It wasn't nonsense though. It was the simple practically of the matter. Fallon was moving on with her life and Malou might have a place in it, but it wouldn't be the same place she held now. It physically couldn't be. The truth was something Malou had thought of that summer after graduation, that she had accepted as the truth their seventh year. But then fate had intervened and delayed the inevitable. Now it was here and the truth and stumbled over Malou's reluctant lips. Despite that Malou shouldn't have mentioned anything, not so soon after Fallon had had to lose someone with the choice she'd had to make yet again. The truth of Malou's bad timing was evident in the look on her face, the surprise that flashed over it first, followed by sadness, and then the stubborn fight that marked Fallon as who she was.

It was the fierceness in her words and the plan that Fallon laid out in front of them that made Malou smile this time. Not because of the pragmatism of it, but in fact because of the fact that it would absolutely not work. Not if Malou were to ever have a life of her own, one that didn't estrange her even further from any chance of a match herself. Despite the impracticality of it, the fear of it even, Malou wasn't ready to admit that she didn't want to find a love of her own. In the past few months the small hope that she might just find someone for herself, someone who would accept her as both Mr. Hatchitt and Mr. MacFusty had accepted Fallon, had begun to form in her mind. She didn't think she would ever find that, but she couldn't yet throw all caution to the wind and give up just yet. She still had a few years before she was counted as hopeless didn't she?

"I wish we could." Malou said gently, putting a hand on Fallon's knee in a silent desire to impart the fact that she understood the gesture and wished it could really be that way. "But you know people would talk." She bit her lip as she admitted this truth, the one that she wished didn't matter, the one that wouldn't matter if only society understood. But society would never understand, would never accept the close bond between Fallon and Malou. No, the orphan would forever be marred by her residence with a married friend. Wouldn't she? Perhaps if she moved in with them in a few years it might seem more normal to take a friend in, a spinster orphan with no home of her own, but not just yet. Besides, as much as Malou hated to admit it, she'd always feel more of a third wheel than anything else. She couldn't mar the early years of her friend's marriage by her own intrusion - it was not fair to either of them. No matter how much it would hurt her, hurt Fallon even, she couldn't do it.