1000_cranes | (no subject)

(no subject)

It isn't until later that she starts mulling it over. So what if she'd been sitting there looking like hell when she met Sam; why should it even matter? For a moment there, she forgot who she was. She forgot that she was Charlie Jones, that her little girl was playing on the floor and that her father, Cadi's father, was probably never coming back. Even though she still had wedding rings on, she'd consciously thought shit because there she was without make up when a handsome guy walked into her bar.

And realising that? It makes her feel like hell.

She ends up in the Hidden Hamlet, cross-legged on the grass with Cadi charging around, chasing Banon. Charlie does something that she hasn't done in a long, long time. She bends over her lap and she folds paper cranes.

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Sam spots Charlie's familiar head of hair long before Kate does, making a beeline for her.

"Hi Charlie!" he shrieks, little legs carrying him over as fast as he can, Kate not far behind. "Bird! You make bird!"

"I am, baby," she says, opening her arms for him and letting him throw himself into her lap. She smooths one hand over his hair, grateful, not for the first time, that Cadi's not jealous.

"I'll make one for you, if you like." She glances up at Kate. "Hey, Katie. I was comin' to see you, later."

Kate raises an eyebrow but just leans down to get Sam's attention. "Hey sweetie, you wanna go play with Cadi? I think she wants you to play with her."

Sam scrambles off Charlie pretty willingly and heads over, already jabbering away.

Kate settles herself down, eyeing the cranes. She's not sure if they're a good sign or a bad sign. "What's going on?"

"Oh, nothing," says Charlie, shaking her head, red hair spilling around her shoulders. "Nothing important. It's silly. It really is." She finishes the little crane that she's working on and then drops it on the pile, looking at her hands.

"How long after Jack did you...like...notice another guy?" she asks, cheeks burning, eyes fixed on her hands.

Oh.

Huh.

Kate blows out a sharp breath and settles her elbows on her knees. "Baze was really the first and only. So I'd say around seven or eight months after? That was the noticing. It took a lot longer before I was ready to really let myself want him. Who is it?"

"Nobody," says Charlie, shaking her head and then her head snaps up, dark eyes wide. "And I'm not going...I'm not doing anything about it, Katie, Jesus, I swear, but, like, in he walked and I noticed and then I felt like shit because, hell, it's only been three months. What does that make me?"

"It makes you human and it makes you lonely," Kate answers with a firm nod. "Being sad doesn't suddenly make you blind."

"But it's so soon, Katie," says Charlie, miserably. "Like, in he walks, in Sam walks, and for a moment, all I can think is that I look like shit, because I haven't brushed my hair and I've got my glasses on and..."

She sighs.

"I'm an idiot."

"Charlie, honestly, the longer you go on the less sharp the pain is and the less immediate the loss is, but you're never going to not feel guilty when you notice another guy. It's normal," he insists in a low voice.

She covers her face with hands and makes a miserable sound, muffled by her palms.

"I don't want to, Katie," she says. "I don't wan tto ever notice anybody but him."

"I know," she says softly, marveling that after years and another relationship, her heart still belongs to Jack.

"I felt the same way. I still sort of do. But it doesn't make it wrong or that you're a bad person or a bad wife. We're widows, really. That's what it feels like. All the rules are sort of tossed out the windows."

"I just feel like it hasn't been long enough," she says, wiping her nose on the back of one hand. "I just...He's a really sweet guy and he's so handsome, but he's not Ianto and he's never going to be you know?" She shakes her head. "And this is so, so stupid. Sam just works for me. It's not like it's even a possibility."

"If it doesn't feel long enough then go with that," she tries, not sure how to make this better. Every experience is so different. "But just know that no one will be Ianto. Any future anything has to be completely different or else it will just mess you up. But if you're not up for casual, I wouldn't go there just yet because I don't think you're ready for serious."

"I would really, really like to have sex," admits Charlie and then she buries her face in her hands again. "Oh, God, Katie - why does that make me feel like such a terrible person?"

The Hamlet always was a good place to raise a kid.

"Lookin' good, Cadi," he says as he wanders over, coat over his arm for dramatic effect, not because he's ever needed anything resembling a coat on the island.

"Hello, handsome," says Charlie, pushing a strand of red hair behind her ear as she sharpens a crease with her fingernail. "How're you doing? Done bein' a pillar of the community for another year?"

"I could probably just tape the introduction and get someone to press play," says Geoffrey. He won't, of course. It's the two times a year he's guarantted to get up on stage. "You seem...industrious, today."

"My daddy, my actual daddy, he always said that the Devil makes work for idle hands," she says, folding the paper without really having to look at it - she's made so many of these that she knows it by heart.

"Just thought I'd better keep busy, you know?"

"You've never seemed to have much trouble keeping busy," says Geoffrey, watching her work, one eye still on Cadi just out of habit. "Not that you're not doing lovely work and all, but what's up?"

Her jaw tightens for a moment. She doesn't really want to admit to it, but then, if she can't talk to him about it than who?

"You ever do somethin' and then a moment later catch yourself doin' it and realise what an asshole in makes you?"

"Constantly," says Geoffrey. "And yet it seldom stops me from doing it. But I find it hard to believe you know much about that kind of thing."

"Oh, Geoffrey," she says, half exasperated and half miserable, burying her face in her hands. "Lemme ask you - if Duck was suddenly gone, you think you'd ever notice anybody else again?"

There's something about just the idea of Duck being gone that makes Geoffrey freeze—he's suffered terrible losses before, but that would eclipse them all. But there is an answer to her question, even if it takes him a moment to get there.

"Eventually," he says. "Eventually I would. Forever is a long time."

"But how soon's too soon?" she asks, because she desperately wants there to be a simple 'yes or no' answer to this question. She wants it laid out to her in terms that she can understand.

"Like, how soon is too soon for me to care what I look like when a handsome guy walks in? How long is it going to be before that doesn't make me feel like an asshole?"

"There isn't a schedule," says Geoffrey. "I mean, if you got married to someone a couple weeks after he was gone, we might have a bit of a Hamlet situation. But that's not what we're talking about."

"Oh, God," says Charlie, miserably, burying her face in her hands. "Only you could make this about Shakespeare, Geoffrey." She sniffs. "And he works for me. Well, now he does. Jesus."

"I'm pretty sure the employer-employee power relationship doesn't even exist on the island," says Geoffrey, "so don't use that as a reason to feel bad about looking."

"This is all so stupid," she says, sniffing again and rubbing the back of her nose against her hand. "Ianto wouldn't even have cared if I looked, you know? Just looked, but he wouldn't have cared. Hell, he'd probably have looked too."

Geoffrey sighs softly, then takes hold of Charlie's shoulders and makes her look him in the eye. "Whatever you're feeling, that's what you're feeling," he says. "If you don't feel ready, then it's okay not to be ready. But if you do feel ready, there's no reason to feel guilty about it. Nobody's judging you, least of all me. No, least of all Ianto. And for the record, everything always comes back to Shakespeare."

The last part makes her laugh, just a little huff of breath but something. She lets her head drop again, leaning into Geoffrey's hands on her shoulders.

"I just...it's lonely, you know? Just me and Cadi is lonely and I know it shouldn't matter to me but it really does. I...I was really good at being alone but he broke that."

"Of course it's lonely," says Geoffrey. "He's not just another person, he was a piece of your life."

"I'm not made for this, Geoffrey," she says, voice quiet, little more than a whisper, because she's so, so ashamed to admit it. "I don't know how to do this. I can't. I can't."

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