A/N: This is dedicated to my beautiful wifey, Joanna. We are so in sync sometimes that it scares me. She is always, always there, and I hope she knows how very much I love her.
Happy birthday, lovely.
And thank yous to both Jaz and Sam for helping with this fic!
Charlie is always, always watching.
And, you think, for someone who watches so much, he doesn't see an awful lot. He never notices when you don't smile back in the mornings, as long as you wave, or mutter your hellos. He doesn't see all the failing grades, all the Ds and Fs, all the unfinished homework. He doesn't even notice the way your hands shake when you are quiet, the way your body trembles in fear of what you might do to it in those moments when Charlie is not around to watch.
"It is so easy to get lost in your own head. I do that a lot, too," Charlie says, because, even now, he is watching. "What's on your mind?"
"Do you ever wonder what it's like to just...not be?"
"Like being dead?" he asks, eyebrows raised. (Even now, he still cannot see.) "I don't know. I guess it would feel like before you were born. All the nothingness that you can't really reach with your mind because your mind wasn't around to remember it."
"I guess."
"Or it could be wonderful. Heaven. I think you'd like Heaven."
"I think everyone's supposed to like Heaven."
"But you especially. It's quiet there."
You do not say anything for a while; you just stare at Charlie's face –smiling, patient Charlie – and try to imagine the look on his face if he found out you were gone to Heaven.
"I know you don't like it when things get too loud," he says softly.
And, maybe, he does see things, after all.
They are fighting again.
They always fight, but it never gets any easier, and your mother's shrill screams will ring in your ears for hours tonight; the thump of your father's fists against the drywall will pound in your head for days; the words don't you tell me to keep quiet if michael can hear this then good because michael should know all about his prick of a father maybe then he'll grow up to be a decent man who won't fuck around with every woman who walks by maybe Michael is the only good thing you can lay claim towill burn the backs of your eyelids for weeks.
And it's times like these that you need Charlie.
You need him to just sit there and watch you with that understanding in his eyes, with that it'll all be okay; I've been there etched onto his lips. Just in case.
Just in case.
Peace, please, I need peace.
The water splashes over your body, clear and clean and lazy, running in waves over your stomach. It is languid. Sluggish. It sloshes against the edge of the bathtub loudly, like crashing waves over the shouts you try so desperately not to hear.
Peace. That is all I want, all I need. Peace. Please.
You sink slowly, slipping beneath the surface, and your parent's screams are dulled, distorted – but never silenced, never that – and the water is hot on your face as you slink away beneath it and wonder what complete and utter isolation feels like.
You open your eyes, stare at the ceiling. The light is gaudy and blurred, like smeared paint, but all fuzzy at the edges. Everything is too bright, and the voices in the distance start to fade.
Peace.
And you wonder what it would be like if you never had to come up for air.
"Freaks."
And Charlie's watching again; they're looking at you, always you two, and they're saying all these stupid fucking things and your heart is hammering inside your chest and Charlie's just fucking watching you, like it doesn't hurt, like they're not even there.
"Why are you listening to them?" he says, voice soft. "Why do you always listen?"
"Why do you always fucking watch?"
You shoulder past him, hearing catcalls and insults and laughter and no one gives a shit about you, you know that?
And the worst part is that you know Charlie is still fucking watching.
There are nights when you wonder why his eyes follow you, why his gaze rests firmly on your shoulders. You wonder if it has always been this way, or if he knows.
Knows that something is very, very wrong. Knows that you are breaking, knows that the way your insides shatter like glass with every high pitched scream from your mother's golden throat, knows every knife cut, blade slash, nail marked scrape on your forearms, your thighs, your stomach.
But he's Charlie, and he's watching the way he always does; from inside his own head, never really seeing.
And, by God, you need him to see.
"Freak."
The blade cuts into your skin, parts your flesh like Moses did the Red Sea and runs red rivers down your arm. You wonder how many men have tried to cross the rivers of their bloodstream and died without anyone ever knowing they were drowning.
You wonder if you will be one of them.
Because there are times when not even Charlie is around to watch.
You raise the gun to your temple, finger shaking on the trigger and Dear God in Heaven, please don't hate me for this, you think, over and over and over.
(No one is watching. Not now.)
Dear God, I just want it to be quiet.
Dear God, I love my mom and my dad but I hate Mom&Dad.
Dear God, I will miss Charlie and Susan and everyone but, dear God, if Heaven is whatever I want it to be then they will be there, won't they?
Dear God, I am scared.
Dear God, I will miss so much.
Dear God, I am sorry. So, so sorry.
And you are pushing on the trigger, eyes tight shut, bracing for impact like it's going to save you somehow, like blowing your brains out isn't what you're going for, like you're being murdered instead of just going to sleep one last time, and this isn't as easy as they said it would be.
One deep breath. One last breath.
And then – and then –
(Dear God, take me home.)
-and then everything is so, so dark, and you are still so, so sorry.