Warning: Use of language in this chapter.

The world was spinning. Why was it spinning? Was it always spinning? Or was it spinning just for her? It would be nice if it was, a grand gesture that she hadn't been forgotten.

Beth tried to get up off the couch, but her limbs felt too heavy, as if she'd been pinned to the velvet fabric with nails. Where was that infernal ringing coming from? Oh, right, the phone. But who could possibly want to talk to her? Certainly not Benny. It had been almost a month since their fight, almost a month since she couldn't summon the guts to ask him to stay, almost a month of her drinking her days away, feeling sorry for herself and her pitiful, pathetic existence.

Beth rolled off, landing in an inelegant heap. Staggering to the phone, she vowed to unplug the thing and get thicker curtains: the light was making her vision dance with black spots.

"Hello?" Beth croaked into the receiver, instantly clearing her throat at its brackishness. She groped for the tap and a glass, smudged with recent use, but it was decent enough for her current needs.

"Hello, Miss Harmon. It's Ed Spencer."

Who? Oh, the tournament director for Kentucky. Why was he calling? And before...eight am?

"It's about tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"The tournament," Spencer said slowly, as if to a child. "We wondered if you could come an hour early. The Louisville paper is sending a photographer and we think WLEX will have somebody. Can you come in at nine?"

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. The tournament. The Kentucky State Championship, her championship, the first she'd ever won, where she had beaten Harry, the first time she'd felt what it was like to be on top, to be in a room full of men and know she could best them all, each and every one. She had to defend her title; she couldn't lose that too, she wouldn't.

"I don't know," Beth said, putting down her glass of water. "Can you call me back in an hour?"

"Sure, Miss Harmon."

"Thank you. I'll tell you in an hour."

Beth hung up the phone, trying to catch her breath. She hadn't prepared, had barely touched a board since Benny left, unable to so much as look at the prices without thinking about Benny, how she'd treated him, all the things eh hadn't told him. He'd offered his heart up to her, and she'd thrown it in his face. And the look in his eyes, as if he had expected it all along, had known that this was how it would all play out, yet he had chosen her anyway...it was all too much. Too, too much. She needed a plan, a strategy, needed to get her head on straight. She loved chess, it was who she was, and she couldn't let herself forget that over some man.

Even if she cared about him like no other, and likely would never feel the same with any other man.

Beth put on the coffee maker, fishing some aspirin out of the kitchen drawer, cogs of her mind warming up once again.

When Spencer called an hour later, she negotiated to a half hour.

She just hoped it would be long enough.

Schools were always depressing. It didn't matter how much time passed, or whether or not it was even your own school, but at the sight of Henry Clay High School, she was immediately assaulted with memories of her own adolescent education, of the girls who had looked down their noses at her and then suddenly found her oh so interesting as she gained notoriety, and of Harry, of him sitting at the board with her, drinking coffee in the morning with her. But Harry wasn't going to be there, and she was well above those girls now.

Beth pulled open the heavy door of the squat building, florescent lighting making her eyes sting. She went to sign in, and Annette Packer of all people, came up to her and started ranting, going on about Beth beating her and 'how she'd been there for two of her firsts.' All she wanted was a drink. She hadn't touched one since yesterday, but the itch was still there, slumbering under the surface, begging to be awoken.

And for the first time, she wanted Alma, wanted her mother, wanted her to wrap her in her arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that she'd get through this, that she hadn't squandered her talent and she was a genius like no other. She wanted someone to tell her she wasn't going mad.

The room was too full, too bright, too full of people and expectations. Beth fought through the crowd, not caring what people would think. She just needed to breathe.

Which was why, of course, as soon as she got out, Beth began digging in her purse for a cigarette and her lighter, cursing when the damn thing wouldn't ignite. She threw it into the grass, momentarily satisfied. Feeling eyes on her, she instinctively looked up, finding Harry, sweet Harry, staring at her as if she was a stranger, and one he couldn't stand the sight of.

"Beth," he said, voice full a paradoxical amalgamation of relief and disappointment. "Christ, Beth. You look terrible."

She didn't need him to tell her that. Her hair was flat and lifeless, skin devoid of all colour, and no amount of heavy eyeshadow and eyeliner could detract from the bags under her eyes.

"Hello to you to, Harry," she murmured dryly, cigarette burning a metaphorical hole in her palm.

"I'm worried about you," he told her, a parent telling their child not to eat any more sweets or watch less television so their brain doesn't rot. What right did he have to provide his male commentary on her life? None, that's what right he had. No right.

"Whatever for, Harry? I'm fine. Everything's sunshine, lollipops and fucking rainbows everywhere."

"Cut the crap, Beth, you're not fine, okay! You're not fine, and I knew, I knew this would happen, that you'd have no self control, that you'd land yourself in the gutter. Have you even looked at yourself?"

"No, but why don't you tell me?" Beth ground out, growing tired of his dramatics. She was just so tired.

"You got that look in your eyes. My dad, he used to drink. And he wasn't cruel, didn't get loud or anything. He was bitter, and sad, but whenever he tried to stop, he and that same look in his eyes. I know you lost your mom..."

"Don't you bring my mother into this!" she cried at him, holding back tears. "Don't you dare talk about her! I know you think you're helping, but you're not, Harry. I don't care what you think about me or my decisions, I don't care why you came down here, but i want you to go. I want you gone! It is my life to fuck up, and you don't get a say in it, don't get to pity me with your sob story! Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal," Harry ground out, getting into his car but not starting it. He turned in the driver's seat, one last desperate shot at getting through to her. "People spend their whole lives trying to reach the top of this almighty pedestal, this pinnacle of achievement, chess players most of all. But if you get to the top, you realize you've left everyone else at the bottom, and you only have yourself to blame. Don't get lonely, Beth. Don't get lost up there: you'll never come back down."

Beth didn't sign to give him a backwards glance as he drove away, didn't so much as offer him a single thought as she left her lighter in the grass, making her way back to that tomb of a building. It felt right, somehow, that her and Harry's relationship should deteriorate here, where it had all began, where people had heard the name Beth Harmon and looked up from their boards at that slip of a girl with the whole world before her.

That girl was nothing more than a memory now. Gone, just like everything else in her life.

Everything in life was unpredictable, chance the driving force behind most decisions in life, dancing that fine, pins head line between chaos and control. But not chess, not her game. Foster was nothing, a mere ranking in the 1800s that she'd already forgotten the exact digits of. Even if she was playing black, it should have been a done deal, Dutch Defense or not.

But it wasn't.

She'd sat down at the board, relishing in the sacred calm that has settled over the room at her presence, poised and controlled as she could ever be. Then he had sat down, chair squeaking against the cracked linoleum of the floor. And all she could think about was Benny.

Benny opposite her on the board, Benny, wise and brilliant and crackling with life and energy. Benny- stubborn like a flashlight in the dark, mind sharper than an axe in winter. What it had felt like to have his arm around her shoulders, to stay up well into the darkness of the night, reading and arguing and laughing, a million tiny moments that held her heart together. And she'd thrown it all away. Why? Why, why, why?

Because she still couldn't believe he cared about her, believed that he'd change his mind and leave her all alone again. Because she didn't know how to be normal, didn't know if she could ever let her guard down for somebody. Because she was scared, and thought she actually deserved her mother dying, Alma dying, everybody leaving her it thinking she wasn't worth the effort. If you're told something often enough, by enough people, there must be some grain of truth to it, right? There had to be something wrong with her, otherwise she wouldn't be sitting at this table, playing chess, while all the other women out there were cooking dinner and raising children, willingly complicit in their domesticity.

But what if she didn't, she'd mused as she picked up a pawn, dragging it across the board with dead fingers. What if she could learn to fix herself, to get down off that pedastal and learn to open up?

No.

She knew Benny -which was half the problem- and she respected the fact that once he'd made a decision, that was it; he'd play it all the way through. It was Touch-Move, and they could not alter it's rules, she couldn't, even if she wanted to.

Foster snuck up on her, an innocent cat turning into a slinking mountain leopard. Then she started losing pieces. She scrambled, but nothing worked, not a thing. Somewhere, Beth thought she actually heard someone gasp, as if the mere hint of her not sealing victory was unconscionable.

Beth glanced up at Foster, his face like a boy who's found an extra sweet in the bag, a mistake he can exploit and relish in, unexpected sweetness at someone else's expense.

Beth gripped her rook, mind careening on its tracks. She'd been distracted, and it had cost her. If Benny knew, he'd be furious, feelings or not. He'd curse her until he was blue in the face about leaving 'personal bullcrap' (as he'd probably say) off the board. This wasn't her. How had he done this to her? How had he garnered so much power over her? And why didn't she mind the fact that he had?

She recovered, through the skin of her teeth, a hard-earned victory she had not experienced in years. Beth hadn't had to fight for a win like that in recent memory.

And it was exactly what she needed. Like a bucket of cold water to the face, she took a look at herself, at her life, at how low she'd come, how she'd almost been beaten, by a nobody, almost lost her title.

She knew in that moment that she had to stop, had to stop the drinking and the pills and the wallowing.

So she did.

The Christian Crusade came knocking not long after she'd secured her title yet again in a simple match against a player from South Dakota. As they droned on about God, gave her a pre-prepared script of their spiel, Beth understood that she couldn't take their money, it wasn't right, wasn't what chess was about. Although many thought it was a game of political strategy, especially whenever it came to an American playing against a Russian, it wasn't to her, and she wouldn't taint her sacred game by being the mouth-piece for people who didn't even respect or understand the game.

It felt good, saying no to them. It felt powerful.

Yes, it was a glorious moral high. But now, she didn't have any money to go to Russia. She'd wasted so much of it on alcohol and pills, on clothes she hadn't needed but like to think she did. Even if she returned all the clothes in her wardrobe and didn't eat for a month, she still wouldn't have enough.

Beth sat down at her kitchen table, going through her problems, which were many, and her options, which were few.

She'd have to call the USCF, explain her situation and do some award-winning grovelling, pride be damned. Tipping out the drawer were she kept all her important documents, Beth sorted through the mess until she found an official letter with their telephone number on. She dialled, hoping that she could fix things with a few well-placed compliments. The clock said twelve nineteen.

Beth waited an hour.

One turned into two, into three, into three and a half. It was almost four by the time she got through to somebody and was thoroughly denied any funds. They suggested she speak to the State Department if she was in financial difficulty. So she flipped through the phone book, but after ten minutes of fruitless searching she couldn't find it, so she rang a general number and the switchboard put her through. Nobody picked up for forty-five minutes.

The phone finally clicked, the voice of some man who helpfully informed her that the State Department were not a bank and could not hand out money for something like this ringing in her ear. He did, however, say that someone would be sent out as an escort for her trip, going on about security and being an asset to the the country and a loaf of patriotic jargon she couldn't be bothered to listen to. She hung up the phone before he could start reciting the 'Star-Spangled Banner.'

Beth went through her freezer, cobbling together a meagre microwave dinner. As she sat by the table, lone bulb casting shadows on her plate, the scraping of fork tinghes the only sound, Beth knew in her heart there was still one more call she had to make, if she wanted to avoid a repeat performance of the Kentucky Championship, if she wanted to move on. Putting her plate in the sink, watching as it sunk below the soap surface, Beth closed her eyes and began to dial a number, a number branded into her brain, a number she knew like the back of her hand and the inside of her heart.

"Hello?" Benny Watts asked into the silence. "Hello, anyone there?"

Beth hung up, phone missing the cradle entirely. She let it hang there, suspended and remote, tears streaming down her cheeks. A sudden stab of anger filled her guy, clouding her veins. What right did she have to be sorry, to wish that she could change who she was, change for him? She was Beth Harmon, and if Benny really knew who that was like he claimed to, then he should have know it would always lead to this, with them on opposite sides of the board, never meeting in the middle.

So she'd get over him, and she knew the best way to start: with the drink. After a half hour, there wasn't a drop of alcohol in the house. Another hour, and every pill was gone, out if reach. Exhausted, fumbling for the light, she made her way up the stairs, the dark a blessed relief on her tired eyes. Collapsing onto the bed with a barely-contained sob, Beth gripped the fabric of her pillow, hard, taking comfort in the pain sluicing into her palm. Pain was good. Pain meant she was alive, that there was still a chance to fix her career, that she'd get back up from this almost-blunder, stronger than ever before.

But tonight, tonight she'd let herself cry, cry over the man with the deep brown eyes and the smile that made her heart flip, cry over what might have been, if only she'd left herself love.

The next day, a thunderous knocking woke her from a deep sleep. Throwing on the first available clothing, Beth flew down the stairs, practically slipping in her haste to the door.

Maybe he'd changed his mind. But what would she say to him? She'd already made up her mind, already plotted out a course of action.

Beth flung the door open, practically ripping it from it's hinges.

"Hello, Cracker. Did you miss me?"

Author's Note: Hello, my loyal, treasured readers. I am so, so sorry about the weight. I've had so much going on in my life at the moment, which of course isn't your fault, and it's not fair that you had to wait, but it couldn't be helped. And here I am! Back with another chapter! This has been almost done for quite a while, but the ending took a long while to put together. Disclaimer, I did borrow quotes from both the book and the show when I had to in order to preserve this chapters authenticity, but I did this with utmost respect to the source material and the style of the story and Walter Tevis's characters, which aren't my own anyway.

So, what did you think, who's happy to see Jolene? I am! She's a great character to write, and I'm looking forward to exploring their time together as seen in the show, but with some original twists.

Again, thank you for sticking with me. I hope you're all doing okay and I'm so grateful to each and every one of you.

Until next time!

All my love, Temperance Cain