A/N: ANOTHER chapter from me already? Anyone would think I was unemployed... *LOL*

Again - reminder - some rated M content, just saying. ;). I just hope y'all approve...?

LOVE HUGS,

Stars Walk Backward

P.S. Charles' poetry is my own... so please be kind!

"Met you in a bar;
all eyes on me, your illusionist.

All eyes on us,
I make all your gray days clear

And wear you like a necklace.
I'm so chill, but you make me jealous!
...But I got your heart
Skippin', skip-skippin' when I'm gone...

And all the pieces fall
Right into place
Getting caught up in a moment
Lipstick on your face

So it goes…

I'm yours to keep
And I'm yours to lose...
You know I'm not a bad girl, but I
Do bad things with you

So it goes…

Come here, dressed in black now,
So it goes...
Scratches down your back now...
So it goes...

You did a number on me... But, honestly, baby, who's counting?"

–– "So it Goes..." – t.s

XXV

Late 2014

Looking back, she barely remembered the taxi ride home, just the feverish intensity with which he had looked at her, tickling her skin with his fingers even when she slapped his hand away because the taxi driver was right there. They made it to the Victory Services, in barely any time at all, which was somewhere that, until that day, Molly had never known existed. Stepping into the lift, she could recall she clearly the weight of the weeks they had been apart in the look that passed between them. Suffice to say, the moment the lift doors had shut, Charles had her against the wall, fire in his eyes and an urgency in his hands.

"There's CCTV," she had gasped beneath his punishing kiss, revelling in the near-painful sensation of the cool mirrored wall as his hips pinned her to it.

"I don't bloody care," came his response, practically a grunt as he lips remained just as insistent, dropping his face into the curve of her neck to nip at the expanse of skin exposed.

Less than two minutes later, they were down the corridor and he was fumbling for his keycard in his wallet. Molly had teased him, peeping down the empty corridors before slipping her hands over him, grabbing greedily at his jean clad behind. He made a minuscule sound of approval before all but falling through the door in haste to pull her with him. The moment he had shut it behind her, he had her against it, breathing a sigh of relief that would not have sounded out of place coming from a well and truly starving man… or Dave after attempting two days of Dry January.

"Thank fuck," he groaned, allowing his hands to roam with the reckless abandon over the back of her leather-clad thighs, up and over the curve of her bottom where he took handfuls, pulling her right up against him as he captured her mouth again, unforgiving. She could still remember how her heartbeat roared in her ears as the chemistry between them crackled, the only sound their rasped breathing in the carpeted, well furnished room. "I bloody missed you," he breathed, pulling back just enough to sink his lips into the curve of her neck again, pushing his teeth into the sensitive skin enough to leave a mark. "Night after night, I had to sit there and listen to that lot of cockwombles talking about you and wondering how you are through the fucking tent canvas until all I could do was think about you," he flexed his hips hard against her to emphasise his point, "about this, aching for you." She heaved out a moan at his confession, breathless and a little dazzled, the scratch of his stubble rubbed deliciously against her throat, followed closely by the nipping of his teeth. "It's like I'm fifteen all over again."

She had tried desperately to get her bearings, everything moving much faster than she was used to. Until that point, almost the entirety of her sexual encounters with Charles had been so tender that everything moved at a rather slow pace, in comparison to her previous 'quickie-behind-the-Indian-takeaway', 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' experiences. She had teased him about it at first, but secretly she had always adored how gentle and caring he was with her, only ever losing his bearings completely as he raced towards his finish.

Perhaps that was why the particular evening that their relationship stopped being a secret stood out so in her memory; it was the first time Charles had shown the part of him that, no doubt silently, screamed at him to be feral, to throw caution into the wind and just be. The same part of him that she had caught only a glimpse of in Afghanistan, the day they mistook thunder for the end and everything changed. To a man like him, a man who lived and breathed rank and regulation and status, losing control, she learned, was the ultimate act of vulnerability, so she treasured that he allowed her to witness it.

She relinquished herself over to him as they moved from against the door to against one wall, then another, letting him kiss her until her lips burned and tingled with the scratch of his stubble and her breath came like she had run an entire 10k, but by that time her hands were in his hair and gripping his shirt for dear life.

"Fuckin' hell, Bossman," she had muttered, dazed as he finally allowed her away from the wall, pulling her into the centre of the room to stand at the foot of the bed.

"I've told you not to call me that during sex, Molly," he scolded without malice. "Last thing I need is to start getting aroused by Two Section!"

She giggled, personally thinking that sounded like an excellent predicament. She went to answer back, but by now he knew her well enough to know it was coming. Suddenly he was on his knees, hands smoothing over the trousers as he admired her in them, her face turning hot.

"It's rude to stare, ain't it?"

She was never sure why she said it, not at the time or thinking back, but he had simply grinned at her wickedly, his eyes silently challenging her to do anything about it. He had practically torn open the fly before tugged the material over her thighs, pressing his lips to her naval in a tantalising trail that followed where the trousers had just been, lower and lower…

Thinking back on it now, years later, she still got hot all over, her knees still twitching with the memory of how quickly they trembled as he merely breathed against her through her comfy cotton underwear. She had felt self conscious with him on his knees, practically with a face full of her lady parts, even after six months, and tried her best to pull him up, but the more she pulled the harder he pushed, until finally her underwear had been pushed to the side altogether and she couldn't stay standing without clinging to the back of his head.

"I'm in my comfy granny pants," she had tried to wheeze, bashfully trying to hide them from him as she lay on the bed, shaking with exertion. "I had no idea I'd be seeing you until you sent that text an' I was already bloody dressed."

"Oh, stop it," he had shushed hotly, stripping himself of his clothes as she recovered – or attempted to. "The first six months I knew you, you were in greens for God's sake. Like I give a shit about your knickers."

"Knickers?" She had never heard a grown man use that word so seriously. "Did you just bloody say knickers?"

The conversation had dropped immediately when she realised he was naked; the dim, somewhat substandard hotel lighting doing nothing to diminish how devastatingly handsome he was. Lying in the middle of the bed, she had let him crawl back over to her, his eyes the molten chocolate, whiskey colour that, by then, had long followed her even into her dreams.

As the chemistry became like tangible static between them again, they both lose their breath, lips long swollen and hands as restless and greedy as the very first day. All too soon, she was desperately needy for him and, for once, he didn't play games with her.

"Please, Charles," she muttered impatiently, kneeling opposite him in the mattress as he had her nipple in his mouth. She had reached between them to tease him, thrilled by the way his breath hissed through his teeth. "Please. Now." He caught her gaze as he captured her lower lip between his. Without another word, he had pushed her onto her front on the mattress, her hips ending up practically in the air with the sudden shock of it. She gasped out a laugh of surprise, grinning against the slightly rough hotel bed cover. He knew by six months in that she preferred sex from behind, as crude as it was to admit, but most often she would willingly forgo the position that was most easy for her to get off on, instead in favour of those Charles preferred that allowed for eye contact – romantic bloody bugger. (Perhaps, if one was analytical and bookish about it, one might say that it was all an indication of her detached childhood, her rather tenuous relationship with her father, and therefore her distrust and emotional disconnect from alpha males... Molly herself didn't allow herself to put much thought to it).

As it was, all she really knew was that it felt so good.

She made an inhuman noise as he pushed into her, harmonising with Charles as he groaned out simultaneously with her keening sigh, swearing over and over. She felt such an intense sensation, something resembling relief. She hadn't been able to see him, but she had felt him everywhere. Even having only known her, the her not on tour that is, for six months, Charles already knew how to work her body better than she did, hence how he knew just which position would drive her out of her mind. That particular evening though, he seemed to be striving, reaching, with something even more guttural than anything that had come before; the sound of his hips slamming against her behind as she attempted to stay upright on all fours, coupled with the strained, whispered groans he made: all of it felt a catalyst for new, unchartered waters.

The pleasure that spiked through her rendered her practically blind eventually, as his stamina was much better than hers since she had had much more than his one glass of wine in alcohol consumption. She remembered feeling as though her entire body was ringing with it, pulsing, singing for relief but also begging for it to never come. Her face felt numb with the friction from the bed cover, she remembered, as he had suddenly slowed. She had practically cried out like a forlorn child with the loss of the seemingly endless sensation, only for Charles' strong hands to lift her arms, limp with exertion, and ease her back against his chest until she was sitting in his lap. He never once let himself slip from her warmth.

"Oh, Molly, fuck," he whispered. Somehow, he always made her name feel almost biblical. There was a sheen of sweat on them both, the kind that told of a steady, ever-building intensity. She felt his lips against her head, having been sucking at her neck, pressing kisses above her ear and towards her temple, so she moved her head to look at him over her shoulder as her hips rolled, instinctively and sloppily in his lap, to meet his with urgency. Eye to eye, he held her to him so tightly and Molly could remember, even now, the expression he wore, both one that told her he was with her, nowhere but in that one moment. His hips had jerked forward suddenly, aggressively, and the pressure building in her almost burst.

"Charlie," she whispered in warning, without thought, feeling a slither of apprehension for the tsunami that was coming. It was a strangled breath of a moan, her body physically shaking, as she struggled to keep herself balanced on the metaphorical knife edge she could feel she was walking.

Beneath her, Charles didn't stall at her slip up, but suddenly his hand was, gently, at her throat, holding her back to his chest as he pushed into her as deep as he could. Had she been conscious or aware of herself, she would have been embarrassed and amused by her use of Elvis' nickname for him, but as it was, it slipped from her without thought and with an ease she hadn't anticipated. His long, slender fingers, capable of wielding deadly weapons and straining in fury, cupped her throat tenderly, the expanse from his pointer finger to the end of his outstretched thumb considerably impressive all the way from beneath one point of the underside of her jawbone to the other. She threw her head backward against his shoulder, his firm hold over her voicebox, forcing her to arch her spine for more delicious friction.

She knew even at that time that she shouldn't, long before being raped and having to face the reality of sex as an act of possessiveness head on, but she had thrived on the idea that he held her in a position where she was at her most vulnerable, before. Until recent events, she had been the kind of woman, the kind of lover, who was secretly delighted when Charles let himself become carnal and possessive. Perhaps it was down to a complete lack of understanding or appreciation for anything subtle, but she had felt she needed it as it showed her, under no uncertain terms, just how much he wanted her.

On this first occasion, she could still remember the way her windpipe had been under his hold, squeezing fractionally just to give the illusion of danger for the sake of thrilling her and, most likely, boosting his own bravado. That being said, what was key was that, despite his strength, she hadn't been afraid to let him do so. It had turned her on, she realised now, all those times, to give him the power – partly because it was all an illusion, a game in which she could hand over all responsibility for a while. In reality, of course they were equals, of course he would never once physically harm her, but being able to watch him give in to the side of himself she never normally got to see, the side of him that drove him to live out of bergen for all those years and fire live rounds without a second thought, was something she had always treasured.

Giving her entire body and mind over to him had been all too easy. Deep down, she was ashamed to admit now, all she had ever wanted was someone to look after her, take all responsibility she had grown up carrying around, the feeling that was she always going to be a burden, away from her.

His rasping breath was against her cheek as he watched her from the side of his vision. It had taken her a long moment to process he was whispering to her. "Say it again," he'd said, the request practically a plea as he groaned through an acute spike in pleasure. She forced her eyes open and blinked up at the white ceiling, trying her best through her heaving for breath to make sense of what he was asking. It was only as she inched her head slightly around towards his that she put two and two together, a lazy smile stretching across her face.

"Wha'? 'Charlie'?" She did her best and most seductive post supermarket advert voice and he immediately rewarded her with the surge of his hips, sudden and powerful, so hard against her that he hit the the spot that made her vision dance with dark stars. She chuckled darkly in gratitude and clenched around him.

"Christ alive!" he laughed breathlessly, losing the alpha male in his persona momentarily as he littered the side of her face with kisses, still holding her still with his strong hand at her throat. "Just when I think there is nothing else you do to me fall more in love with you… You've even made heaven out of that bloody nickname."

The loving words had washed over her like a hot flush, rising a blush of pride and bashfulness on her her already rosy skin. She gave up trying to keep hold of any sense of coherent thought, mumbling a string of curses as he sped up again, raising from sitting back on his haunches just enough to move himself into her with increasing speed and abandon.

That very thought was enough and, just like that, she began falling apart. His hips were, at that point, so insistent that it was almost brutal.

"I've told you," she wheezed, trying to keep herself together enough to form a reply. "I…don't…do…perfect––fuck. It's too much—," she panicked a little, the sheer force of the incoming pleasure daunting in its intensity. He pressed her down into the bed, rutting against her so desperately he almost lost any sense of rhythm. His movements until that point, to an outsider, would have most likely looked insensitive and detached, but she could feel the weight of his eyes on her the entire time, attentive as ever in his observations.

"Yes, you do," he whispered assuringly into her hair. His hand reached for hers where it gripped the bedsheets in a painful, cramped white knuckle grip and slipped his fingers through hers, anchoring them together. It was a subtle reminder of the Charles she had come to know by then; the gentle, kind caregiver with conversational whisky eyes who was like something from an Austen novel – he was always there. "God, seeing you out tonight and actually being able to hold you – it was everything."

"Ditto – oh bleeding' Nora – ditto! Charlie..." she whimpered, barely aware of her own voice as she was overwhelmed by an intense surge of suffocating affection for him and a need to see his face.

"I'm here," he whispered, kissing her anywhere he could reach. His hands were back to being tender from then on, in direct juxtaposition to his punishing rhythm, reaching around her to press against the bundle of nerves between her thighs while other squeezed her fingers and caressed her knuckles. "Come on," he urged, catching her lip. "Come for me," he whispered sinfully, the memory of which was long imprinted indelibly on her soul.

The pleasure immediately bubbled to the surface under his manipulations, so hot it felt almost like her nerves were burning, forcing her eyes to close as tears streamed from the corners and she stopped breathing all together. When her body did relax momentarily just enough for her to gasp for oxygen, before spasming again, she wailed his name into the sheets as he pinned her under his weight, her orgasm seeming to trigger his frenzied movements that brought his own end. She could still remember how her body ached, arching and straining despite the weight of him – the pleasure of feeling him losing control inside had sent her in a spiral that went on and on and on.

He didn't move his weight entirely from her for a long time as they they both lay, simply trying to catch their breath. She turned her face enough to watch him as he settled beside her, his eyelids drooping as he suddenly laughed to himself.

"What?" She had giggled back, the exchange triggering a distant memory of the two of them sharing her Coco Pops.

"Elvis isn't going to believe that I've let someone new call me Charlie."

There was something about the timber of his voice after sex, all low and intimate like he was most private of confessions, that always made her feel so incredibly lucky. It was one of the things, looking back now she was so afraid, she missed the most.

He had slipped from her body so that he could move to see her fully, taking her face into his hands and becoming a complete soft bugger again and she hadn't been able to help but make a soft sound of disquiet, sorry to feel to be reminded of how physically void she felt when he was no longer inside her.

"He'll be askin' you what I did to win ya' round," she smirked, smoothing a confident hand over his soft chest hair and up into the curls at the base of his skull. Charles had grinned wickedly as he looked over her body, appreciating her naked body despite how sweaty and unkempt she was, with eyes that were kind and warm and made her squirm. "All me' cockney charm and magnetism."

"Oh, of course, Dawes," he agreed in his best showman voice, but she could see by the smirk he wore he was thinking thoughts too filthy for a gentleman.

"Though – I s'pose – the odd blowjob don't exactly go amiss either, innit?"

The laughter exploded from him, she remembered, and he fell completely against her with the force of it and shook his head at her as he attempted to look disapproving at her brash humour. Molly remembered grinning like a child with the glee of making him laugh like that.

Present – December 2016

Years later and with so many new demons between them, nights like that one felt so far away, despite the fact her love for Charles had only grown.

She was still reliving the memories and looking into nothing when Charles finally came to bed. She heard Elvis hug him goodbye before he climbed the stairs with his usual slightly favouring of one leg over the other. She lay in bed, lights off, and just listened to him as he attempted to move around the room as quietly as possible, thinking her to be asleep. He moved into their bathroom to brush his teeth and she smiled to herself, knowing he would rediscover the post-it note she had left him on the mirror the morning before last to remind him to shave – (despite the fact he was a grown man and didn't really need reminding). He chuckled to himself as he turned off the light, now a grainy shadow in her vision. She was somewhat disappointed that he chose to strip off his clothes in complete in complete darkness, considering the carnal evening she had been unable to stop reminiscing about for the last hour. As much as she might now have a fear of physical intimacy, it didn't mean she couldn't appreciate what a mighty fine specimen he was.

As he slipped into bed, his toes icy, she gave up feigning sleep and turned round to meet him, her arms already open. She was wearing layers of pyjamas, the cold December air having chilled her to the bone after her drink or two with Brains.

She had missed the Scouse tosser a great deal and had struggled not to lose grip on her decorum at the very sight of his lopsided smile and wide open arms. One drink in and she had lost it in the end, after Brains asked the question she knew he would. He was far too astute for his own good, she thought, but it was, of course, what earned him his nickname.

"Jackie wouldn't tell me what happened but I could tell by the look she gave." Molly smirked, staring into her drink, having suspected long enough of a rather unlikely friendship having brewed between her matron-of-honour and her old friend. "I'm worried, Molls. Round barracks, they're sayin'––."

"They're sayin' wha'?" Molly interrupted hotly, irked by the idea that the regiment was gossiping about her despite the fact she knew they would.

"Tha' your CO being investigated and you being on compassionate leave isn't a coincidence." He was pushy, Brains, he always had been, but this was the first time it had irked her enough for her to have to actually bite her tongue. "But it is, right?"

He could hear the familiar timbre of denial in his voice, the soft hopefulness that she now realised was common in people when they didn't want to believe that the worst could, and did, happen. She tried to make a joke, but her voice was strangled and quiet, so she took a gulp of her drink. "I wish," she whispered.

"What – it isn't?" Brains waited patiently, watching her closely, until she gave in.

"He jumped me," she practically whispered, her eyes blurred with emotion. Immediately, ever the tactile friend, Brains had a soft hand on her shoulder.

"What?" he gasped, sounding wounded himself. When she dared to glance at him, he had gulped down the remainder of his one drink, looking shellshocked.

"Yeah," she whispered. Her eyes burned, sore from previous crying.

He lay back against the booth and stilled for a long moment, his round eyes round and alert. "How could––? Why would anyone––?" She was shaking her head rather violently, cutting him off, because honestly, she had not the faintest idea. "I wish y'told me, Moll. I'm a trained sniper – I could take 'em down easy."

The words were said with mirth, but not quite to the level that either of them were willing to admit.

"Join the queue, mate," Molly snorted, though the humour disintegrated soon after as she considered the reality of her statement. "I've never seen Charles like he was when I told him."

Brains' eyebrows rose right up his hairline. "Oh, shit – I bet The Boss lost it."

Molly's forced smile wobbled, not wanting to say too much, because he was still his superior, after all. "You can't tell the lads," she whispered, suddenly aware of the fact she had said that more than once now. "Please, Brains, I can't face––."

"––No worries, Moll!" He had his hand around her suddenly, pulling her to him the way Smurf once had when she had cried. "Those loud-mouth buggers are the last thing you need." He suddenly had her in a tight hug; the first true contact with a male that wasn't Charles she had had since what happened. She was relieved, so very relieved, to find that it didn't fill her with panic the way she expected.

Now, as she lay in bed, she felt such gratitude for her friend, because before he had arrived to pick her up, she had been stood completely numb and shellshocked in the bathroom, trying her best not to wilt and sink to the floor with the despair that so many men, all of whom were supposedly men of duty and uniform, could do such horrific things to so many women.

Despite all that though, the most painful juxtaposition could be felt between her thighs, as her most private of anatomy throbbed against her will, awoken by the reverent memories of a time when she had been so entire carefree, so free to trust... and so entirely naive that nothing would ever change.

"Sorry – didn't mean to wake you," Charles whispered, oblivious to her turmoil of course as he shivered and sighed in satisfaction as he slipped into the cocoon of warmth she had created beneath the duvet, burying his face into her neck. His lips puckered in a gentle, needless kiss automatically wherever they fell.

"You're alright," she dismissed softly, smoothing a hand over his curls. She knew by how soft they were that he had showered while she was out, the conditioner always made them slip through her fingers like tight coils of silk thread. "Was just lying here awake, anyway." His fingers moved in the dark, restless, stroking where the baby hair lined the back of her neck, evidently trying to soothe her.

"Want to talk about it?" The question was quiet and tentative, unlike the Charles of old from her memory.

"Was just thinking about Mahiki's," she confessed, melancholy.

"Hm," he hummed knowingly.

"Y'told me that night it was the best shag of y'life," she probed, self-conscious and, secretly wishing for the simplicity of that time. She only narrowly managed to keep herself from adding: Would you say the same, even now?

"It was..." he agreed gently, "until the next time." That at least made her smile. "And then our wedding night bloody trumped it all."

She sighed, suddenly feeling bereft by the loss of such a magically time. She had no idea how such happiness could possibly have been real, but less how life could ever get back there again. The panic of such a realisation and she felt the waste of it like a hot flush and drummed through her. "Yes," she choked out – a mere wheeze. "God, it was..." She felt him squeeze his fingers at her neck, evidently trying his best to be reassuring as her tone was anything but nostalgic.

"How did it go tonight?" His tone was careful, controlled, like a child confront their parent, not wanting to rock the boat.

The very thought of repeating what she had heard stoked her panic all the more. "I ain't sure I can repeat half of what I heard—."

He shushed her, pacifying her panicked, hurried speech. "—It's okay, Sweetheart, really. You don't have—," he began.

"—No, it ain't, though!" she sighed, angrily, hating how her voice was tight with unspent emotion. When she spoke again, her voice was small and fractured. "How can any of this ever be okay? How can I ever get back to how we were when I know there's so many men who––?" She fidgeted, falling silent from her urgent whispering as she sat up to rub her hands over her itchy eyes, taking a long moment to try and order her thoughts. "There were so many of them, Charles," she whispered, staring into nothing. "I mean, shit, one of the Doris' said her Squadron Leader did it to her during Basic." She burrowed her face into her hands, trying not to visualise it but failing miserably. "There were so many of them," she sighed. "How can so many men do this?"

He sighed heavily from behind her, reaching his hand up to smooth over her back. "I wish I knew." A second later, she felt the pressure of his lips against her spine through her cotton top, lifting her lips into the smallest of smiles. "Did it help at all, at least?"

Thinking of Nutty and how inspiring she had been, openly and unashamedly declaring what happened to her, she felt herself smile in the dark, despite how filled with anxiety she was. "Well, it weren't all a hundred per cent shit, I s'pose."

"Practically a compliment coming from you, then," he joked, his fingers toying with the hem of her shirt. She exhaled out a soft bark of a laugh, because he wasn't wrong.

"Some of them women, Charles," she whispered, chewing her lip. "They ain't even scared." She heard him move to sit up before he pressed his cheek to her shoulder blade, listening quietly with his usual intensity. "Watchin' them, I just thought... I've forgotten what it's like not to be scared." She willed herself not to cry, too exhausted to face it all again and knowing how much her tears upset him. "Scared of men who make eye contact with me on the street, of the shadows of shadows, of what the regiment will say—."

"—It doesn't matter what they say," he shut down, resolute. She wasn't sure in that moment whether or not he was being certain for her or for himself.

"—But mostly, I'm scared of what happens if they don't believe me."

She was tense, her arms tight around her legs as she curled them to her chest, ignoring the fact her body was already becoming chilled from the lack of the duvet. She felt ten times heavier, having made that confession. Charles didn't move, staying perfectly still beside her as though he was scrambling for the ability to articulate something to say – or perhaps, just perhaps, he was secretly worried about it, too.

"You know, someone said tonight," she murmured, almost to herself as she picked at a scab on her hand in the dark, "only seven per cent of cases end in convictions." She could feel herself trembling but still being herself to move. Lying down felt too casual, too relaxed, for the fury and gnawing anxiety she was feeling, like an ache that made you want to writhe around in an attempt to try and ease it. "Fucking seven." She pushed her fingers into her hair, pulling at it and relishing in the slight pain in the scalp. "How can that be right—? How can I ever be lucky enough to be in that seven per cent—? If they let him off—!" The panic in her rose in her throat and propelled her into an even more insular position, pressing her face against her knees. Charles took leave from the sudden withdrawn body language, pushing his arms around her body until his hands crossed over her chest, pinning her arms into her sides. His face pushed into the gap between her neck and her shoulder as he lovingly hummed against the skin in a low volume. The medic in her knew what he was doing, holding her physically together in a manner that was panic-attack treatment 101, keeping her from digging her own hands into her skin or flapping her arms, but it didn't stop her from automatically trying to fight it.

He hummed a familiar tune into her ear as he began rocking them from side to side, a silky, whispered melody from a time forgot about that same poor Doris called 'Miss Molly', exhaling hushing sounds into her hair. Her eyes burned with a new wave of emotion, this time less triggered by her pain and more by her complete overwhelming gratitude for having him in her life. Her laughter bubbled up, painfully dredged from beneath ten foot of heavy, dark bullshit, and escaped despite the pain that weighed her down.

"The bloody song," she chuckled breathlessly, pretending to hate it as she always did. "Who the fuck says 'good golly' an' all?" she sniffed, attempting to make a joke to distract from the dread that boiled in her gut.

"My mother, on the odd occasion, funnily enough," he hummed quizzically, rolling his eyes at the very memory of it. Molly couldn't see his expression, but she smiled at the reminder of Alison James and all her upper-middle-class 'isms'.

The quiet descended again as she didn't pick up on his attempts at humour this time, the tension in her body palpable. His breath left his lungs in one heavy exhale as he steeled himself to face the previous topic – the one that hurt him the most. "I wish I could give you all the answers you need... that you deserve," he whispered, sounding pained to her ears as the words were breathy from high in this throat. "I would do anything...if I could just take this away from you." She could feel her heart racing in her chest, practically tripping over itself. "You're are my good'un, as your Nan says – and you know that" he whispered, the declaration like an imprint on her skin, carrying on despite how physically frozen she was. "The chances of meeting you, of us falling for one another in a war zone? Lady Luck smiled on us more than once. As far as I'm concerned, you're my one in a million – never mind the seven bloody per cent." He kissed the vertebrae top of her spine, slow and delicate, that peeped out from the top of her pyjamas.

"I think we've maxed out our Lady Luck allowance in the last few years, mate," she muttered dejectedly, unable to be keep but seeing the glass as half empty in her current mood.

"Maybe so," he whispered, never one to sugar coat; the army taught the value off honesty, no matter how blunt. "But either way, luck or no luck – in sickness and in health – I'm here. I'll always be here, no matter what right hooks come for us."

"'Always' is a big word," she murmured immaturely, her insecurity clear and getting the better of her. Charles, determined to ignore the niggle of irritation in his chest that pushed him to be defensive, wrinkled his nose in the darkness. This wasn't about him, after all.

"So is 'marriage', Molly," he pointed out carefully, potently forcing her to reevaluate, because suddenly she lost any thread of where her sardonic thoughts had been headed. She was quiet, still, reeling from sudden halt of her thoughts. Inside her head, she repeated words, any words she could string together, to calm the relenting swell of panic from spewing up her throat. Dr Kahn had reminded her of the anagram used to teach people how to cope and of course bleated on that she use it, (as though she were a plonker from soviet street who was one condom short of an orgy, which she most certainly weren't).

In reality, she knew it almost verbatim. A.W.A.R.E: Acknowledge Accept, Wait Watch, Action, Repeat and End. It was something she knew from her copious amounts of training surrounding PTSD – lord knew she had lectured enough bloody squaddies on it – but it didn't seem to help her one jot now. They were just words. It felt impossible for her herself to implement them somehow, a fact which, she was well aware, was laden with a cruel irony

"'And 'love' is greater still...'"

She must have been stiff and quiet for a long time, because he suddenly spoke, his voice was soft, poetic, wistful; almost as though he hasn't been speaking to her at all. He did that sometimes: fell into the cadence and words of poems he long had memorised, in the same manner in which most people, Molly included, found themselves talking to themselves. The line wasn't one she recognised and somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if it was a line from the elusive poetry he wrote in a leather notebook he took with him on every tour but pretended didn't exist. (She would often catch him writing in the middle of the night, sometimes).

She wanted so much in that moment: to understand, to be able to articulate and not internalise all the rotten crap she could feel inside her, to find any words at all. As it was, all she managed was the smallest of indications that she had heard him. Forever inadequate. "Hm? Is that some of the poetry that you 'don't' write?" She finally turned into his hold, shivering as she burrowed her face into his t-shirt-clad chest, grateful for the chance to change the topic of conversation. His hold was unrelenting as he coaxed her back into the warm.

"Ah, now, that would be telling, wife-of-mine," he dismissed, lightheartedly, pulling the duvet over them both hastily. She made a noise of disbelief but didn't raise her face from her hiding place. Secretly, she was more than intrigued about what it was he wrote about, but he respected his privacy and need for an outlet too much to even consider reading it, not just because the was his wife, but also as a fellow soldier. War could make monsters of men if they weren't careful, after all. Still though, she did find herself being itched by the slight slighter of insecurity. Yes, Charles was a private man, of course he was, she knew that from knowing him one day, but the fact that he continued to exclude her as to the content on his writing, on parr with everyone else, worried her. So, being the same old Molly Dawes at heart, she pushed, putting on her best, most persuasive whisper.

"How's the rest go?" she tried, cheekily, rushing her words. "It's not like I'm gonna know if it's shit," she ribbed hopefully, biting her lip in the dark. She pressed her lips against his heart, shy and hesitant. Suddenly, she was urgent for this small barrier between them to be gone before anxiety ballooned it out of proportion. He pulled in a long, powerful inhale, his entire body moving against hers, as she could practically hear his mind whirring.

Surprisingly though, he whispered out a laugh, settling down with his head on hers before letting his most private citations flow.

"'Your mind has built up walls no one can conquer;
here we don't leave our fortress for days..."

Gradually, her eye-lids began to droop as he murmured such soft, sleep-ridden words, soothed by the rhythm of his words and of his hands as they curled entirely around her, moving up and down her back in the way she so often did to him. She found herself wishing that she too could talk in riddles like he did, because at least, in his chaos, Charles made something beautiful.

"'In reality, the bricks are just made of paper,
saturated by every wave that breaks...
We meet on the sands between sleeping and awake...
and yet, love is greater
still.'"