Work Text:
When Beth leaves, gun in hand, mind made up to murder Susan Duncan, she chooses a blonde wig.
It reminds her of Krystal.
When Beth scoured the databases―it was easy, all she has to do is smile and bat her eyelashes at Raj and suddenly he’s tripping over himself to accommodate her, and he never asks any questions, he’s too busy mooning at her with his big, brown doe eyes, and Beth wonders how someone like him could look at her like that, like she’s worth something―after Katja found her―cornered her, like an animal, flipped her world upside-down with little regard as to whether or not Beth wanted her to―to look for them, the others , she stumbled across dozens of matches within Canada and the United States alone. It’s overwhelming, the names staring back at her. Jennifer, Tony, Sarah, Alison, Cosima, Miriam, Rachel , Krystal, Stephanie... the list continues.
She picks Alison because of her money and Cosima because of her brain, but Beth never forgets the list, never forgets the names.
At night, she whispers their names like a prayer, because maybe some of them will find a way out of this, will escape untouched in a way Beth was never able to. Her skin crawls with the weight of it, with the memories, with the knowledge that there were people watching her throughout her entire childhood; watching, but never interfering.
When Beth leaves, gun in hand, mind made up to murder Susan Duncan, she chooses a blonde wig because it reminds her of Krystal.
They meet once.
Beth doesn’t plan it.
It’s a cold January morning, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and makes you ache with the memories of all the things that steal warmth from little hearts, the kind of cold that sticks and that not even steaming cups of coffee can chase out. Art presses a mug into her shaking hands at the station and Beth doesn’t have the heart to tell him that the tremors have nothing to do with the cold.
They’ve been working on the Pouchy case for months now and are nowhere closer to cracking it, to finding something to grab him on that he won’t easily escape from. It’s mostly paperwork and researching, at this point, confined to the chill of the station, and Beth’s drowning in it.
Some days she walks past the chief’s office and sees a framed picture of him and her father, and she looks away, fights the tightening in her throat, and her skin crawls because there is something she will never be able to outrun.
“Are you okay?” Art asks her, as she’s rubbing her hands methodically over the mug of coffee, repetitively, letting the warmth soak into her cold, cracked skin. Absentmindedly she thinks she ought to go to the store and buy lotion.
Art’s eyes are warm and he looks at her like Raj does only less obvious, looks at her like she’s worth something, and it’s so genuine it’s overwhelming. Beth’s never had a best friend before but she thinks if she did, Art would be a very apt candidate.
“Yeah.” Her voice sounds hollow, even to her, and she tries to fill it with some semblance of life, but it’s just one of those days. The cold has already crept its way into her bones and settled and it shows no signs of going away.
“You sure?” he echoes, voice soft against the usual clamor of the station. “You haven’t called me dipshit all day.”
Beth smiles at him softly and finds that she means it. The look they share suddenly lasts too long and she looks down at the coffee mug and raises it to her lips, letting the bitter liquid pour down her throat and burn out the cold.
“You can always take the day off, you know,” Art tells her, because they aren’t getting much done anyways. It’s cold, too cold, and everyone’s going stir-crazy.
Beth’s been working so hard that she can’t quite comprehend the concept of rest. If her memories don’t keep her awake it’s the pills and if it’s not the pills it’s the crushing responsibility of Katja and the others and Paul and sometimes it’s so much that Beth can’t keep it all straight in her head.
“You know?” she says, after a while, and Art looks up at her in that patient way of his. “I think I might.” A day away from it all, from Paul, from work, from the pressure of clones and trying to save people she didn’t even know existed until a short while ago.
Beth ends up right in Krystal’s lap.
She doesn’t intend it.
Beth wraps herself up in her overcoat, ties a woven scarf her mother sent over the mail that seems like an apology around her neck, and tucks her hands into her pockets and sets out to wander.
It’s been so long since she’s let herself just go . Walk. Enjoy life around her.
Her feet carry her to a cute little salon, the sort of place you see in Instagram pictures, with open window walls and cute little stations, and there’s a part of her that urges her in. In the back of her mind, a whisper.
Krystal Goderitch, manicurist.
It’s the sort of place that usually wouldn’t take walk-ins, but the weather has chased most people into the confines of their homes, so Beth doesn’t think it’ll be a problem. She looks down at the skin on her hands, cracked and dry, and at the ends of her nails, chewed, and at the skin around them red and raw from where she picks at them.
Probably a manicurist’s worst nightmare.
Someone who works there spies her and her eyes go wide and suddenly she’s disappearing, and then she drags another woman out from a break room, and then there’s Krystal.
Beth’s breath catches the same way it did when she met Alison, and Krystal blinks back at her before rolling her eyes at her coworker, the two of them walking up to her.
“Lisa here thinks we’re like, long-lost twins or something, but I clearly see no resemblance, because, I’m like a ten, and you’re just on the cusp of an eight.” Beth almost smiles at that, because she’s seen clips from Krystal’s YouTube channel, mostly instructional beauty videos, but she’s even more in person.
Krystal snatches for Beth’s hands and waves them offendingly in Lisa’s face.
“And look at this! No twin of mine would have hands like this.” She shoots Beth a look that’s almost like pity and then looks back at Lisa. “Can you take my three o’clock? This girl needs, like, a complete hand makeover.”
Lisa just nods, still staring, open-mouthed, at the two of them, and Krystal rolls her eyes at her before tugging Beth along, and she’s so forceful that she reminds Beth of herself, in a way.
“I’m sorry about her, she’s losing it,” Krystal whispers, “the other month some absolute soccer mom came wandering in when I was on lunch and apparently she’s convinced that she was my long lost twin too. Like, yeah. Whatever.” She starts rubbing a lotion on Beth’s hands that stings before it soothes―Beth should really take better care of her skin―and realizes that she hasn’t introduced herself.
“I’m Krystal, by the way.”
“Beth.” It’s nice, to meet someone who doesn’t know who she is.
“So, Beth, what do you do that makes you absolutely destroy your hands?” it’s almost an accusation, and Beth smiles softly at the way Krystal purses her lips, waiting.
“I’m a detective.”
Her eyes go wide and suddenly Krystal is a lot more excited to be with her.
“Are you really? I always wanted to be a detective, you know. My dad, he was a journalist, always exposing the baddies of the corporate world or whatever, bringing justice, and I just thought that was like, the coolest thing, you know? I even took years of mixed martial arts to like, prepare myself for it physically.”
“Did you?” Beth asks, an eyebrow raised, and Krystal nods emphatically.
“I may look small, but I’m like, super strong.” Beth smiles at her despite herself. “I bet I could take you out.” Beth doesn’t doubt that she and Krystal would be evenly matched, physically. She spies the lean, wiry muscle of Krystal’s arms, the grace with which she moves, but Beth has the slightest edge of discipline, and the advantage of a gun.
“Indeed,” she agrees, and Krystal smiles at her, because Krystal’s the sort of person who can tell when someone’s being condescending, and Beth has nothing but fondness for her clones, her sisters , as Cosima had called them, offhandedly, once―she thinks Cosima craves a family more than anything and that’s why―and her tone is genuine.
As Krystal works, she tells Beth about her life.
Beth doesn’t think she’s ever known so much about a person in so little time, and wonders if Krystal is prone to over sharing so much with every stranger she meets, or only the ones who share her face. There’s a brightness to her eyes that reminds Beth of Cosima, and a steely determination that is very much Alison, but at the same time she is uniquely Krystal.
“So what made you decide to be a manicurist instead of a detective?” Beth asks, and Krystal pauses in her motions as though to consider the question, pursing her lips once more in a manner that Beth is beginning to associate with her and her alone.
“My mother is a very religious woman,” Krystal starts, and it’s in no way the explanation that Beth expects her to start giving, “goes to church every Sunday, that whole deal. And she was scared that I was going to get, like, murdered or something, and prayed every night that I’d go into a safer profession. She was a therapist, helped heal people, you know? Told me that I could save people without putting my life in danger.”
“And that lead you to this?” Beth asks, not in any mocking way, moreso because she’s confused at the connection.
“Most people don’t consider beauticians to be in the healing arts, but what I do is definitely healing,” Krystal affirms, nodding to Beth’s hands, once cracked and stinging, now soothed, “but I like to think what I do helps people, gives them a little bit of peace. And it makes them look nicer, which always helps.”
Beth smiles up at her, and Krystal smiles back, softly, in a way that reminds Beth of Mika.
“What color polish do you want?”
“Just a clear coat, please.” Krystal crinkles her nose a little bit and Beth laughs. “Can’t have any bright colors for people to distinguish me by on the field, you know.” Krystal nods, accepting the explanation, and goes back to work, talking enough for the two of them.
It’s nice.
Beth exits the little salon later and the cold bites at her, nips at her nose and lashes against her cheeks, but her hands remain warm.
When Beth leaves, gun in hand, mind made up to murder Susan Duncan, she chooses a blonde wig.
It reminds her of Krystal.
Krystal, who is brave and solid and sturdy and strong in her own way, who believes in healing people.
Krystal, who tried to heal Beth, in her own way, when nobody else had.
Beth breathes, looks at herself in the mirror, and tries to see Krystal somewhere in the brokenness in her eyes.
When she comes back, blood splattered across her face, hands that are no longer cracked from the cold shaking and unsteady, gun in her purse, Mika is waiting for her, eyes wide.
Mika grasps her like she knows she’s leaving, like she doesn’t want her to.
Mika looks at her like Raj does, like Art does, looks at her like she’s worth something, and Beth breaks under the weight of it, because she knows she’s not. Beth knows her own worth. She’s shaking and it has nothing to do with the late-night chill, the coldness has long since sealed its way into her bones.
“Watch the others for me,” she makes Mika promise, when the other girl looks like she’s going to cry, and Beth thinks of Cosima, of Alison, of Krystal.
She hopes they’ll be safer without her.