Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

i.

They thread the slice up with bra wire, and the sound of Van's screaming - the sound of Van's agony as dirty wire is woven through her face like shoddy embroidery - is too uncomfortably reminiscent of a wolf's howl. Van screaming as the wolves scream. Van crying as the wolves had whimpered when Taissa destroyed them. Van crying and screaming and Taissa's innards melting into soft puddles at the wail.

Taissa screams inside every night. The entire team aches, but just as Shauna is eating for two, Taissa is screaming for two; screaming for herself, that silly hidden void within her that awakens in darkness, and screaming for Van, who can't open her mouth very far, who Taissa loves and loves and cannot lose.

She boils lake water over a fire and cleans Van's wound four, five, six times a day at first. Van complains about it - or at least tries to - but her words are slurred and her arguments don't come out quite right. So Taissa dabs carefully at the slice, tries to keep the rags she uses as clean as Wilderness-possible. She has to keep Van alive. Van has to be there when they get out.

They're getting out.

She feeds Van little bits of anything-they-can-find so she doesn't have to do it herself - because she can't do it herself. Seeing Van so helpless makes Taissa's stomach turn sick, like bad milk, like she's swallowed something rotten. Some roadkill flesh-thing. God, she could eat anything right now - but she'd give half of it to Van, of course.  Right?

ii.

Jackie dies, because of course she does, because the wilderness is cruel and maybe they aren't getting out, after all, and Taissa has to pry Shauna off of her corpse, pet her hair. They're all much too young for this - but is anyone really ever ready to see their best friend's dead body? Is anyone ever prepared for it, at any age? The elderly people Taissa knew - before the crash - always cried when their friends died. Even in old age no one expects it to happen until it happens and then, well, the grief is monstrous. The grief is an entirely new wilderness to navigate.

Taissa wonders what she would do if Van died — if Van really died, out here. Would she put makeup on Van's corpse, copy Shauna's instabilities? No, Van would hate that — and, less importantly, Taissa isn't that unstable. She hasn't been broken by isolation yet. She almost was, but Van took her hand and opened her eyes and the world became paradisiacal just for one moment - the fleeting breath of a second in which she realized that Van was alive. 

And that they were about to set her on fire.

Would Taissa become that unstable? Would she succumb to it? Van didn't really die, so she'll never really know. She hopes she never finds out. The thought of cradling Van's corpse makes her - makes her - well. It just makes her hungry. Hungry for a hiding place, hungry for action, hungry for an escape, hungry for food, hungry for flesh-of-anything. She hates how hungry it makes her, thinks one day I won't have to worry about any of this.

She's trying to ignore the mystical shit that Van keeps exhaling, but even with her odd coping mechanisms, Taissa still—-

iii.

Van's wound starts to heal, eventually - it gets to a point where the wire can be threaded out and the flesh braids itself together around its absence. Van still insists on sleeping next to her, and Taissa can only give a half-hearted complaint.

In the mornings Van holds her close to share body heat. In the mornings she turns over and develops a routine: she kisses Van awake first on the forehead, then on the lips, then on the collarbone, and then she's up. Thank God for the cabin. Thank God for Van, the stability underneath her, holding her in place during a time of chaos.

Last night Van had complained of facial pain, so today's routine is going to be a little different. It's good to have some consistency among the scatter, but too much of it can feel threatening. So she kisses Van on the lips at first, peppering slow, soft kisses into Van's mouth. She starts to wake up now, smiling into Taissa's teeth, and at the hint of consciousness Taissa's mouth begins shifting to the right. Pressing gentle kisses into the corner of Van's lips, she takes her time with each touch, tracing her fingertips down Van's back as she moves. 

She brushes a finger over Van's jaw, and then over her cheek. She begins to wake up even more, leaning into Taissa's pets. When Taissa's fingers - and then her lips - press over Van's partially-healed scar, she doesn't jump, doesn't even seem to notice. It's just another kiss. They're just Van and Tai, regardless of circumstance, regardless of wilderness, regardless of all. She continues to press faint kisses along the jag of her scar, ghosting over the ridged skin of her cheek, until her touches gradually transcend and she's kissing Van's forehead, the dips of paler skin where the plane and wolves had mawed. 

"I know what you're doing," Van mumbles.

"And?"

"And nothing," Van replies. She falls back asleep in Taissa's arms, and the scars of witnessing Van's mauling melt along with her body as it goes soft in her slumber.