Authors Note: I own nothing. No ownership rights to Beverly Hills 90210.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Loyalty
We are quiet as they leave the room though Dylan makes sure to kiss my head and give me reassuring eyes before he gets up. When the door is closed over we stay quiet.
"You know I'm sorry, right?"
"You've said it a lot over the last thirteen months, I know you are."
"But my sorry doesn't make it better." I bite my lip and slowly shake my head, I can feel my eyes starting to well up. "You deserve an explanation, I'm just not sure if you are going to be able to forgive me after it though. I know you keep things from me now, I know there are parts of you that I don't get access to know and I'm not talking about the Dylan part's. I'm talking about the stuff you used to feel safe sharing with me, your feelings, your thoughts, your fears, your thinking process I used to get all of it but now you hold some of it back." I nod. "It's because I broke our bond."
"It's not broken. Brandon I wouldn't have got through that last week of February or all of March that year, and I know Arthur or me, or both of us would not be here today without you. You have been a great twin to me since-"
"I was just shit before it, and it's that that has caused you to have doubts on what you can trust me with and what you can't. You're afraid I could do it again." I nod and wipe the tear that had escaped. "I won't. You have to know that. I held your hand in that hospital room not sure if that breath the last push would be your last. I know it was scary for you but it was scary for me too. You had made us promise so much, had prepared so much to ensure Dylan's rights to Art would be absolute. You made sure to have it all prepared so that he knew you trusted him with whatever part of you was going to be left, but you forgot that a part of you is in me and I didn't know how I'd cope without that. Not being able to feel that thread of awareness that you were there that you were connected to me. It made me realise how much I rely on that as my comfort." He takes a calming breath talking about me like that is difficult for him and for me as well.
"You were always Daddy's little girl and while I know that both our parents love me and have always been easier on me, they have also left me to my own devices. I got lectures when I did something wrong and praised when I did something right but the emotional stuff, the check in's neither mum nor dad do that with me. You do that with me. You have always been the one to sit with me at night to make sure I was okay, to be my sounding board, when I was sitting there holding your hand I realised that I might not have that for the rest of my life. That my first and truest emotional support could leave me." He rubs his palms under his eyes getting rid of the moisture.
"I say this because in Minnesota it was you and Bobby before his accident that I'd confide in. If I was having a bad day, if people were mean to me, if I played bad, if the expectations to be perfect got to overwhelming, and then after the accident it was just you. When we moved to Beverly Hills in sophomore year you kept that role but somewhere in junior year I really began to trust and confide in more people; not like the random sophomore year conversations but regularly. Dylan first up on that cliff, then Steve, Andrea, then even Kelly. I let all these new people in and gave them access, I made them family and trusted them with the emotional stuff and they trusted me too, they shared themselves with me. I felt what you and I have always felt with each other, I felt safe with them."
He's quiet for a moment, like he is getting prepared to hurt me. "You didn't like Emily, whether it was because of her one date with Dylan at the start of the year or because your intuition was going off, but you didn't like her and you weren't afraid to say it to me."
Seriously we had always been honest with each other. "Hey at least I said it to you and not Emily, you went straight to Dylan when we first started seeing each other trying to warn him off."
"True. You were right about her and while I know you helped her that night, talked her down and agreed with me to give her the Minnesota twins shirt for Christmas, it nagged at me that you didn't try harder, to trust me and welcome her in like I had done with Dylan. You were also pulling away from me in other ways, you had less time for me and you were confiding in Dylan more. He was the one you turned to after the hold up not me. He got through to you but I was left out of it, I had never been so far removed from such an emotional event. I could have lost you and it was Dylan you turned to for support. When you-"
I don't think I can sit here and listen to him declaring he stopped caring because I got a boyfriend, it's too petty. "Brandon are you saying you were annoyed that I let my boyfriend in after you have just told me that you let four others in?"
"No I'm saying when I had let these guy's in, you and I for the first ever time had developed distance from each other. Kelly, Andrea, Steve and Dylan when I could get some of his time, became the people I turned to. They offered different perspectives and in hindsight they don't push me like you do, they don't call me out. Dylan loves that about you, but at seventeen your sister calling you on your bullshit… it was nice with Steve and Kelly, even Dylan will just leave a thought provoking comment when he thinks I need to check myself. You are more brutal. Andrea is as well."
He runs his hands through his hair. "Do you know when Andrea got the job at the beach club I was mad? I didn't want her judging me all summer, interfering with my hopes for a good time after a stressful year."
He pauses to take a deep breath. "There is so much freedom here, so much moral ambiguity. Steve and Kelly are pretty relaxed, they saw me as the sensible one, Donna and David did as well. Even with my drink driving, almost cheating in school, getting my car stripped because rather than seek you out immediately and tell you Emily had spiked my drink I chose to enjoy the high. When they talk to me they don't see any of that, instead they just take me at my word, trust my judgment-"
Because I care more, have known him forever and worry that he may be caught in a moment so I ask questions, I'm punished. "Brother I wasn't fan clubbing you enough?"
"At seventeen I thought I knew everything. I was about to go into summer, I was about to move into being a senior, I had great friends who I could trust and who thought I was wise and well let's face it fed my ego."
Putting this altogether makes me feel worse, why was this needed? "And then there is your absent twin, who calls you out on shit and who is not coming to you to solve all her problems, she has started to do that with the guy she thinks is her forever."
"And then you run away and get rewarded in my eyes with a trip to Paris. I have six day working week's ahead for the whole of summer while you get sent to Paris."
He was jealous over that? "That wasn't my choice, I didn't want to go."
He looks and begs with his eyes for me to understand, "I know that, I know that now. I know how they manipulated Dylan to convince you, but I was a seventeen year old who doesn't see that I just see you moving further away from me becoming a Beverly Hills spoilt princess, getting rewarded for breaking rules while I'm required to be perfect and work hard. Add to that I'm connecting more with Steve and Kelly who have real problems in my eyes not anger over trips to Baja."
His tone gets softer I prepare myself this must be his way of trying to soften the blow he is about to land. "When you came back you were further away from me, Dylan was distant. I blamed his absence on you. When you broke up I blamed his inability to immediately chose on you. He was finally seeing what I had started to see, you were no longer the girl from Minnesota you had become a Beverly Hills arrogant elitist."
The quiet tone did nothing to make those words better. He didn't need to say it all I understood. "You never stepped in you never called him out for it, never supported me even privately by saying what he and she were doing was wrong because you thought I deserved it, that I deserved to be treated like shit. That I had brought it on myself." He goes to speak but I hold my palm slightly out, I need a minute. I stand and move into the kitchen and grab a water my hands are literally trembling as I try and pour the water into the glass.
He follows me in. "Are you okay? Should I check your blood pressure? Maybe this was too soon."
"No I'm not okay, I just found out my twin actually thought I could be so horrible that I deserved to be treated like shit, that people were justified in doing it. You didn't even think I was deserving of having Dylan just make a clean break or that our friends should have just cut me off altogether, no instead I was so horrible that you felt it should be drawn out and I should be made to suffer. Was it to teach me a lesson, my karma, my punishment in your eyes? That'll teach Brenda for thinking she had a boyfriend who loved her, friends she could trust and above all a twin who would be her biggest supporter for life." I hold the bench to stop my hands from shaking.
"And your excuse for all of it was that I fell in love, didn't like your girlfriend who mind you tried to light herself on fire in front of me, didn't run to you after I went through a traumatic experience, that I dare to challenge you to make sure you were making good decisions that you'd be happy in yourself for, all the while I lived in a house where all three of you judged me constantly on the quality of my character and that of my boyfriends. Oh and let's not forget you got friends. Yep I'm glad I know this, I'm glad to know how easy it is for you to toss our lifetime of family, support, of us away."
"Brenda I didn't know, I didn't know what Dad had done, what Dylan and Kelly had done-"
"No you didn't but you knew me, you've known me all my life and you thought I was capable of being so horrible that I deserved it, that I deserved to be humiliated, made to beg for months, beg for a man who you and I had done so much for because to us he has always been family. Even that didn't make you question his actions. You chose him and Kelly as your family, and you let Steve, Donna, David and Andrea speak as if I brought it on myself."
I finish my water, "the den is set up for Val, please tell everyone goodnight for me I'm going to bed. Drive safely down the hill people can speed up it at night."
As I move out of the kitchen he questions me. "That's it? You don't want to discuss it more?"
I stop but I don't turn around. "That's it, I now know. Unlike Dylan who needed months to decide where to park his loyalties my brother was capable of making it in an instant, no thought required. You walked into senior year thinking, my sister is a bitch and deserves what she fucking gets."
As I continue moving through the main room to get to the hall he follows. "I'm sorry you know that. I shouldn't have needed to know everything to know that you being treated that way was never going to be okay. That you could never have done anything to deserve that."
"Yeah but you didn't."
As I move into the hall I contemplate checking on Art, Dylan has the monitor so I know he is fine and in all fairness I'm too emotional to go in there. Closing my bedroom door I look around my room I don't know what to do. Should I cry, scream into a pillow or go have a shower, as I look at my shaking hands I decide the first thing is to check my blood pressure. It's higher than normal but not extreme and it's only a problem if it doesn't come down soon. I decide to shower and hopefully the distraction will clear my mind of what my brother just told me. The whole time I'm in there Brandon's words ring through my head "Beverly Hills arrogant elitist", I scrub harder. By the time I exit the shower my skin has been well exfoliated, too well. As I move into my room I see Val on my bed in her pyjamas looking at my little book that records all my readings, she looks up.
"You've been in there a long time. Sleaze came to check on you when he heard your hands were shaking, he saw the reading and then came storming out and made your brother tell us what he said. Dylan" I lift my eyebrow, "he earned his name. He went off at Brandon, said if anyone had become Beverly Hills it was him. His self-righteousness was fucking horrendous especially as he was lusting after Andrea while dating Nikki and then following it up with gambling in order to make as much money as possible to compete with the wealth around him. Dylan told him that he was angry that you would just call him on it, he said his arrogance at his moral authority and big man on campus attitude needed to be checked. He then told him to leave." I sat on my bed and Val passed me the monitor. "He told me if it isn't lower after your shower then I needed to get him. I had to promise as it was the only way I could convince him to leave." I ran the monitor again and noted in my book the lower reading.
"He wanted to be here but I didn't think seeing him would be what you needed right now. Brandon and him and the rest of the glass houses brigade are not what you need. You needed me." She wraps her arm around me and I rest my head on her shoulder. "You know we are bitches right? We piss people off by being brutally honest. What bugs them the most is that we are also self aware, that we know when we have crossed the line being unfair in our candour- you my dear apologise at that point, it makes you the sweet one of us. It also pisses people off the most, they have this anger that they can't do anything with, you've owned your mistake and called yourself out for it anything they do now makes them the asshole. Add to that our ability to hide our vulnerability and well we are capable of just pissing people off by walking into the room."
"So we are bound to be hated?"
"Insecure people like weakness, they like faults, they like people who are flawed as they make them feel better about themselves. If they can't find that flaw they find personality traits or stupid stuff like the way someone breathes to get all worked up over. It sounds like you've been charged around here with the horrendous crime of being confident in yourself and being brave to try and fail- really it makes you a complete asshole to the self-esteemed challenged." Her sarcasm was clear. "Did you tell my husband he was a complete idiot?"
"No."
"Okay well you should get on that ASAP. He has always had the capacity to have an ego and be arrogant it's why you are his perfect twin you keep him in check and he keeps you from becoming too dreamy and dramatic." She squeezes my hand, "yelling at him will make you both feel better and if I can watch it will give me comfort that I don't need to do it myself." I nod from her shoulder. "Okay you get to wallow with me tonight then that's it but as it's nearly morning in New York can we wallow in bed?"
"We having a sleepover?"
"I feel I might not get many more of these, as while that bed at the end of the hall looks big enough for all of us and Sleaze is definitely hot I can't imagine you are big on sharing."
I laugh, "you know what's mine is yours except for Dylan he is all mine."
"Well that's good to hear, you sound like the old territorial Brenda and that's exactly how it should be. Tomorrow we can discuss you doing the same with this Maggie part."
As I finish closing up the house and checking on the kids I walk past her door, I can hear the giggles inside. After such a dramatic day and the false claims that Brandon lay on her it was good to hear her happy. Val could stay as long as she wanted if she could keep my girl that way.
I'm sure tomorrow well today considering the hour, would be another dramatic day and I wasn't sure if I had added to the drama. Would she be mad at what I had said to Brandon? I said I wouldn't get involved and I didn't mean to but how was I supposed to listen to that garbage. Bren the girl who organised Freshman Senior buddy orientation, who had reached out to Donna to get help for Scott's sister, who had organised the charity pig skin prom and the Christmas school visit, yeah as if any of that played into his narrative of an elitist, a Beverly Hills Princess.
From everything I had heard it sounded like Brandon was pissed at her for me. He was pissed that we were together. It wasn't surprising, throughout sophomore year we had never sat well with him, first with him wanting me not to date her, to his annoyance in me meeting her in Palm Springs and then when they were moving back and he found out about the Spring Dance. It was clear he had a problem with us. When we got back together at the start of junior year I thought though that we were good, he had been supportive and had Emily to focus on but I guess as Bren and I got more intense, realised how together we wanted to be he became less supportive. He was not happy when his parents agreed we could go to Baja and when he told me on the beach they were fearful I was taking their little girl away from them I should have asked if he was fearful I was taking his sister.
Rather than telling us how he was feeling, he simply did exactly what I did shut down in his own way and lash out. It was the part I was angry at the most, we both chose the exact same time to abandon her emotionally in completely different ways, and we both took out our insecurities on the person we trusted the most, her. I knew when I was yelling at him tonight I was yelling at me as well. Shit!
The phone is picked up before the second ring.
"She's okay right?"
"I'd ask how you knew it was me but stupid question, yeah Jones she's fine. Val is a miracle worker and by the sound of it they are having a sleepover."
"Good. They'll be laughing all night. I have no idea what those two discuss when together but they always used to giggle a lot as kids, our parents eventually made them sleep downstairs as they were sick of having to get up and tell them to go to sleep." He sighs. "You ringing for round two, it's not like I don't deserve it and well Steve is unable to go there he-"
"Didn't know our girl, he just got to see the strong and self assured Bren."
"Yeah." There's a long pause. "When she came home from the park, he stayed with us all afternoon. When she finally fell asleep laying with her head on a pillow on my lap as I rubbed her hair he looked at me and said he didn't know she could break. He thought since she didn't break from the cancer scare, your first break up and while close she didn't break from being held up; he believed that she was tough as nails. I had to explain that if we were in that park we would have thought the same thing that she was unbreakable."
"She is unbreakable look what I put her through, what you put her through, what Kelly puts her through and then look at how she carried Art. She is unbreakable but it doesn't mean it doesn't kill her. I don't know how she does it, I'd lose my sobriety if I was faced with all that."
"D I'm sor-"
"B you don't owe me any kind of apology, I actually rang to apologise to you. I lashed out at you tonight-"
"It was deserved."
"But it's deserved from Brenda. She's the one who was hurt. She doesn't need me to fight her battles. But to hear what you were thinking, all because you trusted me so much to be doing right by her I'm just mad at myself."
"Yeah I know that feeling well."
"B can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"You never liked us together did you?"
He's quiet for a long time. "Brenda is… she's my twin. I don't know how to explain that feeling other than when she's close it's comforting to me and when she's not, well it's like a blind spot in my vision my eyes keep trying to get around it looking for her. I liked like you guy's together, my best friend and my sister just as long as you don't take her away from me."
"You know she wouldn't let that happen."
"D I don't think you understand how much she loves you, she would. Besides the kids she'd choose you over everyone, that's what she was doing at the end of junior year. Do you know she ran away and didn't even tell me? Didn't leave me a note or drop a hint." He pauses. "She made provisions for everything before the birth. She had letter's guaranteeing your rights, had filled in the birth certificate as much as possible whilst getting Bobby to film her. I had five minutes, that's all she wanted me to take. I had five minutes to feel that she was gone and then I had to call you. She wanted you on your way before my parents were called, she wanted you holding your son before anyone tried to keep you from him. I was given five minutes, then I had to make the phone call and stay with Art. Steve was supposed to call Iris and then deal with the doctors over her. When it came to raising Art I was to not intervene even if I thought she would want something different, I had to trust that you knew what she'd want. I have known her since before we were born and she still thought you'd know what she'd want more-"
"It's not that. That's not what she was saying, she told you that so if I was ever in doubt I'd know that she had complete confidence in me. That she'd back me. Your sister was guarding against the day when I'd feel unsure and was telling me she'd support my choice, that whatever I did would be right for our son."
"See you do know her better."
"Does that bother you?"
"At seventeen it did more than I let on and in a way yeah it still does."
I'm quiet for a bit as I try and pull myself together, I also can't apologise for our connection- it's something I treasure. "B she's got too much going on this week so I don't want to ask her but did she really think I'd let Kelly play a part in our son's life?"
"You were together back then and she didn't know. You guy's were volatile but she didn't know if you'd reach out to her, she didn't know if her being truly gone would free you to be all in with Kelly. She talked to Val more about that. Val even offered to take Arthur if that was the case, she has practically raised her younger siblings she's actually amazing with kids. Bren said no. Her Will had you as sole guardian and in the eventuality of you not wanting or able to do it, then she requested you to choose Val and me."
"There was so much thought."
"As soon as they rushed her to the hospital she was advised that inducing would be the only option if they couldn't get her pressure down. They told her the risks then. She spent the hours in there when she wasn't resting getting it all in order. My sister is nothing if not organised-"
"Especially when she's stressed." I breathe out. "I wish she had called me."
"It was discussed over the phone as we waited at LAX for our flight but she thought if it did happen, to see two people in your life die in front of you in less than a year. She thought that it would be too much, she wanted you to be focused on Art not on her."
"Your sister doesn't know how much I love her, even not seeing it would destroy me." We take a moment this conversation is a lot. "It didn't happen. It means we can do better."
"That's what I think we both have been doing."
"Yeah." I look at the clock, shit Art will be up soon. "It's late actually it's early I should get some sleep before the kids wake up. B can you promise me something?"
"Yeah."
"It will never happen unless she leaves me, but if there is ever a choice on where your loyalties lie it should always be-"
"Oh a hundred percent McKay you are on your own."