remained in the present instead of focusing on the future.

“Well, we’ve been together since freshmen year,” of course he was a virgin. They had their fights, lately a lot about her not being ready yet, so of course he was a virgin. Why else would he keep pestering her about it if it wasn’t because she was making him wait.

“Yeah, I know. It’s just, you guys have broken up like 10000 times,” Shauna pointed out, and sure, if Jeff was someone else’s boyfriend she could see it happening, but he was her boyfriend, and she couldn’t imagine anyone getting between them and taking advantage of their break.

“Never long enough to count.” She shrugged and then saw the most outrageous sign on the side of the road, proudly standing out for everyone driving or walking by to see. “The hell is this bullshit?” The sign read: ‘We’re proud of our Boys Varsity Baseball! Go Jackets!’

“What?” Shauna asked like she wasn’t seeing the sign.

Jackie sat up straight in her seat and angrily motioned toward the sign, annoyed by the audacity. “Those assholes were under 500 a whole season. Shauna, honk at that thing!” when Shauna didn’t immediately comply, she reached over herself and honked.

“No, they’re just gonna think we’re, like, saluting mediocre baseball,” Shauna huffed, amused and forgetting the conversation about Jeff’s virginity.

“No, they’ll know,” she assured her best friend as she rolled the window down and stuck her head out. “Try undefeated, bitches!” she yelled

“Oh my god, Jackie,” Shauna laughed softly.

“We’re going to the motherfucking nationals!” she cheered, letting the excitement for nationals replace any unease she might have felt.

~X~

The mood in the locker room was infectious, the girls singing and doing each other’s make-up right before the pep rally. And Shauna was blending right in, singing with them, not quite dancing, but participating. She focused on Jackie as the girl left the locker room, heading to the coach’s office, and then, a minute later, you walked in.

You crossed paths with Jackie, Shauna was certain of that. What happened in the hall, she had no idea, but she knew Jackie well enough to know the minute between her leaving and you coming in didn’t go by without a warm greeting, and it soured Shauna’s mood to know Jackie was affectionate toward you in ways she wasn’t with the rest of the team.

The way you walked in, grinning, carefree, despite being the last to show up, made it difficult to be annoyed with you, at least when you weren’t being competitive. If only Jackie wasn’t the one who brought you to the team, if you weren’t the first to declare her the captain, long before coach Martinez even considered it, maybe things would have been different.

From the corner of her eye Shauna caught you high-fiving Laura Lee before hanging your arm around Natalie’s shoulders, joking with her about one thing or another, whatever the two of you talked about.

“So, I was thinking, maybe we should have a slumber party when we get to Seattle,” Mari told her and Shauna hummed, not really committing to the conversation.

When Jackie came back Shauna expected her to go to her locker, but instead, Jackie seemed to focus entirely on you, sitting at the bench and tying your cleats. “Already getting a big head, hm?” Jackie teased, draping all over you from behind, her arms loosely wrapped around you.

“What? No, ‘hey, Y/N’?” you asked, as if you didn’t see each other in the hall, surely you couldn’t have missed Jackie.

Shauna couldn’t see Jackie’s face, or your face, but she knew Jackie enough to know she was rolling her eyes with that satisfied grin on her face. “Hey, Y/N,” Jackie gave in, reaching up to mess your hair.

“Captain,” you sounded happy, like that was exactly where Jackie was supposed to be, leaning pretty much all her weight on you.

“So, which team are you choosing?” Shauna did her best not to listen, especially when Jackie’s voice became quieter, like she wanted this conversation to be between just the two of you.

“Haven’t thought about it yet,” you replied, your voice just as hushed.  

“Any chance you’ll consider Rutgers’ Scarlet Knights?” Jackie asked softly, her voice muffled and though she wasn’t looking Shauna couldn’t get the image of Jackie’s lips against your neck out of her head. Of course, Jackie wanted you at Rutgers.

Tell her no. For once in these three school years tell your ‘Captain’ no. At least that was what Shauna wanted to yell at you, to not give Jackie what she wanted, just to give Jackie a taste of rejection. Maybe then Jackie would pull away from you, not used to being rejected or having to work for attention.

“I guess I can consider it. It’s closer than Bristol, that’s for sure,” yet you didn’t tell Jackie no, you didn’t quite say yes, but Shauna heard Jackie giggling and clenched her fists.

She pushed back the jealousy she felt, pushed it away because there was nothing about the way you and Jackie were that should have made her feel insecure or threatened as Jackie’s best friend. The one who should have been worried was Jeff, because Shauna couldn’t remember the last time she heard Jackie giggling like that with Jeff.

“I’ll take consideration if you do one thing for me,” by now it was getting more and more difficult to make out what Jackie was saying, and while she heard you humming she didn’t hear what Jackie asked for, only you groaning in response followed by Jackie playfully smacking you and the bench squeaking as Jackie probably pushed herself harder against you. “Come on, for me,” she heard that tone of Jackie’s voice, the one usually accompanied by puppy eyes and something squeezed in Shauna’s chest at the thought of Jackie looking at you with her large, puppy eyes with barely a few inches between you.

“Fine, fine,” you grumbled, giving in like always and by now Shauna was certain everyone would always comply with Jackie’s wishes.

“Girls, you’re up in five minutes,” coach Scott said from the doors and Jackie finally separated from you, heading back to the bathroom to fix her lipstick. Shauna glanced toward you, seeing the tiny smudge on your shoulder.

Natalie noticed it as well, reaching over and wiping it from your uniform. You and Natalie exchanged glances, and you shrugged, as if you were telling Natalie what happened was just Jackie being Jackie.

It wasn’t just Jackie being Jackie. And Shauna dreaded the thought of it without even knowing why. Perhaps, on some instinctive level she could tell what would happen if you went to Rutgers, especially if she didn’t. It might happen in the first year, or it might happen later, but she could see it clearly. Jackie breaking up with Jeff and getting closer and closer with you, until, until, until.

She frowned, shutting her eyes, desperately getting the image out of her head and putting on a smile as all of them lined up, ready to come out when called. Jackie was at the very front, the captain, the queen bee, everyone’s princess, followed by Lottie, then her, Van, Taissa, Laura Lee, Allie, Nat, then you, Melissa and Mari, followed by the rest of the players.  

“Now, our next act needs no introduction, so let's all just make some noise for your New Jersey State Girls' Soccer Champions!” they heard and ran out, following Jackie’s lead and emerging to the energetic chanting from Misty that seemed to spread onto the stands while music played in the background.

She caught Jackie’s eye, seeing the excitement in Jackie’s eyes as she stood there, confident, even wiggling her shoulders a bit to the beat of the music. Jackie was soaking the attention up, like a flower blooming in the Sun.

And she was stuck in the shadow Jackie cast. Stuck between finding her own rays of sunlight somewhere else and staying where she was, giving Jackie what she wanted and tagging along to Rutgers.

~X~

There was no point in Jackie even bothering to hide she had a soft spot for you, people paid attention to her, whether on accident or not, so, she never bothered hiding anything. Still, Natalie had to admit she was surprised when Jackie hugged you from behind while you were getting ready.

She ignored it, only catching the glimpses of your grins, both of you looked happy, and it made Natalie worried. You had feelings for Jackie, that much was as clear as day. But Jackie? She wasn’t doing this out of malice, she wasn’t consciously trying to hurt you, that much Natalie could tell, even without being close to Jackie. That simply wasn’t the kind of girl Jackie was. Self-centered and bossy, sure, but not malicious.

So, it made her own situation more difficult, because if Jackie was half the bitch most popular girls were she could snap her fingers in front of your face and talk some sense into you. But as it was, Natalie could just stand by and watch her best friend rushing head first into a heartbreak.

Jackie was straight. She was straight before Jeff and she’d be straight after Jeff. At best, and if every piece fell into place perfectly there was a chance you might be an experiment, a temporary fling to satisfy Jackie’s curiosity. From Natalie’s point of view that would be the furthest you and Jackie could ever get, and it would hurt you a lot more than nothing ever happening.

Yet as she glanced back she noticed Jackie closing her eyes, looking almost fragile as she clung to you, her breath shuddering as you reached up and caressed the back of her hand, and Natalie could read the word ‘captain’ slipping past your lips, as if the two of you were in some bubble, separate from everyone else.

“Girls, you’re up in five minutes,” coach Scott informed them and a minute later Jackie pulled away from you. Natalie glanced at your shoulder, noticing the smudge of lipstick there.

The pep rally went by fine, coach Martinez called you to his office and Natalie went outside, finding Lottie and Tai talking.

“Nat, come here!” Lottie called her over and she walked over to them, already noticing how tense Tai was.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, she was drunk, not blind, and the practice was in ten minutes.

Tai subtly gestured toward Allie. “We need to freeze her out,” of all the things Natalie expected, this wasn’t it.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked, looking at Lottie and seeing she looked to the side, refusing to meet Natalie’s eyes.

“She is by far the worst player on the team,” Tai argued, and sure, she was the worst.

“Well, someone has to be the worst,” Natalie countered, not denying that Allie was the worst, but whether they liked it or not they didn’t have anyone better than Allie. No matter how often you had to rush in and get back a ball Allie just lost.

“It seems like you don't even care,” Tai glared at her, acting like she was the only one who cared about this. Everyone cared, but most of them weren’t ready to exclude another player from the game. Especially since most of the players weren’t that much better than Allie, it just so happened that she was stuck between three juggernauts of their team. Sure, Lottie had great footwork, and Van was a great goalkeeper, but the three best players of the team, you, Tai and Shauna, were all around Allie, making her performance look even worse than it was.

“Are you kidding me? You're being insensitive,” and there was that as well. Allie was a freshmen, and sure, she could be a bitch sometimes, actually most of the time, but she was still young.

“This is what we've worked for all season. You really want to take that chance?” Tai challenged her, like victory was all that mattered.

“Yeah. 'Cause I'm not a fucking asshole,” she wanted to win too, especially after the risk you took, but this wasn’t the cost she was willing to pay.

“What are you guys talking about?” Shauna joined them, noticing the tense atmosphere.

“Allie,” Lottie said with a long sigh.

“What about her?” Shauna asked, leaving Natalie grateful that Tai’s attention was on someone else now.

And Tai looked at Shauna incredulously. “Did you black out at states? She totally choked.”

“She's a freshman, Tai,” and despite not wanting to argue, Natalie couldn’t keep her mouth shut on this.

“She's a liability,” yet Tai wasn’t letting this go.

“So, what do you want to do about it?” Shauna asked instead of immediately shutting the plan down.

“She can't screw up if she doesn't get the ball,” Tai explained her brilliant plan.

Shauna frowned, but the frown quickly faded away. “You want to freeze her out?” Shauna, again to Natalie’s surprise, didn’t sound as opposed to the idea. Well, Shauna was really competitive as well, but Natalie honestly thought that began and ended with you.

Tai nodded. “At least we'd know what we're working with.”

“She kind of sucks, but... I don't know,” Lottie hesitated, and finally Natalie felt like she wasn’t the only sane one.

“That's because it's bullshit!” she reminded Lottie. This wasn’t what a team did.  

“Oh, yeah? What's your plan, then?” Tai demanded.

“Leave it to Y/N, she’s been covering Allie all season,” she argued. Yes. Allie was the weak link, but you were the defensive wall not many could break through.

Tai crossed her arms tighter, more and more frustrated by the moment. “Y/N can’t play for two people; we come across a team as good as our own and what then?”

Natalie wanted to roll her eyes at that, no matter how possible it was that they’d run into a team as good as their own. They were going to nationals, after all. “I don't know. Play like a fucking team and win? It's worked so far.”

“Everything works until it doesn't. And for the record, you smell like a wino. Get your shit together,” that was it, she was done with this conversation.

Natalie huffed silently, her smile ironic before she just shrugged. “You know what? Fuck this,” even if Tai wanted to freeze Allie out that wouldn’t be as possible as she thought it was as long as you weren’t in on the plan. You started damn near every counterattack and if you thought Allie was in the better position, you’d pass the ball to her. Tai’s plan would fail at the end of the day.

She wouldn’t even have to give you a heads up. Because then you’d confront Tai, and that would cause a bigger mess. She’d just let things correct themselves on their own.

~X~

You walked onto the field with Jackie, waiting for others to come as well and the two of you passed time just passing the ball. “So, how’s considering Rutgers going?” Jackie asked, smiling cheekily at you.

You passed a bit further to the left, making her work for it a bit more. “I guess it would take Wade a bit less to adjust,” you figured.

“Wade? You’re taking your brother with you?” Jackie asked, pausing completely and walking over to you, taken aback by the new information.

All of a sudden, you were very aware that no one other than Nat knew about your family situation. “Yeah, I figured I’d rent an apartment, get a job along with whatever money father would send,” you gave her bare minimum, not wanting to talk about your reasons for bringing Wade along.

Jackie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question it, she did pout though. “And here I imagined you’d be in the same dorm as Shauna and I, hell, maybe even in the same room,” she had it all figured out. Her perfect college life.

“Living on the edge, I see,” you teased and Jackie rolled her eyes.

“I can manage the two of you,” you didn’t doubt that. Both you and Shauna have proven that you’re able to set your rivalry aside for Jackie’s sake.

You took a step closer. “So, how did I end up in the picture of your perfect life, Captain?” you inquired curiously and Jackie just reached up, smoothing your sleeve for whatever reason.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teased you back, though there was some uncertainty in her eyes, like she wasn’t entirely sure how it happened either.

Van cleared her throat, and you both jumped, not even noticing that she was merely two feet away from you. “Dully noted,” Van said and took the ball that was between you and Jackie.

“What?” both you and Jackie asked at the same time, but Van was ignoring you entirely.

“It’s not what it looks like,” you quickly said, not even sure what it looked like.

“Yeah, what Y/N said,” Jackie quickly added and finally Van turned to look at you again, though with that shit-eating grin on her face you preferred her turned away from you.

“What? You were just talking,” she was being a little shit about it, making both you and Jackie flustered on purpose by feigning ignorance.

Luckily, the rest of the girls began gathering and saved you and Jackie, at least for now, from the teasing.

Ten minutes later coach Scott jogged onto the field, without coach Martinez anywhere in sight, and blew the whistle, making everyone gather near him. “All right. Bring it in. Take a knee, ladies,” they all got down on one knee, waiting for the instructions. “What's up, state champs?” he grinned, proud of them and it was met by cheers from the team.

This time tomorrow they’d be near Seattle and the excitement was very much noticeable.

“Okay, so JV is gonna help us out with a little scrimmage today,” he explained, instructing the JV and he was just about ready to signal the start of the practice game.

“Uh, excuse me, Coach Scott, shouldn't we say a prayer first?” Laura Lee interrupted him, but frankly, most of you were already used to this.

Coach Scott tried to convince her it was just a scrimmage, but she silently and patiently won the argument, said the prayer and then the scrimmage could start.

It didn’t take long to realize there was something different about the practice today.

You could see it from the moment you passed the ball to Taissa, only for her to make a more difficult pass and instead of passing the ball to Allie, passed it to Shauna. And sure, Shauna would have gotten the ball, but the more optimal combination was passing the ball to Allie and then letting her pass to Shauna.

Allie was playing about as well as you’ve learnt to expect from her, and you were starting to think Tai and Shauna were refusing to pass her the ball on purpose, while Nat actually passed the ball back to Allie instead of moving forward.

You looked at Nat, but she didn’t meet your gaze, and you turned to the equally confused Jackie who was watching from her position. You could tell both of you had the same question in mind. ‘What the fuck was going on here?’

And then it happened, without any of you knowing what the end result would be, without anyone, aware of what was going on or not, reacting in time, Taissa switched teams and Allie finally began playing better, only for the brief moment of progress to be brutally shattered by Tai sliding in from the side and tackling Allie.

Even as far from Allie as you were you heard the sickening snap and froze for a moment, shocked by what just happened. Allie’s cry of anguish tore through the field, making your blood run cold as you slowly approached. Was there even anything you could do? There was so much blood on the grass, and when you got close enough you could see Allie’s bone, her leg bent in the way it never should have been and you knew, regardless of what you knew from taking care of Wade, that this was way beyond anything you knew how to handle.

“Help!” Allie’s cry made you flinch, and you took a step back instead of a step forward.

You looked toward coach Scott, equally shocked as the rest of you.

The only one who seemed calm was Misty as she quickly ran up to Allie. “Okay. Apply pressure to stop the bl-“ as she pressed down on Allie’s leg to stop the bleeding Allie screamed again, finally making others react, Nat, Lottie, Shauna and Laura Lee surrounding her and holding her hands as coach Scott instructed Misty to call the ambulance.

You glanced at Jackie, noticing she was trembling slightly, completely out of her element, frozen and unable to react.

And you weren’t doing any better.

You usually acted without much thought, recklessly doing what felt right at the moment, and right now, when your lack of knowledge could easily make things worse for Allie, you just stood back.

The practice ended right then and there, but you all had to stay there, listening to Allie’s whimpers and cries of pain until the ambulance arrived and took her away. None of you complained, none of you spoke, you just went back to the locker room, defeated and still processing what happened.

From the corner of your eye, you saw Lottie washing the dried-up blood she got on her hands when she held Allie’s hand off.

You put your arm around Nat, noticing how shaken she was, and for the first time she didn’t lean in, like she was somehow blaming herself for what happened today. When she pushed your arm off you just sat there, next to her.

The locker room doors opened and Jackie walked in. “I know we're all really worried about Allie,” she began, squeezing her hands as she spoke to the rest of the team, clearly trying to keep the morale high. “But, it might not be as bad as it looks,” you wished you shared Jackie’s optimism.

“You could see her fucking bones, Jackie. I'm pretty sure it's exactly as bad as it looks,” Nat snapped, not in the mood for optimism that bordered on delusions.

“We weren’t close enough to get a good look, Captain,” you added, not wanting more tensions right now. Both you and Jackie, like most of the team, for that matter, stayed back.

“Oh, God. I'm gonna throw up,” Van said what most of you probably thought.

Jackie took a deep breath, regaining her composure. “Okay, but, I mean,” she exhaled, picking words. “we're still a team. And we still have each other,” somehow it didn’t feel that way right now, no matter how hard Jackie tried to keep the morale up.

“And the Lord works in mysterious ways,” Laura Lee added causing Nat to abruptly get up and punch the locker.

“Nice work, Taissa!” she snapped, running out and you jumped to your feet, running after Nat.

“Nat! Wait!” you exclaimed, catching up to her.

“I need to be alone,” she glared at you, tears filling up her eyes and normally you would have let her be, letting her come to you instead of pushing her into this, but this time you just grabbed her and pulled her into a hug.

“No one could have stopped it,” you whispered as she crumbled in your arms, sobbing into your shirt outside the gym. “It’s not anyone’s fault,” this was familiar, for both of you, it wasn’t a bloody wound neither of you were equipped to deal with, it was emotional turmoil and misplaced guilt and you needed to pull Nat out of it before it consumed her.

“It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” Nat sobbed, hugging you and digging her fingers into the back of your shirt.

You could sense there was more to this than Nat was telling you, but you didn’t ask, you didn’t need to know, you just held her, her mascara staining you shirt as she let it all out. Knowing wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t fix Allie’s leg, it wouldn’t turn back time, so, at least until nationals ended, it would be better if you remained oblivious, unless Nat herself chose to tell you.

~X~

Late that night, after you were done packing and finally convinced Wade to go to bed, you went downstairs and found your father, sitting in the kitchen. “Hey,” you said, almost uncertain of how to approach the man.

He looked from his cup of coffee, an old photo, folded one too many times was the only thing in front of him. You remembered that photo, the last family photo you had, the only one where, technically speaking, all four of you were in. Your parents were laughing, he was hugging both you and your mom and she was resting one of her hands on her stomach, she was seven months pregnant at the time.

“She’d be proud,” he suddenly said and you sat down next to him, patting his back. It was the closest the two of you got to an embrace in years.

“I know,” you told him, glancing at the old photo, kept together by several layers of tape.

“I know you hate me, Y/N,” his voice trembled and he buried his face in his hands. “I know I am ruining Wade’s childhood, I know I ruined your childhood,” he admitted, yet it didn’t make it any easier. You should have been Wade’s sister, not his one and only parent his whole life.

You didn’t say anything about that though. “Can I count on you to take care of him while I’m gone?” you asked, needing to know you could leave without worrying about Wade.

Your father nodded. “I can handle one week,” and you forced yourself to believe that, otherwise you’d be distracted and this trip would be for nothing. “She wanted to give you a sibling so much,” a tear slid down his cheek, yet, unlike with Nat earlier, you couldn’t find it in yourself to comfort him. “And she died for it,” and he blamed Wade, couldn’t even look at him without remembering your mom.

“He’s only ten, no matter what you feel, you need to act like his father until I come back,” you said, getting up.

Your father’s laugh was hollow. “I guess I can do that,” you bit your tongue, you’d keep biting it until Wade turned eighteen. “Let’s go fishing when you come back,” your father offered, like taking care of Wade for one week suddenly gave him the right to expect you’d warm up to him.

“Only if Wade can come as well,” you’d put up with it, if only to make Wade’s life a bit easier.

The man in front of you, the man who happened to be your father, who failed to act like a father to your brother and kept trying to act like he only had one child until you had enough of it, looked at you and nodded, reluctantly. “Fine,” but before you could say anything else, you heard the doorbell ringing.

You left the dimly lit kitchen, the shadows behind your father dancing ominously behind him, but you didn’t pay them any mind. The darkness in this house, the despair, you’d protect Wade from it, and you wouldn’t let it consume you.

No, that wasn’t fair to the house. It had nothing to do with the house. It was all your father.

And as much as you were looking forward to going to the nationals, you couldn’t wait to come back.

You opened the front doors and caught Nat as she slumped into your arms. “Damn, you’re really high,” you chuckled, used to this by now. Nat grumbled something incoherent and you helped her up the stairs, carrying her most of the way and dropping her onto your bed. “You are too used to me doing this,” you joked as you took Nat’s shoes and jacket off and wiped most of her make-up off before dropping down on the floor next to the bed. “You can finish the rest when you stop tripping,” you sighed, it’s been a long day.

“Thanks,” Nat mumbled into your pillow, and you glanced back, seeing her curling up on your bed and hugging your pillow. You smiled slightly, reaching up to brush a few strands of her hair back before tucking her in, making sure she couldn’t toss the thin blanket off, regardless of how warm it was.

You turned the lights off and went to the comfortable sofa in the corner of your room where you usually played your guitar, unless you were playing it in your bed, and, with a thin blanket in hand, got ready to sleep.

You’ve gotten used to this whenever Nat slept at your place, which, over the years, became a rather common occurrence.

Most of the times it wasn’t even planned, but tonight it actually was the plan. Nat’s suitcase and bag were already at your place, ready to go to the airport first thing in the morning.

Just as you closed your eyes to sleep you head the doors opening slightly and opened one eye to see Wade looking inside, pouting. “Okay, come over here,” you whispered, giving in and not even scolding him as he rushed into your room and jumped onto the big sofa next to you. He curled up against you, clinging to you like he’d never see you again.

“It’ll only be a week,” you kissed the top of his head and wrapped your arm around him.

“Take me with you,” he pleaded, not wanting to spend even one day basically on his own, and you considered it. He was a good kid, he wouldn’t cause any troubles, but in the end you chose not to bring him along.

“Maybe next time, okay?” you were sure the girls wouldn’t mind too much, but you also felt like it would be good for him to get a taste of a brief period without you. “Besides, someone needs to take care of Blitz, right?” you tried to get him to see the brighter side.

Wade pouted, but didn’t complain or try to convince you to change your mind anymore. “I’ll miss you,” he muttered.

“I’ll miss you too,” you spoke softly as he tried to stay awake, not wanting to waste one second on sleep.

He pulled something out of his pocket and placed it in your hand. You glanced down and saw he gave you the swimming goggles you gave him for his tenth birthday. The same goggles he got quite attached to. “For good luck,” he said, suppressing a yawn. “Like this I’ll be with you.”

“When did you get so serious?” you asked, taken aback by the gesture, but you still placed the goggles around your neck. “I’ll keep them around my neck,” you promised, ruffling his hair.

~X~

Wade only fell asleep a bit after half past four in the morning and you carried him to his bedroom, tucking him in and kissing his forehead. “See you in a week, buddy,” you said softly, heading back to your room.

He wasn’t going to go to the airport with you and Nat, mostly to avoid you changing your mind and bringing him along anyway. Instead your father would just drive you and Nat to the airport and go back home.

You went back into your room, now silent aside from Nat’s soft breathing. The swimming goggles remained around your neck and you smiled softly, checking your guitar once more, making sure it was ready for the flight as well. That was Jackie’s request slash order, that you bring the guitar to Seattle. She was surprisingly persistent when it came to hearing you play the guitar. So, with that secured you got dressed and ran outside, taking Blitz on his morning run.

A couple of hours later you boarded the plane, sitting down next to Nat, not knowing the plane would never make it to Seattle.

A/N: Feed me comments, and I shall provide more chapters!

Chapter Text

f-It was never supposed to end up this way. What do I have to do? Was supposed to grow old with you.-

“Y/N,” the hushed whisper sounded familiar, yet you couldn’t quite place it. It sounded so distorted you couldn’t tell if it was male or female, yet it comforted you, lulling you to sleep instead of waking you up. “It’s time to wake up,” the voice sounded more urgent and it felt like your whole world was shaking, the darkness around you shattering as you gasped and woke up to a nightmare.

You felt your body being pressed against the back of the seat and each breath felt like a struggle as the deafening screams of despair and the terror-inducing sound of the engine failing created a cacophony of a disaster.

A hand grasping at your right forearm snapped you out of it just enough to look at Nat, at the terror in her eyes, like she wasn’t seeing you. You opened your mouth to speak, but no words came out. All you could do was to grab oxygen masks and frantically put them on you and Nat. You winced as the plane tilted to the side, the back of your head hitting the headrest as you grabbed onto Nat instinctively to steady her.

This wasn’t happening.

This couldn’t be happening.

Yet it was. The plane was plummeting to the ground.

You took Nat’s hand, feeling her desperately squeezing, tears brimming in her eyes as you pushed the two of you upright. You, against all logic and reason, dared to reach over and lift the blinds, just to know if you were heading into the water or not.

Vast, endless forests and mountains. That was all you saw. Not a hint of civilization anywhere near, just trees slowly getting bigger and bigger.

Your life flashed in front of your eyes, your brain looking for a way to save you, or so you heard somewhere and somehow it settled on the closest experience it could find. That brief feeling you got when you jumped into the water from high up, your muscles tightened as if you were expecting to hit the water.

The sound of wind violently whistling in your ear drowned out the screams and you focused on Nat grabbing onto the collar of your shirt as you held one another.

How long was this hell going to last?

The alarms went off in the plane, as if you all weren’t already aware of the incoming doom, and then, just for a few seconds, there was a moment of nothingness. The plane hit the ground, crashing through the trees and for a moment you blacked out as carry-ons fell on top of you and Nat.

The panicked screams, crying, the pained and dying screams, it all felt so distant, like a nightmare you were supposed to wake up from, remnants of it breaking into your subconsciousness. The screams grew more distant, your consciousness fading.

“Please, God!” Nat’s sob pulled you back and you gasped, blindly pushing at whatever bags fell on top of the two of you. She was on the verge of having a panic attack, but there was no time for it now.

“Push!” you cried out, pushing the bags to the side. You opened your eyes, breathing heavily as you looked around, focusing solely on looking for a way out. “Come on, Nat,” you breathed out, pulling her against you and getting up, hurriedly pushing her toward the exit as Tai and other girls struggled to get the doors open. “Nearly there,” you whispered, feeling her trembling in shock. “One foot in front of the other,” you weren’t sure if you were saying that to her or yourself.

Maybe there was some use to being an adrenaline junkie and chasing danger for close to a decade now. Your mind was in turmoil, thoughts scattered and unfocused, but your body kept moving, almost on its own. Nothing else mattered, there was an exit, Nat was in front of you, you had to get her out, everything else could fade into the background.

Just like jumping into the water from 20 feet up. One thing at a time. One task. Nothing else. The whole plane could have been on fire, and you wouldn’t have noticed in the state you were in.

“Shauna! Shauna, get the fuck up!” yet Jackie’s voice snuck through your focus, and you looked back, seeing Jackie shaking Shauna.

The doors broke open just as you got Nat to the exit. “Tai!” you yelled, helping Nat out of the plane and pushing her toward Tai as her, Lottie and some other girls scrambled to their feet. “Get away from the plane!” you yelled, leaving Nat with Tai, before climbing back into the wreckage.

“Y/N!” you heard Nat yelling your name and the sound of shoes scrapping against the ground.

You ignored the smoke slowly filling your lungs. “Captain!” you exclaimed, for a moment looking into Jackie’s wide, frightened eyes and then saw Shauna, still out of it. “Fucking hell, Shauna,” you slapped her awake. “Get your ass up!” you yelled, pulling her to her feet with Jackie. Shauna’s eyes widened, but neither you nor Jackie let her take a moment to figure out what was happening.

“Go, Captain,” you told Jackie, the wasn’t enough space for both of you to support Shauna. She looked at you and nodded, getting ahead to help Shauna out.

“I’m awake,” Shauna said and you pushed her ahead of you, once more focusing only on getting back to the exit. Each step felt like a race against time, the heat rising in the plane, yet you tried to ignore it, refusing to think about how few seconds you had before something would blow up.

You didn’t even notice Van screaming for help until Shauna abruptly stopped. “It's Van!” Shauna went right past the exit and toward Van and you found yourself stuck between pushing Jackie out and going after Shauna.

“I'm stuck!” Van’s cries broke your heart, but you saw the flames getting closer and closer, the raging fire freezing you for a few precious seconds.

“I'm coming, Van!” Shauna yelled.

“Shauna!” Jackie cried out after her and took a few small steps forward, getting between Van and Shauna and you.

“Captain!” you took her hand, pulling her against you as flames inched closer, engulfing more and more of the plane and getting dangerously close to Van.

Yet Jackie remained solely focused on Shauna and how close she was to the flames. You looked toward the two, seeing the issue, the stuck seatbelt.

“Come on. Oh, God, it's stuck! I can't get out! Can't get out!” Van screamed and you let go of Jackie climbing over seats.

“Hurry up!” Jackie yelled and you looked back at her, knowing she wasn’t leaving without Shauna.

“Fuck,” you cursed, getting behind Van’s seat and pushing the one that fell over her and made reaching the belt even more difficult.

“Oh, my God!” Van cried out, desperately fumbling with the belt.

“Shauna, we got to go. We got to go!” Jackie grabbed onto Shauna and looked at you. “Y/N, come on!” she yelled at you.

“Captain, get out!” you shouted, but she didn’t move. “GO!” you yelled at Jackie, frantically looking between her and Shauna, Van, and the flames. You moved to where Shauna was and pushed harder than you thought you could, adrenaline fueling you as flames licked at your jacket. With a cry you pushed the seat out of the way and pulled the seatbelt as far as you could. “Come on, Van! Come on!” you weren’t even sure what you were asking her to do, you just knew the heat was rising, the smoke filled your lungs, the sleeves of your jacket getting singed by the flames.

“Hold it! Hold it!” Van cried, grabbing onto your shoulders to pull herself out of the seat.

You let go of the seatbelt just as Van got out and you dared to look back as you rushed toward the exit, seeing a piece of metal falling into the fire and light from outside coming through the hole in the ceiling. “Duck!” you shouted, pulling Van between seats as explosion rocked the wreckage.

A seat fell onto your back, knocking air from your lungs and you nearly collapsed on top of Van. “Fucking hell can things stop falling on me!” you bellowed, pushing yourself up and shoving the seat off.

Van actually laughed. “Shut up, we’re fucking alive,” she whispered in utter disbelief, both of you were singed from the explosion, and you were sure you were bleeding somewhere, but you fucking survived.

You got back up, you felt like your knees would buckle at any moment, but you offered your hand to Van. “Come on, let’s get out of this death trap,” you managed to grin, helping her get up, only to then realize the exit was gone, several seats were blocking it. “Guess we need to find another way out,” you chuckled, looking around and only seeing one exit. Through the hole the explosion made.

“Fuck,” Van said what went through your mind.

~X~

Nightmare.

This had to be a nightmare, the worst nightmare Jackie ever had. She was on her hands and knees, trembling as she looked around at this nightmare they were all stuck in. Her teammates, her friends, all in various states of shock, some pulling others away from the wreckage, some throwing up, some sitting on the ground in shock, some looking around, confused unable to accept what happened, some crying on the ground in fetal position.

She saw Natalie, helping Melissa calm down while frantically looking around, searching for…

You.

Jackie looked behind her, at the doors leading into hell, into the plane that could explode at any moment. And she couldn’t move.

The sound of your voice as you yelled, or more like roared at her to go, the desperate look in your eyes telling her you needed her to get out so you could focus on Van, that wild look in your eyes. It remained etched in her mind, her heart slamming against her chest in panic and fear. “Please, please Y/N,” she pleaded, begging you to come out, to appear at the doors and stumble outside with or without Van as long as you got out.

Yet, she couldn’t move, couldn’t go back inside to get you. She should have grabbed your arm, she should have dragged both you and Shauna out, instead, she listened, automatically reacting to the order you gave instead of being your captain. And now she was stuck here, waiting helplessly.

“We have to go back inside!” Shauna’s shout made her act without thinking as she got up and grabbed Shauna, stopping her from moving any closer to the wreckage, both to avoid losing Shauna in an explosion that would happen any moment now, and to stop herself from recklessly running in.

“Shauna, I’m begging you,” she pleaded. This was already too much, way too much, she couldn’t take Shauna being at risk as well.

Jackie looked back at the exit, and then it happened, the explosion rocked the wreckage, making her flinch and instinctively back away with other girls. “Oh God, oh God,” she collapsed into Shauna’s arms, you didn’t get out, you were inside and the back of the plane exploded. You were inside. “Y/N,” she reached toward the wreckage, stumbling against a tree and sliding down as Shauna let go of her.

She looked to the side, noticing Shauna clutching at her head. “We could have helped them,” Shauna dropped to her knees, retching and Jackie could only look at the wreckage.

“I was trying to save you,” she whispered. She chose. She would have dragged Shauna out anyway, but you were right there. “She was right there,” Van was stuck, it was risky, but you were right there, she just had to reach out.

“They both were!” Shauna yelled, furious, grieving, blaming her and Jackie froze, falling silent, unable to answer.

And if Shauna’s anger wasn’t already increasing the guilt she felt tenfold, Tai and Nat asking for Van and you broke her completely. “I couldn’t lose both of you,” she whispered, her voice cracking, though Shauna didn’t even hear it.

~X~

Natalie looked around, trying to find her among the girls, anywhere, refusing to consider any other option. You pushed her outside, leaving her with Tai and other girls who got out before anyone else, and then you went back to get Jackie and Shauna. But the two of them were right there.

And Jackie was more distraught than Natalie had ever seen her. And Shauna was furious, for once not attached to Jackie like she so often was.

Where were you?

“Y/N!” she called out, looking everywhere for you, anywhere but at the plane that just exploded.

You couldn’t be there. You couldn’t have still been inside.

Why would you be inside? She got out. Jackie got out. So why weren’t you out?!

“Help!” Coach Scott’s pained cries made her turn to to the other side of the plane and she began walking toward him.

‘Focus on what you can do now’ that’s what you’d tell her as she convinced herself you just went to look for your bag or something, anything.

She froze in place the moment she saw the coach, his leg stuck under the wing of the wrecked plane.

“Coach!” more girls gathered, Lottie, Tai, Mari, Laura Lee, Akilah, Misty, the six of them and Natalie all rushed to his side.

“Hey, girls, is it, uh, can you move it?” he asked, springing them all to action.

Lottie and Misty grabbed his arms, while the rest of them struggled to lift the heavy wing up enough for them to pull him out. It felt so heavy, and she gritted her teeth. “Just a bit more! Come on!” Natalie encouraged them as they all grunted and cursed, and finally, Lottie and Misty pulled coach Scott from underneath the wreckage.

“Oh, fucking God!” Lottie’s cry or horror made her look at the coach and she stumbled back, horrified at the sight of his mangled right leg. Mari turned around and leaned forward, dry heaving. Natalie felt like throwing up as well.

Natalie looked at unconscious coach Scott and took a few steps back. You were nowhere to be found. Coach Scott could die. And this nightmare was just starting.

~X~

Shauna getting up and walking away made Jackie panic as she got up to follow her. “Shauna, please wait!” she pleaded, wrapping her hand around Shauna’s forearm.

“Leave me alone,” Shauna demanded, still furious.

“I didn’t want to leave them!” Jackie cried out, but then Shauna froze and Jackie nearly bumped into her.

“Holy shit,” Shauna gasped, covering her mouth and Jackie looked ahead, seeing coach Scott, and more importantly his mangled leg.

“Jesus. Coach,” she couldn’t take this anymore. Any of this.

And then, almost out of nowhere, Van stopped right in front of her and Shauna. Her hair and face were singed, as were her clothes and hands, and she had a couple of cuts on her face, but she was alive and glaring at Jackie with so much hatred is made Jackie step back. “Surprise,” she said.

“Van,” Shauna gasped, relieved and happy, just as Tai rushed toward Van and hugged her from behind, crying out her name.

“Captain,” tears filled her eyes as she spun around and saw you, leaning against a tree, a few steps behind her. “Hey,” you smiled, skin singed and blood trickling down the side of your head, your Yellowjackets jacket burnt slightly.

“Y/N,” she jumped into your arms, her fingers digging into the back of your jacket as she buried her face in your neck, breathing in the scent of smoke, sweat and your perfume. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, kissing your cheek and reaching up with her right hand, running her fingers through your hair.

You hugged her, tightly, but it wasn’t tight enough, she needed you closer, needed you pressed against her. “You did what I told you,” you whispered into her ear, your voice comforting, sweet, so caring she melted against you.

“I left you,” she cried, once more burying her face in the crook of your neck.

“I would have been losing my mind with you behind me, Captain,” you still called her ‘captain’, and she hugged you tighter as you ran your fingers through her hair before pulling back a bit to take a good look at her. “Are you okay?” you asked like she was the one who was left behind. You reached up, wiping a bit of blood from her forehead, she didn’t even notice it before and she did the same, wiping the blood from the side of your face.

“I am,” she was okay now. “Just don’t scare me like that again,” Jackie pleaded, pulling you down until your foreheads were pressed together.

“No promises, Captain,” you chuckled, in this nightmare, in this chaos and despair, you still chuckled, and she let that ground her, let you ground her, calm her, anything, as long as you were holding her like this.

“You’re impossible,” she whispered, kissing your cheek one more time, before the horrifying sound got your attention and both you and Jackie turned to Jackie’s left, seeing Misty, her face covered in blood and an axe on the ground. “Oh, God,” Misty just chopped coach Scott’s leg off.

“Fucking hell,” you cursed under your breath, instinctively pulling Jackie against your side.

“Help me move him!” Misty demanded, though everyone was in shock, eventually, one of the girls, Robin, approached, but she turned away, throwing up. “Now!” Misty demanded, grabbing one of coach’s arms and reluctantly Tai and Van helped her move him.

Jackie looked at your face and saw relief in your eyes as you noticed Natalie was fine, and despite everything something squeezed at Jackie’s heart. A jealousy she couldn’t explain, yet she gently nudged you toward Natalie. “Go to her,” she whispered, seeing Shauna still keeping her distance from her and accepting she’d be on her own until Shauna got over her anger.

“Come on, Captain,” yet you, with one arm still around her waist, pulled her along toward Natalie. “Nat,” you called out to Natalie and Natalie’s breath hitched, as she spun around, taking in the state you were in.

“You reckless idiot,” it didn’t take a genius to figure out you were still in the wreckage when the explosion happened and Natalie quickly hugged you. “Don’t think I’ll let you off the hook so easily this time,” and Jackie wholeheartedly agreed with that, and she’d be more than willing to talk some sense into you with Natalie.

“I know,” you said softly, wrapping your free arm around Natalie and despite really needing your hand on her back, Jackie took a step back, giving you and Natalie a moment. You glanced at Jackie for a moment, before properly hugging Natalie. “How are you doing?” you asked Natalie.

“I’m okay, don’t worry, just a bit shaken,” Natalie admitted, staying strong, and she could do that, she had you to lean on when things got tough.

You nodded, pulling back to check on Natalie once more before nodding again, satisfied to see she wasn’t wounded. “Come on, I really want to sit down,” you admitted, no longer running on adrenaline and half-functional survival instinct.

~X~

You sat on a log with Jackie, frankly surprised that Shauna was sitting with Mari, about a dozen or so feet away from Jackie.

Nat, who was pretty much unscathed, was with Tai, ripping up shirts to make bandages for coach Scott. Everyone sort of gathered near, coach Scott lying on the spread out towels basically in the middle of the group. Everyone was doing one thing or another, gathering suitcases, calming people down, or at least trying to, or helping with bruises and injuries.

You were sitting there, waiting for your eyes to stop burning from the smoke with Jackie sitting next to you and cleaning the small cut on your forehead with a damp handkerchief. “It’ll probably leave a scar,” she whispered as you winced a bit.

“I’ll take it over dying,” you shrugged, it wouldn’t be a big, immediately noticeable scar anyway.

Misty crouched down next to coach Scott and checked his leg. “She’s incredible,” you whispered to Jackie, honestly amazed that Misty could stomach looking and treating a wound like that. Jackie nodded, unable to even look at the wound from a distance for more than a couple of seconds.

“All right, bleeding's slowing down. We need to disinfect it somehow. Um, maybe something from the bar cart?” she turned to Lottie, figuring she’d know the answer.

“There wasn't one. I mean, it was just soda. It's cheaper that way,” Lottie explained, though it probably wouldn’t have made any difference if there was a bar cart. Chances were it would all break during the crash.

“Maybe somebody brought contraband,” Laura Lee said and immediately, as one, everyone but you looked at Nat. You were too busy snickering.

“Okay. Wow,” Nat said, rolling her eyes and smacking you on the shoulder.

“I mean,” you smirked at her.

“Well, did you?” Misty asked, expecting an answer.

“Obviously,” Nat replied and then glanced toward the bags, none of which were hers. “But I stashed it in my bag, and God knows where that is now,” she sighed.

“Guys, how about this?” Van asked, showing Misty a bottle she found in one of the bags.

“Hey, that's m- Uh, a great idea, Van,” Jackie was absolutely about to say the bottle was hers, but corrected herself when she noticed Shauna and Van looking at her.

“Witch hazel, isopropyl alcohol. Actually, this could work,” Misty said as you wrapped one arm around Jackie’s shoulders.

“You’ll get another one, Captain,” you teased her, your tone light and even a bit humorous as she buried her face in her hands.

“I swear I don’t care about a stupid toner that much,” she whispered, barely loud enough for you to hear.

“I know,” you whispered back, flinching and focusing on Jackie as coach Scott screamed. “I need to get away for a moment,” you whispered to her, struggling to handle the screams and the sight in front of you.

Jackie nodded, getting up and going with you, following you a bit further from the group. “This is a nightmare,” she whispered and you agreed.

“I want to help him, but my medical prowess starts with cough syrup and ends with Band-Aids,” you admitted. You’ve been so protective when it came to Wade that you never needed to know more than that. If he got sick, you took him to the doctor and that was the end of it.

“That makes the two of us,” she whispered, leaning against a tree.

You smiled, though it didn’t quite reach your eyes and then Jackie’s eyes widened as she noticed something behind you. “Y/N, that’s your guitar case!” she exclaimed, running toward it before you even processed what she just said. You honestly thought you’d never find your guitar.

Unlike Jackie, you walked over to it, opening the case and miraculously finding the guitar a bit scratched on the sides but otherwise fine. You took it from the case, playing a few notes and finding that it was all fine. “Well, I’ll be damned, my guitar got out looking better than me,” you chuckled, packing it again and hoisting it on your back. You looked back toward the group and then at Jackie.

She looked like she didn’t want to go back there, back to Van blaming her for dragging Shauna out and leaving her there, back to Shauna being distant, back to the plane that reminded her you were all in this nightmare.

“Do you think our families will find out before we are found?” you asked, dreading the thought of Wade finding out about the crash and not knowing you were alive and on your way back.

“Maybe not. I mean, what is Lottie’s dad going to tell them? ‘Hey, you know that plane that was supposed to take all our kids to Seattle? Yeah, it crashed.’ Everyone would go crazy,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as she was convincing you.

And you believed her, you needed to believe that. By tomorrow you’d be on your way back to Wiskayok and everything would be fine.

“Come on, Captain, let’s go back to the team,” you whispered, reluctantly heading back to where everyone else was.

A blood-curdling scream tears through the forest and you lower the guitar case near the makeshift camp and rush toward the scream with Jackie right next to you. “That sounded like Laura Lee!” Jackie tells you and you grit your teeth.

“What the fuck is it now?” you cursed, pleading for this day to just fucking end already, yet as you reached Laura Lee, being pulled away by Lottie you realized the day was far from over. “Holy shit,” you whispered, seeing coach Martinez up on the tree, blood dripping onto the ground below him.

“Dad! Dad!” Javi screamed and you turned just in time to see Shauna holding him back.

“Javi, Javi, Javi, come here,” she pulled him closer, trying to calm him down and prevent him from looking.

“It's Dad,” Javi whispered, and you reached over, placing your hand on his shoulder, you noticed he was leaning toward Shauna, not resisting her.

“Look at Shauna, okay, Javi?” you said gently. “Focus on her, one breath at a time,” he was looking at Shauna a lot like Wade would look at you. Shauna looked at you for a moment, silently understanding what you were trying to do.

“That’s right, focus on me, okay? Breathe with me. In and out,” she guided him, slowly breathing in and out and waiting for him to follow her lead. “That’s right, you’re doing great, Javi,” she praised him as he nodded rapidly.

“Holy macaroni, is, is that?” Misty appeared with the subtlety of a rampaging elephant and you pinched the bridge of your nose.

“He's got to be dead, right?” Nat asked and you changed your mind. Misty had the subtlety of a regular elephant, Nat, at the moment, had the subtlety of a rampaging elephant.

“What the fuck?” you never thought there would come a day when you and Shauna Shipman had the same reaction.

“Okay, who has the best arm?” Jackie asked and you took a step away from Javi, confused and curious.

“What?” Lottie asked, just as confused as you were.

“I do, Jackie,” Mari volunteered.

Jackie looked at Shauna, waiting until she guided Javi a bit further away. “Thinking we could try and throw things at him and see if he moves,” she suggested.

“Captain,” you genuinely had no idea how to react to that idea. Even if no one else had any other ideas.

“You want to throw rocks at Coach who fell out of a fucking plane?” Taissa questioned her incredulously.

“I didn't say rocks,” Jackie immediately countered. “Someone's shoe or whatever.”

“Oh, yeah, that's a fuck-ton smarter. You're on fire today, Jackie. Oh, wait. That was supposed to be me and Y/N, huh?” Van accused her.

“What?” Taissa asked, not knowing about what exactly happened on the plane.

“Let’s just say not all of us are as willing to help,” Van glared at Jackie.

“I have self-perseverance of a panda in captivity combined with curiosity of a puppy and impulsiveness of a squirrel; I am not the measuring stick we should be using for that!” you exclaimed, for a moment forgetting about the main issue at the moment.

Van looked at you with her mouth open wide, as if she couldn’t believe you were taking Jackie’s side on this.

“Okay, guys, stop it. We need a plan here,” Shauna interrupted the three of you, gesturing at coach Martinez and reminding you that you had a bigger problem at hand.

“We could lower him with ropes?” Laura Lee suggested.

“Oh, of course, I’m just gonna run get my necessary for soccer ropes real quick,” you said, spreading your arms.

“Vines, then? I don't know!” Laura Lee exclaimed helplessly.

“Fuck's sake, Laura Lee, we're not gonna Tarzan him out of a tree,” Nat told her incredulously.

“You got a better idea?” Jackie demanded, all out of ideas.

“Than shoes and vines? Sure. Let's just cut the fucking tree down,” Nat suggested sarcastically.

“Sarcasm really isn’t helping here, Nat,” Taissa snapped, pacing as she looked up toward coach Martinez.

“Nothing will help, we can’t reach him and get him off the tree without risking plummeting to our deaths!” you snapped back.

Yet, the decision was made the moment Travis saw his father. “Dad? Dad!” Travis exclaimed, running between all of you and starting to climb the tree.

“No, don't! Travis!” everyone tried to talk him into stopping, but he wasn’t listening, he wouldn’t listen to anyone, not right now.

You groaned, taking a deep breath. “Y/N! No!” Nat yelled at you, and you felt a hand, probably Jackie’s since she was closest, brushing against your forearm before you slipped out of her grasp and went after Travis.

“I’ll get an earful for this,” you muttered under your breath as you went up higher. “Watch your footing!” you yelled at Travis, but her wasn’t listening, relying on dumb luck to keep him from stepping on the wrong branch and falling.

“Travis! Y/N!” you heard yells from underneath you, Jackie and Nat’s panicked voices loudest of them all. You’d have to apologize to both of them, clearly you were adding more and more things to the list of all the shit you needed to apologize for. You’d make it up to both of them as soon as you were all safe and back home.

Tomorrow. You’d make it up to them tomorrow, at whatever city you end up in. You’d never reject Jackie’s invitations to parties, you’d come with Nat wherever she wanted, you’d even entertain the idea of joining Kevyn’s band.

But today, you’d keep adding more things to apologize for, even if this ends up as the last one.

From the corner of your eye you saw them spreading out blankets or towels, you couldn’t tell from this high up, preparing to catch whoever fell. The idea that those things would hold any of you and save you from a fall from this height would have been funny if the situation wasn’t so dire.

“Dad,” Travis called out, stopping now that he was at the same height as his father.

You reached Travis and realized why he stopped. A branch had pierced coach’s stomach, there was nothing anyone could do for him now. But worse than all that, he was actually alive. “He’s alive,” you whispered more to yourself as coach reached out toward Travis, looking at his son and quietly begging for help.

Travis went to take his hand, but you grabbed him, pulling him back forcefully. “The branch will snap,” you whispered, having noticed how old the tree was as you were climbing it. Even where you were wasn’t safe, let alone stepping further from the trunk.

“Let go, Y/N!” Travis demanded, panting but you refused to let him go.

“Javi is down there, don’t leave him alone out here,” you reminded him harshly, looking into his eyes, yet he pushed your hand away, stepping onto the branch, trying to get to his father on his hands and knees.

The branch tilted under added weight, cracking slowly and Travis stopped, looking down toward the ground. “Dad,” he looked at his father, looking into the man’s eyes one last time as everyone underneath you begged him to get back.

“Grab my hand,” you offered him your hand and pulled him back, not to save his life, he would have made it back anyway, but to take away some of the responsibility he’d feel for giving up. Like this he could convince himself you stopped him. The branch snapped, falling, with coach Martinez still impaled on it. It crashed down with a loud thud, and you closed your eyes, swallowing the lump in your throat so you don’t fall apart up here on the tree.

“Javi needs you,” you whispered to Travis. “You are his older brother, protect him,” you repeated the words similar to the words you kept repeating like a mantra since Wade was born. “Focus on what’s left, not on what’s gone,” no matter how hard it is, no matter how much it hurts, that was the only path. Cry and grieve the loss, but keep going.

Travis didn’t reply, he slowly let go of your hand and leaned his forehead against the tree trunk.

You gave him a moment, letting him collect his thoughts before you slowly began climbing back down. “Follow me,” you told him, carefully checking each branch.

You reached ground and stumbled away from the tree, refusing to look at coach Martinez, refusing to fall apart right now, in this cursed place that already took way too many lives. “Y/N,” Nat approached you, placing her hand on your shoulder and you just realized you were trembling.

“He was still alive,” you whispered, shutting your eyes and biting your lip. “It didn’t matter though, there was no way to get him down,” you could have had all the equipment in the world, the branch wouldn’t have held your weights. You felt Jackie’s hand on your back, yet it didn’t do much to help you.

“Come here,” Jackie whispered, opening her arms to you, yet you looked away.

“We need wood for the fire tonight,” you needed to keep moving, you couldn’t stop for one moment.

~X~

Natalie looked at your retreating back, helplessly exchanging looks with Jackie. She’s known it for a long time now, but now Jackie was understanding it too.

It wasn’t the plane crash that caused this.

You were always like this, parts of you were broken long before you met any of them.

And chances were, you didn’t even know it, you got so used to this constant need to never stop long enough to process everything, that you thought it was the way it would be. It was your normal.

But no matter how hard you tried, nothing could last forever, sooner, rather than later, you’d have to stop and face everything you kept bottling up. Here, or back home.

A/N: Well, I considered making this longer, but this felt like a nice place to stop. As usual, feedback fuels my writing.

Chapter Text

-If I fall, will you be there, when I come to my senses, if I fall, will I fade away alone-

You looked around the wood, gathering fallen branches, breaking some of the bigger ones with your foot. At least they were mostly dry, so you figured they’d burn fine. You thought back to the trips you used to take with your father, mostly fishing, but he sometimes took you camping near lakes during summer breaks. Back then he’d leave Wade with your aunt, his sister. Back then you kept convincing yourself Wade was simply too young, and in a way that was true.

“Kindling, we need kindling,” you muttered, looking for dry leaves, dry moss, anything of that nature. And then it hit you, all of this, the endless forest, the trees so dense you barely saw the sky, the complete silence, and lives already lost. A raw, helpless sob tore through your throat, escaping against your will as you looked around you.

You survived the plane crash; the worst was behind you. You didn’t worry about yourself, no matter how dense the forest was the rescue team was bound to find you maybe even tomorrow. You worried about Wade, who’d spend who knows how long not knowing if you were alive or not. And you couldn’t do anything but hope your father would, for once in Wade’s life, put aside his resentment.

“Fuck,” you cursed as you leaned against the closest tree, pressing your forehead against it. “Fuck!” you yelled, the forest swallowing your yell as the branches you gathered clattered at your feet.

You bit your lip, holding back tears, holding back the incoming flood of emotions you weren’t ready to handle right now. And then you heard a branch breaking behind you and spun around, only to realize it was just Nat. “Holy shit, you gave me a heart attack,” you said, grabbing at your chest as your heart threatened to jump out of your chest.

Nat walked up to you, seeing the branches now piled right behind you. “I found your carry-on bag,” she said, offering you the swimming goggles Wade gave you, but you went still, too shaken right now to move. So, Nat, more in tune with your emotions than anyone else in your life, raised her hands and put the goggles over your head and hung them around your neck. “There, now he’s with you,” she whispered gently, wiping a stray tear that snuck out of your eye.

You nodded, leaning your forehead against Nat’s shoulder. Your breathing was shallow, the storm in your mind slowly calming down, not fully passing, but slowing down enough to clear your thoughts enough to function and be of use. “I’m sorry,” you whispered as Nat rubbed circles into your back.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she comforted you, reaching under the band of the goggles to gently scratch the nape of your neck. “But we need you with the team,” she said, knowing you needed to focus on something. “Jackie’s idea of a forest are beaten paths near the road, so safe to say she’s not taking charge anytime soon,” Nat added, letting the implications hang in the air.

You didn’t have anyone taking charge. Misty was taking on a role more akin to a head nurse, rather than a leader. Couch Scott wasn’t even conscious, coach Martinez was dead, you were all scattered and disoriented, moving like a hive without any direction.

~X~

She caught them looking toward her. Melissa, Gen, Crystal, Britt, Robin, Akilah, sometimes even Lottie and Laura Lee, expecting her to know what to do, to take control as the team captain, and she kept hearing coach Martinez’s words to her. That when things get tough the team would need someone to guide them,

Jackie was the captain, she was the one who had that responsibility, but she had no idea where to start. Didn’t even have any clue on how to light a fire, let alone help anyone else. Even when she was cleaning the cut on your forehead, she had no clue what she was doing and just cleaned the blood from your skin with water.

“Captain,” you approached her from behind, coming back with Natalie with piles of branches in your arms and she was flooded with a sense of relief. On the field you were their counter, the one setting things in the motion, minimizing the danger to their goal. “Come with me for a moment,” you whispered, gesturing subtly to the side and Jackie followed you without a question while Natalie went to check on others.

She noticed the swimming goggles around your neck but didn’t question it, she just stopped near the edge of the somewhat open space most of the bags were brought to. “So, you and Nat, uh, brought wood,” she said awkwardly, pleased with herself when she saw you smiling a bit.

“We did,” you said and stepped a bit closer to her. “Captain, can you take charge of us?” you asked and her jaw dropped at your request. Surely you realized by now that she was helplessly unequipped for this situation. She was extremely coddled all her life, her idea of a forest was the large park where parties were being held. “They need a sense of stability, my father took me camping when I was younger, I know what we need to do,” you quickly added, probably noticing the panic etched on her face.

“Oh, open with that next time,” she felt like she could breathe again. “You just need me to tell them what to do,” that made sense, she was still the captain, she’d be able to get most of them in line.

You nodded, relaxing a bit as well.

“Okay, just that. I can handle that,” she could do that much, she was used to that. “What do I need to tell them?” she looked at you, still a bit uncertain but determined to see this through.

“Right, so, we need wood, uh, branches, twigs, anything that isn’t thicker than four, maybe five inches, for the fire, as well as dry leaves or dry moss to start the fire,” that was simple enough. “We also need any supplies we can get from the wreckage. I don’t know, whatever was included in the flight, pillows, blankets, broken seats, anything really,” the idea of going back inside, where there were several dead bodies made her pale.

“Y/N, I can’t order someone to go back inside,” the rescue team will come tomorrow, and they wouldn’t have to touch the bodies, at least that was what she convinced herself of. Moving the bodies on the plane would have made this even more real, make it feel like they’d stay here a lot longer than anyone was willing to consider.

You swallowed the lump in your throat, and she could see what was on your mind before you said it. “Nat and I will do it, we just need a few girls to carry things back to the camp,” she should have told you she’d come with you and Nat, but the idea of being that close to dead bodies made her nauseous. “And last thing we need is to collect all the bags and figure out what food and drinks we have here, so everything from our bags and the plane, we gather it all.”

Jackie nodded, finally catching a glimpse of control and order in this chaos. “Okay, I can organize all that,” she said and snapped her fingers. “And we should put all the medicine or things that can be used as medicine in one place as well,” she added, watching as your face lit up.

“Good thinking, I brought Advil with me,” you told her, and she also had Motrin, so while she was sure you wouldn’t be needing it, well, aside from coach Scott, it was good to know what you had.

“Oh, and you need to play your guitar later, we need some music,” she remembered, making you grin and shake your head in disbelief. “No ulterior motives, I swear,” she added, hiding her hand and crossing her fingers.

You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling. “Come on, Captain, let’s get everyone moving,” you said, following her back to the group.

And then she caught sight of Javi sitting with Shauna. “Shit, playing guitar would be insensitive, wouldn’t it?” she asked, not wanting Javi or Travis to feel even worse than they already were.

You stopped, considering it for a moment. “I’ll take the fall, besides, it’s not like I’ll play tango or whatever,” you decided and Jackie nodded, silently promising not to let you take the fall if it came to that. The two of you joined the group and she glanced at you one more time, finding encouragement in your eyes.

Jackie took a deep breath, noticing some of the girls were already looking at the two of you. “Everybody line up!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands loudly to get everyone’s attention. “I’m serious!” she demanded more firmly when they didn’t immediately comply, and slowly but surely, albeit with a lot of reluctance, the girls approached her.

~X~

It was you, that much was obvious the moment Jackie began barking orders to everyone, because Jackie probably wasn’t even sure what dry moss looked like or how it would be used to light a fire. Not that she, or most girls here, were much better than Jackie when it came to that.

So, it had to be the universe playing a joke on her when of all the people here you actually knew what to do.

While dragging the last suitcase to the pile of bags and suitcases, Shauna looked at Jackie who was with Natalie, watching as Natalie lit a campfire. It was starting to get dark, and surprisingly cold and she could see people already dreading how cold the few nights they’d spend here would be. Luckily, while there wasn’t any alcohol on the plane, there were blankets and pillows, and even usual snacks since the flight was supposed to last eight to nine hours.

She couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but Laura Lee approached Jackie and Shauna could see Jackie was scrambling to figure out the answer, desperately turning to Natalie who took over, pointing toward the small stash of medical supplies Misty was arranging.

Your return from the wreckage immediately got Jackie’s attention as she approached you, plucking something from your hair as you whipped out a bag of gummy bears from behind you, prompting Jackie to lower her head, probably giggling as she gently smacked you on the shoulder. You opened the bag and from the looks of it counted the gummy bears, saying something to Jackie while gesturing two with your hand.

And there it was again, the smile on Jackie’s face, looking almost playful as she grabbed your hand and pushed it down while raising her other hand and waving three fingers in front of your eyes. You shook your head vehemently, but Jackie bit her lip the same way she did whenever she was messing with someone on purpose.

Shauna envied it, your ability to be so open, especially with Jackie. Here she was, struggling to deal with exactly what she wanted. Jackie chose her, she pulled her back, chose to save her life, yet Shauna blamed her for it, blamed her for pulling her away from Van, and to an extent even you. Jackie choosing her over you and Van should have made her happy, yet she wasn’t satisfied, it didn’t feel as good as she thought it would.

Maybe because it was life or death and she didn’t want you or Van to be hurt, let alone die in such a horrible way.

Or maybe it was because, instead of Jackie for once having to chase after her, Jackie was focusing on you. Or maybe because you were left behind on the plane, granted, by your own choice, yet you weren’t pushing Jackie away, you were actually doing opposite of pushing Jackie away.

It was like Shauna won the battle, but you won the war, and she was seeing the results as Jackie, who was already fairly close with you before this, found comfort in you instead of literally anyone else.

She turned her attention to her bag, looking for a pack of mints she brought along, yet from the corner of her eye, she noticed Jackie and you parting ways, both of you, as well as Natalie chewing on something while Jackie began going around with the bag of gummy bears.

Eventually, Jackie came up to her, she stood up as Jackie slowed down, tentatively closing the distance with those huge puppy eyes already deployed. Jackie was nervous for once, shuffling her feet and parting her lips a few times. “Hi,” she settled on that, her voice carrying a kind of timidness Shauna wasn’t used to hearing.

“Hi,” Shauna replied, finding it more and more difficult to stay angry at Jackie, especially when she felt her position was threatened by you.

Jackie smiled a bit and carefully took Shauna’s hand, opening it and handing her four gummy bears from the bag, all yellow, her favorites. “Four?” she asked, puzzled.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Jackie shrugged with that same mischievous smile on her face. From the looks of it everyone got three, and Shauna wasn’t about to complain. She definitely needed a bit of extra sugar after everything that happened.

“Jackie,” she began, not even entirely sure what she wanted to say, she just knew she didn’t want what happened on the plane to affect their friendship.

“I’m sorry,” Jackie blurted out. “I know you didn’t want to leave either of them behind, and I understand why Van is angry at me, but I was terrified I’d lose you,” from the way Jackie was looking at the ground and her bottom lip was trembling even Shauna could tell this was on her mind since the crash.

Her hand twitched, itching to reach out and hold Jackie, to comfort her, tell her it was okay, tell her she appreciated Jackie’s apology, tell her she would have done the same if she was in Jackie’s situation. Yet she choked, unable to coney into words or actions what she felt at the moment. The relief, the warmth in her chest, knowing how important she actually was to Jackie, it was difficult to process it all as quickly as Jackie was expecting from her.

“There wasn’t time to think,” she wanted to smack her forehead for such a lame response. She knew she’d be haunted by that line, by the countless better ways she could have replied to Jackie’s apology.

Jackie nodded, relaxing a bit, so maybe Shauna’s reply wasn’t as bad as she thought it was. “Right,” she noticed Jackie taking a small step closer before wiping dust or something from her eyes. “I’ve still got to give gummy bears to Gen and Melissa,” she said and awkwardly gestured toward where the two girls were. “We’re okay, right?” she asked, just to be sure.

Of course they were. There was no way Shauna could imagine spending the time until the rescue with any tension between her and Jackie. “Yeah, definitely,” she answered, a bit too awkwardly, but that was all Jackie needed.

~X~

‘Two now, third tonight,’ you suggested when you handed her the bag, yet like a kid who couldn’t resist the cookies left on the table Jackie went and gave everyone three gummy bears each. And now, with two gummy bears left, she went over to you and Natalie. “So, change of plan,” she said, letting out an exaggerated sigh of exhaustion while she dropped to her knees behind you and leaned onto your back, her arms hanging around your neck and a bag with two gummy bears dangling in front of you.

“Holy shit, Jackie! A little warning next time!” Natalie exclaimed, startled by Jackie catching her off guard. She wasn’t even trying to be quiet so she had no idea what the problem was. You and Natalie were busy getting the kindling ready, so at least it would be a bit warmer soon.

Which reminded her of how cold it was, and she dropped the bag into your hand before burying her cold palms under the shoulders of your varsity jacket. “Clingy much, Captain?” you teased, feeding Natalie one of the two gummy bears because she was busy lighting the fire.

“It’s fucking cold,” she complained, eying the blankets brought from the wreckage. You’d do in the meantime.

“Mhm,” you agreed and brought the yellow gummy bear to her lips. “I don’t like lemon ones,” you said like you weren’t the one who chose which gummy bear Natalie would get, not that Jackie was complaining, she gave Shauna her third gummy bear.

Jackie caught Natalie shaking her head and heard her sighing, but didn’t question it, instead accepting the gummy bear and savoring the taste.

“We need to properly set up the camp, distribute the blankets and pillows, ration the snacks,” you said as you fanned the flames with a paper fan you made from the notebook. The flames grew stronger and Jackie nodded, determined to make this night as organized as possible. She could approach this like it was a slumber party gone horribly wrong, she could deal with that. Keep the morale high, that was her task and she knew how to do that.

“On it,” she whispered into your ear, reluctantly stepping away from the increasingly warmer fire.

~X~

Several hours later most of you were gathered around the fire, the night giving the forest an eerie feeling. And with the darkness and occasional unsettling sounds came the somberness. It was like the moment you got to take a break it all came crashing down on you and you were sure Mari stepped away so the reality of your situation wouldn’t break her completely.

You could see it in their eyes, the flames in the middle of the camp illuminating the despair, the exact moment when so many of your teammates were getting lost in their thoughts.

Yet what disturbed you the most was the lack of sounds. Sure, there were occasional sounds from the forest, but not nearly as much as you were used to on the camping trips your father took you on. And sure, maybe it was simply because you were no longer a child, but you couldn’t shake off a bad feeling that was crawling its way under your skin and seeping into your bones.

You opened your guitar case and brought the guitar out, looking at Javi and Travis for permission. Javi didn’t seem to mind, he was silent, but he looked at your guitar curiously. Travis however moved away, choosing to move closer to coach Scott. You sighed, tempted to put the guitar back in its case, but for the first time since the nightfall you saw the girls focusing on something other than the horrible circumstances you were all in.

So, without a word you strummed a few notes, just to get in the mood before starting to play Concierto de Aranjuez, figuring it was a good choice. The gentle, somber music filled the silence, the melody bringing with it a sense of longing somehow mixed with peace. The swimming goggles felt heavy around your neck, and you closed your eyes, for a moment pretending you were at home, playing the guitar to Wade.

Yet the sound of wood cracking within the flames and the occasional sound of animals in the distance made you open your eyes. And you stared at the flames, muscle memory keeping the gentle melody going. You glanced toward Nat, seeing her closing her eyes, letting the melody you so often played back home provide her with a hint of comfort.

How many hours has it been? A few of the girls had watches, but you never bothered asking, it didn’t matter, really. Somehow this, playing your guitar, gave you the most tangible sense of time passing. Fifteen minutes, that’s how long you’ve been playing the second movement of Concierto de Aranjuez, Adagio, on repeat, for the third time now.

Slowly, exhaustion from the day began catching up to you and you lowered the guitar back down, you accomplished what you were after. You caught Jackie glancing at you, a small smile appearing on her face as your eyes met, and you smiled back.

“I'm sure the plane has an emergency transmitter sending out a distress signal. They'll be here to rescue us by morning,” Shauna spoke up softly, convincing herself as much as everyone else gathered around the fire.

Jackie turned to her best friend, smiling a bit. You nodded, forcing yourself to stay optimistic because you had no idea how to handle the idea that the rescue wouldn’t come soon. Nat glanced at Shauna as well, but she didn’t seem as optimistic as Jackie or you, and Van continued eating something, her gaze empty.

“Still, maybe we should conserve some food?” it was like the universe itself was setting Jackie up, constantly putting her in situations where she was making Van angrier and angrier at her. No matter how reasonable her concern was. “In case they don't get here till later in the day?” Jackie added.

Defiantly, Van put another corn nut in her mouth. “You want to save the corn nuts?” Van asked, anger noticeable in her tone, and Jackie, who already felt guilty for leaving Van behind hung her head, backing down immediately.

“Come on, you know that’s not what she meant,” you defended Jackie, no matter how tired you felt.

“Y/N,” Nat warned you quietly and for a moment you and Van stared at one another, Van looking incredulously at you, like she couldn’t believe you were actually on Jackie’s side here.

You noticed Nat tensing next to you, expecting a confrontation, and she wasn’t the only one, you heard the small sounds of fidgeting, hitched breaths, whispers, like something that would have ended with nothing more than a round of bickering back home was enough to send most of the girls into the fight or flight mode.

Yet Van, maybe realizing how tense everyone else was getting, shook her head in disbelief and closed the bag of corn nuts before getting up and shoved it into your chest. “Happy now, Y/N?” she didn’t even wait for you to reply.

With a heavy, exhausted sigh you tossed the half-eaten bag to the already halved pile of snacks and grabbed the airplane pillow, inflating the sorry excuse for a pillow that was still better than rocks and ground. You tossed the first one you inflated to Nat, and then got another one, inflating it and lying back, staring at the sky. Or at least what little of it you could see through the trees.

Two minutes later the inflatable pillow you were lying on popped.

~X~

Natalie looked at you, noticing how tense you were, how clenched your jaw was. She wasn’t completely sure about what happened on the plane, no one but you, Jackie, Shauna and Van knew exactly, but she could piece it together to an extent. Between Van’s anger directed solely toward Jackie, you and Van making it out of the plane together, and Shauna being surprisingly distant with Jackie for a few hours, Natalie figured Jackie decided to pull Shauna away while you stayed to help Van.

And knowing you, you probably yelled at Jackie to leave.

Natalie wanted to sigh, to scold you for how much you let Jackie get away with. She didn’t though, there would be time and place for that, away from the rest of the team, away from this forest, this hell. She wasn’t entirely sure you were ready to hear what she had to say to you.

“You okay, Laura Lee?” Taissa’s question got her attention and for the first time she noticed just how distraught Laura Lee was. Sure, all of them were in various states of distress, but Laura Lee seemed like she was about to have a panic attack.

Laura Lee’s silence even got you to prop yourself up on your elbows and look at the blonde girl.

And then finally, Laura Lee spoke up, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “This is all my fault. I did something really bad,” she whispered.

Natalie looked at you, seeing confusion on your face. The hell was that supposed to mean?

“I kept screwing up in my piano lesson last week,” she was crying, her voice wavering. “Mrs. Brophy kept yelling at me. ‘Sharp. F sharp. F sharp.’ I just,” she sniffled. “I couldn't take it anymore, so I called her a bad word,” she revealed, like that was the reason they crashed. “Just in my head, but God heard me. Now we're all being punished,” it was nonsense, a desperate way to make sense of what was happening to them.

“What did you call her?” Taissa asked a lot gentler than Natalie thought she could.

Laura Lee hesitated, like she was physically trying to force the word out. “Cunt,” the word came out in a whisper, like a secret that should have never been told.

It was ridiculous, and it only took Van trying not to laugh to make everyone burst out laughing, just for a moment forgetting their problems.

And as if encouraged by the absurd confession, even more secrets began spilling out. “I steal shitty clothes from T.J. Maxx,” Lottie, the rich girl of the team whose dad paid for a private plane, blurted out.

“What?” Van, justifiably shocked, asked.

“I return them, and I get credit that I never use, and I have thousands of dollars in T.J. bucks,” who would have seen that coming, damn, she should have paid more attention to Lottie.

The laughter and pure shock continued and she caught Jackie looking at you, as if silently asking you if you were hearing this. For a moment Natalie could have sworn she saw something unspoken between you and Jackie, something she was so used to seeing in your eyes whenever you looked at Jackie, but now, with Jackie’s face illuminated by the flames, it was like she could see it in Jackie’s eyes too.

Jackie blinked, as if shaken by the moment that just passed between you. “I, uh,” she scrambled for her own secret to reveal, both to keep the laughter and mood going, and to distract herself. “I used to sneak downstairs after everybody had gone to bed and watch the Color of Night so I could pause it on Bruce Willis's wang,” Jackie was straight, no matter what the little moment between the two of you might have implied.

“That is definitely why we crashed!” Taissa agreed as others laughed.

“I mean, Jeff's not bad, but damn! Right?” Jackie turned to Shauna, and you grinned, hiding what you felt from everyone else, everyone who didn’t know you as well as Natalie did.

You’ve long since come to terms with it, or at least that was what you kept telling yourself. And yet you kept looking at Jackie like she was the only girl in the world, blind to every other possibility.

And it fucking hurt.

“What about you, Shipman? Any secrets big enough to crash a goddamn plane?” Jackie asked, turning her attention fully to Shauna.

For whatever reason Shauna seemed almost afraid of the question, like there was something not even Jackie knew. “Um,” she was trying to think of something.

And then coach Scott’s scream tore through the camp, the laughter vanishing into thin air with his pained scream and they realized way too late that Misty was no longer sitting with them.

“I had to stop the bleeding for good,” was all Misty said as coach lay there, unconscious from the pain after she burnt his wound closed. And in that moment, whether on purpose or not, Misty stopped two things. His bleeding, and their fleeting moment of relief and happiness.

~X~

Sleep didn’t come easy to her, not that night. Despite exhaustion, physical and emotional, Jackie struggled to keep her eyes closed. The ground was cold and damp, and she constantly had a feeling that something was crawling over her, one insect or another, and her right thigh was starting to itch for some reason.

Jackie turned to her other side, looking at Shauna. She was asleep, not even looking uncomfortable with everything that was around them. She was that tired, Jackie guessed, and same went for other girls, yet she just couldn’t sleep.

Something ran over the back of her palm, and she quickly sat up, shaking her palm and looking around for the bug. “Fuck,” she cursed softly under her breath, looking under the blanket even though she couldn’t see anything. She shivered, despising the thought of anything crawling over her.

“Captain, settle down,” your sleepy whisper made her flinch, and she turned to her left where you were, lying on your side with your back turned to her. You were the first to fall asleep, only waking up when Natalie lay down to your left and you stretched out your arm for her to use as a pillow since about half of the inflatable pillows from the plane popped due to the small branches and other things Jackie didn’t want to think about. So, no one even bothered with the remaining half.

“There are bugs!” she whisper shouted at you, only to be met with a blank stare, and she made herself even smaller than she was by curling up as much as she could. She knew there was nothing you or anyone could do about it, she knew there were other girls who were squeamish, especially about bugs, but they were all sleeping, and here she was, frantically looking for the bug that ran over the back of her palm.

“You need to sleep, Captain,” you whispered, sounding a bit more awake now, but not moving due to Natalie.

“I can’t,” she knew she had to, she wasn’t stupid, but she was scared and uncomfortable.

You rolled onto your back, careful not to disturb Natalie and moved your blanket a bit more to the side, making about a fourth of it cover ground next to you. “Come here,” you whispered, patting the blanket laid out on the ground. Jackie looked at you, swallowing the lump in her throat as she got up with her blanket in hands. “Spread out your blanket so one end overlaps the end of mine,” you whispered.

“Right,” she looked into your eyes and lay the blanket down. You kept the edge of her blanket in place as she lay down, more than aware that there were only a couple of inches between you, despite the blanket in the way. She settled down next to you, the blankets acting as a sort of a cocoon. “I feel like a burrito,” she whispered and you snorted, trying not to laugh.

“Oh, Captain, what am I going to do with you?” you teased, patting her shoulder as she moved a bit closer, pressing her back against your side.

“Come to Rutgers,” she whispered, thinking about the future instead of the present. She needed that, she needed to, at least in her thoughts, be somewhere else, anywhere but here.

You remained silent for a bit, and then, much to her surprise you actually gave her a clear answer. “Sure, I’d love that,” you replied and her heart hammered against her chest.

“Say,” it just came to her mind, she didn’t really consider it prior to this very moment. “You’ll rent an apartment for you and Wade, right?” she asked, surprised by her own idea.

“Yeah,” you whispered back, pulling your hand away, much to her disappointment.

“Let’s do it together,” she wanted to party, be social, make bunch of friends, but she knew she was too used to living in a huge house to just swap it for a dorm. A nice apartment felt like a much better option than a dorm she might have to share with a lot more people than she was willing to. She’d be fine with your younger brother there as well, since it was clear by now that you’d prioritize him over anything. “With Shauna as well,” she would have included Natalie as well, but the girl to your left had long since voiced her lack of interest in college.

“I like the sound of that, Captain,” you whispered sleepily, not even arguing about Shauna being included and it gave Jackie hope that maybe Shauna and you would actually be able to set aside your differences, that it wouldn’t just be her keeping peace between you.

“Are you ever going to be sleepy enough to just call me by my name?” she asked randomly, since she was sure she wouldn’t get to see you drunk anytime soon, and she honestly would have bet damn near anything that you’d call her Jackie when you were this sleepy, but no, here you were, still calling her Captain.

“Nope,” she didn’t have to turn around to look at you to know you were grinning. Well, it’s not like she was complaining. “Sleep now,” you whispered and she felt just safe enough to close her eyes and fall asleep, right there, with you right next to her.

~X~

What. The. Fuck?

Never in Shauna’s life did those three words so perfectly describe her feelings and thoughts. Last night she fell asleep, cold and miserable, and now she realized she wasn’t sure if she had woken up or if she was in some bizarre dream.

Why was Jackie sleeping next to you?!

And so closely at that?!

And sure, technically, Jackie did lie down between you and Shauna last night, but when Shauna fell asleep there were good five, maybe six feet between you and Jackie and now she wasn’t sure her finger could fit between your blankets!

“The fuck?” Natalie voiced what was going through Shauna’s mind when she woke up and saw Jackie and you, and in any other situation the expression on Natalie’s face would have been comical as she checked her hands and pinched herself, perhaps checking if she was either high or dreaming.

“Yeah, they’ve been like that pretty much all night,” Van said from the side, finishing the bag of corn nuts from last night with Tai. Great, that was exactly what Shauna wanted to hear right now.

“Jackie,” Shauna closed the distance and crouched down next to Jackie, intending to wake her up.

Jackie groaned, covering her face with her blanket. “Not yet, wake me up when the rescue team gets here,” Jackie whined, and Shauna’s jaw dropped. Did Jackie, the same Jackie who hated the thought of bugs, who shut down every suggestion of camping, just say she wanted to keep sleeping on the ground?

“You need to get up,” Shauna said, which wasn’t exactly right. There was nothing to do but wait for the rescue team, but she didn’t like this one bit, so she wanted Jackie up and moving around.

“To do what?” Jackie asked, actually turning around so she was now facing you, which was the opposite of what Shauna wanted. “Count leaves?” she yawned, and Shauna was about to accept her loss and go sulk.

“It probably isn’t a bad idea to be ready for tonight just in case,” you muttered sleepily, frowning, probably because your left arm was numb from Natalie sleeping on your forearm. You blinked a few times and tossed the blanket off you, getting up with a groan fitting for someone who spent the night sleeping on the ground. You yawned and Jackie let out the most annoyed groan Shauna had heard from her in a while.

“Do whatever you want,” Jackie muttered, grabbing your blanket and covering herself with it.

Shauna was not going to complain about it. Jackie could sleep all she wanted, as long as it wasn’t that close to you.

“So, we’re just going to let Jackie sleep?” Van asked, clearly not over what happened yesterday.

“Most of us should do that. Conserve energy as much as possible. Anyone feeling restless come with me to get sticks and dry leaves, the rest of you sit around or sleep,” you took charge at the moment and took off, Mari, Javi, Akilah and Laura Lee following you, the rest remained around the campsite.

Last night you all agreed on a rough plan, keep the fire going so the smoke could work as a signal for the rescue team, and for that you needed to gather wood.

Only one of you knew it at the time, but the rescue team would not be able to find you, the only signal they could have tracked was gone, destroyed in an impulsive need for purpose and belonging.

This easy-going, we’ll be rescued soon mentality most of the team had at the moment would soon vanish, leaving only the terrifying reality that you were stuck in the middle of nowhere. None of you knew that by the time the rescue comes, your numbers will be significantly lower, the ones surviving forever changed and broken by this place.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

-And I swear, I didn't mean to be a let-down; what I broke can't be fixed with all my sorry excuses-

Wrong. There was something very wrong about this place, this energy, or presence or something, making I difficult to breathe, to sleep, keeping her restless. The sounds no one else seemed to hear disturbed her and she couldn’t calm down enough to fall asleep, no matter how tired she was. The moment she was sure everyone else was asleep, Lottie sat up, starting toward the attic, as if waiting for something to come down and harm them all.

She quickly lost track of time, too stuck in her own mind to focus on anything, whether it was tangible or not. The dread threatened to consume her, to take over her mind and make her act in ways she probably shouldn’t.

And she felt so, so alone, abandoned in her paranoia, in that same awful feeling she’d get as a child, the one her father saw as sickness that needed to be medicated. Well, the medicine was gone by now.

Someone gasped behind her, waking up from a nightmare. Those happened a lot since they crashed. By the sound of the gasp she figured it was Natalie. And sure enough, a few seconds later Natalie realized she was awake and sitting there, motionless. “Lottie,” she heard Natalie’s voice, heard her approaching, crawling between their teammates sleeping forms.

Natalie was always more in tune with others than she let on, and it was easy for her to figure out what the issue was by simply following Lottie’s line of sight. “It's okay,” she tried to convince her, even though there wasn’t anyone in the world who could convince her that this was okay, that she was okay. “He's gone. Remember?”

She remembered. Physically he was gone, that much they could both agree on. To Lottie he was anything but gone.

“We buried him,” Natalie reminded her, but to Lottie is wasn’t enough to chase the feeling she had away.

“I think bad things happened here,” she whispered, afraid of what was coming, and something was coming, she just didn’t know what or when it would come, but this feeling was real. Everything about this place was wrong. Everything.

Yet they had nowhere else to go.

Natalie wrapped her arms around Lottie’s shoulders, pulling her into a gentle, comforting hug. “Probably,” there were enough things here to assume that even without a bad feeling, from the remnants of the life someone lived here, to where it was in the middle of nowhere. “But we don’t have much of a choice, it’s here or outside,” she whispered and Lottie reluctantly leaned into her touch, raising one hand and gripping Natalie’s forearm.

~X~

They all just moved on, gave up on the rescue and chose to play house in the abandoned cabin. And Jackie found herself just watching, usually sitting with her arms crossed, observing helplessly as her team began leaving her behind.

She watched as Laura Lee, Gen and Melissa hung a rope to dry clothes on. She watched Tai get Van and a few other girls to help her clear the area around the cabin, to cut down the vines and bushes, as well as some small trees that were near. She sat back as Akilah explained what to look for when foraging for food.

It’s not that she didn’t want to help, she didn’t know how. She tried to help Van and Natalie with setting up the outdoor fireplace and the sticks the pots would hang from, but she just got them angry when she failed to set the sticks up properly. Days later she still had no idea how they figured it out and got the heavy pot hanging over the fire.

So, since she figured she had no idea what to do, she should just wait until someone tells her what to do. It was better to sit back and do nothing, than to make tasks more difficult than they had to be. She sat on the porch, once more with her arms folded over her chest when you came with a huge net in your arms.

“Captain, help me out here,” you said and she stood up, watching you until you pointed at one end of the net. “Grab that and help me spread it on the ground,” you said and she did exactly what you asked of her, helping you spread the net that was bigger than she thought it would be in front of the cabin. But more importantly there were several big holes in the net, making it useless and Jackie looked away, blinking a few times.

“Think we can use it?” Van approached you when she saw what you found.

“Not the way it is,” you said and took your backpack off, emptying it on the ground. Jackie saw the spare thin ropes like the ones the net was made of. “I’ll have to patch it up,” you didn’t sound nearly as concerned about it as you should have been in Jackie’s opinion.

“Wait. Patch it up?” Jackie asked, looking at you like she wasn’t sure she heard you well. “You know how to?” she asked a bit incredulously.

You nodded like it was common knowledge, but no one told her, this was the first time she was hearing anything about you knowing enough about fishing to fix a net. “My father used to take me on fishing trips when I was younger,” you explained and went to bring a stump over to the net so you could work. “Think you can help me?” you asked.

“How?” Jackie wanted to help you, but what could she do in this situation? She didn’t know how to fix it.

You looked around the cabin. “It’s a bit too heavy to hold it for a long time, but if we hang it from the roof it’ll be fine,” you said and before Jackie could stop you managed to get on the roof. “Give it here, Captain,” you grinned and she shook her head but handed you one end of the net.

“Here, to hold it in place,” Van said, lifting a slightly bigger and heavier branch with Shauna.

“Good thinking,” you said, grunting as you pulled the branch to the roof.

“Careful!” Jackie warned you, and you just winked at her as you managed to set everything up. “I’m serious,” she pouted, not liking how careless you were, but you just climbed back down and patted her on the shoulder before thanking Van and Shauna.

“Okay, so, you keep it steady and I’ll patch it up,” you said and tapped the stump for Jackie to sit on. “Just hold it like this,” you said and showed her where and how to hold the net.

“You sure this is helping you?” Jackie asked as you began fixing the net with spare ropes you found. Sure she kept it in place, but she was sitting while you were doing the main task.

“Yeah, I can work with both hands,” you said, focusing entirely on tying the knots and bit by bit patching up the holes in the net. “It’s faster,” you added, and Jackie found herself looking at you, at the way you squinted a bit every time you had to weave the rope through knots and tighten them, or the way you quietly hummed to yourself, filling the silence.

Still, as happy as Jackie was that she was helping, eventually her muscles began to ache a bit from holding her arms up for a long time, but she bit her lip, forcing herself to push through the discomfort. The last thing she wanted was for you to get annoyed as well.

“You okay?” and yet, despite being so focused on your task you noticed, of course you noticed.

Jackie nodded. “I can do this much,” she said, already feeling so out of place, already feeling judged and like everyone now had an excuse to turn on her; she had to do this much.

You looked at her, pausing for a few moments before slowly lowering the spare rope on the porch. “Come on, I need a break,” you said, and maybe you really did need a break, or maybe you were just looking out for her, framing the break as something you needed and not her need.

And Jackie reluctantly let go of the net, though the relief she felt quickly outweighed any questions or uncertainties. “Thanks,” she said as she massaged her sore hands. She was definitely not used to doing anything physically demanding that wasn’t soccer.

She really missed soccer, she missed kicking the ball, playing with everyone, she missed those moments more than she dared to admit out loud. She went inside as you sat down on the porch and poured water into two mugs. They’ve been scrubbed yet they still looked filthy to her, but there wasn’t any other, cleaner option. The plastic bottle kind of starting to smell. “Here,” she said as she handed you one of the mugs.

“Thanks, Captain,” you said as she sat down next to you. She drank her water quickly and closed her eyes as she leaned her head back against the cabin. She was still thirsty, and hungry, and she hated it here more than she ever hated anything.

~X~

It took you three days to get the fishing gear fixed up, but at least that was over. Only, that still left the more difficult task, finding the good spot for the net, because you didn’t have a boat and you couldn’t exactly leave it by the shore.

Your plan, since you had to improvise, was to find a spot that was more like a cliff, or a tree that grew over the lake, set up the net and then dive in to get any fish that gets caught. Not the most practical way, but you were severely lacking in equipment, and the net was too heavy to be constantly lifted and lowered even by a couple of people.

Maybe you should just be thankful that it was a gill net and not something that absolutely required a boat.

You walked relatively close to the shore for a while, until finally, after what felt like a few miles from the cabin you reached a cliff a few feet above the water level. “This could work,” you said to yourself and checked the depth with the help of a fishing pole found in the cabin. When you pulled it out of the water you smiled, this spot would do, you just had to set it up now.

~X~

When you came back to the cabin it was already close to sunset as your attempts to set up the net failed a few times before you finally got it set up and ready.

You were pushing yourself to keep going, each step feeling more and more difficult. Your stomach growled, and the hunger was only made worse by how cold you were because of all the time you spent in the water.

“Y/N!” you heard Nat exclaiming and saw her running up to you and putting your arm around her shoulder to help you. “What happened?” she asked, checking for any injuries.

“Just tired,” you muttered, leaning on her. “The net is ready,” you smiled, exhausted but happy, hopeful even. With some luck tomorrow morning you’d come back with a bucket full of fish.

Nat looked at you, stuck between wanting to scold you and being happy that maybe, just maybe you’d be able to survive until the rescue team finds you. “You are such an idiot,” she whispered, pulling you closer into a one-armed hug as she helped you walk to the cabin.

“Did I miss anything?” you asked curiously. You had no idea how many hours passed since you left, but you’ve definitely been away from the cabin for five to six hours, at the very least.

“Coach is going to teach us how to hunt, or, well, use the rifle,” she said reluctantly and you immediately stopped. “He’s cleaning it and making sure it’s completely safe. And he’s probably hoping you’ll catch some fish so we’re not all shaking like leaves from hunger. So, we’ll try tomorrow,” she added, looking into your eyes.

You tried not to feel too much pressure, knowing everyone was relying on you for this, but you also knew you needed that one proper meal, or at least as close to a proper meal you could get if any of you wanted a shot at hunting something. For now, you focused on Nat. “Are you okay?” you asked, seeing that look in her eyes and knowing full well what, or rather who, was haunting her.

“I have to be,” she said, desperately trying to convince both of you that she wasn’t bothered by this, that she was fine with trying to learn how to use the rifle.

The only thing you could do right now was to nod and hope that she just wouldn’t be the one burdened by that task. “It’ll be okay, we’ll make it out of here alive,” you promised her, still believing that all you had to do was to hold on, to just hang in there for just a bit longer.

“Sure, Y/N,” Nat didn’t sound nearly as hopeful about the rescue, at this point all she wanted was a slightly better meal, that’s how bad things were getting. The worry seemed to be permanently etched on her face when no one else could see her. You reached for the swimming goggles around your neck and took them off and placed them in her hand.

Nat flinched, looking at the goggles and biting her lip, trying not to let her emotions show. “I’m going to go back home to him, and then I’m going to convince you to leave fucking Wiskayok with us,” you said firmly. “I don’t care what the cost is or what I have to do,” you’d survive and drag Nat and Jackie and whoever else you could out of here no matter what.

Nat looked at the goggles and took a deep, shaky breath in before putting the goggles back around your neck. “Come on, let’s get you inside the cabin,” she said, not yet able to either completely deny your hopes or agree with them. And for now, you had to be fine with it, as long as she didn’t completely give up, it was all fine as far as you were concerned.

You stepped into the cabin, finding everyone sitting there, serving warm water mixed with a few mushrooms, clearly foraging didn’t go that well today. “How did it go?” Mari asked, looking at you hopefully.

“We’ll see in the morning,” you said, not wanting to risk giving all of them false hope.

Mari nodded, handing you your mug. That’s how meager the dinner was, that you didn’t even need a bowl. “There’s seconds, if you’re into warm water,” Mari said, half-joking half-serious and you shook your head, sitting down next to Nat.

“My favorite,” you said sarcastically.

~X~

When Jackie woke up next morning everyone else was already up, spending their time doing one thing or another, and she had no idea how any of them could function after only having water with barely any mushrooms and maybe a handful of berries a day. Her stomach growled as she lay there, sprawled on the floor.

The doors opened and she wished so badly she could just close her eyes and pretend she was asleep. “Jax, come on,” at least it was Shauna, approaching her gently than most other girls would at this point. “Breakfast is ready,” what breakfast? It was water with pine needles and some other edible leaves or whatever.

“Fine, fine,” she mumbled, getting up to get dressed and ready for the day, finding at least some comfort in a relatively familiar routine and doing her makeup, though it was bare minimum. She took her time, in no rush to join the other girls or consume tea pretending to be a meal. The mood was getting worse and worse, the lack of food making everyone miserable and eager to get into an argument, and she was no different.

Shauna placed her hand on Jackie’s shoulder, though from the corner of her eye Jackie saw she hesitated. “Maybe it’ll be better when coach teaches us to hunt, and Y/N hopefully figured out the fishing,” she tried to comfort her, but that was even scarier right now. Daring to hope that those two things would go well, that they’d have food to eat, that it would be enough to help them survive.

Starvation, dying in the middle of nowhere, none of that was as scary as hope at the moment.

“Hell yeah!” her and Shauna jumped when they heard Van shouting and some other girls cheering.

Jackie looked at Shauna and they went outside, seeing most of the girls gathering around someone. “We’ve got fish,” Akilah said with a grin on her face and sure enough when the girls moved to let you put whatever you caught in the pot of hot water Jackie saw a half-filled bucket of cleaned up and deboned fish.

The mood was instantly lifted and Jackie watched from the side as Tai and Van brought more wood from the fire and Mari began stirring the pot and Laura Lee brought a handful of mushrooms left from last night while thanking God. And you were right there, with Natalie by your side, trying to get dry and warm again.

“Get me another pot,” you said and when Gen brought you another pot you dumped fish bones into it and set it over fire. “We can dry it and turn it into powder to add to food,” you explained and normally Jackie would frown at that, but at this point they really had to use whatever they had.

“Eww, sounds gross,” Britt gagged, clearly not liking the idea of eating bones.

“It’s calcium!” Misty enthusiastically explained.

“What Misty said,” you said, glancing at Misty like you weren’t sure how to react to her enthusiasm regarding grounded fish bones, and Jackie had to say she agreed with that sentiment.

Either way, a few minutes later the smell of fish soup filled the air and Jackie’s mouth watered and she saw some of the girls wiping their mouths. She looked at you, still sitting next to Natalie and found herself unsure of what to do. If she should approach you, say ‘good morning’ something. You didn’t seek her out either, choosing to spend time with Natalie, and sure, Natalie was your best friend but… she shook her head refusing to be jealous.

Just because you were there for her for a few days and you fixed the fishing net together, well, you fixed it, she just held it for you, it didn’t mean anything more than what it was.

She took a few steps back, not even aware that she was pulling away from the group when everyone seemed to gather around the pot, awaiting first meal that was both warm and nutritious in over a week.

It was like she was unconsciously telling them she no longer belonged one tiny decision at a time. Her refusal to give up hope, her inability to adapt, this wasn’t who she was, there was not a single tiny part of her that was made for a place like this, and each day it felt like she was getting further and further away from the girls who once saw her as a captain.

Or maybe she was never a part of them to begin with, acting like a leader, like their captain, the one member of the team above the rest, on the field and outside of it. She wasn’t stupid, she knew the only person she really had was Shauna and maybe, just maybe you, though you’d always pick Natalie over her, so really, she still only reliably had Shauna.

So, Jackie stood back, observing you as you poured fish soup into mugs, knowing exactly how many pieces were, so, of course you were the one pouring them. But the moment you poured the soup into two mugs you handed the task to Natalie and stood up, looking around until your eyes met.

“Hey, Captain,” you said as you walked up to her and gave her one of the mugs.

Jackie swallowed the lump in her throat, ignoring the tingling sensation where her fingers brushed against yours. “Thanks,” she said drinking some of the soup. It warmed her up instantly and despite the lack of seasoning it still tasted so good, or maybe it was just because she was starving.

“There might still be some small bones in the fish, so, careful,” you said and sat down on the stairs, watching as everyone got their breakfast.

Jackie nodded and sat down next to you. “Will you have to go swimming every day?” she asked curiously.

You nodded. “Good thing I like water, and can hold my breath,” you said after swallowing a few bites. “I’m thinking I should probably swim around in the lake, maybe try to find some edible plants along with the fish,” it sounded more like you were thinking out loud.

“Isn’t the lake already cold?” she got chills every time she thought about that initial contact with the lake. It was May, or well, now it was definitely June, but the lake wasn’t warm at all.

You shrugged, but she could see you definitely appreciated having something to warm you up right now. “If it’ll mean we get to eat something, I’d say it’s worth it,” you figured and Jackie nodded, unable to argue with that logic.

~X~

With some actual food in their stomachs and spirits lifted it was time for coach Scott to teach them how to use the rifle, first by testing if anyone had the necessary talent to keep the rifle steady. Which, somehow, most of you failed to do.

“Slow breath in, then full exhale, then go,” coach instructed Tai as she aimed and with a click of the trigger the coin that was supposed to remain on the rifle fell to the ground.

“Damn it,” Tai cursed, her competitive attitude coming through in abundance. And, after a relatively okay meal the rest of the girls were in the mood for competition as well.

“It's okay, you guys. Hey, it's not a competition,” coach Scott reminded them.

You personally just sat back to watch, and to be there for Nat if she needed you. You were already in charge of fishing, so hunting was not something you were going to try your luck at. You couldn’t clone yourself and you were happy to give that task to someone else.

“Uh, but there is gonna be a winner, right?” Jackie asked cheekily and you found yourself grinning a bit, Jackie was competitive, not as much as Tai, but she definitely had her moments.

“All right, Jackie. You're up,” coach said and Tai handed Jackie the rifle as Mari cheered for Jackie.

Jackie raised the rifle and Misty put the coin on the end of it, only for it to immediately fall down, making several girls laugh at Jackie. “Okay, this is literally impossible,” she complained, glaring at the rifle like it personally offended and betrayed her.

“All right, come on, let's keep it moving. Martinez. Let's go,” coach got them all moving again and Travis took the rifle from Jackie before she sat down between Lottie and Van.

Travis turned to look at his brother. “Uh, yo. Javi, come try this,” he offered the rifle to Javi and you frowned, Javi was a kid, the hell was Travis thinking.

“Fuck you,” Javi rejected him immediately and left, clearly angry at his brother.

“Nice going, Flex,” the moment Mari teased him you saw a brief flash of anger on Travis’ face, but he seemed to push it aside as he turned around and lifted the rifle. He muttered something quietly and Misty set the coin. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened, the coin didn’t fall off.

He got the saddest lonely applause from someone standing in the back that immediately died down when no one else joined in. “See, and that, ladies, is how it's done,” he boasted only to get several middle fingers, mainly from Jackie and Mari.

“Nice, Martinez. Nat, you're up,” coach said, calling Nat to try and you froze for a moment, looking at Nat, but she was already taking the rifle from Travis.

“Come on, nice and easy. Like the man said,” you heard Travis condescendingly whispering in Nat’s ear, full of himself for being the first to get it right.

Nat flinched before she even got to pull the trigger and you went over to her, knowing what happened, what she was thinking about. “Nat,” you took the rifle from her shaky hands, handing it to Van who was next.

“That's a shame,” Travis taunted and Nat, recognizing that tone quickly grabbed your wrist, standing between you and Travis. “Now, you know what, next time we can just stick to something you're actually be good at, like folding laundry, or sucking-“ he didn’t even need to finish the sentence, you grabbed the collar of his shirt and the only reason you haven’t yet punched him was because Nat was still holding your other wrist.

The word got stuck in his throat and you were both at a standstill.

“Hey!” Van also jumped in Nat’s defense and several other girls were glaring at Travis.

Nat grabbed your other wrist and pulled you back, silently telling you that it isn’t worth it. “I'm going again,” she decided when she saw you were not trying to fight Travis, and took the rifle from Van,

“Can she do that?” Jackie asked and for the first time you glared at her, really not liking how this was what she had issues with and not what Travis said and did.

“Yeah. I'll allow it,” coach Scott let Nat go again.

“Okay, this is bullshit,” Travis complained.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is the big baby insecure?” you taunted him.

“That's enough!” coach yelled at both of you, spending a lot more energy than he had to try and maintain some order between all of you, especially right now.

Van pulled you back, pulling you closer to the rest of the girls. “Back off,” she warned Travis as Misty placed the coin on the rifle.

Nat pulled the trigger and the coin stayed in place, causing applause and cheering and you caught a glimpse of a smile on Nat’s face.

As Travis stormed off to sulk you put your arm around Nat’s shoulder. “You okay?” you whispered just for her to hear, masking the question as a congratulation kiss to the side of her head.

Nat leaned into you a bit and nodded. “Thanks,” she whispered, patting you on the back and giving the rifle to Van as the two of you went to stand a bit further away from whoever was giving the test a try.

~X~

Half an hour later, mostly because it took a bit of effort to get coach Scott from one place to another, you found a bit of a clear path and a fallen tree about fifty yards ahead. There were makeshift targets placed on the tree, made up of food cans. The final test for Nat, Mari and Travis. The rest of you were there just to watch.

“Now that we've narrowed down the field, here's how this is gonna go down. One final round for all of the marbles. You got five targets, five shots each. Mari, can you start us off?” he explained the rules and Mari nodded, taking the rifle.

“Um, just a thought. Shouldn't we be saving bullets, you know?” Laura Lee asked like there weren’t enough bullets to arm a small battalion. Frankly, considering how many bullets you all found you were shocked the guy even bothered with fishing gear. Maybe it belonged to someone else.

“Yeah, in theory, but lucky for us, the nutjob who lived here before was apparently hoarding for the apocalypse,” coach Scott explained it perfectly, besides, this was less of a waste of bullets than just giving the rifle to someone and figuring out mid-hunt their aim is shit.

Mari took the first shot and missed, and of course, the resident expert had to speak up.

“The cans. You're- you're aiming for the cans,” Travis told her.

“Shut up!” Mari yelled at him.

“Do you like being this way?” Nat asked and you had no idea why she even bothered.

“If you shit the bed again, you gonna ask for another do-over?” Travis demanded, acting all tough.

“If she does better than you again, you gonna run off like a brat again?” you snapped, not even satisfied that someone was shouting ‘Ooo burn’ in the back.

While you and Travis glared at each other Mari finished shooting, hitting one of five targets and Travis had to look away and take the rifle from her.

“Okay,” he said and began, hitting three cans in a row, but missing the fourth.

“So close, Flex,” Nat said and in one moment what was just usual teenage animosity became a lot more serious as he gave into his anger and turned around abruptly and you instinctively moved in front of Nat without even considering your options and coming face to face with the raised, loaded rifle.

“Don't fucking call me that!” he demanded, enraged as everyone who could went for cover.

“Travis!” coach Scott yelled at him, but he couldn’t do anything, he could just stand there and helplessly watch.

“Y/N,” Nat grabbed onto your forearm, afraid, not of the rifle that was supposed to be aimed at her, but of you being in the way, and you gritted your teeth, hating that she was in this position, constantly reminded of what happened with her shitty excuse of a father ever since the rifle was brought up.

You bit your tongue, forcing all the things you wanted to say to Travis to remain silent, because sure, you were reckless enough to get between him and Nat, but realistically that bullet was going through you if he fired. Provoking him was only going to endanger Nat, and you weren’t about to fuck around and find out if hearing what you wanted to tell him would set him off.

He glared at both you and Nat, still aiming at you and breathing heavily.

“Put the gun down,” coach demanded and after a couple of tense seconds passed Travis finally lowered the rifle and turned around to make his final shot.

Nat pressed her forehead against your shoulder. “What were you thinking?” she whispered and hugged you from behind, her fingers digging just underneath the collar of your shirt before she smacked you there.

“I wasn’t,” you admitted, reaching up and patting the back of her hand as Travis’ bullet hit the fifth can, making his score four out of five.

“He’s fucked up, he lost his dad, please, don’t jump at the first chance to fight him,” she whispered into your shoulder, knowing that, unlike her, you weren’t trying to bring it to his attention that he was being an asshole. No, you were downright ready to get into a fight the moment he verbally attacked her.

You sighed, bringing her hand to your lips and kissing the back of it. “Kick his ass,” you whispered and felt Nat nodding against you.

“All right, that's, uh- yeah, that's good shooting, Martinez. But don't ever do that again,” coach warned him and Nat walked around you, accepting the rifle from him.

“Don't choke. Again,” he had to taunt her one last time and you took a couple of deep breaths, wanting so badly to throw a punch, just to shut his damn mouth up, just for a few minutes. But you couldn’t. Mainly for Nat.

Nat shot once, twice, the third and the fourth time, each time hitting the target and finally, the fifth shot hit the food can as well, making it the perfect score and you felt a strange mixture of pride and worry at the same time. Pride in her, in her skills, in her finally showing that she was the best, and yet you wished it was in anything other than handling firearms.

For now, you could only hope everything would turn out fine and that Nat would enjoy the applause and cheering she was getting right now.

~X~

And just like that the two chosen to go hunting were Nat and Travis, in your opinion easily one of the worst options here.

“The truth is, we might be out here for a little longer than we expected. So, the rest of us are relying on you two, which means you need to rely on each other. You understand?” coach asked as he set the two of them aside. You were sitting on the porch, getting the rust off the hooks for the few fishing poles in the cabin.

From the corner of your eye you saw Travis was definitely not happy, that he was beaten or that he had to work with Nat.

Coach Scott offered the rifle to Nat, but since Travis was closer to him, he reached for it. “Natalie,” coach clarified and Travis gave her the rifle with a look of disdain on his face before storming off into the forest.

“Travis, wait up!” she exclaimed, running after him.

“You really think this is a good idea, coach?” you asked, your every instinct telling you to go after them, but you stayed put, knowing you needed to put the survival of the group over individual gripes.

Coach Scott hesitated for a moment. “Travis is,” he paused, looking for right words. “He’s grieving, it’s messing with his head, making him snap easily,” he said, and sure, you knew it, you understood the pain of losing a parent so suddenly.

“Yeah, and Nat is a fucking trauma sponge,” you tossed the dirty rug you were cleaning the hooks with into the bucket of water, frustrated. “She’s got more empathy and understanding in her heart than any of us,” and worse than that, she’ll fucking take it until she breaks, silently dealing with all the bullshit, all the insults and judgment thrown at her until she snaps, and probably not at the one most deserving of it.

And then she’ll feel even worse and force herself to quietly endure it all, even more than she did before, just so there’s no fighting, just so there’s no shouting and violence. As long as she was the only one suffering, she wouldn’t show a reaction, like she would have bravely stood in front of the rifle aimed at her instead of being frightened when you were in front of her.

Coach Scott remained silent, understanding your point of view, but also knowing the reality of the situation you were all in. He made his way over to you on his crutches, struggling with even that small distance. “I know, I wish I was the one who went hunting, I wish it wasn’t up to just the two of them, I wish fishing wasn’t just up to you, I wish so many things were different, Y/N,” he admitted and you nodded, glancing at the bandages around what was left of his leg.

“I know,” you sighed and took the fishing poles. “I’m going fishing,” you said and went toward the lake.

~X~

Apparently, all it took to get Travis to act like a dick all the time was to just get a ring from his father’s corpse. Easy. She could do that. Smoking a joint afterwards definitely helped though. And she figured some mutual understanding that they both had a shitty dad helped a bit too, because the tension between them seemed to fade away and now they were working toward the same goal. Hunting.

And then, finally, they saw it, a doe; big enough to last them at least a few days, maybe even over a week if they ration it properly and you keep bringing in fish. Natalie looked at Travis for a moment, and they quietly made a decision as Natalie aimed the rifle, the image of her father, threatening, horrible, violent, always taking his frustrations out on her and her mother, always condescending, always insulting, taunting, that horrible image replaced the reality.

The rifle in her hands turned into the gun that killed her father and she was once again that terrified little girl, forgetting to take the safety off and having the shotgun taken from her.

In his mocking he forgot to put the safety back on, and it cost him.

“You're the fucking useless one!” she screamed at him as he turned to leave, escalating the conflict when none of it would have happened if she just kept her mouth shut. He was an awful, abusive father, yet it still fucked her up.

“The fuck did you say-“ he turned around, furious, and the last look in his eyes she ever saw was pure, unadulterated even murderous rage, the look that made her even less likely to fight back against those closest to her. That bit of fight left in her had vanished as he tripped, the gun went off, blowing off a part of his head, and she watched as her mother wept like she lost the love of her life, like he was good to her.

He turned her into a survivor, not a fighter, he made her choose self-perseverance over fighting for herself.

And right now, faced with hunger or firing the gun to kill the doe, she once more chose survival, this time taking the safety off, syncing her breathing with Travis’ and firing, killing the doe.

~X~

Jackie was sure her heart was still hammering in her chest, threatening to finish what the plane nearly did. At least she saved Van, right? Surely that was enough to make Van forgive her for leaving her on the plane. And she left you too, and you didn’t mind, you weren’t angry at her.

Speaking of you, you came back from the lake empty handed. She and a lot of other girls were disappointed, though coach Scott said it was to be expected, you didn’t have any bait. That made sense, unfortunately. You sat back, still tense after what happened earlier and she didn’t even dare to approach you.

You frightened her in several ways, first by jumping between Natalie and Travis when he was aiming at Natalie, which was a dick move for sure, but the way you did it scared Jackie even more. And then there was that look in your eyes, just for a moment, that clearly visible restraint as you struggled not to either taunt Travis or jump and take the rifle from him entirely.

As she watched you she was reminded of the first few months she knew you, that anger in your eyes, the eagerness to fight. No matter how many people were against you. And she knew, deep down, the only reason you didn’t get into a fight with Travis was because Natalie was behind you, and her being behind you was more important than your temper and rage.

Jackie shuddered, not liking it when you were angry.

Instead she turned to Van, hoping to distract herself even for a brief moment.

“So, for the record, we're, like, even now, right?” she asked, not even thinking about how her question sounded, and the way Van looked at her, like she was out of her mind, and she was ready to give her a piece of her mind made her back away a bit.

Van was about to speak when Jackie got saved by the bell as Natalie and Travis brought in a dead doe, shocking everyone.

You ran before anyone, helping Natalie like that was your instinct more than a conscious decision and Jackie watched as the two of you seemed to silently check up on one another. She set it aside though, focusing on the doe and letting relief and happiness outweigh everything else.

“Oh, my God. Finally!” Van rushed toward Natalie as the doe was lowered onto the ground.

“Wow. Okay. Nice work, you two,” coach Scott praised them as everyone gathered around the two of them and the doe, including Jackie.

“It was all Natalie,” and it seemed like miracles weren’t done happening, as Travis, the same Travis who less than half a day ago pointed a rifle at Natalie, admitted she was the one who got the job done.

“So, what do we do with it now?” Natalie asked, looking at coach, expecting further guidance.

“Well, first thing we got to do is bleed it out,” he said and Jackie took a few steps back, definitely not eager to see it being done. He raised a hunting knife. “Who wants to try?” like anyone but maybe Misty was going to volunteer for that.

“I'll give it a try,” Shauna said in an eerily calm tone, taking the knife and Jackie stood back, watching as her best friend took the knife and with it in her hands approached the doe, calm, quiet, almost like a hunter. A shiver ran down Jackie’s spine, this wasn’t Shauna she knew, the image she had of Shauna and the one in front of her eyes didn’t match, yet it was happening.

“Just right across the throat,” coach instructed and Jackie stared, almost terrified as Shauna, completely calm, without even flinching cut the doe’s throat. Even coach Scott frowned at the sight, feeling uneasy, yet Shauna looked at peace, like she found her role in the group, more importantly, like she found a release Jackie never even noticed she needed.

In one day, four people found their definitive roles in the group. The butcher. The hunters. The fisher.