Disclaimer: not mine

AN: Sorry, guys, I'm trying to get out the Silee fic I promised :) Patience is a virtue! But here! It's Wingedraksha Does Angst again!

When he was a boy, his ma took him to a museum in the city. She lingered by the clothing from Earth-That-Was, the tools and the ancient flight machines that barely got a couple thousand feet off the ground. He passed her by, trailing a hand along the tarnished bronze railing that separated the displays from the visitors. He paused at the weapons section, blue eyes taking in the old guns and swords hanging on the wall. A bow. A copper arrowhead.

He moved on.

People stopped him as he explored the dim rooms, wondering where his ma was. Such an adorable little boy. Such messy hair, and oh, those eyes. Gonna be a heartbreaker when you grow up, chile, said the dark woman with the patterned dress.

Heartbreaker.

He turned a corner, breath coming in a cough. Still a little sick. And there… the pictures. Ah, those pictures.

Men and women, children, dogs, cats, anything and everything from Earth-That-Was. Photographs. Color. He stared at them hungrily, wanting to reach out and stroke the glossy print to see if the people could feel him. See if they’d step out of their frames and play. For a poor farmboy from a Rim planet who’d scarcely seen a simple capture, the photographs were somethin’ else. Life, frozen in a square of vibrancy.

It made him smile, and yet brought an aching sadness that he couldn’t quite understand. That life, those people, were gone. They would never smile again. Never pose for the flash of a camera. Never kiss. Never be.

He traced his eyes along the wall, going from one picture to another. Black-and-whites, now. They changed with the loss of color, he noticed. Faces went from laughing or off-center to perfectly poised and awfully, awfully solemn. Eyes like dark stones stared out from pale, expressionless faces. Men with the little curls of mustache, women with the delicate ringlets of hair pinned up. Children, oh, the