Beth – Please read this
I am sorry. I don't have a lot of time to explain why I'm suddenly gone. Even as I'm writing… I know this letter isn't going to make a lot of sense. Hell, if I had a whole year to write out this letter to you I doubt I'd get any further than I am right now.
She knows the word 'year' is underlined.
She could trace, with her eyes closed, the rise and sudden fall of his handwriting. It's hurried and sloppy. Every sentence is a slightly-slanted-to–the-right jumble of incomplete thoughts and stinted cursive. There are misspellings and run on sentences. She's practically memorized the entire letter during on the subway to the cafe.
I'm not much of a writer. But I couldn't wait as long as I'm being told that I have to.
From across the table in the break room, Beth knows exactly the point where Ronda's stopped reading. Her light green eyes jump to make sure Beth's still with her. Still seeing this. Still believing this.
"God," Ronda drawls. "He's dramatic."
Ronda shifts in her seat, one hand touching at her hair, which is tied up close to the nape of her neck in complicated, over stressed, braids. She's dyed it black. Her eyebrows are as well, and they highlight the disbelief across her face and brings to Beth's attention that her nose lacks the tiny pinch of a thin ring.
Her bright red blouse is covered in tiny tingly bells that form a Christmas bow. It's more of an eyesore against the black ties of her apron that criss-cross, but Beth only assumes that Max finally got the best of her and she's committed to company policy. Probably with the threat of being let go.
Seeing Ronda looking so pedestrian makes Beth's chest ache more. Like it's one more detail that she just failed to notice in time.
Ronda drops her eye contact and goes back to the letter that's made Beth feels like a stranger inside of her own apartment. She had found it earlier that morning on top of Ronda's magazine piles, covering the face of Tony Stark—but not much else. His jacket was gone. His socks, even his shoes have completely disappeared. His honest blue eyes. His warmth. His smell entirely evaporated from her life.
It's almost as if Steve didn't want to found. Didn't want to leave a single ounce of his presence in her house.
It tugs at her chest. Crushes in and out from her lungs in ebbs and flows, a question of why.
Why?
Was he ashamed of her? With everything he's confessed, does he not trust her—even with just a single detail of where he is? Her head throbs bitterly. Does he think I'm not strong enough? She has to bite her lip hard to not shudder a sob. God, after all he's seen. He probably thinks I'm just a broken mess.
There's no new message on her cellphone from Steve. There's no missed call. There's no text.
The letter is all she has. Well, that and…
She gently reaches inside of her apron's pocket to touch at the torn, frayed, black and white smile of a man named James. Another paper stranger inside of her life that she doesn't know what to do with, but she read his entire obituary as well, for anything, anything at all close to understanding why Steve's suddenly…
She keeps both papers close to her all throughout her shift. She couldn't bear to leave them in her locker.
It's the only thing that keeps her body from going entirely numb.
Salto Della Fede is not numb. It's very much alive. The wooden booths are already crowded with the warm mutterings of mingling mouths all whispering at once. To Beth, it's all a low-muted buzzing that used to make her feel relativity at ease when coming into work.
Now she just feels trapped. All over again, as if were months ago, where her hand shook so badly she'd have to awkwardly take a customer's cup and refill in in the back over the sink. She wants only Ronda, but she's somehow clocked in and her name-tag is waxy and new and pinned to her chest. But she just knows that people are staring at her, that it's glaringly obvious how she's bleeding under the knotted ties of her black apron. She smiles at regulars, lists of today's specialties, makes comments about the chilly weather, and keeps blinking to stop herself from tearing up.
It comes in ebbs of painful abandonment, flows of confusion, and entirely drowning in desperation for an answer not jotted down at the last second.
Please understand that I didn't want to leave you, but what I am doing isn't about what I want anymore. I'm being called in again for my team. My cellphone went off late last night. In way, I'm grateful that it didn't wake you. I stole too much of your night as it is and I've already been booked a flight out to—I. I'm being sent out with Natasha—but I can't tell you the rest. Partially because I'm bound due to regulations and for your safety, and, frankly, the rest because I'm being rushed as it is.
Water, she reminds herself. She slides her hand along the table to touch her glass and pulls it closer to her.
She's so thirsty. It's as if all fluids in her skin have dried up and escaped through her mouth from how many times she's forced herself to breathe deeply, made stalling trips to the bathroom to brush back her hair because it's just a disaster and it keeps sticking to the sweat on her forehead. She vaguely thinks that maybe she's caught whatever Steve had.
She barely touches the glass to her lips when the ice rushes up to her face very quickly. From behind the letter, Ronda faintly snickers at her. It's apparently empty. Of course. She gets up with a frustrated glare at the door for the café's sink.
Her hand reaches blindly along the sink for a new cup. A finger runs along the smooth loop of a mug. She pushes lightly on the tap. She isn't sure if she's hit the hot water handle or the cold. She figures it doesn't really matter. As long as she has something else to focus on. Something to keep the colour to her face.
She pulls a mug from the tiny buildup of need-to-wash-dishes with a smiling snowman beaming at her, places it under the stream, and turns back to watch Ronda continue reading from the booth.
I feel so awful, Beth. This is not any proper way to treat you. I'm so sorry.
I want so badly to go back into your room I—
I can't let it be this way. Not right now.
The truth is…I'm gonna be gone for a while. I honestly couldn't tell you when I'll be back.
Slowly, Ronda flexes the stale tilt of her shoulders and meets Beth stare, pulling her back into reality.
The mug overflows with boiling water, pools back into the drain, and is entirely forgotten.
She knows why Ronda's searching for her now. It's that same stare that Beth wore on the subway when her eyes caught the way the 'the truth is' is scratched through over and over and over. The same stare that makes her realises that she had analyzed those words for so long that streaks of tears are seeping out remind her that she needs to blink, but she just can't.
Ronda waits for Beth to sit but the blonde continues to stand, locked there. She actually has to reach out to push her back into the booth. The green in her friend's eyes looks a little awestruck. Wide and incisive.
She leans back again with a quiet clear of her throat as she reads the ending of the letter.
""I promise I'll call you as soon as we land, but for now my cellphone is going to be off, and you won't be able to reach me till tomorrow. But we'll talk then, and I'll explain myself. I know this is sudden. I know you're probably upset, but please, don't be afraid of being alone.'" Ronda's eyes settle to Beth's for a moment before she continues. "'You're brave, Beth. And today is your first month of working this job that allowed me to meet you in the first place. From everything I've ever hid from, that's incredible. Please go to it. Be with your friend. Now I've really gotta go, but there's one more thing I want you to do for me. Try to promise me you'll'—" She suddenly stops.
Her lips drop into a scowl.
She flips the paper around. Sideways. Upside down. "What?" She glances at Beth in absolute confusion. "It just ends? Just like that? The hell?" She digs into Beth. "What is it? What did he want you to promise him?"
"I—" Beth moves a hand to touch at the torn edges. Her stomach drops at the way Ronda's face tightens at her, bewildered, black eyebrows etching into pale skin. She hopes, with all of her might, that she can hold out over her lie. If Ronda knew the truth, Beth could only imagine how she'd never be truly alone to find out. "I don't know. I just found it that way. He must've torn it."
"What?" Ronda retorts blankly. She seems to stare at Beth for a long time before she can find the words again. "And this is all he left? Nothing else?"
Beth studies the chips inside the plastered wood between them. Her fingers pick again at the article. "I've tried calling Natasha and Steve's cells to only get their voice mail, so, in a way, yeah. But …there's one more thing. Another paper."
Ronda snorts skeptically. "Oh, please tell me it's just as outrageous the last."
"It's…different." Beth straightens back up. She brings in a dry breath from the lukewarm air harbored in the building just before she carefully lifts the deteriorating paper from her lap to lay it along the table. It doesn't stay flat, though. It's just too old to stay pressed. "Honestly, I have no idea if it's even Steve's. But." A pause. "It has to be." She looks straight at Ronda. "Shouldn't it be?"
Ronda looks right back at her. "Are you asking me, or are you telling me?"
Beth braces her elbows to the table to droop her head. "I don't know, Ron. It was just there when I woke up. Maybe he had it on him while he slept? It just…it sounds so… stupid."
"Alright, alright," Ronda falters. She briefly moves a hand to smooth back Beth's hair. "I'll look at it."
Ronda doesn't bother to actually touch it. She braces her hands onto the table top and hoists herself up read it. Her hair is starting to come undone and it falls along her temples as she concentrates—but suddenly she sits right back down and brings out a hand to hold the article in place. "Wait."
Beth's heart skips at the sudden movement. "Yeah?"
"Before I read this and I probably just get more and more pissed off at your boyfriend, I want to talk to you about what I'm been trying to talk to you about. Could we do that, possibly?"
Beth's face turns as white as the snow outside, but her lips are a bitten flurry of red as she gasps. "Oh God, Ronda, I told you, I haven't seen him."
"I know that, Beth," Ronda counters strongly. "But I just…I have to tell you what I saw, okay?"
"Why is it so important?"
"Because I think it matters," Ronda emphasizes heatedly. "Because I care about you. Because now that Steve's dropped off the face of the earth without even so much as a goodbye to you, I can finally pry you away from this whole—freakin'—disaster that you're so happily living in. You have to talk to me now. You owe me this talk."
"Okay," Beth picks up her head to give her friend her full attention. "You're right," she replies hollowly.
"Thank you," Ronda whispers loudly in long anticipated appreciation. "Steve's friend. What's his name—Roland?" She grabs Beth's wrists from across the table. "I was talking to him, that time where he just suddenly showed up to talk to Steve about his 'condition'? And—Beth." She squeezes her wrists, hard. "He sneezed and the all the lights in the building flickered at once." She lowers her voice although the break room is empty. "But that's not all. His eyes were glowing. In. The. Dark."
"In the dark?" Beth repeats slowly. Ronda's shaken expression is full of conviction. Beth's questioning reflex is only to soak in Ronda's words one more time. "Are you sure?"
"Dead sure. I paid attention. He's not bad to look at—but then, holy shit, those eyes." Beth feels the shake from Ronda's own shiver. "They were so…unnatural."
The blonde simpers. "I…I don't know what you want me to say, Ronda." She pictures the strange, graceful giant of a man that wrapped her in his jacket. Those dark blue eyes that seemed to be deep and inexplicably wise, staring at her, judging her through the collapse of her own psyche. "He saved Steve's life that day in the park. And Steve's heavy. He's got to be so strong to lift someone up without a second thought." She swallows drily into a low voice. "Do you think he's a mutant?"
Ronda inhales sharply. "I don't know, Beth. But to me, this only means that he's all the more dangerous. All of them. You know what they're saying about mutants, right? That they stick together. They…feed…off of each other. Just the other night, I heard Jeremy talking to Sarah how he apparently saw some insane fistfight between two mutants. Completely trashed this bar on 33rd. They said that knives came out of their hands. Fucking. Knives." Her eyes seem to expand, growing darker. More sad. She sighs wearily. "Look, I don't know what to say over the letter. I'm sorry Steve's suddenly gone on this long trip but…maybe…maybe it's better…this way?"
Gone. Better this way.
Everything about Steve's light and laughter. Every comforting, warm, heart-breaking secret he's whispered to her in the dark.
A mistake.
Beth's chest tightens. A sharp, cutting hurt curls inside of her heart, but she pretends to not feel the pain. She's pallid at the idea of giving up after all she's seen.
"I'm not going to stop seeing him."
Ronda exhales slowly. "I know you aren't. I figured that out pretty quickly the night you basically told me to get the frick out your apartment because you were going to stay with a bleeding stranger asleep in your bed."
She holds Beth's hand, trying to fill the empty spaces with the isolated way Beth is gazing at her.
"I'm just trying to keep this in perspective for you, Beth. I love you. And after the aliens…and—and man-made superheroes and your—" She halts, despair lingering in the green resting of her irises. Her voice is a near whisper. "This is getting way bigger than just dating someone, Beth." Her eyes harden ever so slightly. "This scares me. Steve and his friends—they're freaks, and they scare me." There's a wobble of surrender to her next few words: "And I'm scared that you don't see it."
"Oh, Ronda," Beth's eyes burn at the edges, threatening to unleash all of the uncertainly she's felt since she woke up in an empty bed. She scoots outs of the booth to pull Ronda into a hug. "Don't you dare cry—" She continues weakly. "I've been doing a great job all day; you'd be proud of me! Don't cry!"
Ronda curls around her, arms tight around her neck. "I am proud of you." She strains into a murmur, her voice frustrated and exasperated tangle to Beth's neck. "I may not like Rogers…but I am proud of you. He made a point of your coming into work today—and I don't think you came just because he asked you to. You came because you're getting better. I am so proud of you."
A sniff sneaks out from Beth and she gets a glimpse of the scent of baked goods and vanilla shifting onto Ronda's dark hair. "Are you? Really? This whole time…it consumed me how much I was putting on you. I thought you hated me."
"I could never hate you, Beth." Ronda laughs. She hugs her tighter. "A whole month. Man. You did good, Princess Buttercup."
"Ugh, dammit Ronda," Beth squirms out of her grasp. "You ruined it."
"Heh," Ronda pulls back, both hands to Beth's petite shoulders so she can get a good look at her best friend. "I miss you. Just so you know. I'm alive and stuff. And there's this great whole world outside of Steve."
A flicker of a small smile across Beth's lips. "Just…please look at this, and I promise I won't drag you into my drama anymore." Her blue eyes are large and round, and Ronda nearly rolls her own.
"Not like you have t'beg me, Beth. I'm interested in what crap he's trying to pull. TV isn't even this good."
Beth's fingers snatch up the crumpled smile of a dead man. "Read it."
"James Buchanan Barnes," Ronda murmurs. She crosses one leg over the other and picks idly at the straw in Beth's drink. "Too bad he's dead. He's certainly handsome in this picture."
The humid air has fogged the windows next to their elbows since the last time they sat down. Although she can't see anything, it makes Beth uncomfortable to watch Ronda's eyes twist across the page like a typewriter, so she stares into the fog. The last huddles of remaining costumers squeal at the gust of the wind outside the café's door. It's been snowing for hours now and since the evening is approaching, the temperature just keeps dropping.
"James. Buchanan. Barnes." She pronounces slowly again, appreciating the rolling 's's over her tongue. "He's got one of those names, you know? Like, it just kind've sticks to you. What's it called? Alliteration?" She trails off again once more. "Born 1922, died 1943, in a train sabotage mission during World War II." Her legs switch again. "I didn't think people smiled back then, right? Like, 'hey boys, put your war face on and—cheese!'"
Beth stifles a laugh. "Be polite! He was so young when he died. Basically our age." The blonde lasps again into silence as Ronda reads on. "Could you imagine—dying so young?" A pause. "Right in the middle of a war? Possibly all alone?"
Ronda's eyes peer over the holes in the obituary. She carefully nudges her knee into Beth's. "Don't. Don't think about your bother. Seriously. He's coming home."
Beth forces a tight, mournful smile, but it fades as she pulls back to the window.
"What the hell kind've a middle name is Buchanan, anyway?"
"Ronda."
"So…you just found this in your bed?"
The blonde slowly turns, but she has trouble keeping up with Ronda's extracting eyes. "Right where Steve fell asleep. Yeah."
"Hm. You guys haven't—" A slight kick causes Beth's knee to reflectively tap the underside of the table. Her blue eyes startlingly jump to Ronda's.
"No!" Beth objects embarrassingly.
"'Kay, okay. Coverin' the bases here." A slight chuckle. "If you know what I mean."
"Ronda, for God's sake- finish the article!"
"James Buchanan Barnes," Ronda recites suddenly, dramatically, a hand to her chest. "One of the greatest losses suffered for the great war. He'll take his place in history as—" Her voice slows. "Place in history." Green eyes pounce to blue. "Beth. Do...do you know where Steve got this?"
Beth nods expectantly at Ronda's delay. "Yeah…it shocked me, too. Historical artifacts like that…they're pretty priceless, aren't they?"
"No." Something behind Ronda's eyes seems to pulse. "I mean—where this is from?"
Beth shakes her head. "What?"
"I've seen this guy before."
"What?"
Ronda clasps a hand to her forehead as if suddenly struck with an epiphany. "That's why his name sounds so—Beth, my dear." Ronda slowly slides the paper back across the table. "What are your plans for after work?"
"'The Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum'?" Beth reads out from the glowing sign above the towering building. The metal plates that hold in the spacious warmth are practically melting the snow off the slides, easing it to the sidewalk below. "What does this have to do with—"
Ronda tilts her head. "Seriously? You're like, the biggest closeted Cap fan I know, and you aren't aware there's a new part of Air and Space museum here? It's like a traveling thing, I think. All Captain America history."
Her blush is small, but it highlights her face. "I mean, I saw commercials for the huge, official one in Washington D.C. But here? Not at all. But…why Captain America?"
Ronda stomps her boots out at the doorway and holds it open for Beth to walk through. "You don't go out anywhere, do you?"
Beth's stiff, straight a-head glare is all the payment Ronda needs to get them tickets.
When Beth finally sees the Captain America banner, her breath is taken away.
He's everywhere.
A giant, life-sized, hand-painted mural is lovely crafted as the backdrop. Even besides Cap, Beth can count the eyelashes on the men following the Captain's lead over 40 feet back, it's so intricately detailed. The whole piece is a living, breathing, time-captured machine of green cloth, dirty, jagged nails and open mouth screaming of long forgotten orders. The background throws itself into a romantic depiction of tank about to fire, with Allied men pouring into the foreground, slowly turning from 2-D paintings into fully realized statures of a team of mutli-coloured soldiers from across the globe.
At the very first line—towering on the center piece in the room, Captain America leads the call. He's stretched out, head tilted back to shout to—what Beth now understands to be—his original team: The Howling Commandos. They've each been given plaques on the adjacent side of the work.
Soft crafted dummies holds their uniforms. They're been washed and dusted and probably flame-retardant by now, but each stands on their own, strong and indifferent to their fate. She runs her fingers over the engravings, smooth, cold and untouched.
Timothy Aloysius "Dum Dum" Dugan—a ginger man with a mustache keeps to the Captain's right. Apparently, he was friends with the legendary Howard Stark long after the Captain vanished and the war was over. Gabe Jones— first African American welcomed onto the intentional team and machine gun extraordinaire stands to Dugan's back. Close by is Jim Morita, a Japanese-American soldier that Captain America had saved from a concentration camp. James Montgomery Falsworth and Jacques Dernier, members of the 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade of the British army, aren't far from the model's right. The clothing straight to Captain America's left, however, isn't named, and suddenly Beth's interest in their history fades as she finds that the faceless mannequin seems to be looking straight at her, disturbingly holding itself still and solemn around the golden names.
Beth glances around for Ronda—and finds her studying a shield of glass that keeps the exact motorcycle Captain America used during World War II in mint condition. The dark-haired waitress catches the look on Beth's face and giggles.
The sound seems to echo all around the empty chamber.
"No fun staring at ghosts?"
Beth swallows nervously as she fast walks closer. "Don't say that, Ron."
"What's the face for, then?"
She gives a small glance to the floor. "I don't know." A look behind her, back at the nameless uniform. "One of Captain America's men isn't labeled properly, and it bugs me because…well." She opens her arms to motion to the rest of the intensely organized history of the Super Soldier. "Everything else is."
"Ah," Ronda coos understandingly. "It sounds like you're ready for what we came here for."
Beth follows the clicking of boots towards the other end of the hall. Its lights seem to be shining even heavier over the air, bringing the dust to the surface in waves as it floats from exhibit to exhibit. Ronda stops at the edge of a crystal cut memorial. For a second, Beth thinks it's something along the lines of the Vietnam Memorial—a list of thousands of names carved artistically into a reflecting obsidian stone wall that casts your face right back at you, like looking into a mirror.
But this one is so opaque that the blonde can stare right through it.
"What are we looking at?"
"Your friend." Ronda states simply. She then steps out of Beth's way.
Suddenly, she's staring straight into the eyes of James Buchanan Barnes.
She shudders a step back immediately. A hand flies up to cover her mouth as she gasps. She looks to Ronda for help—but instantly snaps back, held captive by the empty blue carved into the man's eyes. His entire image is here—but he's not smiling like in the photograph in her pocket. No, this time his lips are split open to bear his teeth as he charges, cheek turned to look back behind him as if he's perpetually waiting for an attack. His hair is cut, styled—entirely too perfect for what it must've been like during the war—but it's him.
Before she realises what she's doing, she's barely presses the pad of her fingers to his face. Her lungs feel as if they're struggling to compress and her exhale sounds far too loud, as if the entire museum had been holding itself breath for this very moment.
"Oh my God." Beth whispers, blue eyes shockingly wide. "What are you doing here?"
She leans closer to try to read the beautifully carved writing surrounding his engraving.
A hand instinctively rummages through her pocket for the obituary. Once she finds it, she unfurls it carefully and holds it up. The wording is different. The dates are concussed. But it's the same man. Even without the smile, the lines of his piercing eyes are unmistakable. The bridge of his nose, the jut of his chin. His hairline is flat along his forehead. The missing details between the photos highlight to Beth the subtly of a man being shipped out for war and a man holding his body against one.
"James Buchanan Barnes," Beth reads off thoughtfully. "The right hand man to Captain America. Inseparable both on the school yard and the battlefield. Unfortunately, many documents surrounding the affairs before Sgt. Barnes' death have been lost over time. It is known that he was orphaned at a young age and sent off to the same school that Captain America attended during boyhood. It's among friends and colleagues alike where he took the affectionate nickname of "Bucky"—" Her voice cuts off. She blinks. Reads the nickname again.
The colour drains from her face.
Bucky.
A rush of adrenaline spikes through Beth's heart. She can't feel the trembling of her body. Beside her, Ronda's hands raise in concern. She's asking Beth something. Someone is speaking to her. Someone is telling her a secret—someone is whispering so close to the shell of her ear she can feel their lips tracing every word.
Bucky. Her thoughts whisper, low and dark, sounding so much like Steve's that she swears he's standing behind her, his breath warm on the back of her neck— His name was Bucky.
"No!" She cries out, but its Ronda that's got her, looking alarmed and perspiring.
She pulls her hand off the glass of the memorial as if it's about to fall apart.
A step back. Another step back. She feels a hand grasp her shoulder.
She can't stop staring into the eyes of a young dead man that's been lost for over 70 years. Staring in the empty blue that reminds Beth of a shifting sea, rising, falling, sinking—like the handwriting of someone she trusts—like the muted, sad image of another young man with blond hair and imploding blue eyes staring out into the bay that she's had a first date on with a stranger that took her hand and told her that his best friend's name was—
He was KIA, the voice whispers again from far away. So far away. Months away. Years away. It's pretty recent and yet… it feels like a thousand years ago.
The words are curling off the stone, swirling around the room.
Barnes gave his life for his country, for his honour, and for his best friend during an feat of incredible bravery while capturing a Nazi occupied train along the Alps. The greatest loss—
There's a sharp pain to her sides as if two knives are going in at once. She rushes to hold herself together. The black and white photo is crushed between her fingers and she just keeps squeezing it tighter. She wants it to crumble. She wants it to be dust.
Someone is telling her a secret.
I hid so well, Bucky didn't even know.
Didn't even know, didn't even know, didn't even know, Beth's eyes want to close but she can't shut out the blue. It's washing over her. It's suffocating her. Ronda's already pulled her sturdily away from the gallery. She's in front of her now. Blocking the stare of the faceless soldier. Blocking the shine of crystalline eyes. Her green eyes are a light that is cutting through the panic.
Someone is telling her a secret.
Alive. My best friend could be alive.
Men from a long fought war have turned up their guns to take their aim, no longer listening to Captain America's commands. The motorcycle in the corner is turning against its chain, growling and dreading its prison. The dead man is stirring. His eyes have moved from looking behind to looking at her. Everything is looking at her. The dead man is demanding her to give him a name.
"But I don't know your name," Beth whimpers up at him. She's slid onto the cold, solid tiles beneath her.
He doesn't believe her. He knows. He knows she's lying because she's scared. She's so scared.
Someone is telling her a secret.
I don't know if I can handle one more thing to change.
Fingers are battling to open up Beth's hand. She wishes she could help. She isn't sure how to move anymore. She feels air on her palm. The paper is gone.
Gone.
Steve's gone.
Her vision turns to black as she's pulled out of the room and into the night.
Ronda's splashing snow straight onto her face. The icy bite along her cheeks forces Beth to wake up.
She drags herself forward and collapses back into the snow as Ronda's voice carries, fast and far too high, to a police officer that her friend doesn't need medical attention.
"It's a panic attack triggered by claustrophobia. I'll get her home safe, sir, don't worry."
Beth opens her mouth to force herself to vomit to only be greeting to the taste of ice on a New York City sidewalk.
A pair of soft hands are holding up the cascade of her yellow hair. There's a slight nervous pause where nothing happens.
"No throwing up this time?"
Beth swallows down some bile and refuses to be sick. Refuses to cry again in public, or scare Ronda.
"Not this time," she agrees hoarsely. She weakly lifts up one arm and Ronda pulls her up from the snow. Ronda keeps her arm around Beth's waist for support.
The walk to the subway seems so far away. She keeps hearing labored breathing and pretends that it isn't her own.
"I'm not going to ask what happened." Ronda says quietly. "You don't have to tell me." Her best friend's voice turns angry, but it's not at Beth. "I should have never taken you there. After all the stress you've handled perfectly well today. This my fault."
The snow falls silently through their hair for the longest time before Beth finally has enough air to answer her. "No. Thank you for taking me there. I needed to see that."
Ronda stops, but when Beth tries to continue ahead she doesn't realise they've broken apart.
"Did you?" Ronda asks flatly with a voice that is tired and harsh on the wind.
"Yes," Beth begins dazedly. "I have to ask his friend, though. If it's true."
"What?" Ronda snaps, unable to really hear her. The snow has picked up. She can see that Beth's slowly turning in some strange direction that isn't back to her apartment. "The hell is wrong with you? You're going home. You're going to sleep."
Ronda rushes into the wind and takes her friend's hand.
"Come along, Princess Buttercup." She gives Beth's hand a small tug, and is relieved with the blonde doesn't put up a fight. "I can't spend the night with you…but I'm going to make damn sure you get through it."
AN: Thank all very much that have favourited, followed, and reviewed! If you guys can, please let me know what you think?