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[whats_insideyou]

When she woke that morning, she found a box waiting for her just by the bed. Wrapped in festive silver paper and done up in a shiny red bow, and immediately she wanted to toss it off a fucking cliff. She'd missed Christmas at home, she'd thought at the time that she wanted nothing more, but Louise and Jean Pierre were dead, everyone was dead, and

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[agirlnamedchuck]

Holding a butterfly net that she had made herself, the lonely tourist Charlotte Charles was about to go tend to the little critters and creepy crawlies who liked to grow in places that they probably shouldn't. It was not that they had no right to be there, it was just that being there did more harm than good and stood a chance to get them smushed.

"You should try the flowers over there. There's a nice mix of Lepidoptera and plant life," she suggested in an attempt to be helpful as she went about her careful movements.

[whats_insideyou]

She lowered her camera slowly, looking at the woman over the viewfinder, her face almost entirely expressionless.

"I'm just getting used to this fucking thing," she said flatly. She'd get tired of flowers soon enough.

[agirlnamedchuck]

That sort of reaction was not the sort of thing to get a rise of Chuck who had spent her formative years living with her ornery Aunt Lily and her skittish Aunt Vivian. To her, rudeness and nonemotive qualities were homey and warm.

"I didn't know," she answered still relatively upbeat as she continued her task. "I was just making a suggestion."

[whats_insideyou]

Sarah nodded, and after a moment she murmured a quiet, "Thank you," her accent heavier than normal, as if the words pained her.

"No, film. That's all I meant," she said, flipping back the little door to reveal the tiny memory disc inside, "The whole department went digital, years ago, but I refused."

[agirlnamedchuck]

"I like film better. The pictures are nicer."

All of the cameras that Chuck had been accustomed too were old rickety things, not fancy gadgets that whirred and clicked, but ones that still worked years later when they were covered in dust. "Were you published? Your photographs?"

[whats_insideyou]

"I miss my darkroom. There's something... comforting about the ritual." The smells. The feeling of the photo paper under her fingertips. The counted steps in the dark. Ticking timers.

"I worked for a newspaper in Paris."

[agirlnamedchuck]

"I bet." Chuck's life was full of rituals, for bees were methodical creatures and cheese needed to be kept in order lest it get all out of sorts. Then there had been the aunts to consider, but all of that was long ago.

"That must have been nice. Pretty at least." Paris had seemed very exotic, at least in the photographs, but exotic always had a sinister turn.

[whats_insideyou]

"It was... I suppose it could be, sometimes."

Others, it was completely vile, even if it had been the only home she knew.

[agirlnamedchuck]

"Nothing is really nice all the time."

Not even pie, no matter how much certain people would insist it was. Chuck knew better than to think it could be and liked things because they could be equal parts sweet and equal parts salty.