1000_cranes | (no subject)

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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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"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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