Chapter Text
Taissa Turner, was, despite what others might say to the contrary, fairly adept at self-assessment. Determined, and fairly ruthless at that? Sure, she’d take it. Passionate? Check. Well-organized? Of course. A bit of a bitch? She’d admit to it, though begrudgingly. However, all this capacity for self reflection had not left her capable or willing to talk about how she was doing.
A month in to college and already her quasi-celebrity status had died down as much as Tai had hoped it would. She’d made it past the poorly disguised whispering, the sympathetic pats on the hand and unsolicited offers from her professors for extensions and extra credit. She had smiled and laughed her way past the awkward small talk of her classmates, their fumblings around “what did you do this summer?” She was fine. She had moved on. Even if no one else believed her, she was going to march forward with her life.
(Even if that means putting up thick curtains over her window so that she can’t see the forest beyond campus, because when she looks at the block of black-green and the whispering shapes of trees she sees smoke, and the white tip of a plane’s wing, and she hears screams and smells burning.)
(Even if that means never letting her thoughts wander too freely, always having a book to read, or a paper to write, or wind sprints to run until she’s heaving on the side of the soccer field at two in the morning while everyone else was asleep.)
(Especially if that means never taking out the shoe box buried under her winter clothes in her closet, filled with the things that she had given Tai.)
She was fine. She had moved on.
She doesn’t believe it the first time it happens. Her mind has a long history of playing tricks on her, and Taissa has built a complicated series of locks and levies to keep things where they should be. Denials, rationalizations, twisting away from what juts up against her fences.
But it’s a Tuesday, and she’s coming out of her political science lecture with a ripping headache and an americano with three shots— an easy reality to believe in. A lot of things have slipped in the fourteen months since Tai had been rescued, but her appreciation for coffee and pork roll had only grown exponentially. It was this fleeting craving, a fucking breakfast sandwich of all things, that turns Taissa away from the social sciences building, and towards the student parking lot on the other end of campus. She didn’t go this way on Tuesday mornings, and she certainly didn’t go the left way, past the english building and the other block of student houses. Blame the unusually crisp early September morning and a pair of shorts, or blame Taissa’s inability to get too close to the forested section of campus that she would have to walk through to get to her car from the usual way, but she catches a figure out of the corner of her eye. It’s just an outline, and just for a second, but Taissa could recognize it anywhere.
It’s her. It’s Van, opening up a window on the top floor of one of the student houses.
Tai stops cold. It’s similar to how she had felt stumbling around outside of the crashed plane, like everything was filtering down to her from miles of lake water. The window is closed in half a second, and Van (the person who just looked like Van, her mind snarls) is gone just as quickly. It’s not until a breeze kicks up a bit that Taissa realized that she’s dropped her coffee and it is rapidly cooling in her socks. On pure instinct she starts to move forwards, but by the time she’s sitting in her car with her hands at ten-and-two she can’t do anything but stare out of the windshield.
You just miss her. You’re seeing what you want to see. She made it very clear that she’s moved on, she has no interest in seeing you.
So many rational, well-substantiated reasons. And yet.
Isn’t this what you wanted, Taissa? a part of her hisses, isn’t this exactly why you’re in Massachusetts in the first place? Why you turned down Howard, to go to the school that you know she wanted? That you talked about in the attic before—
Shaking her head hard enough that curls bounce off of her forehead, Tai grips the steering wheel so tightly that the faux leather squeals. She sits there for hours before she can bear to walk back to her house, the long way, eyes as close to the ground as she can stand without tripping the whole time.
- - - - - -
College parties here are loud, and dark, and writhing as one massive girl-creature. Tai can’t handle them for very long. With her guard let down from alcohol or weed or whatever it is that the girls in her dorm common room are passing around, she’s more prone to seeing things out of the corner of her eye. Screams of delight become howls of a wolf pack in the dark. The sharp, klaxon lights beating to the stomach-achingly loud music become, in a few seconds, the emergency lights of a plane crashing to earth.
Taissa never stays long, but it only takes an hour or two to get what she wants out of Friday night ragers.
Tonight there are refreshingly few frat boys snuck over from nearby schools, and as she dances Tai feels eyes trawl over her from girls on couches and in corners. There are a handful of potentials, but she is looking for something in particular. Last week it was Holly’s grey-blue eyes. The week before that, Lyndsey’s freckles. Taissa fucks them with the same ruthless determination she used to put into soccer. She pistons her wrist through cramps, eats them out until her chin is soaked and their legs are shaking. She doesn’t let them touch her much, but after they’ve come a few times they never remember. What she’s in it for is the after— Holly or Lyndsey or Gillian passes out next to her, warm, silent, her chest rising and falling. Taissa, who would otherwise that night have been impassioned but distanced, winds herself around this other girl. It’s too comfortably warm. The bed isn’t a few layers of frayed blankets on a wooden floor. But with her eyes closed, in the dark? It’s almost passable as a memory.
- - - - - -
“So, have you met anyone yet?” Shauna says, but it’s hard to hear her. Something drones in the background, loud enough that Tai is having to focus closely to catch all the words.
“I— well, you know, i’m still settling in. I haven’t got my footing yet,” she lies.
“Wait— Jax!” Shauna calls, her hand muffling the receiver a bit, “Baby can you turn it off just for a few minutes? Tai is on the phone.” If Jackie gives some sort of grumbled assent Taissa doesn’t hear it, but in moments the hairdryer is off. “Sorry, we’re going out.”
In the attic, Shauna and Taissa used to whisper to each other from their blankets on the floor. Secrets, gossip, little things of no consequence when they woke up the next morning, but in the grain-heavy dark they were indubed with magical intensity. Now, their weekly calls are as close as they can get, Shauna in Rhode Island and Tai in Massachusetts.They were still close, closer than she was with any of the other former Yellowjackets, but Taissa couldn’t help but feel something curdling in her. Shauna’s voice rang with her happiness, the pictures she sent Tai of her and Jackie lover-close and starry with devotion. She’d been shoveling this feeling back for months now, this ugly yellow thing, but even now it creeps up on her and sours the moment.
“Oh, I can call you back tomorrow if you want,” Tai offers. Shauna hesitates.
“Are you sure? I promise I’ll call tomorrow it’s just the lit mag is hosting a party and if you don’t show up it’s like impossible to make it on to the staff…”
“Go! I’ll call you tomorrow, same time?”
“Definitely— you’re the best Tai. Love you!”
Shauna hangs up, and Tai puts the receiver down on her desk. An intolerable wave threatens to crest through her, and so she bites down on her finger until it goes away. Laying awake many hours later, she runs her thumb along the ridges her incisors have made on her index finger. The way the peaks and the valleys feel remind her too closely of running those same fingers over Van’s scars. She gags and grabs her already-beaten running shoes, her head lamp, and jogs out into the night. When she screams, she muffles the sounds by stuffing her sweatshirt into her mouth, but a few mourning doves shoot up out of the trees.
Tai hasn’t lost everything from Before, not yet. She has her family. Shauna, and Jackie by extension, the occasional postcard from Natalie with precious little information other than she is still alive, still traveling. A letter or two from Misty that she staunchly ignores. Most of her high school pleasures were excised after Van left, too entangled with memories as they were: swimming, most television, weed, soccer, sitting in parking lots, thrift stores. But not everything. Blockbuster had been a Thing they had done together on Fridays, but she had also gone frequently with her little sister and brother, and her grandmother before she had gotten sick. This balance helped it from being unbearably reminiscent of things she tried not to think about, and as a result she could still enjoy going as much as she was able to enjoy anything these days.
Taissa could spend hours here. The carpet wash smell, the stale AC, the quiet murmurings of couples and families browsing the shelves. Her method was to work from back to front, combing through for anything interesting and saving the new releases for last. Then the candy aisle, resplendent in neon colors and crazed shapes, novelty lollipops, Hershey kisses the size of her head. It was better than a movie, or a fish tank.
Tonight it’s late, nearly closing time, and Tai was the only one in the store aside from the bored teenager at the register. He was chewing on his black painted fingernails and occasionally looked pointedly at the neon-fringed VHS shaped clock hanging over his head. Tai’s parents had gotten her a small TV with a built in VHS player before she moved into her dorm— she’d gotten a lot of these sorts of gifts after being rescued, extravagant things from relatives and well-wishing neighbors. Lamps, money, make up that she would never wear, clothes she returned to the mall. But the TV she loved. Running alone wasn’t enough to pass the night time hours, and the weather was getting colder by the day. She’d taken to watching endless sitcoms, documentaries, B-movies from the seventies, anything bright and loud enough to keep her attention through drooping eyelids.
The teenager scans her without even looking at her. He has clunky, silver rings shaped like skulls and a necklace with a dull razorblade dangling over his Marilyn Manson t-shirt. Tai feels a bubble of affection for him— he reminds her of Nat, the way she used to be. She gives him a perfunctory little smile that he ignores.
It’s not until she’s backing her car out of the lot and turning out onto the road back to campus that she sees her.
Just like the last time, it’s only a glance, but Taissa knows without a doubt that it is Van. This time it’s the back of her head, red hair longer than she remembers it, a threadbare sweater and brown cords. She’s walking to a forest green hatchback with a Hannaford’s sack of groceries, strong and loping, the same way she hoisted loads of firewood back to the cabin or nets of soccer balls onto the field.
Frozen, Tai stares. She watches Van load the groceries into the trunk, walk around to the driver’s seat, dig her keys out of the pocket of her pants. She watches her breathe on her fingers a bit, her head turned just enough so that Tai can see the rogue of her lips and the very tip of her freckled nose. She watches her put the car into reverse, and then—
Turned around from the shoulder, Tai sees Van’s face. Her scars, healed now but raised, one of her green eyes clouded just a bit from the wounds. Her mouth is the same shape, her eyebrows held just as she remembers they could be in concentration. Their eyes meet accidentally, through two different car windows, across a parking lot. Taissa feels like she is about to faint. Her stomach warbles, her hands are too weak to turn the ignition. She sees Van’s mouth drop into a little ‘o’ of shock.
Somehow, that is the tipping point for Tai. Something about her shock, her pain, tips her into anger. Van left her, disappeared, ignored every call and letter. She broke Tai’s fucking heart and didn’t even have the decency to tell her.
Tai rips her eyes away. If it’s frantic, if there are tears leaking hot and angry onto her chin, she doesn’t care. The streetlights blur, dangerous and beautiful.