runtowardsomething | (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

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."