Thread: What Might Have Been (AndNich123 & Reydan)

He took mouthfuls of hot tea as he watched her struggle through her feelings. Charles hadn't perhaps thought how hard this room might be for her. He, of course, had suffered through their breakup in familiar surroundings. Embraced and fussed over and soothed by those that he loved. She? She had run, putting everything behind her - that meant a clean break, but it also meant she had been operating without a safety net. Unless...unless she had found something...or some one... else to fill that role. He tried to put that particular thought out of his head, but it hovered, in the background. Wanting to be answered. Biding its time for now. 'She hates you...but she'll get over it' he said, although to be honest he wasn't sure he meant it. Jenny had taken her leaving even harder than he had. In many ways theirs had been the closest relationship and the lack of trust - the sudden, lifechanging decision taken without including her best friend, had broken Jenny's heart. Nevermind how people had, over the years, tried to rationalise it to her - that Maddy couldn't have told her without putting her in the most awful position about whether to tell Charles. Jenny's heart was hard to her now. Maybe hard to everything that wasn't her family or her studies. He sighed, blowing the steam off the top of that cup of tea before glancing up at her suggestion. 'A walk?' he said, surprised, somewhat taken aback at the suggestion. But he could see the hurt in those eyes, the desperation for some sort of human contact. Some sort of forgiveness. 'Fine' he said, a soft, comforting, smile on his lips. They stood, leaving those empty mugs still warm from a pair of hands so used to intertwining but so long parted, and stepped out into the backyard. Clanking from the adjacent garage suggested Daniel was working Maddy's Mom's car up on the lift to slide under it and check the workings. Up above them, on the upper floor of the old house, a curtain swished. Jenny, possibly, checking on them. But no face appeared at the window to confirm or deny that... If they were hoping for relief, though, the outside warmth of the afternoon offered little of it. Every sight their feet took them too had memories. The swing in the backgarden, which they knew was a seat big enough for two. The bubbling brook that ran, from his house round the back of hers across town, connecting their homes. The swaying trees of the copse through which they had run as breathless children. Each step was hard for her, it seemed. Not only did Maddy seem to ache, as if from ages-old bruises, but there was distance between them. A foot or so, never any less. Something that had, before she left, never been a thing. He sighed. 'I forgive you Maddy' he said, smiling. Not sure if he meant it, but knowing it was what she needed to hear in that moment. He glanced at her, not sure how she would take it. She was a drowning person in desperate need of a lifebelt....but the old Maddy he knew had hated the very idea she was being pitied. 'Now talk. Forget that I've seen the news, or read the papers, or talked to other people...tell me what happened with that plane and why you're here now. Not the details, but the big picture.' They stopped, on the crest of the small hill maybe ten minutes walk from his house. Behind him, as he looked up at her on the crest, was the small town laid out below. 'I don't care about the crash, Maddy. I care about you...and what you need right now' he said, the wind whipping through his auburn hair.