xp_logs | Angelo and Amanda, Tuesday late afternoon

He finds her in the rec room, gets her to talk about Charlie, and lets her cry on him.

The opening strains of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" were playing, but for once they didn't get a reaction from the girl sitting huddled on the couch in the rec-room. Amanda could have stayed in her suite, but she'd promised Marie-Ange and Manuel she wouldn't hide from people, so here she was, with a mug of tea cupped in her hands, watching the flickering images without really seeing them. Her attention was turned inwards, a thousand images of Charlie playing on her mind's eyes, and none of them providing her with an answer.

Not in the library, not in her suite, not in the stables... but Angelo found her in the fourth place he looked, at least. One glance from her to the screen told him almost all he needed to know, and he settled quietly on the couch beside her. "Hey."

"Hey," came the rather listless reply, Amanda's eyes not leaving the TV. It was the fish slapping dance, and the antics were completely failing to raise even a glimmer of a smile. When she'd introduced Angelo to her secret Python obsession, she'd giggled like a small child. The only change was in her hands, shaking slightly as she clutched at the mug.

He looked at her face, glanced down at her hands, and frowned. "What happened?" he asked very quietly, knowing if she really didn't want to tell him, she'd say so.

"The usual," she replied distantly, and took a deep shuddering breath before turning to finally look at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face slightly pinched, as if she hadn't been eating again. "So, hey, good news. Paige is back in the land of the talkin', yeah?" she continued, in an obvious attempt to change the subject. Angelo wouldn't push, and she couldn't deal with talking about it just yet. Not when it didn't make any sense at all. And besides, Angelo would still be there later, and with Paige 'recovered', he had plenty on his own mind.

He pulled his legs up onto the couch, arms wrapped round his knees almost unconsciously. "Yeah, she is. Bobby went to see her."

She wasn't so far gone that she didn't catch the reaction. And the statement. "An' you?" she asked, in much the same tone he had spoken to her.

He shrugged, half-focusing on the screen. "Haven't been down there yet."

"Are you goin' to?" Her eyes slid back to the screen. Oh, the argument sketch.

"Probably. Kind of... have to. Can't just leave it like this." His voice was dull.

"No, you can't." Amanda kept her eyes fixed on the screen, but as she spoke, her voice grew more and more impassioned. "You need answers, both of you do, an' the only way you can get that is t' talk. Because that's what people do, when they care about each other. They talk, an' they tell each other when they're hurtin', an' they fix things." Tears welled up and slid down her face unnoticed. "You an' Paige have got that chance, so you bloody well take it, 'cause if you don't then maybe one day you might not be able to, an' you'll always wonder what you did wrong, why the other person couldn't talk t' you, why they..." Blindly she reached forward to set her mug on the coffee table in front of the sofa, missing it but not really caring as she curled into a ball of misery.

A strand of skin shot out to catch the mug and put it safely on the table, then Angelo pulled Amanda into a hug. "C'mere, little sis. Tell me."

"C-charlie," she stuttered between sobs, holding onto Angelo in much the same way she'd clung to Remy in the rain, and Manuel later. "H-he's g-gone, Ange. An' I don't know why!"

He held her close automatically, beginning to understand. Gently, not pushing, he asked, "Gone?"

"Remy an' I... s-s'posed t' meet him, only he d-didn't show. I made Remy go to his place to see where he was, an' we... we..." Images of that bloody bedroom filled her mind again, and she screwed up her eyes, fighting desperately to get the words out. "We f-found him."

He wouldn't make her say what she wasn't. 'Dead'. He rocked her slightly, helpless, lapsing back into Spanish without quite realizing it. "'stoy apesadumbrado, mi hermanita. Tan apesadumbrado."

The words themselves didn't matter - Amanda was too far gone to dredge up the Spanish Manuel had taught her, and any way, she didn't want words. Not Angelo's, any way. The only words she needed were Charlie's, answers, reasons, something to help her understand what she'd missed, what she'd been too self-absorbed to see. And those words weren't coming, not now, not ever.

So she held onto Angelo and cried into his shoulder until his shirt was damp and her eyes swollen, and there were no words.