@90svan pulled Jackie Taylor aside at the compound (S2 AU)
Camp Green Pine was a powder keg, and it only took a matter of days for the ammunition to be set.
Twenty-five years they'd all spent trying to move on from the disaster, crawling their separate ways out of the darkness. Coping in manifold methods, each carefully selected like a poison to numb, starve, and choke out the gnawing animals within them. Some of the team kept in touch, forming a vital support network for one another. Others separated themselves entirely (or were separated), and yet that bond they shared sunk deep in their flesh like hooks, claws, teeth.
And now the Yellowjackets were forced to face themselves as they were, once again. Jackie was privately reeling -- Lottie's well-meaning but misguided attempt to save Natalie's life had drawn the kindling to the compound. Misty, Taissa, Shauna, and Van. Each one a firestarter in their own unique ways -- except out of all of them, the lawyer perhaps trusted the redhead most to keep their cool. Not to light the pyre of Lottie's carefully constructed community, as she might have once accused Van in their varsity days. She and Jackie both understood the intentions of the other woman's beliefs.
A hunter and a butcher could feed the aching stomach, but theirs was a hunger of the mind, a shared sickness through which only Lottie could see most clearly. And Van had known it for longer than most of them, bearing the scars to prove it.
"They're planning what?" Her concerned question was hissed through whitened teeth. Of course the conniving Misty would likely be the one to leave the lawyer out of the loop -- though Jackie wouldn't put it past Shauna to hold a grudge after all this time. "They all know that Lottie's our best chance at actually working through whatever this is right now, right? I mean, even Natalie has stopped behaving like a feral cat after just a few days here. Her leadership helped us before, we just have to see this through."
Just as Lottie protected her, Jackie felt the need to protect Lottie in turn. But at this late hour, in this remote place, the law couldn't help her. All she knew was the rules of nature they had once abided by.
