Re: [Outside AyB: Mari, Dinah, Beckett]
Of course Dinah was sorry. In one way or another Dinah was always sorry for something. Weren't they both that way? Full of regrets and doubts and apologies and lamentations. Life for them had been so dismal and grey for so long that it was a struggle to see things any other way. It was a lot to take in. Overwhelming, really. They were only a couple of days into their time here and already Beckett feared he was never going to find his footing.
But more than that, more than anything else that might have plagued his mind and kept him awake at night, he was afraid of something happening to Dinah. Not just afraid, but terrified. If something happened to her because he had let his guard down or turned his head for just a moment, he would never forgive himself. It would be the last sin on an already towering stack and the whole thing would topple, the weight of it crushing him completely as it fell.
He turned his eyes from his sister to the woman, actually seeing her properly for the first time. It was only as he met that incredibly dark gaze of hers that Beckett realised how warm he was. Not dangerously so, not yet, but it had gotten close in those moments when panic had threatened to take hold. In awkward silence the time for him to respond to Marisol's comment about being responsible for Dinah's presence in the story passed, slipping through his grasp, and then the woman was making what sounded a lot like an offer that was definitely too good to be true.
"We don't have any money," he said. He had meant to say enough, not any, in an attempt to disguise just how desperate their situation was getting but the words had just slipped out of him, that awkwardness from that stretching silence twisting into an anxiety that told him he had to say something. Too much silence, especially when being spoken to directly, was not good. Countless strikes to the face had ensured he learned that lesson, and well. "Sorry," he said to the woman in addition, but also to Dinah, because he had seen the look on her face when he had come through the door and recognised it for what it was. She liked the necklace, a lot, and truth be told it would probably suit her, but it was never good for her to get her hopes up too high.
Besides, when had they ever been offered something for nothing? Everything had a price. Everything.