I loved you (I still do)

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/50518327.

Rating: Not Rated

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F
Fandom: Yellowjackets (TV)
Relationships: Natalie Scatorccio/Jackie Taylor, Shauna Shipman/Jackie Taylor, Travis
Martinez/Natalie Scatorccio, last two are mentioned - Relationship
Characters: Jackie Taylor (Yellowjackets), (kind of) - Character, Natalie Scatorccio,
Travis Martinez, Shauna Shipman, Last two are mentioned
Additional Tags: Forehead Kisses, First Kiss, Angst, first fic, Bisexual Character,
Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol
Abuse/Alcoholism, Opposites Attract, Jackie is so dead in this one,
Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Collections: Anonymous
Stats: Published: 2023-10-03 Words: 2,722 Chapters: 1/1
 I loved you (I still do)
by Anonymous

Summary

Natalie says goodbye to Jackie, and thinks about what could have been.

Notes

This is not beta read! Any and all mistakes are mine. Hoping that Nat too out of character.

See the end of the work for more notes

"I'm sorry," she said. But it didn’t matter, because Jackie was never going to hear them.

Nat wasn't even sure what she was sorry for.

Not being there

She wasn't there; she and Travis had come in through the back door late at night. Had Jackie
already been dead by then?

Nat didn't know; she didn't think it mattered. But she should have been there.

Outside, snow kept falling, coating the ground and removing any trace of footsteps. It made it
look soft, and undisturbed.

Nat fiddled with the lighter she held in her hand.

She flicked it, and nothing happened.

It was empty. Nat could feel the sting of tears in her eyes, but she willed them away.

"What they did was fucked up Taylor." Nat exhales. "I'm not going to pretend I wasn't pissed,
because I was."

There was no response.

There wouldn't be a response.

She flicked the lighter again.

Nat threw her head back against the wall. "You're good."
Too good

Two words, that couldn't be more true. Jackie had been the best of them; she was better than
them. She was better than Nat.

Nat tries not to think about the few times Jackie acknowledged her more than anyone else.

How she had told her that she meant something, that she wasn't useless, more than her
parents had ever told her, to Jackie, she had mattered.

She had said it when they were alone, after practice the first week of freshman year, when
every other girl had gone home, and Jackie was waiting for her ride. It had been small.To
Jackie it probably meant nothing, but it meant a hell of a lot to Nat

It had been when Jackie could still look at her, before she hated her like everyone else. Until
this year, not so long ago, when they had kissed at one of Lottie's parties. Nat tried not to
think of the way Jackie's lips felt against her own. how soft her skin had felt under Nat's
touch.

Jackie kissed gently and softly, unlike every other guy Nat had kissed.Who just shoved their
tongue down Nat's throat, hands roughly grabbing her hips. But Jackie was different; she had
let Nat take control; she didn't push for more. Nat definitely doesn't think about the way
Jackie looked at her afterwards. How her wide doe-like eyes stared at her, her lips parted, and
a faint blush painted her cheeks, and how it made Nat's heart flutter in her chest.

Nat had wanted to do it again.

Jackie couldn't look her in the eyes for weeks afterwards,. Nat was sure Jackie had regretted
it, or that she had wished it was someone else, that it was Shauna.Nat was sure it had been
Jackie's first kiss with a girl, and she was sorry because she wasn't who it should have been
with. It should have been Shauna. The two had always been dancing around each other for
years; they had been close in ways that friends weren't. She had seen the jealousy in Shauna's
eyes when Jackie was with Jeff. The way her eyes burned holes into Jeff, as if Shauna wanted
to strangle him,

That same ugly feeling that Nat felt too

Jackie had been different from the rest of them; while they stood awkwardly at the parties
hosted by the older girls on the team, Jackie had flourished. Shining until the attention, the
praise. From the beginning, nobody could take their eyes off of her (including Nat); the
moment she walked into the school, all eyes were on her. She commanded attention in every
room; she was rich, pretty, and popular—everything that Nat was not.

But Nat knew that it was all an act. She could see through every strained smile on Jackie's
face.

"You deserve better than this."

Nat exhaled loudly, putting her head in her hands. She was tired, so tired.

She swallows, so many words bubbling in her throat—what she really wanted to say, what
she had always wanted to say.

I love you. But Nat sure as hell didn't have a right to say that. Not when she thinks of Shauna,
hysterical, sobbing, screaming, and begging, as if she had lost part of her soul. They were
alone; everyone else was back inside, downstairs. After Tai had finally convinced Shauna to
eat,

"They fucked up, letting you go outside, leaving you out there. I'm angry; how could they do
something so fucked up in our shitty fucking situation?"

Nat pauses, swallowing the bile that crawls up her throat. "I'm mad at you too, Jackie. Why
didn't you fight back? Why were you so stubborn, you dick? Didn't you want to live your
own life?"

Nat can feel the sting of tears, but this time, she lets them fall.

"I know how it feels—to be pushed out, to not feel wanted. But was it too much? To be
shunned by the one person you ever loved?"
Nat scoffs, letting out a laugh that is shaky and bitter. Didn't Shauna understand how lucky
she was? To have someone who loved her unconditonally? Who knew her better than she
knew herself? Who cared for her so much? To have all of Jackie's attention.

To have what Nat wanted.

Shauna had Jackie all to herself. Didn't she understand just how much she meant to Jackie?
Couldn't she see how Jackie looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the world?
She had looked at Nat like that once. It had made Nat feel like she had meant something, like
she was important, like she was going to be somebody in life, and not end up overdosing, or
homeless, or working a shitty job.

Yet Shauna had let her go.

Nat looked at Jackie's body, pale and unmoving. "I should have been there; I wouldn't have
let them do that. I wouldn't have given up on you. I wouldn't have let you go, okay?"

Nat chokes back a sob. "I wouldn't have been who you wanted; I know that, and I never will
be. But I would have been there for you. I would have been on your side, like someone
should have been."

Nat pauses, murmuring the next part quietly. "I wouldn't have let you go. I wouldn't have hurt
you like they did."

That was a lie, and Nat knew it. Everything that Nat touched was broken. Everyone that Nat
cared about left.

She would have hurt Jackie. It's what Nat always does: everything good that she touches,
dies, or breaks. Nat wasn't meant to be loved; she wasn't meant to love.
Because nothing good came out of being loved by Natalie Scatorccio. But Nat pretends that
she could have saved Jackie, protected her, that she would have been good for her as if it
mattered. She pretends that Jackie could have loved her and that she would have loved her.

Jackie had always been unobtainable, even though they were on the same soccer team. She
was always just out of Nat's reach, something that Nat was never meant to have. Because
Jackie was meant to be a prom queen, to get married, and have a family. She was meant for
so much more than Nat. She was lucky if she ended up dead in a ditch. She wasn't meant for
a happy ending, and she was never going to get out of the shitty town she's lived in her entire
fucking life.

But Nat still wanted and loved her, and like everything else Nat loved, Jackie was gone.
There were things that she had wanted to tell her—things that she would never get to say.

That she mattered, that she wasn't useless or a fuck-up, and that she meant something to Nat.
Even if Nat didn't mean something to her,

Nat takes Jackie's cold hand in her own, squeezing it tight. "I'm sorry." She whispers,
squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm so fucking sorry, Jack."

For once, Nat doesn't hear him, as angry as he had been when he was alive. She searched for
his violence in others; she saw a lot in Travis, sometimes in Shauna, but not in Jackie, never
in Jackie. Jackie, whose worst crime was calling Nat a slut and a burnout, which was
somehow kinder than how everyone else treated her,

Nat laughs, self-deprecating, and bitter.

She squeezes Jackie's hand even tighter, as if somehow it would feel warm in her own.

"But it doesn't matter, does it, because you hated me, right?"

There was no response. But Nat pretended that there was; she pretended that she could hear
Jackie's warm voice in her ear. Telling her that she didn't hate her (Telling her that she
mattered)
Nat shakes her head; she knows it isn't real. It's just her and her fucked-up mind, desperate to
hear what she wants to hear. What she needs to hear.

As if it would make her feel any less guilty. Knowing that while she was asleep, Jackie was
outside, alone, cold, and betrayed.

Why hadn't she had Travis come in through the front door? Maybe, just maybe, they would
have seen Jackie, and Nat could have convinced her to come inside.

Maybe Nat wouldn't be in this fucking shed, saying things that she should have said a long
time ago, pretending like she could have changed anything.

"Fuck." Nat says, her voice trembling as she speaks. She wants to be angry at Shauna for
pushing Jackie out and making her believe that she doesn't matter.

But she couldn't, not when Shauna refused to eat, not when Nat had to pretend she couldn't
hear Shauna sobbing at night. Like she hasn't found Shauna sleeping, with Jackie's clothes, or
reaching out for Jackie as if she was really there. She wanted to be angry, but she wasn't. Nat
breathes in and out slowly.

She finally lets go of Jackie's hand, staring at her cold, blue lips. Had she felt it? Nat hoped it
had at least been painless and that she wasn't awake to feel any of it. But none of it really
matters, because either way Jackie was dead.

She was gone, forever seventeen; no, she was eighteen. It had been Jackie's birthday when
she died. It had been her birthday, and she was dead. At least Nat thought it was; Jackie had
mentioned it the day before, but nobody had cared or noticed.

Normally everyone cared, and she was showered with gifts, and praise. She was finally an
adult, she could vote, instead, she was left to rot in a shed.

"Happy belated birthday, Taylor," Nat laughs again, sardonically. God, she was pathetic,
wasn't she?

Nat scoffs to herself. By now, Jackie would have been at Rutgers; it had been all she could
ever talk about. Drawing many eye rolls from Nat, whenever she said they should all go to
Rutgers together and that she was going to room with Shauna, Nat had made fun of Jackie for
it, but she had been given a scholarship from Rutgers, and she hoped that maybe just maybe
Jackie would have asked her if she was going to Rutgers.
That she would have smiled—one of those smiles Nat only ever had directed at her once. The
one that would make you do whatever Jackie wanted.

Nat would always do what Jackie wanted

But instead, Nat was alone, with a corpse, in the dead of winter, in a shed. Talking to her, as if
it Jackie could hear her.

Nat secretly hoped she did. Which was stupid, because Nat never believed in heaven or hell.
But part of her likes to imagine that Jackie is watching over them and that she knows how
Nat really felt. That she knows Nat loved her, and that if she had been there, she wouldn't
have given up on her.

She wouldn't have, she couldn't have. Because how could you give up on someone like
Jackie? But it doesn't matter, because Nat had cared, and now she was gone.

Nat was a Scatorccio, she wasn't meant to love, they weren't made to love. They were meant
to destroy, to corrupt, to steal life out of anything that once had it.

They were parasites, that sucked you dry of everything you had.

Yet, foolishly and selfishly, she let herself love, and care, for someone she could never have.
But she likes to pretend she could, she pretends when she kisses Travis that his lips are softer,
fuller, and more gentle. Pretends he touched her with care. Not rough or desperate.

She loved him too, in her own way. Despite the fact that all she ever sees in him is her father,
his violence, and his anger, So she tries to see someone else in him who's gentler and kinder.
Whose voice was softer, and who was blond. Because when she saw Jackie, she didn't see her
father. Because she was better than that, and Jackie was good, kind, and better than Nat; that
was why Nat loved her.

And it was why Jackie was dead.

It was why they never would have worked out.

But Nat still places a hand on Jackie's cold cheek. Pretending it was warm and red, full of
life. Or that it was covered in blush like it had been months ago when they kissed when Nat
had finally gotten a taste of what she wanted. Of who she really wanted.

It had just been another reason for Nat to feel more guilty because she didn't kiss Travis for
the same reasons.

Travis wasn't Jackie. He couldn't be. He could never be as kind or as sweet because he was
just as fucked up as she was. They weren't good for each other; they made each other worse,
but they were the only ones who could understand each other.

Nat leaned in and pressed her lips against Jackie's forehead, ignoring the icy chill. She held
them there for a moment, eyes closed, wishing she could feel some warmth from Jackie one
last time.

"I'm sorry." She says it again, as if saying it will bring Jackie back as if those words mattered.
They never mattered, and they never will.

"I should have been there."

She's already said this; she knows, but she doesn't care. She was desperate to rid herself of
the guilty feeling gnawing at her stomach.

The feeling that crawled up her throat, squeezed her lungs, made it hard to breathe, and
consumed her entire bein

If Jackie had been alive, maybe it would have been the beginning, the start of something that,
given the chance, could have been more.

Out here, where there was no one in society that asked them to put on roles, Their only
opportunity was their chance, and they could have given each other a shot.

But Jackie was dead. Any shot or chance they had was gone; they had lost it. Nat had been
too late, and now, it didn't matter. Nat leans back, her hand falling from Jackie's cheek. She
takes a deep breath, and for a moment, she just looks at Jackie's lifeless body. Her blue,
chapped lips, her pale, frozen skin, her closed eyes, and it's wrong so wrong.

Jackie, who was always moving, fidgeting in her seat, or tapping her pen, which was
something that had annoyed Nat before, but now? She was desperate to hear that sound
again, for Jackie to show her any sign of life, but she knew that Jackie wouldn't.
Nat's gaze lingered on Jackie a little longer, before she stood, dusting herself off, as she
turned toward the shed door, the wind howling outside. For a moment she stands there, frozen
in place. She turns again to look down at Jackie, perched up in the corner of the shed. On
display like she was a fucking doll. Her mouth opens and closes as if she wants to say
something. There are so many different things floating around in her head. Things she's
already said, things she hasn't said, she swallows thickly, choking back the sobs that threaten
to fall out.

"Rest in peace, Jackie." The words come out raspy, and rough, foreign as they slip off of
Nat's tongue.

Nat doesn't think Jackie is at peace.

But she pretends she is.

End Notes

Had to write some Jackienat as my first ever fic, sorry for any mistakes, and that it was short.

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