runtowardsomething | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's strange, how quickly things go back to normal. It would be, anyway, if Beverly hadn't been in Darrow long enough to be extremely aware that that's just how it goes here. Shit happens and people move on. Usually, though, she isn't quite so directly involved. Usually, the insane, fucked up things that go on don't involve her whacking someone in the head with a tree branch after being dragged out of her tent in the middle of the night.

She doesn't know what happened to him after that, if he's alive or dead. She hasn't wanted to find out, afraid of the answer either way. What she does know is that there's a several-second span of time that she doesn't remember, that there was blood pooled on the sand and splattered on her, and that, in those few moments, she was in a different place and a different time, somewhere she doesn't want ever to be again.

All of it is difficult to shake off. She's fine, she's safe; she's been assured, too, that under the circumstances, nothing is going to come of what happened on that beach. Everyone's stories are consistent. They were under attack, and she defended herself the only way she could. That doesn't make it easier to get past, to move on, the way people here seem to so quickly. She still has to live with the thought that that's another death she very well might be responsible for.

Her therapist tells her to try not to think about it like that, but also that it's a process, one that takes work. She can't expect the way her mind works, the things that have been drilled into her from such an early age, to change immediately. So she frames it like that, repeating it over and over in her head: she defended herself, she fought back, she did what she had to do. She tries not to think about the blood.

At least fresh air helps clear her head. Despite the heat, she rides her bike out to the boardwalk, locking it in a bike rack before she climbs up the stairs, going in search of somewhere she can get a cold drink. Company will help, too, and she knows she'll have that here.

[ Feel free to say plans were made to meet up! Anything works~ ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

More than once, I wondered if I ought to have been more fucked up over the fact that I'd probably killed someone on that island, but I wasn't. It wasn't the first time, anyway. The first time had been harder, the weeks after clouded with... maybe not guilt, but an avalanche of what ifs. This time, it felt disturbingly normal. We went home, and everything went back to the way it was, and across the water were a pack of murderous idiots waiting for... who knew what.

I didn't feel guilty, but sometimes I found myself fantasizing about taking a boat across the water and lighting fire to the whole island. I thought about Bill, or Beverly, splattered with blood, and decided I wouldn't have minded listening to all those assholes scream while their home burned to the ground. It might've even been a little fun.

I wasn't looking for her, but it felt like fate, in a way, to find her walking the boardwalk that afternoon. Flicking the butt of my spent cigarette over the edge of the boardwalk, I offered her a faint, knowing smirk.

She looked restless.

I knew the feeling.

She hasn't seen him since that fucked up festival gone wrong. Somehow, though, Beverly isn't entirely surprised when she spots Neil on the boardwalk just a little ways off, lifting one hand to give him a slight wave before heading in his direction. She may not know what to say, but she does know that there's no sense in avoiding him, or trying to pretend that night didn't happen. What he saw — well, it wasn't even the worst of it, and if a part of her felt uncomfortably seen, it's easy to write that off as irrational, faulty memory.

Besides, she wouldn't really even want to stay away. There's a strange closeness that stems from going through something fucked up with another person. That was at least a part of what happened that last summer in Derry, with her and the other Losers, though she chooses to believe that wasn't all of it, and she feels something a little bit like that again now. He was the one with her in the immediate aftermath. That means something.

"Hey," she says when she's close enough, giving him a small, lopsided smile. "How's things?"

"You know. Same old shit," I said, shrugging one shoulder and matching her crooked smile.

It was strange, feeling like you knew someone, like there was some kind of understanding between you, only to realize that you really hadn't spent much time together. Small talk was awkward and stupid on the best days, but after you'd seen and done the kind of shit that we had, it just felt a little pointless.

"You doin' okay, Miss Marsh?"

"Hanging in there," Beverly replies with a lopsided shrug of her own. Despite the weight of the last few weeks, she is doing okay, or near enough to it. She's alive, and Hopper is fully supportive after what happened at the festival, and she's somehow wound up with a fucking therapist whom she's actually trying to talk to. It's just weird, the way some sense of it seems to linger. There were times, back in Derry, when she felt like she couldn't get clean enough, scrubbing her body until her skin turned pink. This is a little bit like that, the sense of something still there, still clinging to her, invisible but present.

Neil is the only one who saw her in the immediate aftermath, wide-eyed and covered with wet blood. He might well have seen more than that, though she doesn't really understand it. It leaves her more inclined to try to be honest, not to shrug it off. "It's been weird," she says. "You know, since we got back."

"Yeah, no shit," I said, huffing out a laugh. It wasn't so hard for me this time, but I was a fucking mess Halloween before last. I didn't feel guilty for killing some asshole who'd tried to kill me, but that sure as shit didn't mean I felt nothing.

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the little baggy of weed and tin of rolling papers I kept there. I gestured to a sandy down on the beach and asked, "Wanna go smoke up?"

"Honestly, that sounds great," Beverly says with a soft, surprised little laugh. It might not be something she does very often, but not very often and never are two incredibly different things. Right now, a chance to unwind a little and not just stand here, with the one person who was with her that night, seems pretty perfect. She still doesn't really know what it was that made her feel so seen when he found her in the woods, or if that feeling was just in her head, but it still happened.

Nodding toward the stairs that lead to the beach just a little ways ahead, she starts in that direction, glancing over at him as she does. "I'm surprised there's actually somewhere quiet."

"This place tends to clear out. I think it's 'cause of that witch, who put the spell on this part of the beach last year?" I said, making my way down the stairs at her side. Once on the sand, I kicked off my shoes and carried them in one hand.

Finding a place to sit, I dropped down into the sand, legs pretzeled up under me and my shoes dumped to the side. Flipping open the tin, I pulled out a joint I'd already rolled earlier and put it between my lips.

"You know, Bill doesn't tell me much about you guys. It's like you've got this pact to keep each other's secrets," I said, the joint bobbing between my lips as I lifted my hip and pulled out my lighter. I don't sound bitter about it, 'cause I'm not. I know what it's like to be a kid and know you'd die for your best friend. "I haven't seen my best friend in seven years. I kinda wonder if she'd still know me."

I took a deep drag, and passed the joint over.

"Oh, God, I forgot about that," Beverly says, letting out a short, soft laugh as she reaches over to take the joint from him. She's been here for so long now, and so much weird shit happens, that it's impossible to keep track of all of it, especially when it doesn't affect her personally. At least nothing seems to be going on here today, the quiet a relief. Although life seems to have gone mostly back to normal since the disaster that was Pyre Fest, her nerves are still shot. Whatever chaos might be coming next, she hopes it holds off a little while.

Taking a drag from the joint buys her a moment's time to contemplate the rest of what Neil has said. They made a pact that summer — she has a scar on her hand to remember it by; she's not sure she would without it — but it wasn't to keep each other's secrets. They never knew hers to keep them.

"Bill… I think I'd know Bill anywhere," she admits with a shrug, offering the joint back to Neil again as she looks out at the ocean. She'd seen him, after all, the way he is now, even if it took seeing him stumble out of the water here to recall that. "But for what it's worth, there's no secret-keeping pact. He just doesn't know mine."

"I wouldn't mind if there was," I said with a shrug of my own. "I'm just sayin', you remind me of her, a little. Or maybe of me? Or... fuck, I don't know. Maybe just... the way she and I were, back then."

I took a hit off the joint, holding it deep in my lungs and letting out a slow exhale.

"She knew all my secrets, but I dunno if I knew hers. I dunno if I ever asked."

"I don't know if he ever asked about mine, either," Beverly replies, her expression a little wistful. "Or I don't remember, anyway." A few weeks ago, it might have surprised her to hear Neil say that, that she reminds him of himself, or of his teenage best friend. Now, though, it makes an odd sort of sense again, reminding her of that night in the woods as Pyre Fest devolved into chaos, how terribly seen she'd felt, that strange unspoken understanding between them.

"Him, and the other Losers... I would have done anything for them. Still would. But there was a lot I never talked about."

"Yeah, that's what you get, makin' friends with a pack of idiot boys," I teased her, passing the joint over with a grin.

I couldn't help but try and imagine what they all must've been like, or even what my life might've been like if I'd had friends like that. I wouldn't ever take for granted what Wendy was to me, but I know I was way too much for her to handle on her own.

"What else was I supposed to do? That pack of idiot boys were the only people who would be friends with me," Beverly retorts, choking out a laugh. A few years ago, it might have really bothered her to think about the truth in that statement. Now, though, despite it sometimes being a little awe-inspiring that she's wound up with such a full life here and people who really care about her, she's better able to see it for what it was. She wouldn't have really wanted to be friends with any of those assholes anyway.

Thoughtful a moment, she takes another hit from the joint. "They still wouldn't have gotten a lot of it. Never seemed worth getting into."

"Yeah, well, us fuckin' freaks tend to find each other," I agreed with a smirk. The year I met Wendy, she was the only person who'd willingly spoken to me in weeks, for a reason other than giving me shit. I'd made myself as vile and unapproachable as possible, but she wouldn't be deterred.

"I dunno. Some shit, you're better off not carrying on your own."

"That's definitely been true here," Beverly admits. She still doesn't like to talk about it much, preferring to keep all of it put away where no one can see or know or judge her for it. It does help, though, not feeling like she has to hide it completely, having people she knows she can turn to if she really needs to.

She just prefers not to need to.

"And even then, it's still... I don't know. Maybe it's harder to talk to them about it because they knew me then. Or maybe I just need a lot more therapy."

Beverly's text wasn't specific, which puts Anne the slightest bit on edge. Something happened is just shorthand for a conversation too difficult to put on the phone message. And it's been a while since she heard from the kid. She tries not to think too much about that, about wondering if she should've been checking in more, as she approaches the suggested meetup. Won't know until she hears the story.

Bev is easy to spot, red hair fluttering softly in the saltwater breeze, pale hands clutching a drink as she stares out over the water. Anne moves in slow and cautious until Bev sees her, then she settles down beside her on the bench. Bev looks okay but not okay. Not unlike their first meeting, Anne thinks.

"What happened?" Anne says softly, leaning over, her eyes searching.

For the most part, since coming back, Beverly hasn't wanted to talk about what happened. She told Hopper the morning the boat docked, and she hasn't tried to hide it, exactly, but it's a difficult thing to bring up. She's too used to keeping everything buried. It's a habit her therapist has been trying to encourage her to change, and this is no exception, but the way she sees it, it's not really like there's anything to say. She was attacked and she fought back, and she wasn't the only one there who did. She may not remember doing it, those few seconds in which she acted, but she knows that's what happened.

Still, it's stayed with her, clinging to her like the blood spattered on her skin that night, technically unobtrusive but something she's uncomfortably aware of. Among everyone she knows, she trusts Anne to understand it. It's been a little while since they've seen each other, but it's the sort of thing she would go to Anne with anyway. So she sends a text, she makes a plan, and then she waits, something in her unraveling the slightest bit when she sees Anne approach.

She could give the whole explanation, lead into it carefully. Instead, she says, "I think I might have killed someone. At that stupid festival thing a few weeks ago."

Anne is only dimly aware that anything happened at that festival — only dimly aware there was a festival at all, with the way she avoids most of Darrow's events and otherwise keeps to herself and her own. But the news doesn't shock her. Nothing much shows on her features because there's nothing much to show. Certainly not shock or dismay. A small, subtle grimace, nothing else.

"Tell me what you remember," she says softly. Bev's uncertainty — that she thinks she might have killed someone, to Anne, speaks less to any doubt that it happened and more to the memory's tendency to conceal things like that. Shifting a little closer, half-consciously raising a sort of protective guard around the kid, she remembers learned some of her learned courtesy and adds, "If you can."

Although it isn't an unexpected response from Anne, it's a relieving one. This, Beverly thinks, is exactly why she reached out instead of just waiting until the next time their paths crossed. It isn't as if there's been any trouble for her since it happened. Hopper understood, and a few of her friends were there, even if she didn't actually see them that night. Neil was with her in the aftermath. She's been assured, and found to be true, that no one is considering it to be anything other than self-defense. Still, something in her knew that Anne would understand, and she appreciates that more than she would know how to say.

She doesn't even try to, at least not yet. First, she has to get through this story — something that's strange still, even having told it before, if only because it throws her to talk around something rather than about it. She knows what happened; the circumstances made that clear enough. She just has no memory of actually doing what she did.

"There were... these people," she says, knowing that isn't helpful at all. "None of us knew they were there. Someone said later they were cultists. The second night, they started coming out of the woods and just... grabbing people. I think to kill them." She pauses, swallows hard, clears her throat. "I woke up, and there was some guy in my tent. He pulled me out. Tried to pin me down. My — my hand touched a tree branch, I think, a big one, we were right by the tree line." Taking a deep breath, she glances out to the water, knowing the place this happened isn't very far off that way. "And then... the next thing I knew, I was just standing there. Holding the branch. There was blood... on my hands, on the bark. And he was just lying there on the sand. Bleeding."

Anne's focus doesn't flinch as Beverly tells her story. She can see the difficulty, etched clear in the girl's features. Hard to tell, but it don't have to be hard to receive. She doesn't shut her eyes against it or look away even for a moment. She takes it into her as if she can alleviate the strain.

She nods, just once, when Bev grinds to a halt, then reaches out to take her hand. It's a tentative offer; if Bev rebuffs her, she'll pull away easy. But either way she says, "You did right. Even if you don't remember. Sometimes your body takes over and shuts you out. It's to protect you. So you can't freeze, so you don't get hurt worse by remembering it. But you did right." She looks closely at Bev, seeking her gaze if she can give it. "You're still here instead of in the ground and that's what had to happen."

While physical contact can be hit or miss for her at times, right now, having Anne take her hand makes a big difference, helps Beverly feel a little more grounded, more real. She's not sticky with someone else's blood now, or scraped from gripping tree bark too hard. She's just here, being told something that means the world. Hopper said roughly the same thing, and so did her therapist. She knows, too, that she isn't the only person who attended that stupid festival and had to defend their life by taking someone else's. It's just strange, and oddly final, and an instinct she wouldn't have known that she had, at least not when it comes to herself. Protecting someone else has always come more easily to her.

"If it wasn't him, it would have been me," she says, quiet and steady, albeit a little like she's trying to assure herself of it. "And I was… I hadn't been that scared in… a really long time."

Anne nods again, keeping close watch on Bev as if she might slip and fall. Anne knows too well the possibility. Not a fall anyone would see, but something that happens on the interior, behind the eyes. Bev is holding on as hard as she can. Trying to convince herself. Anne can hear it, see it, feel it.

"I've seen a lot of men die," she says after a moment, not sure it's the right thing, but having little else to draw on. "Been at my hand more often than not. Don't know if they all deserved it. Most probably did. Maybe I did, too. But most times it was just them or me. I never thought much of it. It was just the way things were."

She draws a breath and lets it out again slowly. Her gaze has drifted from Bev now, fixed instead on the middle distance toward the water, but she doesn't let go the kid's hand. She hasn't really talked about this to anyone, not even Greta.

"Only time it scared me... Only time I really forgot myself... it was a mistake. Not an accident. Worse." She can't go into detail. Doesn't know how, isn't right when she's meant to be comforting Bev. She huffs out a heavy sigh and says, "I know what that feels like. Don't remember it well, but remember everything that came after. I was scared of what I did. The consequences. Didn't act out of fear, just anger. That scared me more than anything."

Finally she looks at Bev again, a small sliver of nervousness working its way into her composure, like this might change things. These people aren't easy about murder and she tries to hide that she is. But it's all she has to share.

"What you did wasn't a mistake. You protected yourself. Probably others too. You kept yourself in the world and you took something else out that didn't belong in it. That's not something you should ever have to do. It's not something you were prepared to do. That's why it hurts so much right now. But I'm telling you that you'll weather it. And I'm glad you did what you did."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only