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Becky got to the waiting room in the police station, like the agent on reception instructed her to, but the moment she was inside, she froze. There was someone else there, someone very familiar, who Becky recognized even though the woman was with her back to her.
Fuck.
Linda was on the phone, and she didn't seem to hear the door opening and closing.
"No Gerald, this is absurd! Who do they think I am, to make me wait like this? Yes, call my attorney!!! There must be some law against what they're doing! I'm a victim , Gerald! How hard can it be to catch a brat? What? No, they said I could wait home, but do you think I'm dumb, Gerald? I'll never see my purse again if I go home, I have to stay here bothering them until they do their job. Of course they're stalling, Gerald!"
Becky considered turning around and leaving the room before Linda saw her. She didn't have to subject herself to this, she could wait somewhere else. She reached behind her to open the door, but this time Linda heard the handle clicking and turned her face to her. Their eyes locked.
"Oh my god…" Linda breathed out, and Becky raised an eyebrow. Now that she's been seen, there was no escaping anymore, so she might as well face it. " Becky Barnes is here." she said on the phone, the disdain weighting her voice as she said her name. "No, I won't say hi to her for you, Gerald! You can't be nice to her, we hate her remember? Well, same difference!"
Becky rolled her eyes and went to sit down, trying to pretend she was ignoring her. It wasn't that easy, though, because she became the subject of Linda and Gerald's conversation.
"I don't know what she's doing here, Gerald. I doubt she was mugged too. Because, she's most likely on the criminal's side. I'm not being mean, Gerald, just saying the truth! Haven't you heard her husband was arrested?"
"Linda!" she was extremely uncomfortable, so she tried to call her attention, make her stop saying those things. But the blonde simply ignored her.
"A lot of petty crimes, from what I heard. He's a junky lowlife, yes. Not much of a surprise, really…" she kept on talking, as if Becky wasn't in the room at all, and it made the redhead's blood boil.
"LINDA!" she tried again, louder, and this time it had an effect.
"WHAT?" the short woman responded on the same tone, sounding annoyed.
"Can you stop gossiping about me? I'm right in front of you!" her face was flushed with a mix of anger and embarrassment, and Linda stared at her with an eyebrow arched.
"So what?" her tone was so obnoxious it could make someone think she actually didn't think it was a big deal.
"It's disrespectful!" how could Linda make her so angry with so little? The blonde let out a loud, high pitched laugh that made her even more furious.
"Did you hear this, Gerald? She wants to be respected !" and she bursted in laughter again, as if this was the funniest joke she's ever heard. "No, Gerald, she doesn't deserve it. And the man's in jail for a reason, right? It's not disrespect to call him a criminal." she made a small pause, listening to whatever Gerald said on the other side.
"Linda, stop it!" she was almost fuming with frustration, but the blonde kept ignoring her.
"How can you know she wasn't involved, huh? Might as well be, Gerald, don't be so naive…" that was it.
Becky wasn't taking that anymore. In an impulse, she stood up and took the phone from Linda's hand.
"Hey!" she stood up immediately, lunging in Becky's direction to take her phone back. The redhead used their height difference to her advantage and held the phone high, turning off the call.
"That's enough, Linda!"
"Give me my phone back right now or I'll walk over there and report this theft!" she was using her dramatic voice, but Becky knew she wasn't above doing that, so she just handed the phone back to Linda.
The blonde took it, giving her a murderous glare. Becky expected her to call Gerald again and resume her taunting, but she didn't. Instead, she just crossed her arms and kept staring her down. It was that look she made that always got Becky feeling self-conscientious and vulnerable, and she instinctively adjusted the coat she was wearing, closing it more before crossing her arms too.
There was a tense second of silence, their eyes locked on that wordless dispute, until Becky couldn't handle it anymore and broke it with the first thing that came to mind.
"What are you doing here, Linda?"
"I'm waiting, isn't this a waiting room?" it was almost like Linda couldn't help but be a sassy bitch, and the ginger rolled her eyes at that.
"Oh is it? I haven't realized!" she decided to be just as sarcastic, and judging by Linda's face, she didn't appreciate having her weapon used against her.
"Not that it's any of your business, but a boy stole my purse in the mall. I'm waiting for the cops to do their job and bring it back." she told, looking at her nails in an arrogant pose.
"You think they'll manage to retrieve it?" it didn't sound likely, but Linda scoffed as if it was a stupid question.
"They better! I'm not wasting my time here for nothing!" Becky couldn't help but roll her eyes again.
"You're so entitled…" she said with a small sigh.
"Shut up. What are you doing here anyway?"
"I…" Becky hesitated, looking at her feet for a second. For some reason, she felt ashamed to tell Linda that. "I came… to pay Stanley's bail." it came out as a whisper, but they were still relatively close in that kind of stand-off, so Linda heard it clearly.
"Wha-- wh-- WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" Linda actually took a step back, her voice coming out so high-pitched it almost hurt.
"I have to…" she hesitantly raised her head again to look the woman in the eyes. There was confusion and anger in her eyes, and something that looked like disappointment.
"No, you don't." her voice came out as low as Becky's, and they stared at each other for a heavy second.
"He's innocent." she said it with much more conviction than she actually felt.
"He's anything but innocent, Becky!" Linda was so frustrated she was even letting it show.
"I don't know, something about the way he was arrested… it feels wrong, I think it was a set up." this time, it was Linda who looked away, and the redhead frowned at that.
"Even if it was, you know he's guilty. And he's guilty of other things too, he deserves to rot in jail!" Linda's voice was small, and Becky didn't remember seeing her so… not hostile towards her, not since high school.
"He's not going to rot, Linda, he'd be out in five years or so, and then it would just be worse." her tone was so hopeless it made Linda flinch. It didn't sound like the optimistic Becky Barnes she always knew.
"It doesn't have to be worse! You could take this as a chance to press charges against him and get a protective order!"
Linda couldn't understand why Becky hasn't done it already. She's given her Gary's card almost a year ago, and even though she knew Becky wouldn't act on it immediately, she did expect her to do something . But no, she did nothing.
"This isn't about me, Linda!" that made the shorter woman frown.
"What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it's about you!"
"It's not! Because he'll be just out hurting other people instead!" Becky was in the verge of tears, and it was breaking something inside the blonde's chest. Linda just wanted to shake her to make her understand she didn't have to go through that.
"Fuck the others, Becky!" why couldn't that stubborn ginger understand that only she mattered to Linda?
"No! I'm not a heartless bitch like you! I actually care about other people, and if I can prevent him from hurting them, it's what I'll do!" shit, Becky was willing to ruin herself for her stupid sense of justice, and Linda couldn't bear to see that. It hurt her, and she felt powerless to help, and Linda hated that feeling.
"Oh yeah, you're a real fucking saint, aren't you? Keep it up and you'll die like a martyr!" Becky took a step back at those words, but Linda kept on talking, thinking it would make the redhead see her mistakes. "Except nobody cares about your so called sacrifice, and no one will ever thank you!"
"I don't do it to be thanked!" Becky was getting defensive, and it just made Linda angrier.
"Because you're pathetic! You're pathetic enough to even believe your own bullshit!" she stepped closer, gaining ground.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know what it means: you're lying! You don't stay with him to protect other people! You're a martyr to no one, except your own fucked up sense of guilt!" the look on Becky's face was enough to let her know her words hit on some truth.
"Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about!" she sounded almost desperate, but Linda wouldn't back down at this point.
"Don't I? I know how your guilt works, Becky. Ever since you nursed him back in high school, you think you owe him something, and then your precious Tom abandoned you and you let your loneliness trap you into this hell."
"Stop it!" her voice broke, as tears welled up in her blueish green eyes.
"No! Remember when you came into my house, asking for my help? Here's your fucking help! You need to hear this, Becky! You let him beat you, you let him threaten you and ruin your life, and why? I fucking hate you, but even I don't think you deserve this! Why do you bear this?"
"Because of you!" Becky snapped, not thinking straight, and it startled Linda.
"What?" that was literally the last thing the blonde was expecting to hear.
"Yeah, it's your fault that he's like this! He had a head trauma, when you hit him. Do you know what those do? It messes with the brain, that's why he became violent, that's why he dropped out of college, why he can't keep a job, why he--"
"Don't you dare to put this on me! He might very well be deranged before, and even if it is my fault, why are you paying for it? I never asked you to!"
"Because… because…" her tears kept rolling down, and Linda just wanted to take those away, but she didn't know how. She was hurt, too, and she wouldn't hold from speaking her mind.
"Because you don't think it's my fault, you think it's yours ! You feel guilty for everything that's gone wrong in his life, and think you deserve to suffer for it, don't you?" Becky didn't even answer, she just sat down and buried her face on her palms, trying to stop crying. Linda had to blink a few times to prevent herself from crying too, And her voice came out smaller and tamer when she kept talking. "And it wasn't your fault, but it might as well be as long as you think it is. As long as you keep feeding the monster, you'll just keep suffering..."
"Go away, Linda." Becky's voice was muffled by her hands, and she took them out of her face to clean her tears. "You've hurt me already, can't you call it a day?"
"I-- you think I'm saying this to hurt you?"
"Why else?" it wasn't that weird that Becky would think that, Linda knew she was mean to her most of the time, but in that moment she just wanted to help her get away from that bastard, to make her see she didn't need to suffer so much, and maybe it was time she told her why.
"For the same reason I set up his arrest! Because I--"
"YOU DID WHAT?" the redhead almost jumped, standing up to face Linda, and her eyes were full of anger again.
Linda didn't get why Becky wouldn't leave that bastard, but she hoped that maybe, if the he got arrested, if she could see him paying for some of his crimes, if she could be away from him for a while, maybe Becky could step up… instead, she was there to bail him out? It didn't sit well with Linda.
"Yeah, you're welcome." she thought she deserved at least some recognition, but Becky wasn't exactly thankful.
"Is this your idea of a favor? If it is, I don't need them!" She was trying to help, and Becky got angry at her?
"You're such an idiot--"
"Shut up! You don't have the right to do this, Linda! Any of this! To open my wounds and expose them like this? To offend me? To interfere with my life and send it all to shit like this? You said I don't deserve what Stanley does to me? But it's you and what you do that I don't deserve!" she was almost shouting by that point.
The tears still ran down her face, but her eyes were sparkling with an anger Linda never saw, not even in their most heated fights. The blonde opened and closed her mouth twice before finding a spiteful enough answer.
"It's not my fault that you're too weak to--" she didn't even get to finish it, Becky's hand met her face with a slap that echoed in the room.
Linda just froze, her own hand going up to touch the tingling spot on her cheek, too shocked to react.
"Get away from my life." despite saying that, it was Becky who left the room, in a storm, leaving Linda alone there, still touching her cheek and looking at nothing.
Linda barely saw when a police officer called her and handed back her purse. She barely heard when they told her how they retrieved it and how they would put the boy who took it on a counseling or something.
He was a ten year old brat called Ethan, or Nathan, she couldn't bring herself to care. She didn't even found it in her to demand the mall security to not let the boy inside it again, but by that point Gary had already arrived and he used her distressed state to play the "anxiety disorder" card and make all those demands for her.
Gerald came to pick her up, and he immediately noticed there was something wrong.
"What happened?" he asked, as Everest struggled with his security belts on the backseat.
"Mommy!" the baby whined, and Linda took him out of his car seat and brought him to her lap.
"Becky Barnes hit me…" she whispered, still feeling a little numb after it all.
"What? Are you ok? You wanna go to the hospital?"
"It was just a bitch slap, Gerald." she sounded tired, as her baby played with her necklace.
"What did you say to her this time?" she looked at him, surprised.
Gerald, the one person who was fool enough to support her even in her meanest sides, even he was assuming she was in the wrong with this?
The weird thing was, getting Stanley arrested, trying to help Becky see she needed to leave him, it was one of the few things Linda has done feeling like she was doing right. Truly right , not just right by her, but by someone else. But it backfired, and she just made herself and Becky more hurt in the process.
It was always Becky, every time Linda tried to be good, it was for her. And every time it failed, and she got hurt. For her, always for her. She should just give up, this trying to be better thing, because over and over it ended badly.
Maybe she just wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. Because, surely, she didn't do any good at all with this. Not for her, not for Becky. And maybe she really should just live her alone as she's asked, maybe that would be better for everyone.
But Linda couldn't even make any promises that she would be able to do it. Wouldn't she do all this again if she thought Becky needed? Wouldn't she burn down the world to save her if she'd ask? Wouldn't she put up a show to get her attention the next time they'd see each other? Just to spite her and get even just a minute of those ocean-like eyes on her? Could she ever really give Becky some peace?