i could blame Ramadan on my lack of updates, but i just didn't feel really inspired to be writing (plus, i've discovered YouTube at the ripe age of 26, so that's wonderful). after this chapter, there's one more chapter (32) and an epilogue, and this story will be finished. as always, i will upload both the last chpater and epilogue together. i tried to edit this with Grammarly (which i just downloaded) so hopefully, my edits will be better in the future.

Little Glass Houses

Chapter Thirty-One

No White Lilies

Percy Weasley was anxiously sat in a hospital room. George had his legs up and was reading a comic book with the concentration of a Minister delivering a speech about public affairs. His mum was knitting beside him and Arthur was pacing around the room. Bill was staring at old, frayed chocolate frog cards. Nobody talked. As Percy tried to resist pacing around the room himself, his daughter reached up to hold his hand. Two-year-old Molly came out of the room with a dignified look on her face. She nodded her head firmly as if she had resolved the situation. Percy offered her a weak smile. He walked in with her. Molly's face was surly, and her expression guarded. Lucy was clinging onto him with sticky wet hands. There laid in her bed, twenty-five-year-old Penelope Clearwater, small body disappeared under sheets of white. Her lip was swollen, her arm wrapped up in bandages after she'd had a few vials of Skele-Gro.

"Feeling better?" George asked sardonically. He'd followed him in but had barely made a sound.

Percy sat down beside her, watching her stare at him with heavy-lidded eyes. Molly was stood between her and Percy as if she were going to protect him with her toddler body. Penelope's eyes went to the top of Percy's head to his feet and snorted as if she had realised what an undoubtedly repulsive specimen he was. That she'd deserved better than what she'd garnered with him. But her eyes looked vacant and pained.

"I want to be alone with him," Penelope said quietly.

Older Molly glared at her. "Over my dead body," she threatened.

Ron had walked into the room and scooped a wired-up Molly with his arms at George's insistence. She shrieked out a "No!", pumping her arms up into the air. He'd taken Lucy with him too, who happily walked out of the room with him. Ten months, Percy thought, and she was already walking with assistance. A fast learner! It just tugged at his heartstrings. The closer that she got to the eleven-month mark, the more fitful and erratic his sleeping was. All their lives, every fever had led him to A&E with a reluctance to leave until security threw him out. A week ago, Percy had spent the whole day weeping and shaking when Lucy had spiked a fever and started convulsing. 'A febrile convulsion,' they called it. It was apparently harmless and not going to kill his ten-month-old. But Percy hadn't slept any less in his life.

Penelope's eyes were on Percy's face for a few moments. "Did you find someone else?"

There was a hint of desperation in her voice. He knew that he had the upper hand for the first time in years. Percy used to know by the hour, by the day, by the month, whether he was the one that got the chance to gloat. The rush of self-importance that he had made him lay awake at night with self-assured dreams and an ever-boosting ego.

"What do you think?" Bill answered for him, arms crossed over his chest. "That he has offers from women plastered on the cover of Witch Weekly magazine? That he has countless admirers after our court days? That every bird stops him in the middle of his shopping?" Percy raised an eyebrow at him, and Bill just shrugged it off as if to say well, it's true.

Penelope's face contorted into misery. "I would've stopped him in the middle of his shopping," she whispered.

"To punch him with a pint of milk maybe," George mentioned darkly. Percy winced at the thought, but he could already imagine the cool bottle connecting with his face. He didn't think it would be too painful actually.

"Maybe," Penelope's lack of denial was strange to him. Foreign. "Hey, Percy," she reached out and before anyone could do anything, he leaned forward. You could feel the tension rising in the room, the stiffening of bodies, the labouring of breaths. "Come here." She stroked his cheek as if she hadn't slapped him, hurt him, set him on fire. She ran her hand down his hair, and he held his breath, wondering if she would dare take the risk of harming him just one last time. He could see the gleam in her eyes. It was tempting her.

He leaned closer to her and she pecked his cheek like they were old lovers. When she moved to plant a kiss on his lips, his mum had let out a screech. Percy moved his head away. "That's enough," he warned mildly.

"Hey! Who gave you the right?" Bill asked her acerbically when she'd tried to plant one on him.

"It's alright," Percy's quiet voice was being drowned out.

"This is a mistake," Arthur placed a hand on Percy's shoulder. "Come on. We should go."

"No." Percy said very loudly, very unmistakably. His hands were clenched together into fists. He was a grown man with two children. He could make his own decisions. "You will respect my decisions."

"But Perce, she…" Bill looked at him worriedly.

Percy's eyes locked in with Bill's. "No."

"Sure, Perce," Bill looked gobsmacked. He was stood behind Percy. He was so close that Percy could feel Bill's breath on his neck. Percy was finding it hard not to stare at Penelope, so he did. So many things had happened between them, but it had been so long that everything was fuzzy. How could a relationship that was so hard to try to recover from have such fuzzy details?

"Are you here to pay your condolences?" Penelope asked.

He looked down from her face to her arms. It was unnatural. He remembered getting the owl from Claire, her mentioning that she wouldn't be able to come by that weekend because Penelope was in the hospital. One Daily Prophet article about a paediatric healer flinging herself off the hospital roof lead him to realise what nobody had told him. Audrey came by and told him that he didn't have to go. But he had to. His parents wouldn't let him go by himself, and every family member was resistant to the idea. As if Penelope was going to attack him attached to a heart-rate monitor and small-sized blood pressure cuffs.

"Are you here to ask about what happened?" Penelope cocked her head. "Why I did this?"

He shook his head. He knew why she did this, but he was too afraid to say it out loud.

"Oh, you know." This was a woman that could read his facial expressions. But unfortunately for her, so could he. Penelope looked like she was trying to figure out where she sat in the puzzle Percy was unfolding. "Don't you, Percy?" she slightly sneered. She didn't look too sure. It looked like that she didn't know if she should be doing the sneering or if it were up to him just yet.

Percy hugged his chest and tapped his foot lightly onto the floor.

"Don't make me say it out loud." His eyes were hard as they stared at Penelope. He had been wondering for so long, and it was painful to have to say what he was thinking. But then he looked up at the ceiling and said, "When…when I worked in the Ministry, there were so many ways you could get someone to do something for you. Favours of some sort. Allow little bits of…of corruption to just ease by." He could see her face contorting. She knew what he was leading up to, even before he did. "I'd imagine it's the same thing in the hospital. You could…always ask for a potion prescription, an unscheduled visit or...a change in a report." He saw her wincing. "Can't you?"

"I suppose," she answered.

"You suppose," Percy echoed.

Penelope raised her hand up to her hair. "I don't know what you're—"

"Peter died from meningitis." He paused for a few moments. "Meningitis," he enunciated the word with his incredulity, with his scepticism, because how could a woman do what she did with Lucy without doing it first to someone else? "Is that true? Or did you shake him when he had a fever because he wouldn't stop crying?"

The whole room went silent. She didn't say anything, but he knew when he looked at her, that he had been right all along. He stood up abruptly and walked to the end of the room just so he could be alone with himself. But how could he be alone in a room full of people? His hands shook. He could hear a wheeze escape his throat. Images of Lucy being shaken came to his mind. Him asking the healer at the paediatric A&E if it were common for small infants to be shook. If they were being a handful, some parents shake them, and he kept thinking about how much of a handful a feverish Peter was.

He sank to the floor, genuinely feeling like he was going to collapse. He'd always known deep down. There was always a part of him that knew. But what was he going to do now that he knew for sure?

"You know… I know exactly what you're like," he grasped the hairs on his head as tightly as he could. Being in Penelope's line of thought was one of the most toxic thing that he'd experienced. It was like slowly drinking a poison that felt like knives going down your throat every day. He wished he didn't understand her. How mucked up did you have to be to understand someone that would shake an ill child to the brink of death—and beyond?

"I know," Penelope said inaudibly. "I know how you're like too."

Percy shook his head, his head felt so heavy it was like he was carrying the world on his shoulders. "I have never met anyone with this much self-loathing and insecurity."

Penelope looked up from her bed, as if this was some sort of secret that she'd kept well-hidden.

"Neither have I," Penelope answered back, and for once, Percy didn't know if she was talking about him or herself. He wandered over to the edge of the bed, staring at her face. "Percy, they said I'm going to die." Her eyes had become big and clear. "They said I'm lucky I didn't die on impact."

He met his mother's eyes from across the room. She didn't look like she cared if Penelope had died. He would care very much. It would destroy him, and Penelope knew that too. But why?

Percy had heard the words from the healers outside. Something about too many potions, too much alcohol, too physically and mentally unstable, too much bleeding, too much of everything. He knew that if she didn't die in this hospital visit, she would do it again. He knew there wasn't anything that he could do to stop her. He knew that she was selfish because if she died, he would be in indescribable pain. It would mean losing the one person that knew him as clear as day, and he wasn't sure if he would be able to cope with that.

"You're selfish," he said and fluttered her eyes back at her. She nodded her head.

Penelope smiled weakly, a watery smile, uncertain. "You were too good for me," she said, cocking her head to one side. "It's just you never knew it." His fault, he knew it well enough. "You still don't. And that's why I had that advantage over you." She said it as if they were playing games of chess.

Percy nodded his head. "I know," he knew what she was doing. He knew why she chose the words that she did. It was eerie how much he knew, and why it was his fault that he didn't stop it.

"You know," Penelope sat up now, blonde hair all over the place. "I don't remember how we met, or how…this happened," she gestured towards them.

It had seemed so innocuous, the letter exchanges.

In the first letter that she ever sent him; Percy could vaguely remember her mentioning that her parents were taking her backpacking. Her older brother, Michael, died when she was four and she still wasn't the golden child. She was strange and played with magic wands. They tried to understand her, but they couldn't. They went so far as taking their W.O.M.B.A.T.S but they still didn't fully comprehend her. Penelope was in the shadow of someone that had died and will always be. He remembered that so well, no matter what career path she would take, the conclusion was always going to be the same. She had come to resent someone dead. How could I? she'd asked him a few times. How could I resent someone that has died in such a horrible, horrible way? Because as dead as he was, he was still alive. He was more alive than she was, through the stories they told, through the affection they had for him, through the memories that they spoke, just like Peter was so alive. Even if she died right now, she wouldn't be anywhere near the tragedy or the loss of Michael. Some deaths mattered more than others. That was how it felt like sometimes. The death of an eleven-year-old infant, the death of a brother that could do you no wrong, the death of a rapist, an abuser, a murderer.

"I think I changed," Penelope admitted. "From the resentment." Percy nodded his head mutely. He thought so too. He thought that that kind of thing just festered if you let it. But he didn't think that that was just it. He knew her so well. He could spend years talking about how Penelope was like, just like she could spend years talking about him if she wanted to. He understood why she wore that perfume, why she had her hair all tidy and neat and why she wore certain things. He could close his eyes and could pick up a million Penny-isms from a conversation without having to look at her. He could remember how she liked her tea, her sweets, her nails. Penelope was a complex person, with more layers than an onion. He'd spent his whole life peeling them away if he'd tried. But he was so tired of the tears.

"Not just from Michael," Percy decided to suggest. Penelope said nothing. "You resent anything innocent." Something as pure as a fifth-year getting her first kiss, a first year being sorted, a baby in pain.

"I thought you had that resentment too," Penelope declared. "But look at you. You've forgiven me for trying to kill you." She shook her head. If she was confusing, then he was confusing too. As everyone was. "The second I did it. When you didn't even know if you were going to live." She stared at him in wonder. "Not even for killing Peter." She shook her head. "You can't hate anything, Percy, not anymore. And I don't understand how I could turn something that used to be like me into…something like you."

"It was because I was never like you," Percy didn't know what he was like before, but it definitely wasn't like her.

Penelope nodded her head. She didn't look like she wanted to accept that. He could imagine a million scenarios that were in her mind. What did you think of when you had done the things that you have? When you were the victim and the abuser, even if nobody had hurt you? When you had this unrelenting rage banging into your mind twenty-four-seven? When you did things that happened in seconds but left consequences that would go on for years and years? And you promised that you would never do this again, but you did. Because in that moment, that was the only thing that you could do. To inflict the same pain that you felt on someone else, but it would never be enough because the pain that you feel was so infinite, so immeasurable, and you hadn't the physical capability to deal with it yourself because you denied it was there in the first place. How could he explain that that was the beginning of Chapter: Penelope? A book that he was forced to read so much that he bet that he could quote directly from the pages. A book nobody else could read because it had so many derivations. A book he spent late nights musing about, sleepless in a cold sweat.

"I love you, Percy," Penelope said, and it was the most truthful thing that she'd said in years. Nobody would understand that, because how could you nearly kill someone that you love?

"I know," Percy said. "I do too," it was his prison that he loved her. Something that nobody else would understand either. It began and ended with them, and if she died, he'd be living with it all by himself. The thought of it was torture. Just admitting that he loved her made him want to sleep for years. The admission came with things he didn't want to talk about, things that he didn't want to think about, people trying to understand when they just couldn't. But at the same time, he felt so light for just saying it out loud.

"I don't want to die, but I think…I think it's what I deserve," Penelope said.

It was painful to hear someone that you love say that, even if she was right, even if she had done horrible, horrible things. And if she died, there would be nobody to mourn her. People only mourned innocent people. They didn't mourn women that killed their infant sons and cried on their graves every Sunday morning.

"Would you come to see me if die?" Penelope asked.

Percy could feel hot tears burn into his eyes. He didn't have to say anything. She already knew. "Yes," he would come to see her. He would come to bury her too. He would cry like she was a beautiful thing being lost to the world instead of someone that had nearly killed him, that had killed his son, that would've killed his daughters too if he hadn't left. Someone that he should hate but didn't have the capacity for anymore.

"What's it going to be like? My funeral? she looked almost like a child for a fleeting second.

Percy couldn't imagine that far ahead. "I don't know." He rubbed his eyes. He would be like a tap if he left. He didn't think he'd be able to stop crying, not for days. He didn't think he could take it if she died.

"Are you going to make me flowers?" Penelope asked.

Percy picked up a card from a bouquet that he had bought her, an arrangement of sunset flowers from the garden. It was the only pair of flowers in the room. How was it to die like this? In a room full of people that despised you? Knowing that nobody would say anything nice to you at your funeral? That they would bury you and be done with you like you didn't have parents and a somewhat-lover and children?

He made her a sunflower though it took some time. The corners were too sharp. The paper too thick. It was the wonkiest sunflower that he'd ever made. He placed it into her hands. When he leaned down, she brushed his hair and leaned to his ear. "I don't want to be next to Peter," she said, and he swallowed the lump in his throat because deep down, he knew it was because she felt (and she knew) that she didn't deserve it. Then she asked, "Are you going to be okay?" as if what they had were a few fights out into the open.

He bit down his lower lip so that he didn't answer her, and he was sure that his face had transitioned through a thousand emotions, and she had read every one.

Percy couldn't think of schedules, or stare at watches that told him to do things. He was detached from everything. He was angry. He was scared. He was so many things that he didn't know what he could even begin to say to explain them. Molly had run to him when they'd left the room, shrieking to him about 'that lady' as if Penelope wasn't her mother and she just materialised out of thin air from his love for her. Lucy's happy garbles gave him a massive headache. Percy barely made it to their flat without collapsing. His family said nothing to him after they'd left. Percy felt like he had just been cut into two. Likke nothing would ever be okay again. But that night, he fed Lucy and he bathed Molly and he watched them go to sleep like it was any normal day.

Then he collapsed in the couch in front of his muggle telly, in his muggle apartment that overlooked a row of buildings that didn't look quite inspiring. Just grey buildings that stretched on forever.

Percy brought his knees to his chest, burying his head into them. She hadn't even touched him, and she had taken everything from him in one afternoon. He felt like his heart had stopped beating. His whole body had gone numb.

He merely existed for the next few days. He went to his job, talked, fed his children, played with them, and stayed up at night feeling empty and hollow. He could know with certainty from the healers how long his bruises and fractures and operations took, but he didn't know how long he was going to be in this mental anguish. His heart felt so empty. Would it feel like this forever?

One day, he came back from work to see his whole family cramped in his tiny flat. His mother was frowning as she tried to roam through his cupboards. She made him a couple of cheese toasties when Percy didn't even know he had cheese. He'd also forgotten about the bread he'd stowed away in the freezer. Ginny had gently been coaxing Lucy to sleep and Molly played with George for most of the day, who had given her more toys than she was allowed to have because she'd break most of them. Gabrielle even stopped by at some point, took his toddler and his infant and disappeared after a 'hello' and a kiss on his cheek. Then it was just him and his family.

At that, Ron had found the takeaway menus lodged behind his telly, because it was very obvious that Percy didn't cook and was feeding his toddler fish fingers and chips regularly much to the chagrin of Healthy Hannah a couple of doors down, who believed that feeding your children unhealthily was the epitome of child abuse (obviously, she and Percy had nothing in common). They ordered Thai food, including plates of Pad Thai, curries in variations of colour, spring rolls, duck rolls, and enough fried rice to feed Dumbledore's Army (well, the half that didn't include his siblings).

Percy was dissecting his chicken curry into pieces and was eating one mouthful every three minutes.

"Hey, you know," George cleared his throat. "I was just thinking that…that Penny and you, you're like…um…" he was rubbing his neck. "Family, right? Like, if…if I did something that bad to someone else, mum and dad here would probably be perpetually confused. And they probably wouldn't stop loving me because I've done those horrible things. And I guess neither would you." He rubbed his neck. "So, I guess…that even if she did those horrible things because she's like your family, you feel so…so bad about how sick she is. And don't want her to die." His eyes were glinting underneath the lights. "Because that would be a horrible thing." He cleared his throat. "If…if Fred was a Death Eater in the war and killed someone and died, I think…I don't think that it would change how I felt about losing him either."

Percy nodded his head. "Well…" his eyes were on the wall. "I really did love her."

"I know, Perce," Ginny said, grabbing his arm and squeezing it as tight as possible. "And I'm sorry."

Percy looked at his sister, who was staring at him with this expression of compassion that a part of him knew that he didn't deserve. He swallowed the lump in his throat, feeling his hands shake.

"I remember how we met now," Percy smiled but it felt forced.

George frowned. "Perce—"

"We started talking about classes at first, but then little details slipped in. Over the course of a year, I knew how her parents were like. Her mother was a neuropathic…something that was known for being eccentric. Her father was a police officer—a muggle variant of an Auror I believe—who retired early in his life and spent his time at home, mostly watching the telly and working in his shed. Her brother, Michael, died when she was four. He was twenty. An atrocious aneurysm. He was alive one hour and gone the next. He was going to be a paediatrician—a paediatric healer in muggle terms, just finished his internship year over at a prestigious London hospital. He loved the colour yellow. He was the happiest person in the world. Her parents were devastated." He'd cleared his throat, but it hurt to speak. "And although she'd never quite said it outright I believe that she felt like no matter what she did, it would remind them of what they lost."

Percy cocked his head to the side. He didn't know why he was saying all of that, but the words came tumbling one after the other, and he could barely stop himself.

"She lost it once when she almost failed Divination. She said it's not important, cried for days, and refused to talk to me. She had a strict studying schedule—stricter than mine I'd wager. She resented being a prefect as much as I enjoyed it. She wasn't the same after she got petrified," Percy thought that some part of her just disappeared with the petrification. "I think it's because she thought they'd treat her better, but I don't think they understand being petrified in the muggle world, even if you try to explain that you were in such a fatal condition at the time. I think that just added to this resentment she's always had. Of being compared to Michael. Of being second-best to a ghost." Percy shuddered at the thought himself sometimes.

He rubbed his cheek. "The first time she hit me, she apologised to me for weeks. It was in a heat of a horrible argument—although I can't remember the details then, I did bring up all these things that I knew. We lived in a constant state of competition. Who could soothe the other faster? Who could destroy the other in fewer words than last time? I mentioned all those things, and she said that nobody would ever like me. Not besides her, of course, and that she was all I had. When I kept scathingly bringing up her dead brother and her own idealistic expectations of what she thought would happen, she slapped me across the cheek. And of course, I refused to talk to her." He almost smiled just thinking about it because he couldn't imagine reacting in such a way. "She grovelled at my feet. She didn't do it for ages afterwards. I don't think she's tried it again until after I've gotten into the Ministry." He didn't really remember the second or third when he'd had hundreds of slaps, punches and assaults. "I didn't notice her change. It must've happened. But…" Percy was so busy with his own life that he didn't realise that his constant had stopped being his constant. "With how busy it had gotten at the Ministry, with everything that was going on, I didn't seem to realise we were fighting so much." He realised it didn't sound like it had made sense. But at the time, the days had all blurred together. Percy couldn't tell if they'd fought once that week, or every single day, because it seemed like they lapsed into weeks of blissful romance afterwards.

Percy cupped his hands together, trying to remember when a completely normal relationship had turned into what it did. "She might've pinched me a few times, and well, I've never quite enjoyed… that, but it's not like I was forced into it. But by no means was it something to write home about." Percy could vaguely recall him refusing her, and her getting on top of him. He submitted more than a few times but at some point, it had turned into him begging her not to touch him.

"When I left home, we shared a flat. We mostly had separate lives," Percy had never thought of him and Penelope moving together as a singular unit, but he couldn't imagine being involved with someone that was intricately involved in his life. "But I think the fight…" he started fumbling with his sleeve. "I suppose it knocked a little of my confidence. And you see, Penelope and I 'worked' at the time because the relationship was…equal," he'd found it hard to find words. "She was a critical person, and she knew me so well that she knew exactly what to say. But I did too. But I also knew what to say to make everything better, just as she did." He could remember the flashes of emotion behind her eyes before the anger took over. How she tried to mask her pain with the rage, with her pelting him with her little hands and throwing dishes at him that he'd dodge. The minute one smacked him; the amount of debilitating regret that she had made him forgive her immediately. "But I think that she'd started chipping away at me. I think at some point, my confidence, my ability to retort back, just…disappeared. And when you reach that level of…" Percy looked for the word, "well, self-loathing, then I suppose you don't care what others do to you anymore. Because you already dislike yourself so much, so why would you care if someone treats you badly?"

Then he remembered what he'd said in the hospital room, about how he didn't think that he'd met anyone with as much self-loathing as Penelope.

"But I think it was always the opposite for her. I think the more she hurt me, the more she hated herself. And it got to the point where she was so insecure that I think the only thing she could trap me into a relationship was by destroying whatever—well, whatever I was." Strangely, knowing that didn't change how he felt. "But…well, she didn't fall in love with that. And the more insecure I was, the more I reminded her of herself. The more she disliked me—or whatever I had become. And it became a self-perpetuating cycle because the more she treated me like that, the more I thought that it was normal, and the more I adapted, the more temperamental she got. The more victimised I was, the more I reminded her of Michael. I became the two people that she essentially resented within every inch of her life. And in the very few moments where I was myself, it left her with this realisation of what she'd done. She lived in a very…" Percy couldn't imagine being in Penelope's headspace, "difficult point of thinking. I may be the victim, but Penelope laboured about the things that happened more than I did."

He bet that she remembered more of what she'd done than he did. He bet she could remember exactly how she got every single scar on his body. He bet the thought of them both pleased and frightened her.

"But when you start being treated badly, and nobody notices, nobody says anything, then you feel like it's almost justified." His throat closed up, thinking of the days where his lunch breaks were spent in the hospital A&E. "You spend so much time with that one person, that knows you so intimately, being treated in that sort of…way, and you started to really to feel like it's deserved. In fact, you start to become anxious when nothing happens." Percy couldn't explain that even now, even though it had been a few months, he still felt anxious when he went to bed at night. When his face started healing and there were no new bruises to take their place soon afterwards. "And that is what happened. Because you are anxious when it happens, but at the same time, anxious when it doesn't. And I can't particularly explain that to people. But it's because she's a very complicated person and I…"

He wondered how people left abusive relationships and never looked back on them. He wondered how people just went on with their lives afterwards. How they could love someone else. When Percy was sure that there wasn't a person in the world that would know him as Penelope had.

"Yeah, Perce?" Ron suddenly broke the silence.

"And I love her," Percy finished, and it still pained him so much to say it.

"I know you do, Perce," George decided to say. "And that's okay." Percy nodded his head, feeling heard for the first time, feeling a little bit validated too. "And I'm really sorry that she's ill." And Percy knew that he was only sorry because Percy cared so much, but he'd take it all the same. He'd take it and hold onto it as much as he could because everything in his life just felt so fleeting. "But you're going to be okay."

Penelope Clearwater passed away at four pm. He didn't know what day. Percy was just going to turn to look at the calendar, to see what day it was. But then in his single moment of self-control, he tore his calendar from the wall and threw it into the rubbish bin. He took a deep breath, feeling as if he'd accomplished a great feat. He was so jarred from reality. Then he peered outside, just to see the streets. A teenager was walking her dog, avidly talking to her fellytone. A man was carrying his grocery bags into their apartment. A man was talking to another man in front of a fruit vendor, discussing what looked to be either tangerines, mangoes, or other orange-yellow fruit that you couldn't tell from the distance.

The world had not collapsed.

He'd gone to the hospital that day for a visit and was the first one to be told the news. A cardiac arrest, they'd said, but Percy didn't ask how she died. He had left Molly and Lucy at his parents when he'd visited and had disappeared before they could even invite him for a cup of tea. When he had walked into Penelope's room, there she laid, unmoving and cold and blue. The vase of flowers that he'd got her had been broken. Claire was standing beside her, and her father, Adrian, was there too. White-faced and shocked and very much the kind of parents that did love her (and Percy believed it too) but it wasn't the kind of love that she needed. The floor was covered in little pieces of glass everywhere. Claire hugged him so tightly that he felt like she had broken his ribs and cried. He soaked up her tears like a sponge. After they were done, Adrian had given him an envelope. Penelope's handwriting, he realised immediately. He inhaled the envelope deeply. It smelled like nothing. No white lilies, no lipstick imprints, nothing. Just an unsuspected plain white envelope. She'd written his name. Percy, as if it would've been for anyone else. He made sure not to crease it as he transferred it as carefully as possible into his bag.

When he got home, Percy locked the letter in one of his desks and vowed not to open it.