#eatbitch

"Oh I remember. I've had to clean up your messes a time or two, don't you remember?"

“ 𝚒'𝚖 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜. 𝚒'𝚖 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚘𝚍. ” from shauna shipman, @eatbitch

𝐀 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐏 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐇 as saucer-wide, mossy green eyes sweep anxiously around the chaos that had begun to erupt around them. ( 𝚒𝚝 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚊 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛 𝚞𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚕𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐, ) but violently like a bomb composed of what could only albeit reluctantly be described as modern-day human beings .. in the back of his mind, he considers that parasites might have been more accurate: all waving their limbs, toting flashing cameras and stretching out microphones until their elbows hyper-extended. the swell of bodies gathered like a cancerous mass developing on the brain [ ... ] and at the first whiff of death, even the vultures were circling.

for a split second, he could even swear he'd caught the stale stench of age old, lung-withering cigarettes that not only shadowed his every waking move, but haunted his dreams as well.

it only served to make his feral heart race faster, to make him react quicker as he speaks close to the shell of her ear, ❛   ────come with me, okay? i've got you. just stay close. ❜ uttered quickly, concisely, and with an impressive amount of calm despite the tinnitus ringing in his ears. establishing eye contact with her, mulder offers a nod before moving to throw his jacket over her head and tucking her snugly against his side.

as he began to usher her away from the crowd, he filled his lungs and allowing his voice to boom: ❛   everybody stay back or you'll all be charged with obstruction! try to get handsy, and i'll add assault of a federal officer onto the list. that's a minimum of one year in prison and a fine of one-hundred thousand us dollars, and with the state of the equipment i'm seeing, all i can say is good luck coughing up that kind of dough on top of the legal fees. ❜

under the bright luminescence of the new moon, the night felt unseasonably balmy; the torridness that seemed to swelter under nat's skin heightened by the feeling of weightlessness tugging at her consciousness. the sensation of euphoria, lit up in the starlight, and every conflicting, concurrent swell of emotion that chased it. breath by deep, stilling breath, the crest of her high ebbed away little by disappointing little — but the sounds of soaring lupine howls she'd caught across the glade neglected to fade, even as she felt her feet begin to move, and herself come back to her body. didn't stop; just mutated, instead, into ear - piercing screams.

when she made to sprint, to close some distance between them and herself, natalie found herself colliding with solid bone and muscle — another human body, somewhere on an intangible veer between crooked, intertwining trees. in the underbrush, where the foliage took on a closeness too dense to see through.

in her boots, natalie stumbled, the power behind her sideways momentum taking her interceptor down with her. in an instant, teeth pierced her skin, at the tender juncture of her neck and shoulder. flat incisors, then ripping canines — the pressure behind them snapping nat into stark, immediate sobriety before she could even fathom who'd caught her in her dazed crosshairs, or what was happening; that, before her half - numbed pain receptors had had half the chance to register the sting, the dizzying throb, she'd shoved them back, hard enough to catch a glimpse of blood.

with the moon haloing her silhouette, and red staining the bow of her mouth, shauna looked almost nothing like herself; more wild animal in the trees than human.

            ❛            are you ? is your crown heavy , or does it feel like it always was meant to be there ?            ❜           i couldn't shake the vision i saw down in those caves , how the coldness in shauna's gaze was like looking directly into the heart of the earth , all the roots from the trees reaching up through the soil to meet her , like the outstretched hands of her starving , terrified subjects. the role of antler queen wasn't a set in stone thing , the wilderness took & gave whenever it wanted , but even i could feel just how much it loved shauna.

it loved her rage , her passion , her desperation to be finally be herself. i don't know why shauna had been so adamant to stay behind like i was , i'd fully expected to be abandoned to the elements while the others sought rescue , but here we were, slipping back into a familiar rhythm of savagery brought on by winter. i gently ran my fingers along the prongs of the antler crown that had been made for shauna , unused but ready for whenever she adorned them , raising my chin again to fix the queen with a furrow of my brows.            ❛            it's pleased , you know. with you. finally giving into it , on your own terms. it admires you.            ❜          

@eatbitch said: i feel something broken inside me. you can't fix it. no one can.

Nothing had gone how any of them had hoped. The birth of the baby, it had left everyone feeling hopeful. To experience something so beautiful and good out here of all places. However, they had all forgotten that they were unprepared, out in the middle of nowhere, and teenagers. Coach hadn't been any help, but they couldn't even blame him, not really. Regardless, it had been Misty who had delivered the baby and hadn't been able to do anything to save him, to give his mother the happiness she deserved.

That'd been months ago, but the pain still lingered. She could see it in the way Shauna carried herself around camp. How distant she was from them all and she didn't blame her. No, she could only begin to imagine what type of pain she was experiencing and would continue to. Having lost her best friend and her child out here, it was a wonder no one else outside of Lottie had been on the receiving end of her fists; she almost had, if not for the others intervening.

Misty did her best to steer clear of the other, not wanting to anger her, but today had been different. She hadn't seen Shauna in a while, not since breakfast, and for whatever reason, her concern outweighed her caution. So she had gone in search of her, wandering around through the surrounding edges of the camp until she found a path that lead to the small stream not too far away. There she saw their butcher sitting, journal in hand, and though she hesitated, her feet moved her forward and through the tall grass and wild flowers.

Swallowing, she had asked if she was okay, if she needed anything ( mainly to be left alone. ) The answer given, it tugged at Misty's heart and pulled her closer until she was sat on the log beside her. "I'm sorry," she began softly, "I know I've said that plenty of times now but I just..." Her words trailed off because she had. Shauna was the one she had said I'm sorry to the most in her entire life. And she knew saying those two words would never heal or fix anything, but she meant it every time.

" why not? " nat rebuked, without any striking force, any real fire. just a dulled - down sharpness, worn away like bone under a bloodied bowie knife and an unsteady hand.

" you've been wanting to take charge out here ever since we started pulling those fucking cards. you're calling the shots now. "

and now, with shauna at their untethered team's helm and lottie lurking like some whispering shadow — with coach's picked - clean bones in the dirt, smothered in broken tree roots and silt and rocks, like every other crude grave marker they'd scattered between them and the neglected wreckage of their plane — she wanted nothing more than to stop in her muddied tracks. no more dancing around licking, purifying flame. no more bending to the pull of senseless violence. no more chaos.

oh, did shauna shipman know how to grind his gears. expression clicks into something tighter, like the words had struck him straight in the gut. he just stares for a moment, sliding his tongue over his canines. and all he can get out is a scoff. ❛ ... right. ❜ what the fuck has been getting into her lately? steve finds this adjusted version of shauna unsettling at best, but everyone's become unrecognizable at this point. he leans back, arms folding over his chest out of sheer defense & wounded pride. believe it or not, he had approached her out of concern, but now... now she's just pissing him off again.

❛ sorry, i forgot i'm talking to hard-ass shipman, not the girl who was practically mute unless it concerned anything with jackie. ❜ there's the steve that had been missing all this time! the edge returns with the friction of her words, something closer to who he was prior to the crash. prior to the polish being forcefully scraped off him. ❛ JESUS – i'd just thought maybe sitting out here freezing your ass off and acting all dead inside had something to do with jackie dying. clearly, i don't know fuck all. ❜

his eyebrows lift in a challenge, defenses riding up in the ugliest way because now he's embarrassed for even trying to care. he tries to regain footing somewhere higher – ❛ just say you want to be left alone. no need to fucking snap because i actually said something instead of pretending we're not all losing our minds here. ❜

 " shauna, you know I've never liked you – because you're insane. Everyone thinks so and nobody has the balls to tell you that because you're one of those 'poor soccer girls that survived a horrific plane crash' , but you are fucking INSANE. jeff doesn't deserve anything you put him through and neither does your little girl. "