/whelp its that time of the week again! Sorry no fic last week, very busy with school :-) anyway enjoy this one. Warnings for suicide of a main character. Character death.

I love twenty four hour laundromats. You can be there at any time of the day or night and no one will ever think that you don't belong there. Even if you're wearing a suit have shined shoes and styled your hair with enough care to last you for a million years. No one in the laundromat gives a shit about your life outside of these doors. No one in here cares about you at all. I've spent a lot of time here, over the years, when I needed to be away. It's out of the rain and cold, there's always something to distract yourself with, it's great. And best of all: No one at the laundromat is going to ask you how you feel about your best friends throwing himself to his death off the tallest building in Ballarat.

I look at the people here with me. A lady with a baby in a stroller. A man with a basket full of white shirts. A teenage boy with grease stains on his hands. I picked a very busy one on purpose. My owning a washing machine doesn't really matter, especially when I'm not here to wash. I wonder, what they see when they look at me: Do they see a sad man with a big nose studying his hands? Charlie used to tell me a lot about how to analyse your surroundings and the people in them, for example: The boy with the grease stains probably works a mechanical job. The lady with the baby is probably poor and the man with the shirts is divorced. Evidentally I still have a lot to work on. Whatever. It keeps my mind off the building sense in my stomach that I want to be sick.

I was at his funeral less then an hour ago. It was closed coffin: his face was too ruined to display to the mourners. Too bad for the people who already saw it. It's funny but even when he was dead, I think he was still beautiful. Still perfectly porcelain white, still charmingly freckled, hair not even out of place. I helped carry an impossibly light coffin to the deep dark ground, gave my speech about our friendship, said I'd miss him, the usual. I'd gotten in the car, and come here. There's a wake at the doctor's house, people eating and talking. There was a memorial service yesterday for those he wasn't family to. I saw Edward there and I almost took my hurt out on him. He looked the same as he always did: Impassive. I wouldn't put it past him to only have come because his mother said it was polite. Rose Anderson was at the funeral as well. At least she has the decency to look sad. Charlie always liked her, I think it's a combination of her being a redhead and being able to match him verbal sparring. I think he liked having a friend his own age.

I've been carrying that poison pen story around in my pocket. I haven't read it since it was first run, I have no desire to deal with that, I don't want to read such treatment of my friend. My best friend. It was the same one he had in his, when he did it. I don't even know what I'm meant to do. What I'm meant to say. How to comfort his confused mother and hear her tell me at the same time that Charlie won't go to God's kingdom because he chose to take his own life. I don't know what to pray for, now he's gone. When we went to church, I would pray that he would go back to how he was. I feel like a ship with no anchor, tossed out on cloudy seas. The lady with the pram takes her laundry out and drops some accidentally.

I helped her gather it up. She smiled at me, as I helped her. I paid for her dryer cycle, with change that as supposed to go in the Church collection on Sunday. Recently, Charlie had started insisting we go to Church and I'm not Catholic, I'm not really anything. I have trouble believing in anything that tells me that my love, the way that I love, is a sin. He didn't seem to. Or perhaps he did, and that was why he did so. It never stopped him before. Despite my personal views, they welcomed me well enough. Jean was excited to have someone to go to Church with, and I was happy to do what made Charlie happy. It seemed like, in those last few months, nothing made him happy outside of Church.

It never occurred to us until he'd done it, and Lucien looked me straight in the eye and told me that he believes Charlie had depression. I didn't know what that was, I had to look it up, and I think I understand it now. I'd never even really heard of it before. Depression, melancholy. Apparently the best treatment is to send them away. I wonder if that's why he never spoke up? Did he think we would send him off, away? Did he even know? Did he just walk, in a fog, wondering why the world was cloudy?

"God bless you." The woman with the baby said, as I went back to my seat. I wonder if God even gives a shit about those of us left here. I wonder why he would put those thoughts into Charlie's head. I wonder what Charlie confessed every week to Father Emmery.

The poison pen story burns my pockets. I want to take it out and read it again. Charlie's denotations remain, in black ink, his neat, tiny handwriting trying to make sense as to why someone would publish this about him. I don't know what to even say. If someone published something about me, then I know full well I would be in jail for murder. At least, now, with no Charlie to tell me no. I wonder what he could have done to inspire such malice.

A man with a bag containing training gear enters. I've been collecting my change these last few weeks to put in the collection basket. Charlie was working out how he could tithe the last time the collection basket passed our laps. He never used to be so obsessed with Church and what God thought of him. He told me once that as long as he was a good man, then he was sure that whatever God existed would accept him.

I offer the man money for his wash. He thanks me, and looks surprised. I sit again. I remember the faces of people when Charlie went to Church, I remember standing between them and him, glaring back. I remember asking one woman why she felt like she had the right to give him such looks and she told me he was unnatural, a sinner, and I asked her if she was God. She said no, why? I told her that God was the only one who could decide if Charlie was a sinner or not, and until then, anyone who treated him badly would deal with me. No one ever told him, and I wonder if they had: would he still be dead? I think of sitting with him at Lawson's, his face on my shoulder, his tired face peaceful in sleep. I thought of kissing those lips, but I never did. Now I never will.

I settled back in my seat, watching, waiting, not sure what to do now. I suppose I could go back to the wake. I don't really want to, however. I don't have any urge to surround myself with mourners. A house filled with the smells of casserole and sandwiches and the sticky sweet cakes all lined up. If I have to hear I'm so sorry, Bill, one more time then I may scream. If they were sorry then they wouldn't have treated him the way that they had. I fiddled with the article in my pocket. I don't read it.

I paid for the washing load of an old lady who kissed my cheek and told me I was a good boy. I wonder if Charlie has a grandmother with kind hands and warm eyes. I suppose he must have, at one point. I did. I wonder if she read the poison pen story and shunned him as well. For once, I'm glad most of my family is dead. My mother died in a car wreak when I was a boy, my father died of cancer of the lung when I was a young copper. We never got on, me and him.

Another black suit clad figure joins me at the bench. The Doctor is watching with his eagle eyes to the people who didn't know anything about us. He's always like this.

"You left the wake early."

"I don't like them."

"Does anyone?" I scoff and fold my arms over my chest. There's no point in being mad with the Doctor; he tried to save Charlie as much as everyone else did. Possibly harder. One of the few people who did. I still remember being called at six thirty at night to come over to dinner because he was worried about Charlie. I ate dinner across from him, while Charlie sat next to me, pushing his peas around listlessly, citing that he wasn't hungry.

"You gave a lovely speech." My speech was slightly humorous, and done in the way Charlie would have appreciated.

"Thanks. So did you." His speech had been sweet, talking about fond memories. It gave me a toothache just listening to it. Small talk is tiring. "I can't believe Anderson and Tyneman showed up at that memorial service." I'm still fuming.

"They didn't kill Charlie."
"They might as well have." He puts a hand on my shoulder. His wedding ring reflects the light.
"I know."

"I've been reading, about depression." I'm not sure why I felt compelled to tell him. He just looked at me, with those blue eyes. "The woman who's story I read said that she felt worthless, like she was surrounded by a fog. Do you...Do you think he felt like that?"
"The only person who knows the answer to that is him."

"I know." And I did. I stood to pay for the dryer cycle of a disheveled young man, just older then a child. He smiles and thanks me. His teeth are crooked and he has a sweet, rounded face.

Returning to my seat I know that I cannot escape the conversation forever, even if I may want to.

"What happened, that night?" Though we were both there, we never elected to talk about it. Me, out of fear, him out of sadness.

"The station got a call about a bloody jumper, and I went to go investigate." I shrugged, there was relatively little to say in that respect. They happened every so often and some poorly equipped officer would try to talk them down. . "I knew it was him from the moment I arrived. I reconized his posture There was no one around, it was so late. He must have known, must have planned it like that. I don't think anyone was meant to find him. I ran up there, as fast as I could, and when I got there, I noticed there was a note pinned to the door." I pause, go to help an older gentleman with his laundry and then return. "I stood there, like an idiot, while he crept closer and closer. I think I called his name. He turned, to look at me. I looked back. I asked him to come down, and I told him there were people who loved him, I did all the things we get taught to do. There was something in his eyes. I don't know what it was." I sat back. He looks at me, we both look at the same dryer as it rattles and shakes. "That was when you arrived. I don't know what it was, but when you called his name, he looked at me, smiled, and I sprinted forward just as his feet cleared the ledge. He was barefoot in the rain, I remember thinking that was odd. I saw him hit the ground. He didn't even look scared." Bill blinks the threatening tears away.

"Did he say anything?" He had, but Bill doesn't want much to recall it. He supposes he should. Now or never.

"He wanted me to tell you that he was sorry you were gonna see."

"Really? Did you try and talk him.."
"No! I just let my best friend jump to his death without trying to save hi-" The tears start in earnest. He dragged his hand over the back of his eyes.

"I asked him why, and he said it was just his time, I asked him to wait with me until you got there, because I thought you would be able to talk him down, and he shook his head. He said no, it has to be now. I begged, and I told him that I could protect him, that it would get better but not if he was dead. He said it was too late, and he hoped to see me in Heaven, but suspected he would be going to Hell. Then he was gone."

I stumble to pay for the washing of an older woman. She thanks me. I stumble back. The Doctor offers me his handkerchief. I dab at my eyes. I feel like a child who's father just saved him from bullies. The worst part is that it doesn't feel bad. I can see why Charlie liked this.

"What about you?" I asked.

"It was the fastest and slowest moment of my life. It felt like he was falling so slowly that I could run forward and catch him, but also like it was over in only a moment."

"He did the maths. It took him four seconds to reach the ground." I found his notebooks when I cleaned out his desk to make room for Danny Parks. He's come back, but after Charlie's quiet approachableness I find him intolerable. Which is unfair, given that his only crime is not being Charlie. But I can't help it. He doesn't understand who we're all griving for.

"He did the maths?" I nod, the distant nausea showing it's disgusting green face. I can't imagine how he must have felt, to calculate how long he would have before he died. I want to vomit. I want to cry. I want Charlie back.

"How do we move forward from here?"
"We honor him, we refuse to forget him, we keep going." He makes sense. After a moment, he got up and paid for a ladies washing. I think he finally understood why.