Forgotten Memories

Chapter 12

"Sean," Charlotte muttered, barely audible. Her heart was beating faster and faster by the minute, and she felt torn between running up to him in relief and falling to the ground in betrayal.

Across the room, she could see him rake his hands through his hair in preparation for whatever he was going to tell her. His appearance made her uneasy, but his eyes told a different story. She thought to herself, Boy, this better be one hell of an explanation.

After much debate and a push from Scarlet, she started slowly, cautiously walking towards Sean. He took a few steps towards her as well, and much to her dismay, she visibly flinched at the action. He stopped walking towards her and shyly put his hands up in surrender.

"Char," he started remorsefully.

"No," she cut him off sharply, "I want an explanation, not some sappy sob story."

"I wanted to tell you sooner, but after the coma, you... well, you weren't the same."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She interjected.

"That day you woke up, with your mind basically a blank slate, the King told you that you were a princess. Then, I asked to meet with you and when you got there you didn't know who I was. Char, I-"

"Charlotte." She countered harshly.

"What?" Sean responded, obviously confused.

"Stop calling me Char, at least for the time being, because whether you are telling the truth or not, I have to assume the worst until proven otherwise."

As she was finishing her explanation she watched as Sean's face sink in with despondency. She felt bad for being so sharp; Sean had been there for her through everything, but she couldn't afford to be hurt so she kept her walls high.

"Forget it, you won't believe me even if I try." He handed her a folded-up piece of paper and turned to Scarlet. "Take her back to the woods, she can find her way back from there."

He turned back to Charlotte, "If you change your mind about me, that paper will tell you how to find me. Until then, all I can do is hope you remember."

"Wait! Remember what? What the hell is going on here? Why is everything so fuzzy?..." As her mini-rant continued her voice started fading, and you could practically see her giving up all hope of ever understanding why she was kidnapped.

Sean turned away and absconded through a door farther away from Charlotte than the one she had entered through. Her energy was being vacuumed up by the second and her hope had flown away long ago. She reluctantly followed after Scarlet, wondering the whole way whether or not she was making the right decision.

***

Scarlet followed through with Sean's orders to take her back to where she had been kidnapped. Charlotte thanked her and headed toward the castle. Once again, she was overcome with a feeling that something was terribly wrong. Instead of just shaking it off like she normally would, she sat down at the base of a tree on the outskirts of the woods facing the castle entrance.

From there she could see the commotion the kingdom was in after what had happened during the ceremony. She was having a hard time trying to fathom why the so-called rebels had interrupted. Rather than try to figure out their motive, she took a deep breath and tried to empty her mind.

At first, her mind joked at her, running laps around her determination to think things through. Eventually, though, her brain quieted to a murmur and she let herself think about nothing for a while.

Once she was sure her brain wasn't fighting against her heart any more she tried to figure out why she was feeling so off. When she couldn't think of anything, she decided to sneak back into the castle and stay in her room for a while. She figured a little cleaning and reorganizing of her massive suite might calm her down a bit. Little did she know the whole kingdom was worried she had been left for dead somewhere.

As Charlotte was cleaning her massive room she let herself think. She couldn't help thinking she should have trusted Sean and heard him out, after all, he did let her go freely. On the other hand, he literally kidnapped her, and she didn't understand what he meant when he had said that she was different after the coma.

She really wished she had never gotten the coma, and she was starting to wonder why no one ever told her how she'd been in a coma in the first place.

She thought back to the day she met Sean. As he stepped out of the shadows and realized she didn't know who she was. He had looked so hurt, so confused; and for whatever reason, she had felt the same way. She remembered the way her breath caught in her throat when she saw him, and how safe she had felt in his arms. She just didn't know why.

Being so immersed in her thoughts, she almost forgot she was cleaning in the first place. As she let her mind wander, her body had gone into pilot-mode, but her hands faltered as she found a polaroid behind her chair.

It was a picture of her at a house, in what looked like a much smaller town than the capital. A chill raced down her arms in a wave of goosebumps, why would she have been at a house, and why didn't she remember it?

She pushed the feeling off and immersed herself back into cleaning, this time keeping her mind blank. When she got to her dresser, she started dusting around the sides and the back, faltering once again when she found another polaroid. This time the picture consisted of herself at a lake, the water clear and glistening.

Though she couldn't remember where the lake was or what she was doing there, and lavender wasn't shown in the picture, she somehow knew there was lavender in a field behind the person that took the picture. She could smell the lavender in an overpowering sense of amnesia, she could hear laughter, but she knew it wasn't her own.

After finding the second polaroid she knew it couldn't be a coincidence, she threw herself into a frenzy and searched the room for more of them. Within a few hours, she had searched the entire room and found more than 15 more polaroids.

She sat down on the carpeted floor next to her massive bed and spread the pictures out. She had found them in cabinets, on shelves, in-between the pages of books, under her mattress, behind furniture, hidden in jars.

Looking at the pictures she was overcome with the feeling that everything was on the tip of her tongue. It was like the tip of the iceberg and she desperately needed to sink it. She sat back and did nothing but stare at the pictures for hours until, ever so slowly, it all came back. Picture by picture, memory by memory, day by day.

She wasn't sure who had put those pictures there, but she knew she couldn't trust the King. The only people she could even imagine trusting were Sean, Matt, and Carson, and she may have ruined her chance with Sean.

After some deliberation, she decided it would be better to take her chances with Sean and at least hear him out than to take her chances to King Amir and all of his lies.

She had no idea what to expect and she didn't know how she would feel by the end of the day. All she knew was she had 3 hours to find Sean before the sun went down and she had to take her chances at the castle where she was almost certain she wouldn't be safe.