The memories push him out violently, and he comes back with a wicked fit of coughing. Charlie pursues him with calculating eyes, arms crossed across a freshly pressed blouse and her toes nearly tapping out of her high heels.

"It took you nearly a week to process all of her memories. We thought we were going to lose you for a while there when you didn't come out of it as expected," she says, the words drawing attention to the multitude of machines he is hooked up to. "Would have been a shame to have lost both you and Mae in such a short time."

At her name, the memories burst forth again, the ones that he has of her himself and the ones that recognize their original owner's name. The images about split his head open, forcing a deep groan out of his lips as he bends forward on the bed.

After they retreat back into the corner of his mind where he can still feel them hovering, he manages to look up at Charlie. "Is she all right, Charlie? What happened?"

"The memories didn't tell you?" She sighs, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "She's gone, Finn. The only pieces that remain of her are the memories floating inside of your head right now. We don't know how she managed to preserve them for you, but she did."

He sorts through the images, the strangeness of having someone else's opinions and views of the world making him wonder if he'll ever feel normal again. "I think she transferred them to me at the end. Both sets of the memories I have are unclear though, so I couldn't tell you how she did it exactly."

The director of the DMA lets out another sigh and gently pats Finn's hand before standing up in a cloud of lavender and orange that reaches his nose. He watches her with narrowed eyes as she leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. Something deep inside, perhaps from Mae but perhaps not, tells him that he needs to keep the truth to himself, buried as far down as he possibly can.

Leaning back against the pillows, Finn closes his eyes to allow the memories to wash over him again. To him, it seems as if they are getting used to each other; the memories stretching out gentle fingers to caress the inside of his head in comfort. Mae had talked about her feelings that the memories were alive and that she only held onto people's memories for two weeks after extracting them because they paled when not inside a mind.

Reflecting on the last moments he spent with her, it is eerie to find the two sets of memories playing almost simultaneously in his head. It's going to take some getting used to, but for now, he studies himself through Mae's eyes, the only set of memory truly playing in this instance. The memory can tell that she's dying, darkness starting to encroach on the edges as she pulls herself next to his basically unconscious body. A bittersweet moment passes of her running a light finger across his cheek, the scruff on his jaw tickling the pad.

"I want you to understand, Finn," she whispers, "but it's hard to expect that of you when I don't understand it myself. Take care of them for me. Use them to find the other people in my life that deserve to have their memories, both the objects and the actual memories, returned to them."

His vision becomes filled with the sight of himself as she bends down and kisses him, her lips forcing his open. After a time, Mae leans back, and he watches himself glow as his body jerks once before the blackness takes over the whole of her sight.

Perhaps it is a blessing that he doesn't watch her bleed out. That his own memory at the point is of the fuzziness that comes from hitting his head as well as the agony of having her remembrances forced into his mind. As much as Finn would hate to admit it, there is a part of him that is too fond of Mae to watch her suffer while his now-unconscious body lies mere feet away, helpless.

At this point, he's not sure what he wants to do. He definitely can't return to the Department now especially not with Charlie determined to pry the secrets of Mae out of his brain. He doesn't feel any desire to go that direction anyway even without that threat hanging over his head.

Finn knows that he has to return to the pawnshop to fulfill what she wanted to him to. He also knows that until he has completed that task, the pain of being there without Mae will slowly steal pieces of him. Pieces that he doesn't want to try to find out if he can live without. Understanding that aspect, he can't keep the pawnshop as a source of income, one that will end up destroying his heart and soul.

It takes longer than he wishes, but a couple of days later, he manages to convince the doctor overseeing his care to let him sign the discharge papers. He stops short of telling the doctor that the physical pain isn't what he should be concerned about, figuring that it might lead to bigger problems down the road than the cane that gets forced upon him as he leaves.

The pawnshop doesn't look different, but the minute he opens the door, the atmosphere changes. He swears that he can almost hear a noise by the counter and see Mae standing there. An illusion born out of wishful thinking and not reality.

Slowly, he makes his way to that counter, cane clicking against the floor. He learns that glancing at the objects crowded into the shop only awaken Mae's memories, a collage of the people who left them here, the tears. Perhaps the ledger behind that counter will be less useful than he thought initially, but he keeps going anyway.

The bell startles Finn, and the speed at which he twists around to look at the door wrenches his shoulder badly enough that he nearly loses his grip on the cane. A little grandmother stands in the doorway, looking as confused to see him as he is to see her.

Then the onslaught of memories hit him, and Finn fights to keep the nausea from becoming projectile vomit. Once his vision clears, he finds that the grandmother has found her way over to stand in front of him, peering up at him with concerned eyes shining behind her glasses.

"Are you all right, young man?" She asks, laying a wrinkled hand against his arm. "I thought you were seconds away from knocking yourself against the floor."

Somehow, a smile manages to make its way to his lips. "I am quite all right. Thank you for your concern."

She clicks her tongue at him, and Finn gently pats the hand that is still on his arm. "Where has that nice young lady that Pierce left in charge of the shop been? I have stopped by the last couple of weeks to take care of my vases, but the shop has been closed."

His stomach drops at the reminder that this was going to be the first of many times that he has to tell Mae's patrons that she has died. With a quick check to make sure that he is still somewhat holding the grandmother's hand, he takes a deep breath and says, "I am afraid that Mae won't be coming back. She died a couple of weeks ago."

To her credit, she remains on her feet. "Oh, my. Poor dear. So young to have met such an end. I suppose that she left the shop to you as Pierce left it to her."

"She asked me to make sure that everyone's belongings made it back to them safely. Which means that you won't have to come back here again to take care of your vases. They will be safe at home with you."

As time marches on and more patrons come to the pawnshop to either retrieve their belongings or their memories, Finn gets used to the sudden rush of Mae's memories when they walk in the door. He wonders how much of it is because he knows what to expect now and how much of it is because the memories are slowly becoming a part of him.

One of the last people to walk into the strangely-empty shop is a young woman with a baby strapped to her chest. Finn is slowly working his way through the ledgers to see who has stopped by in an attempt to decide whether he needed to track those people down.

When his eyes meet hers, he expects the memories to course through his mind, but he does not expect to see the memory of childbirth that rips through him so strongly that a wordless groan escapes his mouth. It is a memory he never expected to have, and it is even stranger to come back to his senses to find the woman whose memory he just saw staring at him as if she had just watched him being hit by a train.

"You look like you need to sit down for a minute," she says, and her baby squawks as she flaps her arms at him. "That shade of white with the green tint does not look very good on you."

Finn fumbles for the stool behind him and sits down hard enough that he can feel his brain rattling against his skull. "I'm sorry. I thought that I had gotten used to this, but Mae didn't exactly leave me an instruction manual."

The woman smiles at the name. "Oh, you and Mae must be very close then if she was willing to leave you in charge of the pawnshop. When do you expect that she will be back from where she has gone?"

He groans and rests his head against the counter, wishing that the memories would stop screaming at him, wishing that the room would stop whirling around him, wishing that it wasn't his responsibility to tell every person who walked into this cursed pawnshop that Mae was dead, that she wasn't coming back, that the closest she would ever get to walking this earth again was the memories that are still screaming in his head.

The darkness helps as her memories slowly retreat back into the nooks they had carved out in his head, and he almost thinks that it would be best if he stayed in this position for the rest of his life. That is until he feels something wet dripping through his hair towards his forehead.

Finn slowly raises his head to find that the baby has another line of drool all ready to dribble from her mouth onto him. When she notices that he is looking at her, she squeals and kicks her legs.

"She thinks you are playing peek-a-boo with you," the woman, who he now realizes is named Mrs. Miles thanks to the memories, tells him before gently tilting the baby's face up to mop up the impending drool. "I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong just now?"

"It's not that. I just realized how tired I am of telling people that Mae is dead. How tired I am of pretending that I was well enough to come here to make sure everyone got their items back. How tired I am of having these memories hit me when I least expect them to, never quite knowing what they will be."

The sad light in Mrs. Miles' eyes grows at his words. "So she is dead? I had feared as much when I saw how empty the pawnshop had become. It's a shame. I was hoping that one day the little one would have the chance to meet her."

Blinking away the threatening tsunami of tears, Finn leans over to pull open a drawer. "I am presuming that you came to pick this up?"

He holds out the small box, and her brow crinkles in confusion. "Mae didn't have anything of mine. I think she knew what was coming, so she insisted on copying my last memory while I was still in the shop. I only came back on the off-chance that she had some work for me to do. You must be mistaken."

"It was noted in the ledger under your name," he says.

She continues to stare at the box, but the baby reaches out her pudgy hands, managing to get her fingers wrapped around it. Finn, not expecting it, lets the box be taken out of his hands as she sticks the corner of it in her mouth to gum at the cardboard.

"Anna Mae, that's not yours," Mrs. Miles exclaims, carefully extracting it from the baby's grasp before trying to return it to Finn. "I do not take things that are not mine even if Mae happened to make a mistake."

He shakes his head, closing her fingers around it. "She didn't make a mistake. She must have wanted you to have it. At this point, most of the others have already gotten what is theirs, so I don't believe that someone will come in looking for this item."

With a sigh, she lifts the lid to look at what is inside. Her eyes shimmer with tears as she looks back up at him. "She must have left it for Anna Mae. She was always fond of the munchkin after she helped me deliver her. I wanted to name her after Mae, but she refused unless it was her middle name.

"Thank you. I know that this time must be hard for you for a number of reasons. But I know that all of the people who have walked through these doors since her death are grateful that you are willing to make sure that the precious items that they placed in either Mae's or her uncle's care are returned to them."

Mrs. Miles lays a gentle hand against his with a smile before slipping the box into her pocket and walking out the door. Finn watches her go with the realization that soon this shop will be empty, and all that will remain of Mae will be the memories roaming around his head.

Slowly, he rises from the stool with his cane and makes his way to the door, staring out towards the darkening streets before flipping the sign to closed and locking the door.