It was colder in the mornings now, in the daytime, in the nights. Now that the snow had perched, it hadn't shook for months. The temperature kept dropping lower and lower, and only minutes could make you lose feeling and hope of warmth. The only way Van could even feel it was more frigid than the day before was how quickly she grew numb. It wasn't something she wanted to get used to.
The attic would prove to be even colder than downstairs with the lack of a fireplace. Regardless, Van wouldn’t wish to sleep downstairs. Not if it meant getting to make sure Taissa was alright. Lately, her sleepwalking had grown worse and worse. She’d sit up so fast, undoing the bond with a precision and speed neither of them possessed when conscious. Like she knew exactly what to do.
The bond was barely a preventative measure anymore. Now, it was just an alarm, not unlike a bell, just extra movement to jostle her awake so she could contain Tai. In the end, it was worth it. She knew her girlfriend would go crazy without sleep, whereas she was a seasoned insomniac, but slept like a rock when she did sleep. Now, though, she found herself only drifting lightly unconscious, but lying awake most of the time. In anticipation.
Tai had a gift. Something she wouldn’t admit to Van, but that she knew was there. Like something rooted inside her, clawing and surfacing. Battling for control, to be free, screaming and writhing. Begging in a ragged voice not to be suppressed. It knew where the symbols on the trees were, it new where Taissa was bound and where to undo the knot, hell, it even knew Van was her girlfriend. So much was proven the night she’d woken up being kissed, only to be bitten. Like she was trying to devour her. Like she wanted a piece of her own. Which of the Taissas wanted it, she couldn’t tell.
In the cold of the new morning, she watched her girlfriend stir, and slowly rise. Slow in the steady, safe way, the one that told the red-head that she was awake, and not sleepwalking. Not much light filtered in, but there was enough to see. All the pelts and blankets that could be spared for the two were clumped up around them, tangled tight and providing an insulating kind of warmth. A warmth that didn’t feel warm, but that kept them from freezing.
Van smiled a bit as Taissa woke, and she propped herself up on her elbows, hair falling over her face as she studied her girlfriend’s sleepy expression shamelessly. She was never one for subtleties. Brown eyes met hers, ones accustomed to the treatment, and just stared for a few moments before she finally spoke, voice soft and thick.
“You could go downstairs without me, you know. Instead of watching me like a freak” She said it with affection in her tone though, and Van pretended to think it over.
“While that’s a very tempting offer, Miss Turner, I think I’ll pass” She grinned, and flopped back down onto her pillows, dreading having to disentangle herself from the bedding, but knowing it was a necessary evil to get downstairs next to the fire. No matter how much she detested it, how many close calls there had been, fire meant not freezing her ass off. And she could work with that.
“I stayed asleep?” Taissa asked, sitting up with a light brush of her fingers over Van’s freckled, pale cheek, as she began loosening and eventually discarding the rope from around her wrist. She still had that same disapproving frown on her face as she observed the red ring of carpet burn around Van’s forearm, but stayed quiet about it.
Van nodded, sitting up and pulling on her boots. “Yeah, no trees, no cliffs, no Nosferatu-esque activities”
Taissa rolled her eyes at the last statement, and she giggled, her tongue subconsciously gliding over the healing wound on her inner lip from when Tai had bit her. She was glad she could joke about it now, make it light. Hopefully, lift some burden of the guilt she knew her girlfriend still carried about it off her shoulders, and eventually, off her conscience. God, Van sweared Tai blamed herself, or at least took responsibility, for everything she possibly could. To remain in control, she guessed. She’d forgotten what that even felt like by now.
When her boots were fastened, she got up and pulled on an extra coat, along with the trinket-like necklace Lottie had gifted her before she went off into the woods. Not without a second disapproving look from Taissa, but no following comment. She was biting her tongue this morning. Maybe just trying to avoid fights. A common goal once the deep, starving hunger nestled inside all of them.
Van descended from the attic a little before Taissa, sitting by the fire and sighing at the warmth, fingers trying and probably failing their attempt to loosen some knots in her thick mane of hair. She supposed she could do what Tai did, snip hers off. But she kind of liked it, in a way. It felt like keeping a part of her old self. Like she wouldn’t be slipping too deep into what Jackie had once described as the “Back to the land bullshit”. Van wanted to stay herself, despite knowing that was unrealistic.
Mornings were always decently quiet. There was little to do. Natalie always went hunting, Taissa always went outside to chop firewood. There was never any breakfast, and mostly, no fighting. With no game to prepare and even less energy to do so, the quiet would be their only company. As much as no one wanted to talk about it, Shauna losing her baby had been hard on everyone. On Tai, because of the sheer will she had. She did her best to keep Shauna going, to help her through the birth. But sometimes things just don’t fucking work out.
Van, however, had just stood there like an idiot. She didn’t know the first thing about childbirth, and all that shit made her nauseous. Sure, she was a girl. Kids sometimes drifted in the back of her mind. Of settling down someday. Hopefully with Tai, if they ever made it out. If the world stopped being so fucked and they wouldn’t have to hide themselves anymore. But she never thought about being the one to carry a baby.
She was moody enough as it was, she didn’t need raging hormones to back it up as well. Van was also notoriously blunt and unempathetic. She couldn’t bring herself to feel bad when one of her little cousins tripped and dropped an ice cream cone, much less when they knocked over their own tower and sobbed about it. She wasn’t built for it. And yet, kids always seemed to like her. Something about her humor, people had told her. It was always about that, even when she wasn’t trying to be funny.
She’d be lying if she said the thought of Taissa with a swollen stomach sitting in a nursery hadn’t crossed her mind before. She admitted it was enticing, the thought of a little baby between them, a perfect mix of them both. With Tai’s pretty brown eyes, and her smattering of freckles. Maybe if it was her baby, she’d be a good Mom. Better than her own drunk, pissed mother, at the very least.
All that was hard not to think about with Shauna going through the whole process in front of her. But she doubted any of that was possible. How she and Tai would even have a biological baby was beyond her. She’d paid at least semi-attention to health class. She knew the basic logistics. And without some sorry guy between them, a baby just wasn’t possible.
And with the way she’d frozen like that the minute Shauna began to scream, biting her nails and sweating, she didn’t know if she could handle a baby. God, she felt like a fucking wimp. Van did her best to chant along with the rest of the group, to offer whatever she could to the wilderness for help, but in the end, she’d just watched and sobbed. Witnessed Shauna realizing she’d had a stillbirth, that at the end of all that, she’d lost her baby boy.
Thinking about it, now, it made her stomach churn. No, kids were probably off the table for her. She didn’t know if that relieved her, or saddened her. Out in the wilderness, with all the time in the world to think herself into a hole, she ended up in some pretty deep places. Van didn’t know how long she’d been zoned out for, staring at the fire and carding her fingers through her hair, but when she focused again, Taissa was beside her, sitting in a chair.
She scooted over and leaned against the legs of it, her head parallel to her girlfriend’s lap. She took Tai’s hand, one that dangled over the armrest, and just held it close. Eventually, everyone would go their separate ways, to try to find a way to spend the day. Van would probably just get lost in her head again, and maybe refill the water bucket every now and then. Otherwise, this was it. Slowly freezing in a cold cabin, on a dim winter morning.
Behind her, Taissa smelled like the buckskin of her coat, and the firewood that she’d chopped. It was familiar, almost comforting. Lazily, her head lolled back to rest against the side of her thigh. Van had given up on detangling her hair, and as her eyes drifted shut, she’d given up on staying conscious as well. What was the point? She didn’t get much sleep watching over her girlfriend anyways. A nap couldn’t hurt.
…
When she woke, it was to a hand gently tugging hers. As a sort of reflex, her eyes rolled back into her head for a minute as she blinked awake, sitting up with a start, hand grasping blindly for Taissa. It’d become a force of habit anytime she woke up to movement, with Tai’s walking off and all. But she soon realized that she was in the same place she fell asleep in, downstairs and against the chair her girlfriend sat in, who was tugging on their still intertwined fingers to wake her.
“Hey, up. Chores” She urged gently, with a small shake of their hands to enunciate the fact, before she let go. Van rubbed the sleep from her face as she stood, sniffing softly. An hour or two must’ve passed, because the sun was a little brighter against the snow. She grabbed the pail and stepped out into the snapping frigidity of the outside. It surely woke her up. She pawed through the clean snow, packing it tight and filling the pai to the brim. Her fingers were red and stiff, and she kicked at the porch to rid her boots of excess snow before hurriedly entering the cabin again.
She hung the pail over the open fire to melt it into drinking water, and rubbed her hands together. Van sat back in her place next to Tai, though her hair caught on the zipper of her jacket, and she hissed, trying to disentangle herself from it. A second pair of working, warm hands replaced hers, swiftly removing the offending strands from the coat.
“Your hair’s all matted” Tai quipped, and she rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, we all can’t have short, perfect hair all the time”
“Let me braid it back. You look like a stray” She could practically hear the tease in her tone, but she chose to ignore it. It was rare they got moments like this. Small intimacies faded into the background, other more important things occupying their minds. She just grinned and scooted a little more into Taissa’s legs, giving her a better vantage point.
“Yes, Ma’am” She could hear the sigh from behind her, but no retort was supplied, so she just relaxed into the feeling of fingers combing through her hair. Well, as much as she could relax when her scalp was constantly being abused.
Still, it was a nice moment, and she held back snippy comments. She was still exhausted, and this was somewhat soothing. It brought her head back to earlier times, places she hadn’t really gone in a while. When she was little, and her mom would try to do up her hair in buns, or something else cutesy, trying to tame the wild red locks. She’d screamed and cried, really, just acted like a brat.
After the age of six, her hair wasn’t ever touched. It was left wild, or thrown in a simple ponytail. She never got these close moments, so now that she was getting them, she did her best not to mess it up. Even if it was fucking torture. Apparently, all those years of neglect to her scalp had made her tender-headed, not that she’d ever admit it. She’d gotten half her face mauled off, she could handle this.
Finally, her hair was braided back, and she felt like she could breathe again. Her neck was a little cold though, and she scooted closer to the fire, giving Taissa a look of appreciation. The snow had almost completely melted, and she scooped a cup of water out, handing it to her girlfriend. One thing they never ran out of was water. Silver lining in the huge-fucking-cumulus nimbus that hung over their heads, she guessed.
Always a bright side, wasn’t there?
Tai disappeared a bit after that, probably to go check in on Shauna. Van couldn’t make herself. She knew she’d never know just what to say. Obviously, she’d dealt with sad, hurt people before. So much was inevitable on a soccer team full of girls, and especially out in the wilderness. That didn’t mean she’d gotten any good at seriously helping out. She could tell bad jokes, or be downright awkward, or wait for them to get over whatever was happening. She could fake apologies and empathetic smiles, but in the long run, it’d only get her so far.
What do you even say to someone who lost a baby? Van assumed nothing she could supply would make any of it better. She’d had her fair share of shitty days, and people trying to talk her through it had only made it worse. Distractions, evasions, humour, that’s what she was good with. Turning it stupid and silly, so there wouldn’t be any real processing. And when she was too upset to joke about it, she’d turn to the only other thing she knew; movie quotes.
And most of the time, stupidly obscure, irrelevant ones only she had come to know by heart, through rewatching her favorites over and over again. That resulted in weird looks, and a hell of a lot of explaining. It wasn’t a good course of action. None of that would suffice for Shauna. There was a reason Taissa was the one holding her hand and talking to her through labour and not herself. No, she wasn’t any good with that.
In her girlfriend’s absence, she rolled up her sleeve and traced the red burn mark around her wrist. Yeah, it hurt. It stung, really, but she’d never tell Tai that. She knew the second she did, the whole setup in the attic would melt away like the snow over the fire. And she needed Tai cared for. She deserved to sleep. With no one really watching, she pressed her hand inside the water bucket, sighing as the cold water soothed the red, raw skin. At least there was a little relief. Van doubted it’d heal any time soon since she kept re-aggravating it every night. Maybe it’d form some weird, gnarly callus, like a bracelet bracketing her palm.
At least then she’d have an excuse to actually use the word gnarly, probably to relentlessly annoy her girlfriend until she finally cracked a smile and shut her up. Because that’s what she was good for. Stupid pretend stuff. Being serious wasn’t something she’d ever been skilled at. That was Tai’s field, and she’d forever be grateful for that. When Van got serious, she was either angry or much too intense. Not good odds, she betted.
Her back began to ache as badly as her stomach did, and she stood, drying off her hand and cracking her spine. She was a little proud at the impressive symphony of pops, knowing it’d no doubt cause a questioning look or two sent her way. That is, if anyone had the will to pay attention. Needless to say, they didn’t. Van strolled around the cabin, a little restless. She passed Akilah and Mari, who were playing some silent card game at the table in the corner. Travis sat in his room next to Javi, who still wasn’t speaking, but who was sketching something silently. Coach was in his room like always, looking more and more dazed by the day. She pointedly ignored that interaction, eyes passing over to the other corner of the cabin. Lottie looked to be sewing up a squirrel-skin something, with Misty doing her best to worm her way into the solitary activity.
Everyone was occupied, not like she’d really join anyone who wasn’t. While she did love to talk, she wasn’t a fan of encroaching on random teammates for her own entertainment. She always felt awkward in the group, unless she was able to make it stupid enough that she could laugh at something, or get someone else to laugh. Then things began to feel a little more comfortable. Most of the time, she was just entertaining herself with the shit she’d say, laughing at her own lame quips. What could you do, anyway?
Eventually, Van settled right back into her same place by the fire. She waited for a few minutes, head lolled back and zoned out, staring at the ceiling. Her head was pretty empty, until Taissa returned. She moved to allow her back into the chair, and she quietly spoke up. Careful with her words, and maybe trying a little too hard to perfect the tone. At least they weren’t face to face. Eye contact would only fuck her up more.
“How’s Shauna?” She waited for a response for a long while, before receiving the smallest bit of something.
“Healing. Tired” She noticed the tightness in Tai’s words though, how she was holding something back. Whether that be words or tears, she didn’t know, but she reached up and took her hand again.
“Least she’s a bit better” She felt the small nod behind her.
“Yeah. Better”
That was their life now.
Better?