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The movement had brought him close now, enough to touch. It bordered on painful, keeping herself in check against him. "I didn't think you'd want me," she whispered, afraid that speaking louder would break whatever metaphorical spell weaved around them.

Why had she come, though? In Penelope's mind, she thought to say good-bye. To give Charles the say she'd never allowed him and promise a final exodus. Now, though she dared not think it to herself in any certain terms, hope was newly awakened and vicious with it. When Charles had said to her he thought he might start to love her, she knew that's where the core of her fear lay. What he felt for her, yes, because she could (and had) hurt him, but even more, the depths of her feelings for him. How to explain the inexplicable way he brought back noise and sensation and light into her colourless existence? That he reminded her her heart still beat and blood still pumped and lungs still respired. That even though it hurt and tore and stung, she was still living even when those she loved most had left, and though it was a struggle, she could do it again. Penelope believed one day she would have learned this, that her bleak life could not have been sustained forever, and at another time, perhaps by another person, she'd have seen. But however incidentally, it was Charles who had shown her, and for that, she was glad.

She felt the lack of hat keenly now, wishing to shield the naked emotion playing across her face. Could she touch him now? It felt like she played the instigator, so was it selfish if it were once more she who breached this abhorrent vacuum between them? Unclasping her hands from behind her back, one reached forward to this handsome man, to rest against his chest, and stopped, just a hairsbreadth away as hesitation overcame her. This was all frightening and enticing, and until a moment ago, she'd thought hopeless. And even now, it was such a small thing, because they were still the same two people to each other as they had been in September. If he knew about her circumstances, it wasn't by her doing. For all she knew of his life, Charles might be seeing someone. Though she was sure everything had, still in a way nothing was changed.

"I've made such a dreadful mess of everything, haven't I?" Penelope murmured half to herself, drawing her hand back a fraction. A time-out was what she wanted, a moment where nothing counted.