He misses his internal voice, sometimes. The one that analysed and offered advice. Without it, he feels as if he's flying blind. Things occur and they just wash over him, pleasant, unbothering. He fears he has become passive. He wonders if this is how most people think. Life in Ballarat goes on. Matthew is elected the new community leader. There is no punishment from the government, but a congratulations. Alice goes back to the hospital. Rose goes back to the registry office. He and Ned go back to the station where Penny is waiting for them.

Edward follows Matthew around like he had his mother, as still and silent as he ever was. Bill wonders if he even notices the change. He supposes he will never know. Not three days after coming into power, Matthew becomes like Susan Tyneman, and tells Bill to write the crime off as cold. He knows. He realises. He will live with the black marks on his soul. He has too. All of them do.

Weekly, Bill returns to Mycroft Avenue, with flowers, sometimes. Sometimes not. He goes to see Charlie. He sits by the grave at the back of the burnt out house, some of it has blown or washed away. It's still a stain on the landscape. Frank's garden is a mess of leaves, vines and untended plants. In other years, he might have been able to think about what plants were what and how he could fix them, but that little internal voice had seemingly died with Charlie.

Arriving at the stone, he tosses the dead flowers from last week aside, and replaced them with new ones. He thinks Charlie would have liked them, they're daisies. He's not sure why, but he thinks Charlie would have liked daises. Reaching into his breast pocket, he produced his only remaining photograph of him, the last trace of him. Charlie is beaming like he always, though there is a crease over his hand now, from being pushed out of sight too roughly. Serves him right, really. Bill wouldn't know, would he, how to handle something gentle, how to keep something wonderful and not ruin it. He's careful now, however. He smoothes the picture with his fingers and takes a moment to study his face. Every line, every crease. He curl of his hair, the curve of his jaw, all of it. And he feels blessed to have known him.

That afternoon, as he left the cemetery, he wondered, to himself, what was even left here for him. People he no longer connected with? A home he didn't love? A family he missed? Interestingly, when he returns to the car, he finds that he can't drive to the hospital, to see Alice. The police station may as well have been on the moon, and Lawson's office seemed like a life time ago. He throws one last glance at Charlie's grave, and smiles.

When he passes the sign for the Ballarat city limits, now graffitied and dirty, Bill leaves a piece of himself behind there, buried in the earth at Mycroft Avenue, but he has now, when he's gone, he'll never hurt anyone. Ever again.

…

"That's the whole story, then?" the man who used to call himself Bill Hobart nodded, and tugged the child in his lap incrementally closer. She sighs softly, and turned her face up to look at him. "Really?"

"Mhm."

"Wow." Pontaine wraps her arms around her knees, and turns sideways to put her head on his chest. "Will show me the picture again?" The man who used to call himself Bill Hobart reached into his breast pocket and produced his yellowed, faded, creased and well loved picture of Charlie Davis. She examines it, and then leans back on his chest. "He's lovely."
"I know." Pontaine, as she was, had been given to him by a woman who wanted him to bury her with the corpses, telling him she'd make it worth his while. The man who used to call himself Bill Hobart, being a business man, had taken the money, but not buried the child, unable to throw away life in these times.

Charlie told him once, if he ever had a daughter, he would name her Pontaine.

"Like foutain, in French. Fountaine. But with a P."
"Why?" He'd asked.

"Well, I misheard it the first time." He'd said, with a small smile. "And I liked what I misheard better." So when Bill found himself holding onto a babe, he did what he did best, and named her in Charlie's honour.

Pontaine was looking at him, with those big blue eyes. It would have been easy enough for her to actually be Charlie's daughter with that long black hair, curly, and pulled neatly into plaits, and those big blue eyes, wide and full of thought. He can't be certain but she might have his nose as well. His tiny, battered, internal voice reminds him that he's probably just projecting, she possibly doesn't look like Charlie at all. But he silences it quickly, he prefers it this way.

"It's cold." Pontaine complained, as they lay down on their simple bedroll for the night. The graves digger shack was old and the cold seeped in through the boarded walls and up through the dirt floor. But it kept the rain and the sun out so Bill wasn't going to complain.

"Cold is good. Means more bodies."

"More bodies means more holes." Bill nodded, and pulled yet another blanket over them.

"More holes means more money." Pontaine smiled at him,and took his hands into her own, examining the large burns carefully, as was her nightly ritual. Tanned from working many long, hot summers, Bill watches as she traces one small finger over each of his palms, her pale skin contrasting prettily with his impressively tanned one. In those last months, he'd been a lot more tan then Charlie, he's pretty sure Charlie wouldn't even recognise him now. New injuries on old injuries, new muscle, new tan. Pontaine has finished her nightly examination of the blisters on his hands,and lay down, resting her face against his chest. Bill watches her until she sleeps. He reaches into his breast pocket, and falls asleep with his fingers ghosting over Charlie's face.

…

He always dreams of Charlie Davis.