Fancy sat back on her heels as Charlie stood, her hands sliding down his back to rest in her lap. She knew what him pulling away from her meant. Knew the walls he was trying to build within himself. Knew how hard he was trying not to remember things. Because you do it too.
She stared deep into Charlie's eyes and tried to imagine it all in her mind. Squeezed them tightly shut for a moment as if she thought that seeing them clearly could take away some of it for him.
She opened them again and started to shake her head no, when he spoke of still having a job to do, but his fingertips on her chin stalled her sentiment. She couldn't remember him ever touching her before, no purposefully, not deliberately. She was surprised and slightly awed by the newness of it. She let him raise her face up without resistance.
"Charlie," she whispered, her eyes moist with the memories of her own pains. "do you say that for me? Or are you young and naive enough not to know what being haunted by something can do to you if you only swallow it down?"