Authors Note: I own nothing. No ownership rights to Beverly Hills 90210.

Chapter One

I wake up and the mattress beside me is empty, she must be in the bathroom or grabbing water. Bren often was a light sleeper until around two in the morning and then she'd fall into her deep sleep, then you could kiss her forehead or tuck her in; like I had done that night back when I broke my ribs. After two she wouldn't stir at all but before that she'd wake even at the slightest movement. When she doesn't come back after a few minutes I look at the time and realise it's well after two, I guess time got away from us. I smile and get out of bed, she's had her few minutes but I can't give her more- even this distance is too much for me now that I have her back. I want to keep her as close as I can so she doesn't disappear or run off to London again.

When I enter the living room in my pyjama pants I notice her dressed and looking out the window, the lamp in the corner is the only light in the room. It casts shadows over her face making it hard for me to read her.

"Hey why are you dressed? Everything okay?"

She jumps and grabs her heart, "bugger you scared the hell out of me."

As I move closer to her I give her a smile. I love that she now has english cuss words interwoven into her sentences; I can't wait to see what else she has adopted from her new travels. It makes me warm thinking that I get to learn her all over again that we can start fresh and learn each other now as adults without her Dad interfering. Thank god he and Cindy moved to Hong Kong over the summer, it means we can do it properly this time without all the drama he caused. We can finally be together the way we have always wanted to be always were meant to be.

"Sorry it was an accident Baby," she tenses maybe I gave her more of a fright than I realised. When I get within two feet of her she begins to move away, going over to the coffee table to look into her bag and check her phone. "Bren, why are you dressed? Baby what's going on?" She flinches again, I realise that it's not from me surprising her but from me calling her by our personal moniker for the other.

She looks up and gives me a weak smile, even in this light I can tell it doesn't reach her eyes. As she goes back to focusing on her bag she responds, "I didn't mean to wake you, I guess I'm not used to the sneaking out after a one night stand. It's not my usual-"

"What? What the hell are you talking about?" I move closer to her again.

"Dylan I didn't mean for this to happen, I guess you still are a little like quicksand to me. Anyway this was an accident, I was coming off a high from the wrap party tonight and I'm sure the champagne Roy was toasting with me all night didn't help. He is so excited about wrapping the principle filming on his first movie. Hopefully he feels the same when we finish the next one in the series, and when special effects have had their fun with them. Anyway tonight was an accident it doesn't have to be a big deal, we slept together for years, and then for those day's before I left for London. Don't worry my feelings aren't going to get hurt, I know what we are."

I'm completely baffled by what she is saying, maybe I'm still half asleep as nothing is making sense. "Bren what do you think we are?"

She looks up and this time her smile reaches her eye's, "we are just like an old favourite book to each other- a dear friend. It's a nice story to read and reminisce in, remember a simpler time but we've outgrown it."

Pain rushes through me, "you've outgrown me?" She's a full time actress, I'm a guy who gave up college, an addict and a pretend screenplay writer- it makes sense.

"Dylan we've outgrown each other."

I can't keep the bitterness from my tone, "is that why you didn't call when you came home to start filming? In London this last year you outgrew me."

"Dylan I'm not sure why you are getting angry at me, I'm not sure why you are shocked by me saying this. I thought you'd be pleased that I finally understood, I finally was able to get over you. It makes us, hell it makes me being around the gang less awkward. You won't need to keep rescuing me like freshman year, I'm no longer that confused girl struggling to make sense of my changed world. I get it all now and there are no hard feelings."

"You tell me you have outgrown me but you have no hard feelings. What about my feelings?"

"Dylan lower your voice it's late, look why are you so mad? I honestly don't get it. Why is me acknowledging that we have outgrown each other difficult for you to take? You outgrew me that summer in France and yeah it took me longer to catch up but I get it now. It doesn't lessen that we were a sweet first love for the other it doesn't lessen that lovely romantic story, but we are on the same page now that tale between us has been told. On to other books." She picks up her bag and puts it over her shoulder.

I soften my voice I completely get what she is doing, she doesn't know I want more she is self protecting. "That tale… what happens if I don't want it to be over? What happens if that was just meant to be the first chapter and not the whole story?"

I had moved closer as I spoke, she steps back. "Dylan you can't be serious, we are good why on earth would we try and hurt each other again? I have no interest in that."

"I don't want to hurt you either, I don't want to make you feel terrible anymore I never have-"

"You never have meant to. I understand that but you can't help it, and then I hurt you because I can't move on as easily and you feel bad. It's a cycle we started on our first date and one we have continued." She runs her hand through her hair, "I know me not outgrowing you as fast hurt you, I know it caused problems for you and Kelly, I know you felt obligated responsible to try and make it right for me. I will always appreciate that kindness and I will always feel bad I messed up your relationship with Kelly, and subsequently your relationship with Brandon. If it wasn't for me he'd have never had the opportunity to get involved with Kelly and you both wouldn't have that awkwardness between you, I saw it tonight it shouldn't be there you guy's are brothers. Hell since the end of junior year you've been more his sibling than me. I'm sorry I set us all on the path for this to have got so messed up for him and you, and for you and her."

She moves to the door, "look she may be with that guy Colin now but you guy's are soulmates right, you've found each other in all your past lives. I'm sure he is just going to be a fleeting moment in your guy's story together. Until you guys make your way back to the other I hope you understand I don't want to join him in being another fleeting moment, well anymore than the last few hours. I don't want to get to the point where I end up regretting that sweet first love story we wrote together, and I don't need anymore guilt for destroying everything I touch here in LA. It's why I didn't want to see you all, why I kept my distance these last four weeks when we needed to move filming to LA for the large studio green screens."

There is a beep from a car horn, "crap I was hopping to catch the cab before he did that- I didn't want to disturb your neighbours. I better run before he hits his horn again. Night, I'm sure now that my brother knows I'm in town that he'll make me visit some of the old haunts, I know he kept going on about me checking out the new and colourful Casa Walsh- anyway I'm sure we will run into each other again." With that she runs out the door.

It takes me a moment for the fog of confusion, pain, disgust, rejection and frustration to clear, by the time I go to catch her her cab is already accelerating fast down the street. As I walk inside I close my door and move to the couch, I run my hand through my hair. How the fuck did it come to this? She's finally back in arms reach and she doesn't want me, that's not true she wanted my body for a few hours after seeing me at her film party but that's it. Is that all I get? How did she find out about my hypnotherapy? About what I had called Kelly? Fuck.

I sit there in the almost dark room for a few hours trying to figure out how to fix this. When I felt her in the club I was shocked, I hadn't felt that sense of wholeness since she got on that plane. I knew it was her instantly. Having not felt it in over a year, knowing how much it had caused me to lose myself without it. That wholeness, she anchored me to the Dylan I knew, the Dylan I liked and trusted, that Dylan was good and at onetime before that summer he had honour. That Dylan wasn't so lost, he didn't do hypnosis as it was as crazy as the crystals and tarot my mother used. That Dylan didn't fight with his best friend over a girl who had never been anything but a mirage, a mirage I'd made to justify destroying the only person I had ever loved completely, I'd loved honestly. The same person who now didn't want to go down that rabbit hole with me again, didn't trust that it wouldn't just lead to pain and suffering for the both of us, believed I'd only hurt her again. She didn't think I was capable of more anymore.

When the first lights on the new day start coming through the window I convince myself it's not too early to call, he answer's his mobile on the second ring.

"This better be an emergency D, do you have any idea of the time?"

"Sorry B I thought you might be up," it was a lie I knew he wouldn't be.

"You okay? Last I saw you you were going to take my twin for her favourite burritos at that little late night food truck by Venice. I swear she's changed so much in fourteen months, she never used to drink more than a glass of alcohol- I must have seen her glass being topped up like six times last night, then there's the cussing, the Celtic cross tattoo on her ankle, the clothes, the longer hair, she's more toned but I guess being the lead in an action movie makes that happen…" He sighs, "the only thing that hasn't changed is the distance between her and me- I can't believe she didn't tell me she was in town. Val I understand, they haven't spoken since…"

I close my eye's and ask the question I already suspect I know the answer to, "since when B?"

He shuffles around he must be getting up, "D Mum told her about you and Val as soon as they found out."

"Is that why she stopped sending letters? Why she didn't come home, call when I was in the coma?"

"Look, as far as I know my parents didn't want her to know, didn't want to upset her; they told her when they got there for Christmas about the coma but Dad said she already knew. Your mum and her still keep in touch, well back then they were."

"Did you keep in touch with her?"

"Kelly and I would speak to her when Mum and Dad would call her, from what I could tell from last night it seems like Kelly may have kept that going once she and I broke up. I'd still speak to her as well but it became pretty superficial. I didn't want to let her know I had taken her place in the triangle, especially after I had been so unsupportive of her putting herself in the same position."

He breathes out, "I was such an asshole back then I constantly told her to get over it, made her feel like she was being dramatic… jokes on me I guess she at least bowed out and tried to maintain a friendship with you both, respect your choice, pretend it was okay that none of her friends her brother never had her back over the cheating. Instead I buy a fucking engagement ring, destroy our friendship and barely speak to Kelly now."

We never spoke about that time in senior year, we never discussed how him choosing our friendship broke his supposedly unbreakable bond with his twin. How it broke all her bonds here. After our silence stretches out he finally asks, "D why did you call?"

"Do you know where she is staying?"

"Didn't you drop her back after your late night snack?"

"No we…" he growls once he fills in the blanks from my silence. "She left in a cab after telling me it was a mistake that we were long over. Brandon I don't want-"

"No."

"No?"

"You told me last year that she left to get away from me- on some level I know that you were right, but I also know she stayed away because of you. Refused to come home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, any of her school breaks because of you. She's back for a few more months while she films most of the sequel to her movie here. Dylan I'm choosing her this time, I'm choosing her like I should have done from the start. If she is saying no then I'm going to make sure you don't get a chance to change her mind, I'm not risking you making her stay away from her home from me forever." With that the line goes dead.

Fuck!

I begin to pace, he won't back down he is just as stubborn as his twin. Shit I need to speak to her, convince her that this time it will be different. I call Hawaii.

"Hello."

"Hi Mum."

"Dylan, darling this is a surprise. Erica will be delighted to hear from you." There wasn't any judgment in her tone but I knew there should be, I dumped my little sister after she had been traumatised so I could come home to chase after Kelly. Try and convince her that she should run away with me on an around the world trip.

"Before you get her, I… Mum did you know Brenda was in LA?"

She's quiet for a moment, "yes. She's there finishing off a movie she's been working on. It's about a video game that's due to be released at Christmas. From what I understand her film and the video game are being released at the same time, everyone is hoping it's going to be very popular."

It was clear my Mum was still keeping in touch with her regularly, some of this information I had found out last night but some of it was new. "You talk to her regularly."

It wasn't a question but my mother still responded, "yes. Brenda and I… Dylan your relationship with her may not have worked out but to me and to your sister she is still family."

"Erica talks to her as well?"

"Yes. Brenda writes to her weekly, and phones twice a month. She even came to visit for a week on her way to LA. She understands that Erica has gone through a lot and she knows she needs as much support and consistency as she can get." That time she had a tone, she wanted me to feel guilt. "So you have seen her? It wasn't her intent to be known."

"She was hiding from us, from me?"

"She wasn't hiding but I know she wanted to concentrate on her work, get in and out of LA quickly and leave the drama for the screen. I guess that hasn't happened. You've seen her then, have you spoken?"

"Yes. Her wrap party was at the After Dark, thinking back she did try and stay under the raider but half the club was roped off for the event and as she is the lead actress she had to mingle. She was eventually spotted but…"

"But?"

"I had felt her as soon as she came in."

"Of course you did, that means she felt you too. She was at least prepared since arriving in LA that it could happen. I'm sure it was a shock for you."

"Yes but it's a feeling I've deeply missed, like I'm solid again."

"You are. Dylan I don't mean to hurt you but she won't feel as pleased by this fullness."

"She doesn't like the feeling of being connected to me?"

"It feels different to her after your history together."

"It wasn't all bad Mum, we had found our way back to each other before she left. We were good."

"And then you turned to the bottle, ignored her, chased after that blonde girl again, and then began sleeping with a girl she was raised with and thought of as a sister. And that was after she had suffered through nearly two years of hell with you. You're right not all bad just most of it, and all of it aimed at hurting her."

"She stayed in London Mum, she told me she wouldn't be gone forever and then stayed there-"

"Darling only after her call to you to discuss it went unanswered, she waited as long as she could before she had to decide but after her letters and postcards had been ignored all summer, and then you didn't return her phone call. She had to make a choice, she went off everything she knew at the time. Even after accepting the offer, believing you didn't want more than those few day's with her, she still was thinking she should rush to your side when I finally told her about you losing all the money and Brandon confirmed you had fallen off the wagon."

"She didn't though."

"No she heard about your scene and the debutant ball and well decided to wait the couple of weeks for her midterm break and not risk losing her scholarship, she also wanted to see if your feelings for the blonde were really back or if you were just surprised and drunk that night, but then she heard about Valerie." She is quiet for a while I know what happened next.

"Did she want to come back when I was in the coma?"

"Dylan after all that would you expect her to come back?"

"I would have for her."

My mother actually laughs at that, "you would have shown up for her like you had shown up for her so many times before?"

Her disbelief shocks me, "I've always shown up for her-"

"No Dylan she has always shown up for you. When you were hurt in that surfing accident, when you were broke, when you started drinking again, and when Jack died, she even encouraged you to take Kelly back in freshman year so you would be happy. Even when you broke her heart she continued to show up for you. You've done the bare minimum in return- picked her up from Palm Springs, contacted her parents when she was arrested, and given her lovely little moments of friendship but you didn't show up. You sat back and let them all treat her terribly, let her brother treat her badly and you never called them out, told them to stop."

"I told Kelly off for auditioning, and told Kelly that Bren wouldn't sleep with Roy for the part."

"Oh yes you did that, but you didn't call Steve out for spreading the rumour or her brother for believing it, or the rest of that group. You had her back as long as it didn't cost or require you to do anything, and in the same breath you would then turn around and make-out with the girl in front of Brenda."

She pauses and takes a calming breath, I can tell by her tone when she starts speaking again that she is unsure if she should be saying this. "Dylan you know what she was going through you self medicate your way through it when you experience it. You watched her battle depression for months and months, with every wave she got lower became more distant more erratic and you did nothing. You never checked that anyone was giving her help, didn't even tell me- I would have come back for her if I knew, she never told me in her letters how low she had got, how much she was struggling."

I can hear my mother sniffle she is crying, "I told her not to come back when you were in that coma. She only agreed if I phoned her every few hours. She knew more than anyone else there in that hospital I told her everything, she helped me make decisions for your care- she knew what you'd want."

All I hear was that she was stopped. When she wasn't there when I woke up I finally gave up on us, I believed Kelly was my only option- she stayed. "You stopped her from coming, Mum you had no rig-"

"She'd have come back and not left till your life was fixed and her new life would be destroyed. Dylan I love her like a daughter, to me she is my daughter I did what was best for her, knowing that you'd have a lot of support there even without her."

"Her's was the one I wanted, needed."

"Your soulmates wasn't enough?" Since I had been in recovery my mother rarely snapped at me. After doing it it took her a moment to calm and change her tone, "Dylan you can't have it all. I won't allow you to try and do that again to her. Never letting her get away, always giving her hope that you want something more whilst you're still chasing after the blonde. Being her best friend that knows her better than anyone, giving her no room to grow a part from you giving her no space for anyone else. It's a cruel game to play, even crueler when you think of the love that was once there."

I snap back, you can say a lot about that time but since we met our love was never in question. "Still there- always has been!"

"No Dylan you don't treat someone the way you have treated her for the last three years if you love them."

We are quiet for a long time, her words have floored me. I don't know how to argue that she's wrong, I know my actions completely contradict any words I can say but it's still true I've always loved her. "I guess you won't tell me where she is staying?"

"No. I told her when you chose that girl. Even after you had chosen and told her in such a disrespectful way, I still told her that this was just one moment in a long life of you and her together. I don't want that life for her anymore. I know my darling it is the best life for you, that she is best for you but I can't see after all this that it will ever be best for her. Whatever caused the change in you that summer you've worked hard this last year to make it permanent; before I could almost excuse it as a phase, teenage fear but since she got on that plane it's now stuck, it has roots." My mother had always been our biggest supporter, for her to not want it for Brenda made bile rise in my throat she thought I would just keep hurting her.

"It's always when she is away from me I lose myself, that summer this last year. Mum she anchors me makes me whole."

"You didn't lose yourself that summer you spent in Hawaii, you wouldn't even look at another girl." I didn't tell her that was because I had failed in my attempts to try to move on in Baja. I got a little further the next summer of senior year but in reality what happened after she returned would never had taken place if I didn't hate myself for my choice of girl. I could come clean with a stranger, Bren would have forgiven that but she wouldn't forgive her best friend. That lie, that hatred of myself grew, it became a wedge between us.

"Mum it will be different this time. Jim's no longer here to mess it up, we are adults we can have the life we have always wanted."

"She wanted, you've had a different dream since senior year, and now she's made a new one for herself. Please respect that, respect what she once meant to you and do not play this game with her again."

"Mum please just tell me where she is I promise that I won't push, Mum she is still my best friend, she is and always will be my family."

"Dylan you hand out labels as if they mean nothing, best friends don't watch and do nothing when their friends are depressed, they don't allow everyone to disrespect them and they don't disrespect them. Family- your father and I never set the example, I can't criticise you for not knowing that your actions go against that label as well."

She takes a calming breath, "look if Brenda has been seen by you and that gang of your's." Her ownership didn't go unnoticed, she didn't think they were Bren's friends. "She won't be disrespectful and hurt anyone by just focusing on her work, she'll do the polite thing and come around. You can see her then, I can't promise she'll ever let you see her alone-"

"She did last night. She was hungry after her party we went for burritos-"

"Then you know where she is staying, she wouldn't have made you drop her at a fake address."

"We came back here she wanted to see my screen play-"

"Dylan please tell me she looked at it and went home?" When I don't reply she sighs, "I have to go. I'll tell Erica you'll call soon."

For the second time that morning the line goes dead.

I contemplate calling Kelly to see if she knows, from what Brandon said they have kept in touch and Kelly wasn't shocked to see her in LA. I squash that thought, I don't want Kelly anywhere near Bren and I. If I'm going to try and convince her that we should at least spend some time together before she decides it's over for good I don't want Kelly to have any opportunity to corrupt it.

He answers on the fourth ring, "someone better be dying as it's before seven-thirty."

"Hey Jonesy it's Dylan."

"It's been a while, you haven't lost all that money again have you?"

"No but I do need your help. Can you track down an address of someone for me?"

"Sure piece of cake. You got details for me?"

"Her name is Brenda Walsh she's an actress she's working on Roy Randolph's new film here in LA, Lara Croft-"

"Actress hey, kid you got a star crush? Desperate to meet the film star."

"Bren and I know each other, we went out for a couple of year's. I ran into her last night, I didn't even know she was back in LA she's been in London studying for the last fourteen months."

"You can't just call her then?"

"She didn't give me her number or address, and her twin and my mother aren't sharing-"

"You guy's are on good terms though, she didn't cheat on you? I'm not giving you details so you can go yell at the woman."

"I thought we were on good terms, we got back together before she left for London but then the money was taken-"

"And you lost yourself in the bottle for months. I thought you were chasing a girl in LA that's what the gorgeous Val told me?"

"Bren and I it's complicated, can you find her for me?"

"Sure your old pal Jonesy is on it. I'll call you back hopefully in a few hours with the details."

Knowing there was nothing left for me to do I went back into my room, on seeing my bed I was reminded of me carrying her into the room. We had got caught up in a moment on the dining room table, it had taken a little of the urgency off. When I carried her in here and laid her on the bed, I had the patience the self restraint to explore her again. Her ankle tattoo wasn't the only one she carried, she had a few more small ones on her ribs on the left hand side they began an inch away from her breast and wrapped around to her back. Apart from the ink her body had also changed, she had always been skinny but now her body felt stronger. Her arms had strength in them, her abs defined, but even with all those differences she had still felt like my home.

I had told her years ago that we were incredible together, she was the only person I had ever made love to, our first time was different for me because of it. After fourteen months of going back to just a physical relationship in the bedroom I was caught off guard before she left for London by the melding together, of the intensity of our connection in those moments, it was the best high I had and have ever had. Last night it had gone beyond even that, it felt spiritual she could predict everything I'd want and I could do the same for her. I didn't think I could get closer to her, I know I had never been as close to another person in my life physically or emotionally. How the hell could she call that a one night stand? It was the most sacred experience I had ever had.