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cw continues, yellowjackets stuff

[diarists]

[eventually shauna will learn that -- all she did to try to keep them from leaving was pointless, because they can't leave, they walked through that door on that wintry night, circled around the pyre, they took that step too far and the door slammed shut behind them and no matter where their bodies are, shauna will always be bleeding and weeping and hearing her son cry, and misty will always be scrabbling together maggots and flesh and body and bone to try and keep out the cold.

but for now: she is young and scared and lonely and afraid. she had gambled and lost, and she sees misty's acts for what they are -- if it's us or them, it'll always be us. and shauna doesn't want to be alone.

so.]

i'm on my way over.
i had an idea
i mean, speaking of eat, but
i'll tell you when i get there.

[transponders]

[ She’s chopping up vegetables when Shauna gets there. Autumn squash, carrots, the things this commune has in abundance, the things they would have killed for even a sniff of before.

Misty's dressed down, not in the rough, homemade clothes they can make for themselves here, but the jeans and tee shirt she arrived in. ]

Hey!

[ Too cheery, given the circumstances. It's faked. It's obvious. ]

What was your idea?

[diarists]

[shauna remembers the shirt -- remembers putting together the familiar features on the more grown face, the brief instinctive gutpunch of heat at the shift of misty's body beneath her clothes, the odd magnetism she had. was it because she was misty, another piece of the wilderness, another facet of them, of it or because she was -- misty quigley was hot, okay? okay.

shauna steps in, doesn't wait for misty to put the knife down or away, and isn't that enough of what she wants to say? because she moves closer, within reach, she reaches out and down, because misty's one of the few people here shorter than her, and she wraps both arms around misty fucking quigley with a knife in her hand. without flinching. without hesitating.

then, soft, shaky, against misty's cheek, close to her ear:] Do you -- remember what I gave Travis? After Javi? What I brought him? Because he loved him the most, because that's where he belonged?

Nat belongs with us.

[transponders]

[ She isn't expecting it. The days before the crash, when Shauna was happy (when any of them were happy) are a blur. Misty remembers how she grew up, her parents, the music she listened to and the classes she liked best - but Misty Quigley, as she stands here with her knife in her hand and her friend, enemy, teammate wrapped around her, was born out there. When life really began, Shauna only really hugged Jackie, and nobody ever hugged her.

Her arms mirror Shauna's, pulling tight, knife still gripped in her hands, white-knuckled, trying to channel all that anxious energy into that grip so that Shauna doesn't see it. If only her facade of fearlessness could rub off on her, her determination to get through this, if she could just get this one thing right for her.

She expects Shauna to feel smaller in her arms than she does. Like the dead thing that came out of her, but she isn't, she's stronger and braver now than Misty ever was, ever will be. ]

I remember. Yeah, I do.

[ Soft. They never said out loud what they'd done, after. Not what really happened to Jackie or Javi or Ben or Mari. They never talked about what it felt like to taste their friends on their tongues, to pick bits and pieces of them from between their teeth. They didn't need to. ]

Shauna, that's...we... don't need to do that.

[ Her words shake, wobbling as if on tightrope. So different from her eyes, when she pulls away to look at her. They're the eyes of a much younger girl, just with newer glasses. Wet with grief and fear, the kind they faced every day.

No, worse. They're hungry. ]

[diarists]

[it's funny to think about, the Before -- no, not funny, nothing funny about the death of that girl, shauna shipman with her big eyes and petty jealousy, shauna trying to chase the taste of jackie in jeff's mouth, shauna perpetually one step behind and a few pegs lower, but she was behind and below jackie, and that made her above everyone else. especially misty fucking quigley, big eyes and braced teeth (she'd gotten them off in freshman year, and shauna had registered it as little more than a realization that if she wasn't always smiling too wide, too eager, she could've maybe been pretty).

the eyes are the same, when shauna pulls away, looking upwards, seeking guidance and comfort and direction, because misty had never been a queen, only the most loyal of subjects. lottie was the queen of their descent, ushering them into the oblivion of the wilderness, nat was the queen of their hearts (of misty's heart; shauna's not stupid, she knows, she remembers, the kneeling, the worship), bringing them out of the ashes and into that almost-happy, almost-safe summer.

but shauna -- shauna had been queen of the hunt, since that first stag, first blood, first kill. shauna was a queen of blood and justice and reverence, and it didn't matter that she didn't really believe in it, because it was them, always them.]

Yes, we do. [firm, some of that second-winter steel, that endless-earth darkness in her eyes.] She belongs with us. They won't let us take her, not all of her, they're watching us too closely.

But they won't miss her heart.

[transponders]

[ The worship didn't stop when Natalie's reign transitioned into Shauna's. It didn't stop when they got on the plane out of there, even when Natalie refused to sit by her, furious for a reason nobody knew but her. Even that made her feel like they had something between them that wasn't meant for the other girls, a secret that Natalie would hold onto until she was in the grave. That's worship. That's devotion. Misty on her knees and Natalie with her mercy.

There's a small part of her that rankles, that irks, because Nat was her queen regardless of who wore the crown of bone. The best of them, the brightest, the kindest. She's Misty's more than she's Shauna's, they've had another twenty-five years avoiding-knowing-needing each other that she's not privy to, if she's killed her twice over then her heart ought to be hers and only hers.

But sharing is a kindness she can offer, to a scared girl two steps from the gallows. ]

If we...wait a little longer. Until the dead of night.

[ Danny might see. But she's talked to Danny, flirted with Danny, she has a feeling he won't be scandalized like everyone else would. ]

She was my best friend, in our time.

[ Justifying it to herself. She's so much further removed from all of that than the other girls. The feeling of Jackie and the rest between her teeth is just as vivid as it was when she was a girl, but as time goes on she can tell herself, she can concoct the story, that she can mourn in other ways, that burial and tears and flowers at the grave is enough.

Misty lays the kitchen knife down against the counter. Grabs a bigger one. She doesn't think the Natalie that's freshest in her memories would want this, but what's that they say about funerals? They're for the living. A piece of that beautiful, bleeding heart could keep them from spiraling. Keep them alive in a new way, different from how Javi had. ]

[diarists]

[it’s the sort of phrasing – the dead of night, something out of a movie or book – that makes shauna suddenly, abruptly see misty as she was, chapped lips and cracked glasses and sunbleached hair. it’s nostalgia with teeth, the understanding that who they were becomes who she is, standing there, protective, loyal, hungry. again, ringing in her chest: callie callie callie and shauna almost asks am i a good mom? am i happy? do we get to be happy?

but there are other things, more immediate, the glint of the moonlight on the knife. shauna’s last night free, nat rotting away beneath a sheet, still and lifeless and wasted. if it had happened out there, none of them would hesitate. misty had wept at coach’s death, but she’d gnawed his ribs clean like the rest of them.

best friend gets a little headtilt, a quirked eyebrow, something knowing in shauna’s dark eyes. misty trailed after jackie, after crystal, after anyone who would give her the time of day, but there’d been something different, unique about how she followed natalie. the kneeling, the fealty, courtly and ancient, a ritual for just them two. it seems – strange that natalie would change so much that she’d be besties with misty, but who’s shauna to argue?

so, nodding at the knife –] That’s big enough. I don’t want to make a mess. [a pause, a headtilt:] The others? [shauna’s the only one not upset about the poison, about the things misty had done to protect her – there’s a temptation to keep it just theirs, in case one of the others react poorly. well -- lottie wouldn’t, and shauna could probably convince jackie and mel, but still…]

[transponders]

[ It's better that she doesn't ask, because Misty has no good news for her. She had thought, for one bright, hopeful moment, when she stepped into that hut and saw Natalie youthful and warm and whole, that maybe they could. Maybe something good can happen to them, and the irony that it came from waking up in an unfamiliar forest is just...the way it's supposed to be. The place they all belonged. A chance to redeem herself.

She failed at this the first time. The first time Natalie died, she was handed off to a doctor who didn't know her, a mortician that didn't know her, and pumped full of formaldehyde to be on display for a room full of people that, besides them, didn't know her. Not really. Not how they do. It had felt wrong in the way all funerals feel wrong, the staged artificiality that has nothing to do with death and all the terrifying, bleeding, disgusting ways that it mirrors life.

It sat unspoken between them all. This. This urge that Shauna isn't yet far enough removed from the wild not to speak. Misty had wondered then if it was her alone that felt that Natalie belonged with them, that it was a dishonor to inject the chemicals that would make her toxic to them, when she is them. Was them. Will be them again. ]

They...

[ Misty swallows. She knows what the right thing to do is. But above the rest of them, Nat understood her, even when it made her scream. Only one other person seems to want to do the same right now. ]

The whole group will attract attention. Just us.

[diarists]

[the others might’ve forgotten – they can say they have, nat and mel and jackie and even shauna herself, for those first few months. she’d played along with the idea that they could be anything approaching normal, for that handful of time beneath the manor’s elegant roof, pretended to be a typical teenager, petty and foolish and flighty.

in theory, misty’s appearance should’ve solidified that even more – her as the adult, the rest of them as children, falling into line, organized and cooperative and normal. but misty had been strange before the wilderness, and stranger afterwards, and shauna lies and shauna pretends but she’s the same. they’re the same.

it’s almost a comfort to realize that when they go back, they stay them, at the core. protective and secretive and deadly and other.

shauna nods, quietly, thinking about how the only other person who’d cracked a ribcage open and pared flesh from bone is now lying dead. misty has the stomach for it, the care required to keep it quiet. so, reaching out, she slips her hand into misty’s like she had for mel, the day of the trial, lacing their fingers together and squeezing, tight, their hands between them like a promise, like a vow.]

Just us. [soft, eyes bright and warm and molten, like the pyre, like the cabin in flames, like the endless wounds they share.]

[transponders]

[ The girls falling in line has been an unfamiliar feeling, like the sun when the spring broke through after the winter Jackie died, like seeing her parents again after being escorted from there back to Wiskayok, New Jersey. All things that she remembered, but never actually thought she’d see again. Those first few days after the crash, when she was so necessary, when they’d all be fucked without her - it feels like that.

She’s doomed them the same way. Natalie dead, Shauna about to step up to the gallows.

The hand slipping into hers brings her back to the present. The second chance. It doesn’t have to be how it was. She can do right by Nat, she can honor her.

Misty pulls her jacket - Natalie’s jacket - over herself, and quickly takes Shauna’s hand back, as if the offer might expire, the softness that she knows is and always will be oh so rare prone to changing with the wind. It tethers her. It makes her mouth water like such a foul beast.

Hands together, they visit the corpses. Misty doesn’t let go until it’s time to kneel and pull the sheet off Natalie, scar herself with every stitch she’d stupidly allowed Stephen to make, run her fingers over each one of them, neck, ears, mouth. Tears fall, quietly, as he hands the knife to Shauna. ]

[diarists]

[there are pieces shauna will never have, twenty-five years worth of them, solely and squarely misty quigley's to disperse (or not) as she pleases. when she'd first arrived, that had irritated shauna to no end, the concept of there being a world she wasn't privy to, one after those two winters, one after she had become and unbecome and rebecome someone who had babies and married men and lived quietly and sedately in the suburbs.

she's still in that place, the unbecoming, the space between antler queen and wiskayok, and misty is there. misty is holding her hand, pulling the sheet away, and natalie is there, she's there. it isn't like jackie, who'd been bluish and ice-cold to the touch from the day she died, more doll than person. natalie still -- looks like herself, still and sleeping, lips parted just slightly.

shauna kneels down next to misty, sets the knife over the top of nat's breastbone and -- waits. waits for the witness, for the watching. waits, because what if next time shauna isn't there to do it?] Down, through the skin, until you hit bone. [soft, like a prayer, followed by the glide of the knife, through dead flesh, to the places where blood still pools, still lurks. jackie had been dead for months, when they feasted. javi, coach, mari, it had been immediate.

natalie is somewhere in between, not warm enough to steam when shauna opens her ribs like butterfly wings, not solid enough that only a pyre could coax her chest apart. who had eaten jackie's heart, in the end? had they gotten deep enough? her features were still visible, still recognizable, even when the rest of her was gnawed-clean bone, so maybe, maybe...

veins sliced like the clinging roots of a tree, and when shauna gets the heart into her hands, it's like something from the earth, something warm and blood-dark, iron and oxidization, cradled in her palms. she holds it like a bird, like a newborn rabbit, like it'll start beating again in the safety of her hands.

then she holds it out to misty.] You first. [she was my best friend. shauna had gotten first taste of jackie, travis of javi. it's only right. it's only just.]

[transponders]

[ Ever since the crash, she’s existed in places between life and death. There was the dangerous handful of miles they’d carved a life in. There was Wiskayok again after, staying in her hometown a sort of spiritual death to any young person with big dreams, but the safety and order she could impose on it invaluable in the swirling uncertainty of the return. There’s the hospice home, where the patients that deserve it and the ones that don’t both share the same slow crawl towards oblivion.

Misty finds herself in that same place now, between a warm body and a cold one. Between Nat and Javi, between Shauna and the baby. She weeps as she did when she was a girl, sniffling and slapping some focus back into her face when the knife pierces skin, when blood doesn’t flow so much as ooze, thick and stagnant from her days laying here, being poked and prodded by any amateur investigator who decided in the last couple of days that they care.

The crack of her ribs to get to the heart steels her, spine straightening with the crunch of bone. She knows enough to do this herself, but there’s a sense of safety in letting Shauna do the honors, handing her the role she had back then. Because back then, they escaped. Maybe they can do it again now.

She realizes how close she is, not so much hovering over Shauna but leaning on her as she cuts Natalie open and offers her heart to her. Dark, still, and cold. She wouldn’t have thought twice, back then, but now? In hindsight she can see clearly how twisted and fucked all of their little rituals and reasonings had been - they’d done it because they were hungry and wanted to live, the rest was all just coping. Stories they tell themselves so they can sleep at night, so they can put one weary foot in front of the other. They don’t need to do this here. Misty knows, she knows, she knows.

But the blood streaks down Shauna’s wrist like the salt and grease from a juicy cut of meat and she swipes at it with her thumb anyway, smearing it (wasting it) as she grabs her wrist steady, holding it in place to eat directly from her hand. Her teeth are still sharp after all these years, and they tear at Natalie as if she were always hers, as if she wouldn’t thrash and howl against the very idea of Misty laying claim to her at all.

It doesn’t matter what she would say, Misty decides, deep red smearing her chin with every meaty chew. It’s the living that write the story. Not Ben, not Javi, not Natalie. ]

[diarists]

[it's strange, now, to think of how distant shauna had felt when misty first arrived -- twenty-five years on, older, wiser, knowing so much more and gloating over her experience like some smug, freshly-fed cat, purring and smirking. shauna hadn't trusted anyone then, caught between the revelation of truth and the horrors of the game, the monstrous things that had shaped and formed them. they'd snipped and sniped at one another, back at the house -- yet, when outsiders threatened, they'd circled up, snarling and defensive, protecting one another.

something deep in shauna's chest, in the heart that beats right where nat's doesn't anymore, is satisfied with that. the unity, the loyalty, the belonging that none of them, dead or alive, can ever escape. even if, when natalie returns, she can't undo this, can't draw her heart back out of misty's teeth, her throat, her stomach. she'll be there forever.

the blood streaks like ink down misty's throat, and shauna reaches up with the hand still holding the knife, thumbs away every taste of natalie, sucks it off her thumb and flicks her eyes up to meet misty's. and they're the butcher's eyes, but the queen's too, the last queen of the wilderness, fiddling as rome burns, marched out to the gallows, let them eat cake while they built the guillotine that'd burn her kingdom down. but for a moment, shauna had been queen, and misty had served her, fed alongside her, partaken in that last feast.

so, eyes still fixed up, shauna leans in and presses her mouth to the smeared stain of natalie's blood on misty's throat, flicks her tongue against the coppery tang, lets herself imagine notching her teeth into the pulse she can feel against her lips.]

[transponders]

[ There’s no trace of that smug superiority tonight. Misty had thought herself so removed from what happened out there, so much older and wiser than she was then, educated and rational and immune to the whims of the wild, to It, the undefinable ferality etched into all their bones, wiggled into all their brains like a worm. But a parasite left on its own only grows, only gets hungrier. Misty’s need was there before the crash. Why would it have gone away after?

She eats and she eats like one of their feasts, the meat tough and wet and cold, but perfect, because it’s Natalie, because she’s writing a wrong, doing what she should have done back home. Misty takes her and finally, finally has her in her belly and wrapped around her shoulders, a nesting doll of you and me and you and me and your fate in my hands and my fate in yours. Nat’s hands have gripped her heart and now Misty’s teeth grip hers, tearing pieces in ragged bits like the wolves tore her head from her shoulders.

The difference being that this is done out of love. Appreciation, for the most magnificent part of her, ingested to preserve her inside them, not ripped away and thrown about and mutilated, like garbage.

The eyes that meet Shauna’s aren’t the mother hen’s, or that of the leader everyone outside of them has just assigned her, by virtue of her age or militance. They’re the loyal servant, Natalie’s knight, her best friend and biggest cheerleader. Shauna never had the same fealty. It’s why the tongue at her throat feels like thievery, an attempt to steal what is Misty’s in ways that she doesn't understand, that she can’t, that decades from now she still never will.

She clenches her teeth and reaches for the hair on the back of Shauna's head, wrapping it around her fist to pull her back, off her neck, make the wolf bare her throat for once.

(Misty knows it's her. She did from the start. It doesn't matter. She doesn't care. It'll be her own job to condemn her for it someday, not these fucking people.)

There's blood on the side of Shauna's mouth. She tries to lick it clean, but she's covered in it, it only spreads the mess further. Still she tries, she tries, and before she knows it, it's not the corner of her mouth but full, blood-red lips, it's not the cleaning laps of a mama bear but sharp, demanding teeth. ]

[diarists]

[maybe in this place, this time, this moment that sounds like cracking natalie’s ribs open and feasting on what’s inside, shauna doesn’t think to be angry. it’s not like those last days, that final winter, the searches and the paranoia and the surety that someone’s out to get here, out to destroy her. because – now she is sure. there’s a noose circling around her throat, and soon she’ll end up caged or – worse.

they’ll catch her, they’ll corner and cage and chain her, muzzle and shackles until they feel like they can sleep at night again, because the beast is finally subdued. but misty – misty who plotted against her, misty who never followed her like she did nat, because nat was the first and last queen in her eyes, her heart, misty who poisoned and lied and manipulated her way into shauna escaping the cage the first round – misty would let her free. misty would let shauna’s monstrous teeth and vicious jaws close around whoever’s throat they wished.

so she doesn’t resist the hand in her hair, the wrench backwards, the bloodied mouth hot and hungry against her own. shauna smiles her wolf’s teeth and arches upwards, bares the line of her throat, jugular and esophagus and vocal chords, bared and waiting. misty almost-kisses her and shauna parts those teeth on a laugh, says soft, coaxing:] C’mon. You can do better than that. [because she’s older, because she’s more experienced, but – the after doesn’t matter, only the woods, only the wilderness, only them.

so shauna presses closer, whispers:] Creepy stalker Misty Quigley and all those huts without doors, with holes for windows. Van and Tai – me and Mel. Natalie, alone, thinking about Travis. [she lets it linger, bloodied hand reaching out, fingers grazing up misty's arm, to her shoulder, along her collarbone.] Don’t tell me you never imagined us. Don’t tell me you never watched.

light necrophilia....? ffs.

[transponders]

[ The last time she killed Natalie, she rotted in bed for weeks, and Shauna hadn't offered to make her soup, she hadn't offered a shoulder to cry on. She hadn't even had the decency to call. It's okay. She doesn't clean up her murder scenes or try to keep the fingers of the angry mob off her because she expects anything in return, she does it out of loyalty. When had they all forgotten it? They split apart and faked their deaths and broke their promises, all of them but Misty the liar, the creep, the stalker.

They were meaner back then, but they were their realest selves. Their best, most free selves, not the modified, chopped up versions of themselves that were acceptable to serve to the world when they got back. If she likes Shauna better like this, and Shauna likes her better like this, then someday, the hunt will be on. But today, Shauna trusts her more than she ever has. There's warmth in that. Satisfaction. Even as she snipes at her, bites with her teeth and with her tongue, all cruelties, all true. ]

I did.

[ Snarled and rabid, she reaches for Natalie, just to make sure she's still there. Cold and soft, turning the flaps of her skin back into place, hand stopping for too long on her breast. She's still beautiful, even like this. Shauna is most beautiful now, mean and alive and hot beside her.

Misty takes another bite, and wields the truth like brass knuckles, as she has since she arrived, as she passes the meat from her own mouth to Shauna's. ]

Natalie died because of me. Your reign is over because of me. You eat because I let you. So watch your mouth. I only watched her.

more of that ig

[diarists]

[shauna still hasn’t asked about – herself, then. about how she is, twenty-five years on, whether she ended up as cunning, as self-preserving as misty. the paranoia reminds her of the deepest parts of that second winter, her need to protect herself, and she respects it’s adult counterpart in this version of misty. this misty is closer to her now, to shauna in the wilderness, another bloody-mouthed wolf, snarling and snapping, mouth full of meat.

misty turns, smooths, caresses natalie’s corpse and there’s a sharp spike of that old, sour-wound jealousy – the one that had festered in the core of shauna since that night, since natalie was crowned, the hollowed-out envy of it should be me – because it will always be her. misty will choose the corpse of her queen over any real girl, any day, and shauna can’t even hate her for it, because if jackie were laid out there instead, she’d do the same. she’d covet every bite in misty’s mouth, tear it from between her teeth, swallow every chilled, iron-rich scrap of flesh as quick as she could.

if it were jackie, shauna wouldn’t have let anyone else come along.

but they were there, kneeling beside natalie and shauna is chewing meat gone gelatinous with time, congealed blood, the way it got in the storehouse, the familiar gamey flavor, better than elk, than rabbits or ducks or squirrels. she swallows and bites again, but it’s at misty’s mouth this time, hands suddenly reaching, grasping, smearing blood – a handprint down the front of misty’s shirt, months of curiosity finally snapping.]

Okay. You deserve a medal, whatever. [another grasp, this time finding purchase, fingers curled around misty fucking quigley’s perfect fucking tits, because god damn it shauna’s waited long enough.] You never imagined how anyone else did it? I know you could hear us all. [a squeeze, too rough, too proprietary, thumbs finding misty's nipples, dragging slow, teasing circles.] You never thought about me like that?