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[turnthebadinme]

As she woke, bits and pieces of conversation rattled through Serena's mind, images of herself as some uptight bitch and of hearing about Chuck's feelings, the last remnants of a fast-fading dream. Though she'd gone to sleep early enough the night before, the nightmare had canceled out any rest she ought to have gotten, and there was instead a dull

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[renegade_reaper]

Beat'd figured it out eventually. He ain't dumb, much as he sometimes didn't catch on quick. It was hard to miss the entire island turnin' upside down, an' it eventually came to him jus' stayin' in his hut until it was over. 'Course, he didn't know if it'd ever really be over. The kinda stuff Serena had said hit home hard, an' even with a day or two of tellin' himself she obviously didn't mean it (no one did, not with whatever was goin' on, apparently), it'd rung truer than he wanted it to.

He was half asleep when the knockin' started. It took him a while to even stumble to the door, but it didn't take him long to wake up when he saw who it was. His eyes narrowed pretty quickly, an' it took all it had in him not to jus' shut the door on her.

"What?" he said instead, a hard edge to his voice. He ain't in no mood to deal with her if she was still actin' weird. He wasn't gonna take that kinda talk, not from anyone.

[turnthebadinme]

Serena's first instinct, at the sight of him, had been to throw herself forward and hold on. She didn't, though, and in fact found herself drawing back, tensing at his tone. For a moment, no words would come out, her breathing coming harder instead as she fought off the urge to cry. That look was all the confirmation she needed that it had been true after all, when she'd been hoping a bit that it really had been a dream. "I'm sorry. I'm so - I don't know what happened. I'm so sorry."

[renegade_reaper]

He'd been so ready to be closed off an' distant that it almost felt like a shock to hear her say anythin' but more stuff that'd piss him off. His expression softened a little, though it was still guarded.

"Serena?" he asked, like he ain't belevin' it's really her, an' not the person he met a few days ago. "You ain't crazy no more, then?"

[turnthebadinme]

It was a good way to put it, to say she'd been crazy. She wasn't sure how else to make sense of it. On some other day, she would have laughed about that and made jokes, but everything felt too precarious for her to calm down yet.

"I'm so sorry," she said again, fumbling for other words, for explanations she didn't have. "I didn't - I didn't mean it, not any of it. It was - I woke up and I thought I dreamed it all, but I didn't or you wouldn't be mad at me. Which I deserve, because I was awful. It's - it wasn't me, I'm not like that, you know I'm not." Stopping, she took a deep, if shaky breath, blinking quickly and reaching up to push her hair out of her face. She wouldn't cry, she was almost sure, but the threat of it had roughened her voice. Wanting to reach out to him, to touch and be sure of him, she couldn't quite bring herself to, and the sense of waiting on some unspoken permission now after all this time just made everything else worse.