this is the last chapter and following this is an epilogue so they will be uploaded together. i edited this out with Grammarly (which of course, is flagging this A/N because of the fact that i don't capitalise my i's in them). please review, and thank you all for reading xxx

Little Glass Houses

Chapter Thirty-Two

Without Her

The funeral was a sad affair. His whole family had come with, and Percy thought it was inappropriate, no matter how much Claire tried to explain to him that it was alright. Adrian did not look at him in disgust or jeer at him for being so weak that he needed so much 'help' just to visit his loved one.

In fact, during the ceremony, Adrian held onto his hand so hard that Percy thought that his hand would break. Claire kept saying that it was fine now and then and that she understood. But how could you understand that your colossal family was not there for your dead daughter, but your daughter's ex-fiancé's support? And even though he had pointed towards the plot of ground and shakily explained to two-year-old Molly that her mum had been buried there (and how she had gone forever), she just shook her head and clung onto him, "I no mum." She said it so loudly that it was hard for Claire and Adrian not to hear her. And just in case they didn't the first time, she yelled out, "I no mum!" seconds after.

Her screams had carried so far into the wind that he bet that they could hear her all the way in London.

The actual burial didn't take so long. It was over and done with in much less time than it took for his mum to make a roast dinner. Percy had been left alone with whatever was left of Penny, the concept of her. Meanwhile, her parents looked down at the same plot of ground, looking much less invested than he was. And he wondered if what he was supposed to feel was anger, hatred, or love. He wondered if he was supposed to forgive her. If he was supposed to not come, but then he decided not to wonder anymore. It was what it was, what it always had been, and he was sick of trying to understand something that had so many layers to it that he couldn't even begin to imagine peeling them off. And coming to that conclusion felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He didn't think he'd fully understand their relationship. But why did he have to understand? He didn't need to understand any more than he needed twelve O.W.L's to be happy.

Audrey had asked him if he'd wanted to talk about it, but Percy decided that he didn't. But at the same time, he wasn't sure if he was ready to move on. He was stuck at an impasse. He supposed that was okay too, for now. Was he supposed to want to talk about it when he was actively grieving?

His the world seemed so sober when he had relived those last few moments with Peter. He didn't realise how much he'd blamed himself for something that he'd always known had nothing to do with him. It felt like it would take forever for him to let go of that, the realisation that he hadn't done anything wrong, that Peter's death had nothing to do with him, just like Penelope's death had nothing to do with him. It was so strange how he was intricately woven into Penelope's web. The more he tried to unravel it, the more he became intertwined into the thin threads of her manipulation. Long after Penelope had left the web.

Percy chucked out his calendar for a while before he decided to buy a new one again. He bought clipboards that magically told him what day it was.

Bill had stayed with him for a few days, saying something about how he'd just decided to drop by and how Fleur was out of the country with his children. He ate noodles out of a packet and made Molly as many fish fingers and chunky chips as she wanted. Lucy happily wandered over to him, and Percy felt so guilty for feigning headaches to his well-meaning daughters when all he wanted to do was sleep. At night when Bill had his daughters tucked in, he walked into Percy's room as quietly as possible to check up on him. Percy knew because he feigned sleep too, pretended like he really did have a headache and that he wasn't so overwrought with mental exhaustion.

"Hey," Bill sat on the side of the bed. He'd placed a hand onto Percy's. He could probably tell that he'd been feigning his sleep too. "Perce, don't you wanna get up? Take a shower? Eat something?"

Percy just shook his head. "No," he could barely hear himself speak.

Bill reached in and moved to stroke his hair. Percy felt like a little kid. Which made him feel bad because he had little kids. Little kids that he hadn't helped all day. That he didn't bother lifting his head from the bed to even glance at. "Perce," he heard Bill clearing his throat. He sounded a little nervous. "Why… why don't you let the girls stay with mum and dad for a while?"

Percy balked at the idea of trying to explain that to them. "I—"

"You don't have to do anything." Why did Percy feel relieved hearing that? "I can take them tomorrow. Make it into a trip. Have mum feed them to the brim and stuff them in blankets and jumpers." It was sweltering outside that morning, but he could imagine his mum bundling them up by the sofa, even in the heat. The thought made him smile for the first time that day, and it made Bill beam at him too. "They can stay with them for a couple of days, even a couple of weeks." He chuckled. "So…what do you say?"

Bill looked nervous and opened his mouth to try and say something else, but he didn't have to.

"Okay," Percy couldn't imagine possibly lifting his head to go take a shower, much less help Molly pick her frocks for the day or make sure that Lucy got her meals on time. The thought of that was so excruciating.

"Okay," Bill echoed in uncertainty.

"Yeah," Percy let his shoulders drop, feeling a little guilty about how much better he felt. That he didn't have to worry about Molly barging into his room at six am, waking him up.

"Oh," Bill looked torn. "Um… look, Perce, I want you to say to agree with me…eventually. But you agreed pretty quick." Percy smiled again because he understood what he meant. Normally, it would take Percy a Potions essay argument just to get him to say yes. "And I was just…I don't know…do you need anything?"

Percy shook his head. "Thank you," he saw his brother nod his head in acknowledgment before he left.

He hadn't been left alone that whole week he'd reckoned. If Bill wasn't around, Charlie was flipping pancakes by the stove or Ginny talked to him about the problems with this Quidditch season. George forced him into the shower with charms and his mum took him out on walks and told him that everything was fine at the Burrow. He saw his little girls in the Burrow once that week. They were blissfully unaware of everything was going on, happy to spend the time in the Burrow in his old room, snuggled together in blankets that were too big and thick for their small bodies. Molly's limbs were wirier and longer than before, and she flung them haphazardly as she slept during the night. Lucy's favourite thing seemed to be being sat in Arthur's shed and shown shiny things in different colours, which she tried to put into her mouth.

Gabrielle came to see him on a Wednesday night, bringing with her plastic containers filled with potato stew. They sat on the couch and ate, even though the potatoes were so mushy they disintegrated into his mouth before he'd had a chance to chew. Denture food, George would call it, with potatoes so soft they melted in your mouth in the wrong way. "I never said I was a good cook," Gabrielle reminded him.

"You've never said you've cooked it to begin with," Percy pointed out because he knew that Gabrielle's cooking had a bit of a reputation back in the abuse shelter. "You look nice."

"Thanks," Gabrielle answered, not in the off-handed way that she did when other blokes said it. "I can recommend some shops if you're ever in the mood of looking like you're at a Weird Sisters concert."

Gabrielle wore dark lippies with dark floral frocks, and red barrettes. Fleur was all pastel pinks and ruffles, with baby blue tops that looked so ethereal that it made Percy feel uncomfortable. Gabrielle wore chunky dragonhide boots that would make Charlie have an aneurysm and always didn't recognise any colour beyond black, violent purple, and that striking red that made you stare at someone for a long time.

"I'm not sure that's the kind of thing I like to wear," Percy gestured towards his clothes. He supposed he had a look now too that was mostly confined to disastrous knits in gaudy and trousers that looked a little too baggy on him. He was in a pair of navy trousers with white polka dots and was wearing a striped, red jumper. He thought he looked moderately human sometimes, even if he had to wear fluorescent colours in shapes he'd never thought he'd wear just to feel that way. "I suppose I'm…like this now."

"An improvement over the brooding Potion Master look I'd say," Gabrielle nodded in approval.

"Well… I do agree," Percy didn't realise that he did look very much like Snape before, with the old robes and the general unapproachable look. Not that he was getting knocks on his door for sugar cubes these days or anything, but the woman next door had waved at him a few times. "I'd say I'm very popular these days."

"I can imagine," Gabrielle's tone was somehow light without it being jeering. "I never told you why I was there. You know, in the abuse shelter before." She just rubbed her neck. "I was never okay with rooming in with any of the girls before. I was…well, I wanted a guy around. And then I saw you and I know everyone had totally lost it when you came in before, but I was relieved. And I wasn't the only one."

"You never had to," was what Percy said. He couldn't imagine anyone being relieved the first time he'd come around, with the cold reception that he'd had before. But he couldn't imagine anyone agreeing with everything either. The change was hard. He could imagine that before shrieking infants and children became the norm, there was some issue with that too. "And I've concluded that rejecting me had nothing to do with me. I suppose it just had something to do with the fact that it was…a change."

Gabrielle offered him a self-assured smile. "Yeah, you're right." She shuffled her foot around. "But I was…"

"With a woman," Percy surmised, which made Gabrielle's cheeks flush, which was strange considering her heavy dousing of peach blusher and excessive amounts of highlighter. "It's what I've heard." It was hard not to hear things when you were there. He supposed it was one of the reasons why he'd left. He just wanted to be left alone, with his daughters, living in their little cocoon without anything else to destroy it. Well, until something did, but he supposed that he couldn't have predicted it. "That you're…um…"

"Yeah," Gabrielle nodded her head. "I didn't know you listened to gossip." She looked amused.

"Is it gossip if it's true?" he'd asked and then his ears turned red. Gabrielle was laughing, genuinely laughing, and the pot of potato stew in her lap was vibrating. "I've heard the story." He'd admitted, and Gabrielle nodded her head. He'd heard about how she was dating a woman, and that they had gotten drunk. The girl was younger than her by a few years, but she'd gotten very touchy, without much of a consent being established. The dubious consent had led to a disastrous interrogation by the Aurors, which led her to flee to the nearest shelter that would take her. Quite literally it seemed. "It must be…difficult."

"It was," Gabrielle decided to say. "But I don't think I was helping myself by running away. I wasn't in the shelter to help myself. I was in the shelter to hide. And I think…a lot of us did. And I'm really glad that you're not hiding anymore." There was a glint in her eyes that made him melt. He hadn't realised how desperately he needed to hear that just because he'd left the shelter didn't mean that he thought that was beyond help, didn't mean that he was running away. "I didn't think it was really for you. Or for me, let's be fair…" He never felt that way too, not fully, not the way that Tulip felt like when she woke up or how Mabel did those daily activities with the excitement that she did. "Do you still talk to Audrey?"

Percy nodded his head. He still did sometimes. She asked him how she was and read too much between the lines about everything that he said. They had coffee a few days back when he was shaken and withdrawn.

"I think she really likes you," Gabrielle finally said. "I think she saw something in you that's really special. Something beyond, you know, someone that has been in a position like you were in. Like…"

"I know," Percy could see the way that she looked at him sometimes.

"Do you ever think that you'd be in a relationship with anyone again?"

Percy felt like the question was almost a joke, considering that Penelope just died a few days back, and he felt so lethargic when he woke up in the morning. "No," he couldn't imagine the kind of emotional baggage he'd have with a new person. He'd be carrying Penelope with him wherever he went. How many people were willing to hold his hand through that? "Do you?"

"Yeah, I think I would be," Gabrielle replied.

Percy didn't think she ought to be. But he said nothing.

"Do you feel like sometimes, you just want to hurt yourself? Not physically, but find someone that would…I don't know…treat you horribly so you can make sense of what you feel like sometimes?" Gabrielle asked. "Because at least, then it's almost like you have a reason for why you feel the way you do."

"Always," Percy answered with a raised eyebrow. Could you be addicted to being used like that? Was that why some of the girls that he'd met had been in multiple abusive relationships? Was that just a streak of bad luck, or were you actively searching for people like that? Did they smell out your fear, your insecurity a mile off, and know that you were a target? That you were vulnerable?

"I think the pain isn't as bad as the fact that it doesn't make any sense sometimes," Gabrielle said.

"Why does anyone have to make sense?" Percy was tired of trying to make sense of why skies were grey or why he didn't feel like eating more than toast for breakfast when he'd been up all night. He was trying to make sense of his relationship with Penelope, or his parents smothering him because they were terrified of him disappearing, as if his existence would melt into the ether if they weren't careful.

Gabrielle was thinking about this. "I don't know," she paused. "Do you want to order takeout?"

His job had been going alright, except for the woman in cubicle five asking him out for lunch every day.

He had started to become anxious if she did ask him, and even more anxious if she didn't. He had built it up into a nerve-racking part of his day, to the point where he was biting his nails in anticipation of it happening. It was rather pathetic that he was having mental breakdowns before noon over a gesture he knew that most people would appreciate. But he digressed. There were many a time where he'd tried to think of whether he could escape to the lavatory before he even saw her walk towards him. She was tall with long blonde straight hair and had gigantic green eyes that seemed to reflect the lights in the room. Percy meticulously packed his lunch every day and stuck it into his desk as his alibi for when she asked.

But that fateful Wednesday, he couldn't escape. Just as she walked towards him, Percy opened his mouth to tell her that he had a lunch packed. That was when she sat across from him and pulled out her own packed lunch and sat it down across from him. She beamed at him; her teeth-stained florescent pink from her lippy.

"I hope you don't mind," she gestured towards her lunch box. "I just thought I'd join you for a change, seeing as…well, you're usually eating all by your lonesome."

Percy nodded his head but did nothing. I'm very busy actually, he thought to say. Don't think I'll have much time to eat. But thank you. He pulled his lunch box from the desk and opened it, feeling very childish with his child-sized vanilla yoghurt pot, manky banana, and a small packet of chocolate-covered pretzels.

He relaxed a little when she didn't say anything as they ate. It felt like they'd been there for ages, but they must've only taken a couple of minutes just eating when the department was empty. Everyone else was in the canteen, and suddenly, the room felt stuffy. He thought he might break down or just bolt out of the room at some point, but he didn't. He just stayed there, eating pretzels as slowly as he could and spooning vanilla yoghurt that tasted more like a vanilla mousse than a yoghurt. The woman from cubicle five was a quiet eater. He caught her eyes and she smiled at him. He just awkwardly stared down onto the floor. He was suddenly incapable of communication.

"You're shy," she said, and it was so much more than that, but he nodded. "That's okay."

Percy stopped eating halfway through his pack of pretzels. His heart suddenly started beating so quickly. All he could think of was all the way that he'd been touched in ways he didn't want to, and all the things that had happened to him. All the times that he had almost died but didn't.

I'm not shy, was all he thought. I'm damaged.

By the end of that day, he had gone into the secretary's office and asked for three days off. She stared at him like he was mental because it came up so suddenly and he didn't have an explanation as to why. Since he'd been working, he hadn't asked for much. His boss had it stamped by the end of the day, and when Percy went to take his signed leaves from his desk, he asked him if he was okay. Percy just nodded his head and plastered on the fakest smile that he could. He had the nicest boss in the world and the nicest team in the world, who would probably spend more time being worried about why he'd taken three days off than their inevitable increase in workload.

The woman from cubicle five sent muffins to his home. They were banana nut, with bits of chocolate-covered pretzels in them. Beside them was a florescent pink flying memo, I hope you feel better soon with signatures from the whole team. Percy stared at it and wondered what they'd think if they knew what had happened to him. That night, he took the basket of muffins to the Burrow, where everyone helped themselves to one. Percy sat in the corner away from everyone. He ate spaghetti with meatballs and bitter strawberries with waxy white chocolate sauce. He walked outside afterward and watched the sky change into uncertain indigos and faded blacks.

He guessed that things will be good sometimes and things will be bad sometimes. But he didn't know how he could cope with what he was carrying. He didn't know how to ask for help. He didn't know what he needed.

"What are you doing out here?" Bill's voice shocked him. Bill hadn't even joined them that night, but here he was, as real as anything, in a cotton jumper and a pair of woolly trousers. He had on the ugliest pair of brown boots that Percy had ever seen. He looked like himself.

Percy jumped up from where he was stood and accidentally tumbled over and fell straight onto his arse. The grass was wet. Flashes of many skidded knees he had as a child went through his brain.

"You've been out for ages," Bill helped Percy up as if it was just something that happened every day.

"I know," Percy replied, and then realised that he didn't know. He lost track of time more than anyone else. He could probably crane his neck, pouring over a sky, a field or a wall for hours without even flinching. "I was just…" he gestured towards the field beside him as if it would explain what he was doing out here.

"Thinking," Bill stated and then raised an eyebrow. "What about?"

Percy shuffled uncomfortably. "I don't know if I'll ever be better."

"Percy, you already are," Bill suddenly said, and that surprised Percy more than anything in the world to hear that. Because all he could think about was how there was something wrong with him. Something that was fundamentally missing. "Look at you," he gestured towards him. "I recognise you for the first time in years, Perce… don't you?"

Percy cocked his head to one side, and he didn't know if he recognised himself. He had been such a shadow for so long that he didn't know how not to be one. "I suppose." Then he thought of what happened a few hours back and shuddered. "A woman at cubicle five keeps asking me for lunch. Yesterday, she bought her lunch box and sat across from me." Even just saying it out loud made him realise how mental it sounded. "She was eating. She had all this…" he gestured towards his face, "It was awful."

"A woman at cubicle five asked you out for lunch," Bill echoed incredulously. "And then dared to eat lunch with you." Then he nodded his head. "And then what happened after that?"

"I took three days off work," Percy squared his shoulders up. "And she made me muffins."

"You did what? And then she made you muffins?" Bill looked at him like he was mental. "She sounds…um…horrible." He then ran his hand through his hair, "Horribly pleasant that is."

Percy nodded his head, but he had his arms wrapped around his chest. Bill was just staring at him.

"So…you're mourning a woman that had violated you, but are absolutely terrified of this woman that has been very pleasant towards you?" Bill asked carefully. Percy's ears went red. He was ashamed of his own feelings and didn't need Bill's comments about how little sense it made. He knew what he felt made less sense than reading a textbook in Ancient Runes upside down, but it didn't change anything. "I'm sure that I'm being a right git, because if mum even heard me, she'd be tearing me a new one but…"

Percy dropped his eyes down to the wet grass. "You are being a git, but you're also right."

"Perce, you can't be scared of every woman in the world," Bill told him in a very precarious tone of voice. "That's half the population that you're terrified of." His tone was gentle, but what he said cut through Percy like anything because of just how right he was. "How is that supposed to help you?"

"Not half of them," Percy grumbled under his breath. "Just the half that looks…" he gestured towards his face. The half that was made up and spritz on more perfume than a Primpernelle's sales assistant. "Girly."

"And this woman from cubicle five was…?" Bill gestured towards his face like Percy was doing. "Girly?"

Percy stifled back a laugh. "I think if you sliced her in half, she might erupt into a flower garden. She wears more pink things than Dolores Umbridge did." Percy remembered looking down and even noticing that her nails had been painted into a shocking shade of flamingo pink. "And then she sent me muffins! With pink post-it notes! Telling me that she hopes that I feel better." He was gesturing his hands wildly now, probably looking like he was off his rocker he was sure, but he couldn't help himself.

"Can I talk to her?" Bill asked, and Percy just went even pinker, trying to imagine how that would go. "Come on, Perce, what's your real solution here? Just ignore it and hope that she goes away?"

Percy supposed that was his strategy before, but he doubted it would work. "No," he whispered.

"Will you talk to her?" Bill asked, and Percy just nodded his head. "Good."

"What do I even say?" Percy asked, because what did you say to someone? That you were abused? That something dreadful had happened to you and that your normal wasn't the same as everyone else's? Then again, he supposed that he didn't know what other people's normal was. If they were unwell too but had a better ability to conceal it than he did.

Bill shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "I don't know," he said. "But you'll have to figure it out, Perce. This is a big part of why you are the way that you are, you can't hide it forever. You need to make it a normal part of your story." He placed a hand on Percy's arm. "It's like George coped without Fred. How do you think he'd feel if nobody knew what he was going through? If every time he was in a panic or was thinking about him, he'd keep it to himself, do you think it would've been good for him?"

Percy supposed not, but the death of a twin in the war was something different than staying in an abusive relationship for years. They could blame me, was the first thing that Percy could think of. Because it was so easy to not understand, to blame him, to wonder why he didn't leave when he'd been in a relationship like that. And the thought of his inner criticisms being voiced out by the critics in the world seemed unfathomable.

But he did. When he went back to work that Monday, he had announced it like it was a bake sale, mentioned it in the passing all in a couple of sentences that began "I know that some of you have been wondering about why I've had an emergency leave…" and then the words that followed. The Wizengamot trial pages were imprinted into his mind. As he talked, he felt like he was detached with what he said.

He said what he had to say, and he found out that the world went on. He had a strangely normal day, and the woman in cubicle five had been sent down to another department to deliver a presentation at lunchtime.

But when he walked outside, he felt lighter than he had in years. Even though his family knew and the people at the shelter did and even his boss, telling a group of people, even in the vaguest sense, that he had been in a relationship that left him very confused left him meant a lot somehow. And he didn't really understand why, and he doubted that he'd really understand (why did he have to understand everything anyway?). And he must have been a couple of seconds away from opening his door when a realisation hit him. It left him feeling a warmth in his arms. He didn't know how long it had been, whether it was days or weeks or months since Penelope had died, but he'd come to this realisation that maybe… he could live without her.

A few months afterward, he'd accidentally bumped into Audrey Claire Brown when he was shopping.

She was buying bread, and he had a massive amount of children's yoghurts and fruit jams that came out in squeezy tubes. Molly had banged a bag of chocolate buttons into the trolley. When he looked at them, a calm washed over him. Things were different these days. He was not looking for pennies in Lucy's pram, or sweating with the heat of a broken-down apartment. He had confidence in him he hadn't had in years. He didn't have panic attacks trying to figure out the prices of half-off soup cans and dirt-cheap supermarket baked bean tins. Lucy was out of her pram and was walking alongside him now. She had doughy legs and liked purple shorts. Every word she tried to say was accompanied with more spit up than the last. Molly spent an awful amount of time trying to teach Lucy words that she didn't even know and was disgusted when Lucy grabbed Molly's hand with her wet one.

"Percy," Audrey looked happy to see him. "So nice to see you."

When he saw her, he could remember what Gabrielle had said to him. Percy was working every day of the week. He sometimes stayed a few hours after everyone else clocked off just to finish his work. He had some semblance of a personality. He had been applying for post-graduate exams, thinking about how to advance in his post. He hadn't had thoughts like that in ages. "You too," he said wearily.

"I was thinking about you the other day," she said. "How…how are you getting on?"

He wondered what that meant. Was she thinking about him in that sort of way, or was she just thinking about how he was getting on? Percy thought, but he said nothing. "Gabrielle said that you liked me," he found himself blurting out before he'd even realised what he'd said. His whole body went pink.

Audrey went just as pink as him, almost dropping the bread rolls in her hands. "Yes, well…"

"I was thinking about it."

"You were?"

Percy did. He was thinking about it quite a lot. He was thinking about what he'd said with Gabrielle, if he'd ever love someone else again, if he'd ever been in a relationship again. "I don't think…" he paused for a moment. "I think that you're in a position of superiority over me." This was a woman that had found him on the streets, taken him in when he was vulnerable. She was not his equal. She would never be his equal. "Even if it were just a few sessions, you were my therapist." That sounded odd to him. Who dated their psychiatric healer? The risk of the mental games, of being told that he was overreacting…or the opposite. How could you break free of your past if you were always around it all the time? "It's hardly appropriate."

He watched Audrey's hold tighten around her bread rolls. She looked like she was thinking about it.

"Percy," she finally said, and the way that she said his voice didn't sound like she was angry. But he bet that she was hurt. He would be too. It was only natural. "Do you know why I liked you?"

"No," Percy looked back at Molly, who had taken Lucy to the end of the biscuit aisle and was deciding on which colourful packets of biscuits to buy. Lucy had grabbed a pack of chocolate frog biscuits, which Molly seemed to be passionately against it.

"You're very special," she said, not in the condescending way you told children. "Very pure." She paused. "There aren't a lot of people like you anymore."

"This isn't me, Audrey," was all that he said. "You've never met me." And the second that he said that, he felt a warmth spread through his body. He was Perfect Prefect Percy. He was a prat. "I am sick." Audrey's eyes widened theatrically, and she stared at him like she was trying to see right through him, through the glasses, through that vulnerable exterior that he had. "I am not a doormat."

"No," she sounded pleased. She looked happy, and he didn't understand why at the time. "No, you're not."

Percy gestured for Molly and Lucy to come towards him, and Lucy ran towards him, hobbling as if she wasn't 100% sure how to walk on a surface without swaying from side to side.

"I'm proud of you," she suddenly said. "I wasn't sure for a while if you…"

"Me too," Percy decided to say. He wasn't sure if Audrey should be saying that she didn't believe that he'd get better, but he was glad that she did somehow. It made him feel like he was doing okay, and he was doing okay. Even though the sight of a woman sent him cowering and the thought of Penelope made him want to rip his heart out, he was doing okay, especially considering the things that had happened. "Thank you."

He left the aisle, forgetting why he'd even come there in the first place.

Time went on so slowly. Months were blurred, even with schedules and things-to-do and the bristling world before him. Sometimes, the days seemed to stretch on so bleakly, sometimes, the sun shone from dusk 'til dawn and he could feel every ray burn into his blood. And he decided that maybe, he wanted to stop thinking about the day-to-day, or the fact that he was rarely ever grounded into the reality that he was in. Maybe forcing himself to be so grounded was making him so detached and distant. Maybe it was okay that he'd gotten lost in space for hours. Maybe they'd go away a little bit on his own if he'd stop focusing on them.

The woman from cubicle five, Dee he'd heard some people call her, had snuck post-it notes in his drawer, folded into a wonky origami D that had been spello-taped at the edges. I heard you liked these; she'd said. Obviously, my skills are far superior. Then she'd written, what's your favourite colour?

He thought of the clear blue sky outside. Yellow, he'd written back, and folded his memo into a sunflower.