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Charlie's phone buzzed from the bedside table, he turned the other way, ignoring it. At this point it was a wonder why he even kept plugging it back in, considering how often he pretended it didn't exist nowadays. After a moment it stopped. He went to check who it was, dismissed the dropdown menu of missed texts and calls from various people, then set it back where it was.
About ten minutes later, Charlie nearly fell out of bed as he was startled by a blaringly loud ringtone coming from his phone. He swore it had been on vibrate, maybe it was an old work alarm he'd forgotten about.
"Shuuuut the fuck uuuuup." He grumbled as he made his way over to the phone on the bedside table, scrambling to turn it off.
Charlie laid in bed for another.. hour? Must've been, at least. He'd realized he probably wouldn't be able to sleep any time soon if he hadn't at this point, so he might as well get up and do something. It was just as he'd sat up, set on suiting up to out as the Gunslinger, that he heard something from the other room. It sounded like a door closing, and sure enough, peering over to the bedroom door showed light coming from the front room that he had definitely not left on. Whoever decided to break into his apartment right now of all times was about to have a real unlucky night.
Charlie quietly grabbed the bat by his bed as he heard the intruder move towards the bedroom. He waited in the blind spot beside the door frame as he watched the figure's shadow approach in the light from the living room. The guy was moving slowly, distracted. Good. As soon as he'd approached the entrance, Charlie swung the bat to hit the guy in the gut with zero hesitation. He hadn't had even a second to process what the guy looked like before they doubled over to the ground from the impact, clutching their side.
"You picked a real bad night to--" Charlie started to quip on reflex, before recognizing the slight tinniness in their voice as they groaned.
"Jeeesus fuck, Charlie..." his odd, metallic voice was even clearer as he spoke, the same way he'd heard over mic dozens of times, and in person only a handful of times in the past year. It was Damon. "Remind me to turn off the pain receptors next time I visit, fuck ."
Damon didn't look the way he did the few times they'd spent together in person, though. He actually had sleeves on his hoodie, for one, and the hood was up so Damon's shittily dyed blue-green hair wasn't immediately visible. Most notably, though, he wasn't wearing his visor. Granted, he was facing the ground, but the faint blue hue that would normally be coming from his emote display was absent entirely.
After he'd had a moment to catch his breath, Charlie offered down a hand to help Damon up. He accepted it, reluctantly, and slowly got back to his feet. He was still breathing a bit shaky, but he made his way to sit on the edge of Charlie's brain and seemed fine enough.
"You good?"
"I think so, I--"
"Great. Why the Fuck are you in my apartment, Damon?" His voice was only a notch below yelling. "How the hell did you even get in?!"
"I mean, I just picked the front door lock."
"Why?!"
"To get in."
"Jesus fucking christ, Damon, I don't have time for this, go home."
"Yeah, nah, nice try. You're not getting rid of me that easy." He pulls his hood down and sits up straighter, looking him dead in the eyes. "What's going on with you, man? You're never online, don't answer calls, don't answer texts. Alistaire said you'd been avoiding him all week, even I went analog and visited him on Thursday."
"Yeah, congrats. You're a decent friend."
"Fuckin'... Come on, Charlie."
"You come the fuck on, Damon . Why're you here, huh?"
"I'm just," he bit back whatever quip he would normally react with, getting more serious in tone. "I'm just worried about you, man."
His expression reached his eyes, and Charlie knew he was being genuine. He also realized he had never really looked Damon in his eyes before. Their eyes were bloodshot, but a closer look showed strange geometric lines amongst the veins, like a circuit board. His eyes looked a bit sunken, as well. He's not sure if they were always like that, or if he just really hadn't been taking care of himself. He knew Damon would forget to eat and drink on the best of days, but with everything recently…
"Look, man. A ton of shit happened that sucks, to say the extreme least. Everyone's hurt, running around, going nuts, being depressed and traumatized and shit, and meanwhile you disappear off the map except for a handful of Gunslinger appearances beating the shit out of criminals. You're not online, you don't answer shit. Can you blame me for wanting to check in?"
"When you break into my apartment? Yeah, I can."
"Oh come the fuck on, man. You still stuck on that?" Charlie glances away for a moment, but he stands his ground.
"Yeah. I know you don't have a great grasp on privacy, but maybe you noticed how nobody else showed up uninvited? Almost as if, wow, avoiding everyone is a sign of not wanting to fucking talk to them." Charlie could see his brow furrow in frustration. He leans down to meet his gaze. "You need to learn to take a fucking hint."
"You're full of shit."
"Am I? God forbid I set a reasonable fucking boundary of don't break into my home when I'm avoiding you."
"You are. If it were just me, I'd take the hint, sure. I'm-" He bites back another joke, it seems. "Normally I'd pull back, but come on . Look at what you're in the middle of--"
"You think I don't know?!" Charlie snapped.
Damon recoiled a bit. Charlie sighed a bit, composing himself.
There's a moment of silence.
"...You see Alistaire on the news?"
"Yeah."
"He's a good friend, you know."
"...He's being stupid."
"He's looking out for you, asshole."
"I didn't ask him to. Reporters' doing their jobs the same as they always have, it was stupid to get dragged into it. There's nothing to defend, anyways. I killed Apollo."
"Yeah, but there's more to it than that, right?"
"..."
"Charlie, c'mon."
"You weren't there, Damon."
"I mean yeah, no shit, but I know people who were, and I know you, and I'm not a fucking idiot so I know it's not like you face-heel turned and went for pretty-boy's throat like they're saying it was. And you all knew what you were getting into, that you might not come back. I swear, Charlie, you make one mistake, and--"
"This wasn't a 'one mistake,' Damon, this was someone's fucking life . Christ, I know you're disconnected, but these aren't just icons on a screen, real people died, real people were hurt. Are you seriously so unempathetic and uncaring of people that you don't get that? You joke about not being a real person, but sometimes I seriously fucking wonder, because I don't know what the FUCK is wrong with you." Damon stiffens, trying to put up a shield, but Charlie can see the hurt in his eyes. He doesn't stop, though. "You push every fucking boundary til it breaks, Damon. You show up to my house, uninvited, to do what? Talk me better? Pat me on the back and validate me for killing the partner of someone I care about? Are you insane? Or do you really have so loose of a grasp on how to be a human being that you thought that this was okay? And it's funny, you know, because I could swear I was giving every signal imaginable for you to do the exact fucking opposite. And yet here you still fucking are, telling me how I made 'a mistake,' talking down to me like I don't know what happened, what's happening, like I'm unaware of my own fucking actions. Fuck you , Damon."
The last few words hang in the air. Damon looks for a moment like he wants to bite back, but he deflates almost immediately, breaking eye contact as he does.
"...I. I could have phrased that better." Charlie really isn't used to this much honest no-bullshit emotion from Damon. He almost wishes he'd snark or bite back or something. Of all the times to try to be straightforward with him...
"You fucking think? You know what? You're right, Alistaire is a good friend. But you?" Charlie gripped the handle of the bat, biting back the urge to say something he can't take back. "Just get the fuck out, Damon."
"Charlie, y--"
" Get OUT ." He yells, brandishing the bat. Damon quickly gets up from the bed, raising his hands defensively, moving towards the door. Part of Charlie wonders if Damon actually believes that he would just attack him like that.
Damon pauses as he stands under the frame of the door, turning around and meeting Charlie's eyes again. He waits there for a moment, wordlessly calling his bluff. Charlie's grip squeezes around the bat. Damon glances at his hand, but doesn't move from the spot as he speaks.
"If you're so determined for a distraction, I have something you should...well. I'll leave it with you to figure out."
What the hell was he talking about?
"Damon, I'm giving you one more chance to get--"
"Yeah, yeah. I got it." He starts down the hallway. Charlie follows him out to make sure he actually leaves.
As Damon approaches the doorframe, he stops again for a moment. He takes what sounds like a keychain out of his pocket and fiddles with something on it, taking it off and tossing it to Charlie. On reflex, he catches it out of the air.
"Gunslinger should look into that."
Before Charlie could tell him to leave again, Damon's out the door. Charlie stands there, listening for his footsteps. Damon doesn't move from the other side of the door for a long moment. He can hear him mutter something to himself, but can't quite make it out. Then they walk off.
He waits until the footsteps fade out into the rest of the city noise before looking at what Damon gave him. It was a tag of sorts, kept in a protective plastic pocket that he used to hook it onto the keychain. It looked a bit like a toe tag you'd find at a morgue, and for a moment Charlie could feel himself getting angry again, wondering if he'd somehow got ahold of Apollo's autopsy information. But that wouldn't make any sense, he'd just leave the autopsy file itself, and inspecting the tag further proved it belonged to someone else. He didn't recognize the name of the deceased at all, but the signature was one he'd seen a dozen times before, mostly in the files he'd had Damon retrieve right before all of this shit went sideways. Why would he give him this?
Charlie tossed the tag onto the counter for later. He didn't want to investigate shit right now, he just wanted to hit something, someone. So he geared up, and the Gunslinger went out on the scene. Alone.