#darkconsumed jeff

@darkconsumed {Jeff} and Shauna are trying to make this thing work post-crash

In some ways, Jeff was all that Shauna had left of Jackie.

In some ways, that was absolutely not true, but maybe if she said it enough, she'd be more comfortable with his love. Was that what this was? There was something to his affection and attention that wasn't being said. Which was fine -- apart from the barest of bones (bad choice of words), Shauna wasn't going to tell him what had happened out there. He'd never understand, no way.

Not Jackie, not the baby, none of it.

Where Jeff and her best friend had assumed the mantles of class king and queen to ensure their survival in the food chain that was high school, Shauna had to become something she wasn't (or maybe she always was) in those woods. Something that shouldn't have been rescued, or let back into society. Those words, those thoughts were only for her journals, and maybe Jackie's, someday. Wherever she was, she hoped Jackie understood. The hunger, the jealousy, the love.

Oh god, he'd asked her a question, hadn't he? What was it -- something about getting lunch, maybe? It was hard to go out in public in Wiskayok since the return, people asking the girls questions no one wanted the real answers to. But Jeff had said something, and she was just sitting here staring.

@darkconsumed {jeff} and callie are in the car headed to lottie's compound...

Callie's head was swimming as they drove upstate. Her dad had given her the short version of the story, about her mom and everything that had happened. Jackie, her brother... Of course Shauna was never going to open up to her about it. And a heavy gray cloud of swirling emotion had hung over her heart since hearing about it.

But all of that was mixed up in fear and in frustration -- she'd spent years of her life feeling resented, kept at a distance from her mom. And for a while, she told herself that was fine. She'd just put up her own walls to protect herself from the woman who didn't seem to or want to care. Callie had always felt closer with her dad, but even he had been hiding a lot from her. And now there was this whole mess with Adam Martin, and finding out her mom was a murderer. It was just so hard to put her thoughts in order, especially with --

"Oh my god, dad, what even is this music?" It was something old and so not her style. But on a road trip like this, they needed to keep the peace. Maybe take turns at the radio dial. Callie sighed, leaning her arm and head on the passenger window and watching the road around them pass by.

@darkconsumed {jeff} just finished reading Shauna's diaries... and hears the voice of Jackie Taylor.

"Jeff Sadecki... Oh, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff."

This was new. For both of them, the dead girl knew. Sure, there was a version of her that existed in his mind, distant and tragic. The story was that Jackie had died upon impact, left with the other victims at the crash site. But a small group of people knew the truth, the ones who had witnessed the rise and fall of the class queen. Their teeth cleaned her bones and whatever was left of Jackie Taylor was buried at the plane's wreckage. Well, now Jeff knew the truth too.

She wasn't here to gloat. That wasn't exactly her style -- well, it could be, where her old teammates were concerned. But whatever perfect image of her existed in Jeff's memory was now at odds with truth (Shauna's truth, at least), seared onto the pages of those diaries. Shauna's private diaries. Still, Jackie looked every bit the perfect young woman he'd been dating and cheating on not too many years ago. At least there was that.

She looked over him, sitting there with the books in his lap. Jeff was still handsome in a boring way, somewhat aged by newfound fatherhood and the stagnant life of Wiskayok. What had it been, about ten or twelve years? There was a baby now, a new one. A living one. A girl.

Jeff was nice and mostly harmless. Safe. And he probably loved Shauna a lot, even if this new information might have come as a shock. Why else would he have gotten into the safe and looked through those most personal belongings that his wife deliberately kept locked away?