A Past Remembered?

Rachel's POV

Author's Note: I've run this past two different betas and there will invariably still be typos. I've been told it's too dark, but there were so many angles to this show and fascinating characters to explore I just couldn't help going down this rabbit hole. I don't own anything and I'm worth even less. Thanks to everyone who reads, but those who take the time to review are special folks and you keep all the budding authors out there going - so thanks.

I am sitting here at the house of this musician I met last night. I don't know his last name, but I'm sitting here eating Cheerios dressed in only his shirt, while my cell phone buzzes insistently. I know it's Charlie without looking. He thinks he can protect me, but he can't – no one can protect you

The world is a cruel place where you serve a life sentence alone. If you are lucky you don't absolutely hate your cellmate. That person chained to you through circumstance changes, but the chain's still there. I keep trying to lose it and I can't.

Part of me hates him for taking me away from the only father I knew - even if it was all a lie. Part of me is thankful because that man was not my father – he killed my whole family, and the fact I lived with him for all those years makes me ill. I miss the sureness and confidence Charlie stole from me with that revelation. I no longer trust my memory or myself and part of me resents him for rescuing me.

But little by little, snapshots from the past come back. Fragments of my life before…Jack Reese, his daughter (although she looks different now), and some small fractured things about my real family; but they are gone forever - so it seems cruel and masochistic to even try to remember what I have lost and can never have again. I lack confidence now and can't tell if what I think I recall is real or a fantasy – a dream of that happy family we all want to belong to.

What memories do flash through the dark hallways in my mind involve Uncle Charlie and Aunt Jen in our old house, but like I said I no longer trust my own memory. I recall being happy once, it was a very long time ago, and I think I remember him being a big part of that. I remember my brother wrestling with him on the living room floor. Maybe I remember it wrong; maybe I remember him wrong; maybe he's not whom I remember at all.

The Uncle Charlie I remember was a goofball who gave pony rides to my brother and me - sometimes at the same time. He could stand on his head. He had a great laugh. It was infectious – his laugh and his grin seemed to light the room up. I remember a rich sound and a true smile that inspired trust and promised safety. He smiles now but it always seems fake, forced and it's never the same one I remember. And he never laughs.

It's weird I remember more about him than my parents. The doctor says it's because he's alive and a constant reminder of my past. My parents and my brother are dead so they aren't there to reconnect the synapses in my brain that blew apart the night they died. The doctor says it's healthy to be around Uncle Charlie, but some days I think he's only a reminder of everything I lost and can never have again.

Then I look at him and think about all he's lost. His family was lost to him too. Aunt Jen isn't dead, but she's still gone and I think that might hurt more. To have some one that close and still not be able to reach them. He lost his job, his house, his position in the department and twelve years of his life. Only someone who's been through what we've endured can tell you that no amount of money can make up for it. It can't buy back anything important - time, love or family.

Some days when he's not aware I'm looking - I see past the façade he shows to everyone else. I see it for what it is because I do it too – pretend. I pretend so much I no longer recognize real emotion. I wonder if he feels that way too? He seems lost, faraway and disconnected from the world around him. I know this feeling, this separation from the world, this same melancholy.

There are days when I feel like a shadow or a ghost – almost as if I died with my family and I'm not really here at all. The world seems false to me, out of balance and mean – always mean, selfish, petty and little. I think Charlie sees it too. The only one that seems to connect to him is me – but it's a sad, tortured connection that takes us both back to haunted places and murky times. Memory mired in oppressive black mud sucking us both backward into a tortured past and away from any chance of a brighter future.

I wish sometimes that I could remember more. My impressions of my parents are faded now like fax paper left in the sun. Whole portions of my memory are just blackened, burnt away. Sometimes a smell or a sound will remind me of something. A child's toy or a snippet of a song will spark a long forgotten memory, unlocking it like a window into my past.

All that remains of what I can recall is Uncle Charlie, but I don't trust my memory of him and I don't feel like I know him anymore. I'm not sure he knows himself anymore either. Maybe the people we used to be died the night my family did and all we'll ever be are sad two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of those people.

The night Uncle Charlie shot his father, I saw the first true unfiltered emotion from him I could recall - and it was hate. He hates his father. I want to tell him how lucky he is to have his father alive, but the hate was so real, so fresh – it fascinated me.

Then Dani Reese came to the house, I knew her, but I didn't - and he was different. She was real to him; she mattered. To her, with her – he did not pretend, he did not lie, he did not evade and it made me realize there is a future – even if he doesn't believe in it. She is pulling him slowly toward it and I'm not sure either of them even see it. But I see it and it gives me hope, and hope is something we could all use a little more of.