August 12

[a_littlefaith]

It's been over two months since she realized she was dead. Almost eight weeks since Daryl disappeared. A little over four weeks since he had come back and she'd realized he was another person entirely, not the man she had been set to marry. It's a lot to have happen to anyone in a two month period and for a time she'd felt completely lost, faltering in a way she hadn't liked. It had just seemed easier to crawl into bed and pull the blankets over her head so she wouldn't have to face the world or maybe to take after her father and drink herself into a state where she wouldn't have to care about any of it.

In the end, it's Maggie's example she'd decided to follow. One morning about two weeks ago, she had taken off the moonstone ring Daryl had given her, taken it off for good, and placed it back in the box it had come in. Then she had carefully, lovingly tucked the box in the drawer beside her bed and closed it away. It's what Maggie would have done. It isn't giving up, because Maggie never would have done that, but it's accepting the reality of what is instead of what used to be. Nothing she can do will change the Daryl who's here into the Daryl who left, she has to accept that.

Her sister would have told Beth to look after herself, not to forget about her own needs, so she'd put the ring away, knowing it's the fairest thing she can do for herself and for Daryl. Until she can talk to him about what they used to be, having that reminder of what had come before doesn't do anyone any good. So she takes the ring off and she tries to get back to normal.

Friday night rolls around and she has a gig at a small bar, about thirty minutes worth of material she's written in the past several months. None of the songs are about Daryl, she's been very careful about that, but she likes what she's written. Maybe some of this pain is worth it if it gives her good song writing material. When she sings she feels a little less childlike, a little more like an adult, and she has to wonder how much these past few months have forced her into growing up.

It's scary to think she hadn't felt this much like an adult before and it's sad to think that's what pain does to a person.

But she's smiling by the time she wraps up and her heart feels lighter than it has in some time. Her curls are clinging to her cheeks and her forehead and the back of her neck, the bar hot and damp, the night air warmer still, and as she heads away from the bar -- maybe she'll go home or maybe it's time for a weekend visit to one of her friends -- she finds she actually feels good. Not better, not normal, but good.

[I set it up to let people find her in a variety of places, whatever works best. Out on the street, in the bar where she's playing, at her apartment or their apartment if they'd want her to come visit.]

Comments

[a_littlefaith]

It strikes her then just how different their best friends are, because although they're both kinda hairy -- Kili significantly less so, but still with the long hair and stubble -- they're about as different in height as two people can possibly get and she thinks about Chewbacca and Kili standing next to one another and she can't help but smile. That would be quite the sight.

She's not supposed to know that many details about his best friend, though, and she's definitely not supposed to know about the Millennium Falcon, but he offers a tour and she actually has to fight back the gasp that wants to bubble out of her.

Her brother might actually have had a heart attack if he knew this was happening to her.

"Yes," she says emphatically, trying not to give away just how much the idea actually excites her and then she tries to compose herself internally so Han doesn't have any reason to question her. "That's your ship, right? Your space ship? That's so cool, yeah, I wanna see it, definitely!"

[scruffy_looking]

She seems excited and hell, she should be. People in this galaxy don't get to see ships like his every day, or really much at all, which is a shame. Han isn't sure how many people Rey's invited over to see the Falcon, whether she has company over there often or not, but he's only taken a couple. The last person who'd gone to see it with him was Adaline, and he hasn't seen her in longer than he's really happy about.

But if she wanted to see him, she'd call. So maybe she doesn't, she's got a busy life of her own and that's fine. It's not like he cares.

"Let's get outta here, then," he says, pushing off from against the bar and making a move for the exit, "before you get mobbed and take me down with you."

[a_littlefaith]

"I don't think you got anything to worry about on my account," she answers with a laugh, making sure her guitar case is on her back securely as she follows him to the door. The fact that people aren't mobbing him just because he's Han Solo does strike her as sort of strange sometimes, but she wonders if maybe people in Darrow don't know who they're seeing. That seems so strange to her, he's just so famous, but Darrow is definitely strange in a lot of ways, so that wouldn't even surprise her all that much if it turned out to be true.

"Where is it?" she asks. "And how big is it? Who's Rey?"

He has a roommate apparently. Or maybe they just share the ship, although that seems really weird to her, because Han had always been protective of the ship. She can't imagine him sharing it.

[scruffy_looking]

She's got a lot of questions, and Han waits a minute to make sure she's run out of them before he starts answering. "It's out in the country, crash-landed, the poor beauty. She may not be huge, but she's big enough. Gets the job done. About 27 meters, give or take, YT-1300 model, light freighter." He pauses, grinning. "Plus, she's got some modifications."

Once the ship's back in shape, he plans on moving back in. Rey had promised his quarters hadn't been touched, and he believes her. They may share it now, but she's made it clear from the start that she respects what the Falcon means to him.

"And Rey... She's a friend. She's the one who ended up here with the Falcon. Apparently I knew her back where we're from, except I was about thirty years older when we met."

[a_littlefaith]

Even for someone who knows the movies pretty well, a lot of what Han says just goes right over her head. It's still a real spaceship, after all, and there's a whole lot of science that goes into it she can't even begin to hope to understand. Whatever the modifications happen to be, he seems pretty pleased by them and Beth can't help but grin in return. She has no idea what that means either, but she's glad Han is pleased with them, whatever they are.

"Thirty years older?" she asks, her eyes going a little wide at the thought. She's almost gotten used to be people being from different times, but that's only ever seemed to be a few months here and there, maybe at most a year or so, but never thirty. She can't imagine Han Solo thirty years older, even if she knows she's seen Harrison Ford as an older man.

"That must be weird," she decides. "I mean, Daryl's from a lot later than me this time around and that's weird enough. Can you imagine how much he would've freaked out if he'd been thirty years older?" He'd freaked out enough as it was and she doesn't even want to get into that, but the words had come out without her even thinking about them.

[scruffy_looking]

Han shrugs. Maybe Beth's right, maybe it should've seemed stranger than Rey's known an entirely different version of him. From what she'd told him, though, he hadn't changed all that much so frankly, Han hasn't thought much of it. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, he isn't sure, but neither Poe nor Rey have been very forthcoming about the future they know and Han isn't especially keen on asking a lot of questions. He does and doesn't want to be told what the future has in store for him, knowing he'd married Leia had been enough.

If he messes everything up for himself in the future, which is extremely probable, Han would rather remain blissfully ignorant about it all.

"No weirder than ending up in a place like this, I guess," he says, which isn't the full truth, but Han's good at not divulging the whole truth. He pauses then, blinking as he processes what Beth had said about Daryl. "What do you mean 'this time around'?"

[a_littlefaith]

"Oh," she says, realizing suddenly she hasn't told him. The past months have been so strange, so complicated and tangled that she's not always sure who she's told about the things she's seen or done or dealt with. Daryl coming back and not remembering his time here had been such a significant blow -- bigger even than his disappearance in the first place -- that she's pushed so much of it down and away, refusing to deal with it in any real way and she's forgotten who knows and who doesn't.

Because she doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to remember what happened, especially right now. Not when she's had such a good few days after the horrible fight they'd had.

"He came back," she tells Han. "But he doesn't remember being here in the first place. It's like... well, he's someone else entirely. It's been pretty bad. He's angry, not that I blame him, and he's freaked out and it's just all around pretty rotten. Pretty unfair. To the both of us, I think."

[scruffy_looking]

Unfair. Hell, having their asses dragged here in the first place is unfair, but Han can admit that it seems a little extra shitty that Beth would lose the guy she loves then get him back as a different person. Darrow's a hell of a place, in good and bad ways, Han just wishes he had some kind of basis for understanding why the hell any of them are here. What do they all have in common that gets them chosen to end up here, what is it about any of them that would get them sent back?

Nobody he's talked to knows. Most people don't even seem willing to think of a theory and maybe it's just easier that way. It's a blissful kind of ignorance that's still always nagging but from what he's been able to tell, it's the kind of thing people just try to move on from, like learning to call this place home is the ticket to forgetting how they'd gotten here.

"Well, that's not the barrel of laughs I was hoping for," he says dryly, his frown evidence enough that he's at least trying to be sympathetic. "Wouldn't want to deal with that myself." He pauses for a moment, glancing over at her. "How're you holding up, with all that going on? I don't want to hear about how he's doing. How're you?"

[a_littlefaith]

Before answering, she actually considers what she wants to say. She draws in a deep breath, searches herself for how she's feeling, then looks at Han and smiles a little.

"I'm okay, actually," she says. "I mean, it's not fun and I don't feel like doin' cartwheels or nothin' like that, but I'm okay. I spent a lot of time thinkin' about what my sister would tell me to do because Maggie was always real good at stuff like that. Thinkin' about herself, makin' sure she was okay instead of runnin' around trying to make other people happy." That makes Maggie sound selfish and that isn't what Beth means at all, but she isn't sure she knows how to explain it properly.

"I took off the ring he gave me," she admits. "Didn't seem like there was much point in wearin' it anymore."

[scruffy_looking]

"Yeah, did notice that," Han tells her, and he thinks that'd probably been a hard thing to do but he doesn't say anything about it. Pointing out when things are difficult isn't going to help, it'll just remind her how much it'd hurt, and Han's not really interested in doing that. He's not very good at comfort, and he may occasionally say some choice stupid stuff, but Han does try to be good to his friends.

Before Luke and Leia had come along, his circle of friends had really only consisted of Chewie, though, so all Han can do is hope the friends he's made in Darrow will cut him some slack if he's not everything they'd wanted and more.

"Anyway, your sister sounds like a smart lady. That's exactly what I would do, there's no sense in worrying about other people if you can't start by taking care of yourself."