A/N—I own nothing. Michael Scott owns everything!
Summary: This is a really bad idea, I know, but I needed to write something. This piece is dedicated to Elycia-of-Arc, who asked me to write it when they heard about the plot. So, here you go, Elycia-of-Arc!
Hide It In Your Memories
It's shoved away, right in the back of the glove compartment, almost as if it had been put there on purpose: crumpled up in a ball, it almost snaps in half when he unfolds it. The sharp edges of the—he peers at the object in his hand, trying to find out what it is, and realizes that it's a photograph. A bad quality color snapshot that looks like it was taken with a disposable camera.
Three faces, filled with joy and laughter, look up at him, and it takes him a second to actually recognize William Shakespeare. He looks closely at the picture, confused, unable to figure out why he didn't know the Bard immediately. And then he sees the eyes.
Shakespeare's eyes are different. When Josh met him, the Bard's pale eyes had borne a haunted look. They had been almost...almost empty, and the only emotion on his face that had ever reached his eyes was pain. The smiles and laughter had only ever been in his features, but never his eyes.
Here, in the photo, Shakespeare's joy is evident. Josh can see it, shining in his blue eyes, despite the bad quality of the photo. Something was different back—whenever the photo was taken. He turns over the picture, searching for a date, and sees an inscription on the back, written in a firm, almost hieroglyphic script.
November, 1979
Over twenty years ago. It's then that immortality really becomes a solid fact for him. Shakespeare looks the same as he did when Josh last saw him, not even twenty-four hours ago, yet this picture's older than Josh is.
He turns his attention to the other two faces, one on either side of Shakespeare, and is shocked to see two children. They couldn't be older than him and Sophie.
Identical twins. They have to be. Both have chocolate brown hair and clear grey eyes, long noses and heart-shaped faces. If one of them wasn't a girl, they could be duplicates.
"Who...who are those kids?" he asks, holding the photo out to the Saracen Knight.
Palamedes takes it from Josh's hand and looks at it. Josh sees the pain in the knight's face, and strangely, it's the same expression that he saw on Shakespeare's as he said that he hated Dee.
"Ben and Lizzy." Palamedes' voice is taut with pain.
"Who?"
"Benjamin and Elizabeth. They...they were—"
"Were?" Josh hears the anger coming into his voice as he repeats the past tense verb. He's heard it so many times, it frightens him now, angers him. "What do you mean, were?"
The Saracen Knight breathes deeply, and Josh can hear the shaky inhalation.
"They were the sweetest children. Will and I loved them dearly. We were all they had, and we gave all we could to be everything for them."
"I don't understand."
"I found them in 1964, in late November...I made a choice then that I felt was the right one. Looking back, I'm not so sure anymore."
"Why?" Why is he prying? He doesn't know, except that he needs to understand who these children are, and why the Saracen Knight looks so sad when he speaks of them, why Shakespeare looked so haunted when Josh met him, why he didn't twenty years ago.
The car stops at a traffic light, and the red glow illuminates Palamedes' face. The knight points towards an alleyway with one finger.
"I found them just in there."