A/N: Hmm... yeah. So, does anyone else remember in season two when the writers were just like, "Oh. By the way. We don't care about the Marvins anymore so Bess is going be kicked out of that family. But also Bess's mother kicked her out when she was thirteen so this cuts extra deep for her. And also she was forced to marry a sociopathic older man who taught her to be a con artist and definitely physically abused her. Oh, and also we see her in a flashback for about thirty seconds in which she's pretty much a completely different person."
And then as soon as the next episode they just... never regarded all that again? Well, despite their best efforts, *I* remember! and I think Bess can have LOT of angst. As a treat.
/
"What happened to you?"
Ten concerned faces turned to stare at the group of young detectives as they entered The Claw. They were certainly an alarming sight, despite their best attempts to clean themselves up. The girls' faces full of makeup and nice dresses did little to distract from the nasty slash on Nancy's arm, the still-bloody scuffs across Bess's legs, and the impressive black eye George was sporting. The boys, too, were dapper in their suits, but there were still traces of blood in Ace's normally flawless hair, and Nick's lip was split. They all looked as though they'd been through hell.
More precisely, they had only been hell-adjacent, sustaining their injuries by stopping a group of bored teenage wannabe-demonologists who had inadvertently opened a very real portal to God-knows-what while messing around in one of their parents' basements.
"Oh, you know," Nancy said with a half-smile. "Just Heroes of Horseshoe Bay business."
They were late to their own holiday party, but everyone was excited to hear about how the crew had stopped the group of teens from accidentally letting swathes of demons loose in town. Ted was taking ardent notes in her phone for future use on the Fan Fans site, occasionally stopping to ask questions about the different demons and the portal-opening process. George neglected to tell her exactly how the ritual had been done; the last thing they needed was a group of loyal subscribers trying this at home. As they told the story, Ryan broke into an enthralled grin, like he was watching a Halloween blockbuster, but, despite the crew watering down some of the supernatural details and the most extreme dangers, Carson and the Nickersons looked mortified. Even Ace's father looked alarmed as Ace translated the details of their latest adventure into ASL.
They also didn't share, even amongst themselves, the impossibly deep sense of dread that had sunk into their bones when they entered the basement, the way the very walls seemed to be falling apart in the corners and the shadowy places. They downplayed how the demons had fought tooth and nail against them, and gripped them with icy hands that felt like death itself.
After all of this, they were drained and tired, and not really in the mood for a party, but after they told the tale, Victoria raised a glass declared that this was the best possible place they could be. "Demons will suck all the happiness out of you and leave you hollow," she said knowingly, seeing through their nonchalance. "The best cure for you right now is to spend time with your loved ones, eat good food, and, of course, drink."
She may have been advocating for alcoholism, but she was right about the party. Charlie put on upbeat, modern Christmas tunes, Ace showed George's sisters how to play Dreidel, and everyone was going through platefuls of Victoria's hot and delicious food, washed down with Ace's mother's homemade Hanukkah cookies. The Nickersons were getting to know everyone, and Ryan was snooping around the impressive hoard of presents atop one of the booths, shaking boxes and searching for his name. Soon, the horrors of the demon world were more or less forgotten, safely locked away on the other side.
Much to George's chagrin, however, Victoria was helping herself to The Claw's gratuitous supply of wine.
"Put it down," George snarled as her mother reached to refill her glass yet again.
Victoria didn't listen, of course, and emptied the bottle into her glass. "Hey," she said after finishing the remains with one long slug, "you want me to enjoy Christmas Eve, don't you? I need this, I can still sense them on you."
"How?" Bess asked, intrigued as she dropped into the booth next to Victoria. George glared at her for eavesdropping on their conversation, but then turned, curious herself, to hear her mother's answer.
Ever unhelpful, Victoria offered little information. "I don't want to talk about it now. I can just feel them. But it's getting better the more I drink. Speaking of which," she held her glass out, "Bessie, bring me another, okay?"
"Um, okay." Bess knew George would be pissed, but she liked Victoria and didn't want her to be tormented by visions of darkness. It was better to be a bit drunk, she decided.
"Thank you," Victoria said pointedly. When Bess returned with a full glass and sat down, Victoria tousled her hair affectionately. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you." And that was when she turned to George and said, "Oh, can we adopt her?"
Bess watched as George's eyes went wide, appalled, and she scoffed, "She's an adult. And you have enough kids."
"She could help with the kids!" Victoria was laughing, but a sudden cold was spreading through Bess's gut, and sitting jammed against the Fans in the booth was suddenly making her chest tight, claustrophobic.
She normally loved Victoria's attention, but now she decided to leave them to argue, waving one hand with a smile to excuse herself, and by the time she was across the room, George was practically wrestling the glass from Victoria's hands.
Let them bicker.
The heaviness in Bess's chest didn't subside with space or with one of Rebecca's sugar cookies. She had already eaten her weight in holiday dishes anyway, so she set down the cookie after nibbling at it joylessly. In fact, she felt a bit sick. She groaned inwardly; the last thing she wanted was to get sick on Christmas Day, even if her plans only consisted of goofing around Horseshoe Bay with Ace.
Close your eyes and breathe, she told herself. You'll feel better in a moment…
You'll feel better in a moment…
Bess was trying to be good at managing her thoughts. She sometimes excelled at it, but every so often she let herself spiral out of control, and it was so hard to relax with Charlie's hyperpop blaring in her ears and everyone talking at once. Not to mention the cold. Bess shuddered and wondered if the heat was shut off after hours.
She tried to control her thoughts, to make everything feel warm and normal again, but cold and panic were pushing at her bones, and everything felt like too much—
"You okay?"
Bess snapped out of her trance and flashed a fake smile at Nancy, who had come up next to her. Coming out of it, she realized how warped The Claw had been looking. It had seemed like everyone was so far away and the shadows in the windows had been moving, closing in… "Yeah," Bess lied. "Just ate too many cookies, I guess."
Her voice didn't sound like her own. But Nancy didn't seem to notice, "Alright." She grinned and gave Bess a pat on the shoulder, then started filling a plate and made her way back to Ace, who she was exchanging presents with.
It was like she was watching them from through a massive television screen or looking at an abstract painting… She wasn't a part of it, but it commanded her attention. She had been places that were so much louder, so much more crowded, infinitely scarier… But she couldn't get a grip. It was all too much.
It was all the families, Bess realized, surveying Nancy and her two dads, Ace and his parents, George and her mother and her sisters. Even Nick's parents who had come into town for Christmas… And everyone was talking and laughing, and they had known each other their whole lives…
Stop thinking, Bess warned herself. But she kept going anyway, digging the knife in further. They were all families, all these comfortable, warm little units that would love each other until they were all dead.
Who would miss Bess when she died?
The thought caught her by surprise. Since losing the Marvins, Bess tried to avoid thinking too far in the future, but it seemed obvious that their little group couldn't last forever. Sooner or later, all this would splinter off, and then…
Her breath caught in her throat, and she had to press a hand against the counter behind her to keep from falling over.
She knew that she was panicking, getting carried away, and that it was stupid to get so freaked out about the future when things were so good in the moment. But she couldn't stop the thoughts, and she couldn't stand to look at the party anymore. She had to get a grip.
She tore her eyes from all the merriment and ducked into the toilets. It was quieter. Darker. A little better. Being alone helped, Bess decided, almost bitter at the thought of her friends outside.
Her thoughts were still racing, though. Out of control. She splashed some warm water on her face, hoping to ground herself, but it just left her feeling sticky and shaky. She gripped the edge of the sink hard. The room was spinning, and the icy cold was suddenly replaced by an overwhelming heat.
She was tempted to break out one of the windows and run, but even now she knew that would be insane. Instead, she sat down slowly on one of the toilets and practiced again taking deep breaths. Kept trying to ignore the sounds of everyone outside, the muffled music and laughter and plates and glassing clinking.
She lost track of time. She was not making herself feel better. She was fighting off frustrated tears and hot waves of nausea when she heard the door swing open.
Thoroughly embarrassed and not wanting to be seen in her current state—whatever that state was—Bess pulled her knees to her chest and tried to silence her jagged breathing.
"Bess?" Ace. Of course. "You in here?"
Bess didn't say anything, but he pushed open the stall door and found her anyway.
"Are you okay? What are you doing?" The concern was evident in Ace's voice as he scanned her face. Bess hoped the tears in her eyes were more subtle than they felt. "You've been gone for like an hour."
Bess's stomach dropped. She'd been gone for some time, she knew, but an hour was too long. It hadn't felt like an hour at all.
"Oh," she tried to keep the waver from her voice as she fumbled through an excuse. "I'm just, ugh, just not feeling well."
Ace reached out a hand to help her up. "Want me to drive you home?"
Nothing sounded better than that. If she had had a home, one that was really hers, she would want nothing more than to go there right now.
"You mean Nancy's house?" Bess asked as Ace pulled her to her feet. She staggered, and Ace steadied her. She was grateful she didn't fall, but she wished he'd let go. His hands were too hot, and they made her skin buzz when he touched her.
"Yeah. Nancy's." Instead of letting go of her, Ace moved his hands up to her face. Bess clenched her teeth to keep from grimacing. "You sure you're okay? You feel a little warm."
"Just the winter," Bess answered, still praying inwardly that he'd let her go. "All kinds of bugs going around, I guess."
"Alright then."
Bess let Ace walk her out of the bathroom and into the dining room. He sat her down in an empty booth and told her that he was just going to let Nancy know he was taking her home.
Bess nodded, although the prospect of everyone knowing that she was bailing early was not ideal. She put her head in her hands. It was all still too bright and too loud.
Fortunately, Ace didn't take long, and they were leaving The Claw not a moment too soon. They rode in silence—which Bess knew was uncharacteristic for her—and every second of the ride was agony.
She gasped suddenly—a cross between a gag and a sob—and Ace put his hand on her shoulder. "You okay?" he asked quickly.
Bess couldn't bring herself to say anything, so she just nodded.
"You need me to pull over?" Ace asked, splitting his gaze from the road to her.
Bess shook her head, swallowing hard.
Ace, being Ace, slowed down the car anyway. "I'm just going to stop for a second so you can catch your breath."
Bess wanted to insist that she was fine, to ask him to please just get her to the Drew house so she could be alone again, but instead she threw the door open and vomited once, hard, into the dirt.
"Oh, gosh," Ace said, stroking her back.
"Sorry," Bess croaked. She pulled herself back into the car and closed the door, hoping she hadn't messed up Ace's beloved car at all.
"You okay?" he asked for the thousandth time that night after some silence. "Are you good to go?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Okay." Ace started the car again. "Nasty bug. Get a good night's rest, I guess."
By the time he finally, finally pulled into the driveway, Bess was on the verge of snapping. Getting sick had left her feeling empty and clammy. She could almost feel her bones rattling around her fevered body.
"Do you want me to stay?" Ace asked as Bess practically lunged for the door.
"No," Bess said tensely. Usually, she would have said yes in a heartbeat, would have deeply appreciated Ace's compassion, but tonight she just felt… disconnected.
Ace didn't get it, not really. Despite his own struggles with his father, the strain of meeting and losing his secret brother, he still belonged to a family. And the feeling of loneliness demanded to be indulged, rattling around so violently inside of herself that she wanted to scream at him to take off again.
When he kept giving her that concerned look, Bess insisted. "I'm probably just going to take a shower and then go to sleep," Bess lied, "so you can go back to the party if you want."
It took a couple more enraging back-and-forths for Ace to finally be convinced that she would be fine, that he wasn't abandoning her or anything, Finally, she was watching Florence's headlights linger like looming eyes as he left.
She dragged herself inside.
She waited until she couldn't hear the crunch of tires outside.
And then she went a bit mental; she screamed with every ounce of pent-up agony in her body, until she couldn't hear it anymore, until it was just a feeling burning through her lungs. She pounded on the front door and recoiled at the pain that instantly radiated through her fists. She wanted to tear her hair out or hurt herself or…
Bess paused, tried to take control of her thoughts.
Now it was the house, she decided: This wasn't her house, with its cosy furniture and pictures of someone else's family. All of it made her feel out of place and vulnerable. She slammed a picture of smiling Drews face-down on the table. It wasn't enough. She needed to leave.
Still buzzing with agony, now accompanied by a new anticipation, Bess tore through the house, packed a haphazard bag and grabbed the keys to her van. It was still parked on the street, although she hadn't used it in ages. Sleeping in a van was a mere memory, and although she knew that all those memories were cold, terrifying, lonely… she felt a strange pull of nostalgia.
Before she knew it, she was peeling into the street, driving fast and thoughtlessly. Despite Nick's work on it, the van couldn't go too fast without making some strained noises, but there was nobody around to hear them.
Everyone in Horseshoe Bay was inside, out of the cold, safe with their families, the little kids in bed already, waiting for Santa.
Bess was on her own, and the freedom of it hit her with an exciting, refreshing jolt. She had no idea where she was going to go, but she was going to get out of town, far out of town.
Snow was blurring the windshield, and Bess felt herself drift away, getting lost in the swirl of snowflakes in her headlights. If she crashed, she crashed. In the morning, the police would drag her frozen body out of a snowbank and scratch their heads uselessly as they tried to figure who to send the body to.
Odette had talked fondly of death, which, despite all of Bess's own struggles, despite all the neglect and abuse and abandonment, despite the pain and the hunger, Bess had never really understood. When she had been coldest and the most alone, death had never promised respite; instead, she'd sit there and think about the future and finally finding her family, belonging…
"Well, it was all for nothing," she told herself with a bitter laugh. "IT WAS FOR NOTHING," she repeated, much louder, as if the Bess from years ago could hear her and finally just give up.
Wouldn't that be helpful, if she could speak back through the past and tell herself not to bother, to save herself the trouble of it all. She got stuck trying to figure out which mistake she would warn herself not to make, backtracking her head again and again, trying to figure out how she would do it better if she could, if it worked like that.
She only realized she was slipping when she jerked the van suddenly to the left.
I'M DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD, Bess's brain screamed suddenly.
Just as quickly, she remembered that she was no longer in England; she'd been on the correct side. Bess corrected her course and tried to remember what she'd been thinking before she swerved, but she couldn't remember. It was like she'd been asleep.
She tried to keep track of her own thoughts, but they wouldn't stay in her head, coming and going without leaving any impression in her brain when they vanished, always leaving Bess on the edge of something.
She no longer felt like bursting, not now that she had had gained sufficient distance. Now, she just wanted to curl up in the dark to sleep.
It was the dead of night, but the light refused to die in the white of the snow that covered the ground and the clouds in the sky. Bess scoured the unfamiliar town until spotting the vast emptiness of a vacant parking lot, glowing yellow under neglected streetlights.
That was the nice thing about the van, she had no need to wander through whatever town she was in, searching for motels with rooms, and she didn't need to wait to check-in anywhere or talk to anyone to do it. All Bess had had to do was pull off the highway, find a parking spot, and crawl into the back. The bed was stiff—in fact, bed was a generous word for the ancient, paper-thin mattress that just sat atop a hard wooden platform—and the van was so drafty that Bess was left shivering under the pile of ratty blankets she'd accumulated over the years.
But despite it all, Bess was asleep in moments without even trying. In what felt like the next moment, she was staring at dusty yellow beams of morning sunlight streaming in through the windows.
It took her a moment to process. She'd been dreaming about… something. Maybe. She felt like she'd just been somewhere else, or maybe nowhere at all, but she couldn't remember.
She had come a bit unravelled last night, she knew that for certain. But something was still wrong with her memory, something that was probably due to stress or trauma. It was nothing she couldn't take care of; Bess had latched onto anything in the past decade to keep herself sane. She had studied a few religions, meditated austerely, looked for crystals and herbs and magic spells to keep herself afloat. They were all vastly different but they tended to come down to the same idea: Accept things for what they are, practice gratefulness, and keep going, think positive. Whatever this was, she would overcome it.
But she had to be alone to do it, she knew. She had no idea how far she'd driven the night before and now, on Christmas morning, she was vaguely aware that she had just ghosted her friends.
It took conscious effort to pull out her phone—text Nancy, text Nancy, text Nancy—repeating instructions to herself the entire time so that the thought wouldn't fall out of her head. She just needed to tell Nancy she'd be gone for a while—text Nancy, text Nancy, text Nancy—and then she would have a moment of peace—textNancy, textNancy— a moment to get her head straight again—textNancytextNancytextnancytextnancytexnancytecksnancetexksn—
She let the words, which were verging on nonsense, drop out of her head the instant she pressed send.
She lowered the phone and was standing on a street corner, her friends now entirely forgotten.
It was drizzling, and she was standing in the shadow of a very large tree with tangled branches. She was watching someone from afar, a small dark silhouette sitting under the shelter of a porch across the street.
Before the image could come into focus, she was distracted by the sound of the wind picking up and sending the windchimes hanging on the porch into a frenzy.
The sound jolted something through her, a feeling she recognized but that was old and buried…
And then she was standing on the porch, staring up at the chimes up close, their cacophony like an alarm.
Her gaze darted briefly across the street. Hadn't she just been standing there?
Now when she looked closely, she could have sworn she saw something moving in the shadows, but it was probably just the wind, tearing her town apart.
Bess told herself to be brave. She was just a little kid and the sun's vanishing was scary in a primal way, the rain was too loud, too much. But she had to be brave. It was a just a little storm, they got plenty. Her tiny hands were gripping the banister with anticipation, trying to remember why she was out in weather like this, and why she couldn't go back inside.
The reminder came in the next moment when a car peeled around the corner and Bess felt herself lean over the banister and wave wildly.
From the old beater emerged her father, his hair and eyes wild with excitement, skin leathery and dark from working outside for so long. He rushed out of the shoddily-parked car, called her name, and scooped her up in a great, swinging hug that made Bess feel weightless.
Bess laughed, then stopped abruptly when it hurt, like an electric shock. She recoiled, no longer in her father's arms, but somehow staggering backwards into the wet grass. It only lasted a second though, because when she opened her eyes, the landscape had changed once again, and she was sitting on the stairs inside, listening cautiously to a jumble of meaningless sounds.
She was staring out the window by the front door when the wind chimes came back into focus, still sounding like an emergency alarm as the storm raged outside. In the next instant, she realized that it wasn't just the storm making a racket, it was her parents.
She recognized her mother's voice, pitched up in hysterical rage, and she instantly tensed. She was on the edge of something, something very, very bad, her mother's voice filling her with a déjà vu that felt like falling. I shouldn't be here, she started to think, but the thought was interrupted by a mania that swallowed the thought.
We'll get to it all in good time.
Her attention shifted back to her mother, still unseen, probably just around the corner in the kitchen—maybe it was her reflection she was seeing in the window—now on an unstoppable rant.
"—SELFISH, ARROGANT BASTARD!"
"Regina—" her father wasn't given a chance to start, of course.
"YOU JUST TAKE WHATEVER YOU WANT, LEAVE WHENEVER YOU WANT, NEVER CALL, NEVER AROUND, GONE SO MUCH THAT MY DAUGHTER DOESN'T EVEN REALIZE WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT YOU ARE. YOU'RE A PIECE OF SHIT, YOU KNOW THAT? AND SHE'D SEE IT TOO IF YOU WERE EVER AROUND TO SHOW HER—"
"Just two hundred. Just two hundred and I can turn it into so much more, I promise. I can get you—"
There was a loud percussive sound, not flesh, nothing breaking, just a slam, the sound of rage as Bess's father was cut off. "YOU'RE A THIEF, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE. YOU KNOW YOU'RE MAKING YOUR DAUGHTER A FUCKING KLEPTOMANIAC? YOU THINK YOU CAN TEACH HER TO TAKE WHATEVER SHE WANTS FROM ME? JUST LIKE YOU? JUST LIKE EVERYONE ALWAYS DOES—"
Her words blurred into nothing again, just vibrations she felt in her bones but could make no sense of. The darkness outside was getting spotty and staticky, and Bess felt the stairs lurch sickeningly. She grabbed at the banister, the rods holding the handrail up impossibly big, she was so small, how was she so small?
Her mother was right, of course, her father would turn her into—
Not yet.
A morbid thrill rushed through Bess's spine, and she sunk onto her back, trying to keep from sliding off the stairs, waiting for the room to steady itself…
/
A/N: I don't care if I'm making her backstory overly traumatic and Too Much, the writers did it first and they did it worse -_-