Derek! :[
Veronica hadn't had a chance to grab onto and console Bess after she'd broken the news about Fabian. The woman had run out of the restaurant in her panic, disapparated and---she didn't know how she'd gotten here, or inside, but she had and she'd spent the night and following day curled up in the old bed they---she and Fabian, used to share. The house she and Fabian lived in once upon a time had been under renovation since April. Neither of them had been able to sign the papers to sell the place, because what if...what if, one day, they could come back here and...The walls that used to reverberate laughter were now silent and dark.

She was a shitty person. Out of the few thoughts that were going through Bess' mind in the past two days (two days? Two days already?), that was the loudest. She was the most terrible person she knew, she was the most selfish. How could she have given Fabian such a rough time? Why was she so goddamn needy? Other people went through worse, and...and she tried to tell herself, that whenever Fabian gave her the time of day, she accepted it and loved him for it, so it wasn't....she should have appreciated him more. What else was there to say? She was the girl who wasn't his girlfriend when he died.

When he died.

Bess sat on the porch swing Fabian had taken a week to install, looking like a child in an old jersey of Fabian's that had been left behind. Every other thought brought tears to her eyes, and Bess let the wind push her back and forth, exerting no energy of her own.