[ It isn't her turn to do the cleaning up but when Johnny helps, then Madchen helps too. It's only fair and it's only right and there's only so much she can expect him to bear, even when his shoulders are so broad and his arms so strong. She's the one who had hadn't been mindful the first time, after all. (One time, just the once, but one time was all it took.) She has messed this up once already and Madchen has no intentions of doing so again. Guilt is a strange creature like that. And quite often it can be as dogged as love.
When Johnny bends to gather a few of the plates from the ground — no more than some hammered out metal, roughly circular — it's her hand that grips the edge of it first. Narrow wrist, delicate fingers despite the patches of rough skin. Perhaps in another life they would have never grown so worn-down, but they have no other life than this one anymore and all the doors of possibility that would normally branch away at all sides have been shut permanently to them by tragedy and time. (There'll never be another, she'd wailed when she woke. Never ever again. And so there hadn't been.)
She looks up at him with attentive eyes which smile even though her mouth naturally frowns. ] I got it, sweetpea. Don't you worry. [ She nods him back towards the mouth of the tent, where the rain threatens to blow inside and turn the dirt floor into muck. ] Go on now.
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When Johnny bends to gather a few of the plates from the ground — no more than some hammered out metal, roughly circular — it's her hand that grips the edge of it first. Narrow wrist, delicate fingers despite the patches of rough skin. Perhaps in another life they would have never grown so worn-down, but they have no other life than this one anymore and all the doors of possibility that would normally branch away at all sides have been shut permanently to them by tragedy and time. (There'll never be another, she'd wailed when she woke. Never ever again. And so there hadn't been.)
She looks up at him with attentive eyes which smile even though her mouth naturally frowns. ] I got it, sweetpea. Don't you worry. [ She nods him back towards the mouth of the tent, where the rain threatens to blow inside and turn the dirt floor into muck. ] Go on now.