(Untitled)

[teenagerenegade]

For as long as Charlie Bartlett can remember, there's been music. His mom always used to play and, when he was four, he'd had his first piano lesson, learning to play chopsticks with his feet swinging. After his dad went to prison, his mom had played less and less and the piano had become Charlie's. His mom used to leave him notes there because

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[teambatgirl]

"I- oh. Sorry." She'd stopped because there was a piano in her way, a piano that very clearly did not get left here by accident. But then she'd stayed because he had started singing, and now she's just being intrusive. Now he's upset and she's standing here looking at him when she clearly should be elsewhere.

"Sorry," she says again and takes a step away from the piano. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

[teenagerenegade]

Anybody else might be more concerned with wiping their face, but Charlie plays a couple of bars of Prokofiev first and he's smiling when he looks up at her. Then, he does duck his head and wipe his face.

"I'm playing a piano in the middle of the boardwalk," he says. "I'm pretty sure it's not your fault."

[teambatgirl]

"Yes, but I could be more tactful and give you as much privacy as an impromptu boardwalk jam session would allow." Still, she doesn't leave and rests her elbows lightly on the piano. There's that childish, stubborn refusal to make anyone have to cry on their own. And loneliness too, just a tiny bit. "You play really well."

[teenagerenegade]

"I don't think those words actually go together," says Charlie, nose wrinkling as he smiles despite the fact that his face is still damp. He plays a little fanfare, a flourish of notes.

"Awh, thanks," he says, grinning. "I...had a bunch of lessons? For, like, forever."

[teambatgirl]

She smiles at the little tune. "It shows, I think you're really good." Not that she would really be able to pick out a concert pianist's playing out of a line, but it's more advanced than Chopsticks and that's pretty much the extent of her piano knowledge. Stephanie always wanted gymnastic lessons and karate instead of learning the piano or the flute.

"I am curious about how in the world you got this piano out here."

[teenagerenegade]

Charlie's always loved the piano; what shows when he plays is joy. Comfort. Ease. He sinks into playing. His hands stay on the keys without pressing them.

"Oh, hey," he says, brightening, rubbing his cheek with the heel of his hand. "You must be new. Sometimes...stuff...just...kind of turns up? Stuff from home." He sniffs "This is one of the nicer ones."

[teambatgirl]

"Oh." She'd heard about this on her first night here, the Superboy statue in front of Bart's treehouse. But it is one thing to hear about it and another to see something so incongruous and strange. "I am new. This is yours? I heard they are supposed to be personal items."

[teenagerenegade]

"My dad bought it for my mom before I was born," he says, brushing the keys without pressing them down. "I started lessons when I was four. My Mom doesn't really pay anymore, but I do."

[teambatgirl]

"It's like a nice gift then." She smiles wistfully and rubs her thumb over the lacquered top of the piano lightly. She misses her mother terribly, more than she'd have expected. In Africa, she had coped with the absence by reminding herself that it was safer for Stephanie not to be there, that if she was recovering in Gotham her mom would be in danger. It hadn't quite worked, but it was enough. Now here she was doing it all over with no excuse.

She'd get used to it, again. Just had to learn to live with it.

"You're going to have a really fun time trying to get it home though."

[teenagerenegade]

There's an edge of how Charlie still doesn't quite know how to feel about his dad, but, yeah, mostly it's a nice gift. He missed it, anyway.

"I'm going to have to enlist an army."

[teambatgirl]

"Yeah you are." She grins. "Hope you have a lot of friends. Really burly friends. With...I'd say with a van but that wouldn't do much good here. Do you live far from here? It's a lost cause if you're on the other end of the island."

[teenagerenegade]

"I wouldn't call them burly, exactly, but they're well intentioned." He huffs a laugh through his nose and plays a few bars of Yankee Doodle.

"We're not from from here It's going to feel far, but it's not."

[teambatgirl]

"Anywhere feels far when you're moving a piano through a jungle," Stephanie says with a smile. "On the plus side, you're about to have the swankiest hut on the island. Unless you live in a tree house, in which case that's a whole new problem you'll have to manage."

[teenagerenegade]

"Yeah, no treehouse," he says, definitely laughing now. "And we're actually way closer to Ed's hut than we are to mine, but I spend all my time there anywhere, so the piano's better there."

[teambatgirl]

She smiles and leans against the side of the piano, so they're not trying to awkwardly talk across a whole piano. Definitely taking up the whole path now.

"Is Ed the boyfriend?"

[teenagerenegade]

"He is," says Charlie, not a hint of anything like being self-conscious, because, really, why would he? The way that she's standing there maks it look like she doesn't have any problems.

"Couple of years now."