1.
Harry sat on a bench, staring blindly out at the lake. A few feet away, Angela stood at the water's edge, trying to skip stones across the water's smooth surface. She wasn't very good at it; the stones would jump once, maybe twice, and then sink beneath the glassy waves. Undeterred, she would find another stone and try again, like she had all the time and all the patience in the world.
For some reason, the ripples the stones made when they broke the lake's skin and started to sink mesmerized Harry. He watched the ripples spread outward, grow larger, overlap the ripples created by stones both previous and future, and he got the strangest idea that if he watched them long enough, the confusion in his head would split open and he'd understand everything that was going on around him.
He watched the water, and it felt like his concentration, instead of deepening, was moving outwards, expanding, trying to take in the world and everything in it. He could feel his pupils dilating, could feel his hands and feet growing cold, could feel the fog plucking at him again with its quiet, insistent fingers. The fog… it wanted him, it wanted him to let go, to drift away into its embrace.
With an effort that was very nearly painful, he tore his eyes away from the lake, and the strange, drifting sensation faded away. He gasped with lungs that felt new and raw, like they had been put together by someone with only a memory of how lungs worked, and covered his face with his hands. He had to focus, he had to resist the drift, he had to remember! Already he could sense himself losing things; memories were falling away from him, cascading silently out of his mind in a spill of sound and images, and try as he might, he couldn't hold on to all of them. He could barely hold on to the important ones, and the longer he was here, the more difficult it became. It was the worst close to the lake; something in the water called to him, wanted to take him down into its depths, where he would just… disappear. Just be gone.
"Why are you here?" he asked Angela, pointedly looking away from the waves and ripples. "What brought you to this place?"
He watched her toss another stone, and tried to close his ears to the sound of it skidding and plopping into the water. "I killed my father," she said simply.
"What?" He hadn't really expected an answer, and he certainly hadn't expected that one.
She shrugged, her face complacent. "He deserved it. He hurt me for a long time." She glanced at him, and for just a moment, the rage built up behind her eyes again. "If you were here for hurting your daughter, I'd kill you too," she promised him, and Harry felt a chill run through him; she looked powerful, vengeful, like a harpy sent to set right an ancient wrong. Then her brow smoothed, and she was sad, spacey Angela again. "I thought, once he was gone, the hurting would stop." She lifted a stone and studied it closely. "It didn't," she finished quietly, and pitched the stone into the water, really hurled it, not trying to make it skip at all.
Harry waited a few moments, but she was done, and stood watching the waves, her arms crossed over her chest in a warding-off gesture as old as time itself. "I'm sorry," he offered.
She didn't look at him, but a grim half-smile flitted across her face. "Why? You weren't there. It's not your fault."
Harry frowned; he had had this conversation before, but with who? He wracked his brain, knowing that it was somehow important that he remember, but he came up completely blank. It was like someone had gone through his mind with a paintbrush, blotting out vast swathes of memory, destroying his mental landscape and leaving him wandering.
He got off the bench and brushed off his pant legs. "I need to get away from the water," he told Angela. "Do you want to come with me?"
She didn't answer, lost in her own thoughts.
The fog had nearly closed behind him, hiding the lake from view, when she called out to him. "Who are you looking for?"
He stopped and was about to answer her, the name on the tip of his tongue, when the word died in his mouth. Harry frowned; why couldn't he remember his name? He could picture him, could call up an image of his face as easily as he could call up his own, but the name danced on the edge of his consciousness, elusive, darting away whenever he got close.
"I… I can't remember his name," he admitted, feeling ashamed, knowing he should know, wanting to know.
Angela glided up from the lake's edge and stood in front of him. "Can you describe him?" she asked, her voice surprisingly gentle.
"He's tall," Harry told her, appreciatively, "taller than me, and bigger too, heavier. He has blonde hair, wears it a little bit long, and green eyes." Angela's eyes narrowed just a little, but she didn't speak, merely nodded at him to go on.
Harry pausing, thinking; that was what he looked like, but it wasn't him, it didn't describe who he really was, this man that he needed to find. "He doesn't smile very often, but when he does… it changes his whole face, makes him look like a new person. He… he doesn't think he's very good at expressing himself, at showing that he cares, and most of the time he's not, but… sometimes, when it slips out, he has this tenderness, this kindness, deep inside him, and maybe if his life had been different he'd be able to show it more often, but… but he can't… and I can't remember his name!"
Harry bent over his knees, exhausted and depressed at the effort of trying to remember. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the drift, fighting the urge to let the fog pull him apart, pull him into sweet, quiet oblivion.
He felt a soft, cool hand on his shoulder, and realized that Angela had taken a few steps forward until she was right next to him. "You're looking for James," she said quietly.
"James!" Harry shot back up, nearly colliding with her in his eagerness, as it all came rushing back to him, all their history together, all the years of their lives. "I'm looking for James!" he announced triumphantly, grinning at Angela like a fool. The grin slowly slid off his face as he noticed the tears sparkling on her cheeks. "How… how do you know that?" he asked.
The half-smile came back, and this time it stayed. "We've met," she told him, her voice plain and austere. "I… I think I know what you're talking about, with his kindness. Almost like he doesn't realize it's happening, but like he can't stop himself either, you know?"
"Yes," Harry said gratefully, hoping she could be this lucid for just a little longer. Volatile and mercurial as she was, she was still a companion in this awful place, another human voice in the darkness. "Have you seen him?"
She shook her head. "Not for a long time." Looking back over her shoulder at the lake, she considered. "Not for years."
"Oh. Do you know where he might go?"
"Try the hospital." She turned her back on him then, and started walking back towards the lake.
"Hey, where are you going?" Harry reached out and tried to catch her sleeve, but she was already beyond his reach.
She stopped, and Harry felt something brush past him, a loneliness and old sadness that was not his own, and he shivered in its passage. "I can't go with you any further," she told him, still looking out at the water. "I think… I think I'm going for a walk out there."
"Oh." He was disappointed to see her go, but he wasn't going to try and persuade her and risk triggering one of her blind rages again. "I guess this is goodbye, then."
"Good luck to you, Harry Mason," she said, her voice clear and strong.
"Good luck to… wait. How do you know my name?" He was certain that he hadn't told her; with the drifting, the constant tugging at his memories and self, he had guarded his name, valued it as something of power, something to pull him back into himself.
She turned her head towards him, and she was still wearing that little half-smile. "Everyone here knows you." Walking towards the water again, leaving him flabbergasted behind her, she called over her shoulder, "Everyone here knows you, Harry Mason, and that includes the Butcher. He can see you when the others can't."
He started to call out to her, to go after her, but the fog closed around her body, and she was gone.