The Fiddler had wandered away from the two who seemed to be having a conversation, probably just about their memories. These were, after all, very strange times, and the focus did seem to be on memories.
Instead, he reached up toward his section of the board and unpinned one of the pictures. He was on a ship, perched precariously in the rigging with his fiddle balanced on his shoulder. When he took out the pin, though, several other pictures fluttered out from behind it. He shouldn't have been surprised, he was very, very old. He knelt to gather these and flipped through them. One of them wasn't like the others.
While most of the pictures were painted on a glossy sort of thin parchment that was almost sticky to the touch, this one felt more familiar. It was a painting. A small, travel-sized family portrait, lovingly painted with meticulous detail. A man, three children, and...him. Apollo, or whatever he was to be called, stood smiling at the children with his arm around the shoulders of a handsome man with the prettiest smile there ever seemed to have been.
The boy...he didn't remember this.
His grip tightened on the painting as the truth like shards of broken glass forced its way into the forefront of his mind.
He didn't remember because he'd been given a name. This man, those children, they were long dead. Without him.
Her merciless Lady Grave had taken away the memory of his newest name, and he'd let her.
Suddenly, he was regretting how happy he looked in the other pictures.
Charlie had been too busy studying the photos on the bulletin board for the conversation to really register. Even though he felt a sense of detachment looking at the photographs of everyone he had cared about as Charlie Greene, he couldn't help but feel overwhelmed with memories of what it had been like to spend time with them.
What it had been like to not be alone.
Then Charlie realized what Jay and Kazimir were actually talking about. He caught a glimpse of Kazimir's mugshot hanging on the bulletin board; that wasn't much of a surprise, either. The two of them were on the verge of a fight over whatever Jay had been imprisoned for.
Charlie turned away from the two of them.
He was tired of playing mediator - of trying to be the adult in the room, even though it was obvious to everyone present that he was actually the youngest. If they started getting physical, he'd step in.
His gaze turned to Apollo.
Apollo, who was oddly looking sad.
"...What's wrong?" he asked, glancing down at the painting in Apollo's hands. Understanding dawned on him. "...Oh."
Apollo hadn't been as alone as Charlie had thought.
Any hint of amusement on Kazimir's face faded. He glanced over at the photos of Jay. There were other women in them. Some at what looked like his trial. Most of them much younger than him.
He returned his gaze to Jay.
"Better?" Kazimir said slowly. "Just a minute ago, you were obsessed with her. Now you're telling me you were disloyal to her? What kind of f***-up are you?"
The boy swallowed the lump in his throat and carefully pinned the painting back up. Was he the one who painted it? Was it someone who wasn't in the picture?
He shook his head. That didn't matter now.
"What now?" he asked the others, turning away from his pictures to face them.
Kazimir looked over at Fiddler. His hand started twitching at his side. He didn't know why.
"I don't know," he said, looking down at the picture in the fiddler's hands. He wished he hadn't. It made him sad.
"If all this has to do with remembering, I think I remember pretty much everything now." Granted, most of what he remembered made him wish he hadn't remembered anything. He was happy to remember Megan, and Bo, and the happy memories in-between, but there were so, so many mistakes. So many things he wished he could do differently.
His hand ended up in his pocket. He didn't realize he was pawing at his gun until his finger found the trigger. He slipped his hand out.
The boy spotted the gun, finally tuning into the conversation, and hopped back a few steps, putting up his hands in surrender. "Hey, we can get along, no need to take out weapons."
Now that Apollo had stepped in, Charlie decided he would do the same. He was grateful he wasn't the only one trying to play mediator anymore.
"That's probably what the shadow wants," he pointed out, glancing between the two of them. "Everything that's happened so far was meant to mess with our emotions - the shadow's probably enjoying your fight."
Kazimir was feeling twitchy. He hadn't done anything. He was just holding his gun. It wasn't like he hadn't done that before, and it wasn't like he'd shot at any of them. He'd only shot at the shadow, which had proven to be useless. What did they want? Did they want peace? Then why did they keep telling him he was fighting? He wasn't fighting.
They didn't know what a real fight looked like.
He stood stiffly, tucking the gun into his belt under his jacket. His hand moved stiffly, pulling away with his elbow locked before tucking his hand back in his now empty pocket.
His lips curled into a frown, and his brows drew together.
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