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"I thought I'd find you here." Charles said quietly, walking up behind Molly who was leaning against the railings around the pond in the middle of the park, staring at her reflection in the water.
She looked up as he leant against the railings beside her. "What are you doing here Charles?" She asked.
He could see from the fact her eyes were red and puffy that she'd been crying. "You clearly weren't going to come home and talk to me, so you didn't give me much choice." He sighed. He reached across and took her hand in his own, squeezing it gently. Much to his relief she didn't pull away from him.
"I don't know what to say to you Charles!" Molly confessed with a sigh, pushing her hair off her face with her free hand. "It happened, I can't change it! What more is there to talk about?"
"You can't seriously be expecting me to just move on after you've just announced something like this to me!" He lowered his voice as a woman standing near them turned to stare. "This is the kind of thing we are supposed to talk about."
Molly pulled her hand from his grasp. "What do you want to discuss then Charles? You want to go over the facts of how I'm responsible for the fact you'll never get to meet our baby? Do you want to talk about the fact I failed as a parent so badly that our baby is dead?" She sucked in a shaky breath and wiped a tear from her cheek. Charles reached towards her but she pulled further back. "Or how about we talk about the fact that I couldn't do what Rebecca did and give you a child?"
"Molly, it's-" Charles started, but she cut him off,
"Just don't Charles." She shook her head. "Don't try and tell me that it doesn't matter. I've seen the way you look at Sam! How long is it going to be before you start resenting me because you never got the chance to look at our child like that, because I decided to go out on patrol that day?"
"How can you possibly think that?" Charles asked after a few moments silence. "I don't blame you for what happened Molly, and you shouldn't blame yourself either. It was an accident!"
Molly looked up at him with tear filled eyes. "I shouldn't have been out there. I could've stopped it."
Charles shook his head, stepping forwards and putting his arms around her. He kept a hold of her as she tried to pull away from him. "There's nothing you could've done to change anything Molly." He whispered in her ear soothingly as he held her tightly. "You can't keep blaming yourself for this, it's not healthy."
"How can you say it's not my fault? Look at me- I'm a mess. I'm no use to anyone. Because of me Smurf is dead, you're out of the army and now our baby..." She broke off mid sentence, resting her head against his chest. "Where did I go wrong?" She said it so quietly he wasn't sure if he'd heard her right.
"I don't know how many times I'll have to say this before you start to believe me, but I'll say it as many times as I need to, none of this is your fault."
Molly didn't answer him, and they stood there in silence for an immeasurable amount of time.
Eventually, Charles broke the silence, pulling back slightly to look down at her. "Come on, we should really start heading back. It's freezing out here now."
Molly nodded slightly, shivering as the wind picked up around them. "I'm sorry." She said quietly, taking a hold of Charles' hand as they started to walk back.
"You don't need to apologise!" He said for what felt like the hundredth time.
"Just shut up and hear me out!" Molly snapped, sounding much more like herself- something that made Charles smile. He'd missed this side of Molly. "I'm sorry for keeping it from you- you're right we should discuss things like this. I'm sorry for walking out on you earlier, I thought maybe the walk would help me clear my head. That I might be able to put things in to perspective and make some kind of sense of things so I could explain it to you."
"Did it help?" He asked curiously.
Molly shrugged, looking down at the floor. "I honestly don't know the answer to that Charles. One step at a time hey?"
"Sounds like a plan." Charles said with a hint of a smile on his lips. "Come on look, let's get home before we end up with frostbite- it's freezing out here!"
Molly laughed quietly, a sound he hadn't heard in months, before picking up the pace and pulling him along. For the first time in a while she was feeling genuinely hopeful that everything could be okay.