Charlie walks down the empty beach, hands in his pockets, head down. The sun is peaking over the blue, ever-hungry waves of the ocean, casting gold and purple hues across the sky. Charlie passes Claire's tent and pauses in his walk. He lifts his gaze from his worn Vans to the young woman's tent. The cool, morning breeze causes the tent flaps to flutter. He sighs, putting one foot in front of the other to continue his walk; he didn't want her to wake up and see him standing there. Sure, she'd held his hand at the funeral. But that didn't mean she'd forgiven him. She still avoided him most of the time and he didn't want to come on too strong and scare her off. You only get one second chance, after all. He gazes out across the ocean as the sun slowly makes its way into the sky. Charlie hears the first rustlings of the castaways beginning to awaken. He turns around and heads back to his deserted end of the beach.
"Howdy, neighbor," Sawyer was seated outside his lean-to, smirking at Charlie from behind the pages of Watership Down.
Charlie nods to the southerner, acknowledging his greeting.
"How was your little stroll? Did ya check up on Blondie and Baby Huey?" Sawyer teases, lifting his glasses off his nose and twirling them in his hand.
Charlie crinkled hiss nose; he was not in the mood for Sawyer's crap this morning. "No," he grumbles, before sitting in the sand. He hopes that Sawyer will drop the subject, but he knows that the chances of that are as likely as a rescue from this island.
"Well, I thought after ya'll held hands at Ana Lulu and Libby's funeral, marriage was right 'round the corner for ya." Sawyer chuckles, setting his book and his glasses in the sand beside him.
"Sawyer, why are you such a bloody arse?" Charlie asks, looking from the ocean to Sawyer.
Sawyer frowns, but bounces back from the insult quickly. "Why, hell, Chucky, I'm just tryin' to make conversation. It's either your personal life or the weather. And, in my opinion, the weather is more interesting. I'm just tryin' to be nice."
Charlie gives Sawyer a smirk before turning back to face the ocean. He watches the waves lap up on the shore. The two outcasts sit silently for a few minutes until Sawyer cannot contain his curiosity any longer. "So, when are you gonna make your move?"
"What?" Charlie asks, awakened from his deep thoughts. He gazes at Sawyer with furrowed eyebrows. Surely, they weren't about to have a male bonding, let's-talk-about-the-girl-you-love talk.
"Claire." Sawyer responds, looking at Charlie like he was completely idiotic. "When are you gonna woo her?"
Charlie feels his face begin to burn. So, they were having the male bonding, let's-talk-about-the-girl-you-love talk. "Uh, what?" is all he is able to say.
"Are you high or somethin'?" Sawyer grumbles, rolling his eyes.
"No!" Charlie snaps defensively.
"Well, you hafta make a move on her before Locke beats you to the punch." Sawyer states, gesturing towards the more populated side of the beach with a flail of his arm. "Cuz Baldy has been eyein' her like the last piece of pie."
Charlie tightens his jaw at the mention of Locke hitting on Claire. He, too, had noticed Locke ogling at Claire. "Yeah, yeah. I've noticed the wanker, too." Charlie replies. "But she barely speaks to me! She's still pretty upset… What am I s'posed to do? I don't know what to say to her!"
"I thought you said she held your hand?"
"Yeah, she did, but that doesn't mean anything. She was caught up in the moment. You know?"
"What have you said to her since she held your hand?"
"I said 'hello' to her once." Charlie shrugs.
Sawyer chuckles. "Look, Charles, women are funny. Blondie wants you to make the first move now."
"What do you mean?" Charlie questions, raising an eyebrow.
"Good Lord! Are you really that clueless?" Sawyer snaps, growing frustrated.
Charlie scowls, folding his arms over his chest and looking out at the ocean again.
"Go talk to her!" Sawyer exclaims, not waiting for Charlie to answer. Charlie looks at his, face covered in confusion. "Yeah, talk to her. Not just a damn 'hello,' lover-boy."
"But… what if she doesn't want me to talk to her? What if—"
"What if I got up and beat the snot outta ya? We can sit 'round and think of all the 'what-ifs' we want, but right now Claire-a-bell is waitin' for you to cowboy up and make a move!" Sawyer interjects, throwing his arms in the air with exasperation.
Charlie pauses before rising to his feet. Sawyer puts his glasses back on, picks up his book and opens it to his page. Charlie stands there, biting his lower lip for a second. "Go!" Sawyer almost yells, looking at Charlie over the frames of his glasses. Charlie nods, taking in a deep breath. "Thanks, Sawyer," he says before heading to the beach. Sawyer grumbles incoherently and watches Charlie jog up the beach.
Charlie's mind is racing as he reaches the edge of the camp. He slows his pace to a walk. He doesn't know exactly what to say. Should he talk about the weather to start? Probably not. He wracks his mind for an interesting topic of discussion. Sawyer said to 'make his move'… Maybe he should tell her that he wants her back? Would that be considered a 'move'?
Claire was just leaving her tent for her daily walk. Charlie glanced over to her tent, hoping—praying—that Locke was not the one watching Aaron. He breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing Rose singing to the baby with a maternal look in her eyes. Charlie sucks in a deep breath before jogging up to Claire. "Hey, Claire," he shakily greets as he comes up beside her. He slows his jog to a steady walk.
"Oh, hey, Charlie," Claire says, looking at him with confusion and—was that joy?—in her eyes.
He walks alongside her for a few minutes, feeling out-of-place. "Uh, so, you still go on walks?" he asks, hating himself the minute the words left his lips. Of course she still went on walks! She was on a walk now!
Claire, however, did not seem to notice the stupidity of the question. "Yeah, it's kinda hard to fit them into my schedule because I have to find someone to watch Aaron," she pauses, looking at Charlie, "that's why they're usually pretty early in the morning now."
Charlie nods, but he didn't really hear the last part of her sentence. He was busy wondering why she looked at him then. Did she miss him watching Aaron? Was that her warning him to stay away from Aaron? Did she hate him for ruining her mid-day walks?
Claire walks along silently before she notices the worried look on Charlie's face. "Charlie, are you okay?"
"Uh, yeah, just thinking. You know." He states with a nervous smile. He doesn't know how to act around her anymore.
"What are you thinking about?" Claire questions, looking at him instead of into the jungle like she had been doing.
Charlie pauses, his face growing red. Her. He'd been thinking about her. "Uhm," he sputters, trying to come up with something else he could have been thinking about.
"You don't have to tell me. Sorry," Claire quietly tells him, feeling horrid for putting him on the spot like that.
"Oh, no! It's fine. I-I was just wondering if you usually walk this far from camp." Charlie stammers out his answer, looking over his shoulder at the camp. It was now no bigger than his thumb. He really did wonder this. "Isn't this kind of dangerous? Walking out here alone?"
"Oh," Claire smiles at Charlie's protectiveness. Maybe he did still care for her? "Yeah, I usually walk pretty far."
Charlie frowns, picturing polar bears, smoke monsters, and Others. "Claire… I dunno if that's safe. If you want, I could walk with you. I'm up pretty early anyways…" he offers, hoping he's not being too forward.
"Oh, uh, thanks, Charlie…" Claire smiles at him. She didn't know about the walks, though. She didn't want to move too fast, but she didn't want Charlie to feel as though she didn't want to try again. She did.
"You don't have to. I just thought that, we could be together… Walk together! Not be together…" He stumbles over his words, feeling awkward.
"Charlie…" Claire breathes, stopping. She takes his hand in hers, fully intent on telling him that she wanted to take things slow this time when the ground began to tremor.
Claire releases Charlie's hand, falling back a few steps. Charlie looks around, paralyzed with fear as the ground's small tremor escalates under his feet. A large jolt knocks Claire onto her hands and knees. Charlie falls flat on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs. He hears Claire yelp Aaron's name and he looks up to see her crawling towards camp. He is coughing violently for a few seconds as he manages to rise to his feet. It was as easy staying upright as it was walking on a tightrope. The grumbling from the earth's core sounded more ominous with all the faraway screams of the other survivors mixed in. Charlie is walking after Claire, falling quite often. Claire is trying to clamber into a standing position. She continues yelling her son's name. It sounds like a crash of lightening coming from the jungle. It is loud directly in Charlie and Claire's ears. Claire had made it shakily to her feet when Charlie's body slammed into her, sending her sprawling a couple feet up the beach. She turns back to Charlie, screaming his name over the rumbling earth and screams of the others down the beach. His scream of sheer pain cuts her like a knife jabbed directly in her heart.
She stands as the ground's fighting dies down. The rumbling sound is gone and the tremors are dying, as well. Claire rushes to Charlie's side. The palm tree had snapped during the quake. It had been falling and was going to land right on top of her. Charlie had sprinted and rugby-tackled her just in time. He pushed her out of the way. But the tree landed right on his lower spine above his legs. And he screamed with pure agony as it pinned him to the ground.
He is stuck. Tears flow from his eyes as he lays face-down in the sand. The pain is unbearable. He can't catch his breath. He wants to scream and cry and die. His vision blurs as he lifts his head to see Claire above him. Her hands are on either side of his face. She is screaming for help. He thinks he is screaming, too. She screams loudly; he has never heard her sound this desperate besides when Rousseau took Aaron.
"I'm going to get help, Charlie," Claire tells him as she blurs in and out of focus before his eyes. "I'll be back. I promise."
Her hands are gone from his face. Charlie sees her race away from his, blurring into the horizon. The tears continue flowing. He wails when he attempts to move. "D-dear Heavenly Father, please he-help me live through th-this. Amen." He manages to utter. His world crashes to black.
Claire releases Charlie's face before taking off in a dead sprint towards the camp. People are yelling about broken possessions and fallen shelters. They are all rushing around her like a school of unhappy fish. Some people are wrapping up small cuts, large cuts. Claire fights her way through the masses, tears pooling in her eyes. "Jack! Jack!" she screams, pushing her way past a bickering woman. Jack looks up from addressing a large group of castaways.
"Claire? Are you hurt?" he asks, looking at her as he finishes wrapping up a woman's cut.
"N-No," Claire sobs, breaking down. "Charlie, a tree fell on him! He's trapped!"
Jack nods, the look of determination entering his eyes. He looks at his fallen medical hut before shouting orders at those passing by. "Kate! Hurley! Round up a few others and set up my tent as quickly as possible!"
The slender woman and large man get busy quickly employing whoever was closest to help re-assemble the medical tent. Jack scopes the beach for someone to help him. He spots the best candidate for heavy lifting.
"Sawyer! I need your help; Charlie's stuck under a fallen tree." Jack informs the southern man.
Sawyer's eyes darken with worry. "Alright, doc. Lead the way." He drawls seriously.
They reach Charlie after he has passed out. Jack kneels before him, checking his pulse quickly. He nods to assure Claire and Sawyer that he was alive. "I don't want this to startle him and risk him moving and hurting his back any more than this may already have." Jack tells Claire. "I'm gonna wake him up and you need to keep him calm while Sawyer and I lift this off him. Then, pull him forward, out from under the tree. Okay?"
Claire nods silently, kneeling in front of Charlie.
Jack removes a bottle of water from his backpack before lightly splashing Charlie's face. At first, Charlie doesn't respond, but the second time his eyelids flutter open. His eyes cross and then focus on Claire. "Claire?" he mumbles, yelping in pain when he attempts to lift his torso. Claire grabs both his hands in hers. She squeezes them lightly.
"Charlie, Jack and Sawyer are going to lift this off you. Then, I'm going to pull you out of the way. Try not to make any sudden movements, okay?" she informs him soothingly. "
Charlie nods, biting his lower lip.
Sawyer grabs one side of the tree while Jack wraps his arms around the other. "One…" Jack begins counting. "Two…" He glances up to meet Sawyer's gaze. Sawyer nods before Jack says, "Three." The two men grimace as they struggle to lift the palm tree. As soon as he feel it lift off his back, Charlie screams through gritted teeth. He doesn't move.
"Pull him out, Claire!" Jack commands, arms shaking from the weight of the tree.
Claire digs her heels into the sand and pulls Charlie out from beneath the tree. Immediately after seeing Charlie out from under the tree, both men let it crash to the ground. It sends up a spray of sand in all directions. Charlie is whimpering on the ground, Claire still holding his hands. Jack looks at Sawyer and they move forward to lift Charlie. Sawyer grabs under Charlie's arms and Jack gets his legs. Charlie screams out as they carefully turn him over in their arms. His vision is blurring again.
"Charlie, stay with me, buddy." Jack's voice is far away.
"Charlie?" Claire is miles from him.
The world blurs until everything blends into one haze. The haze slowly fades into black. The last thing Charlie recalls is the sound of Claire and Sawyer saying his name.
He awakens the next afternoon, having been passed out for an entire day. He blinks away the fuzziness of the world until it is clear again. He is in Jack's tent. The medicines are all jumbled up, some on the ground, some still in the bags. Jack is entering the tent as Charlie groans quietly. "Charlie, how do you feel?"
"I dunno," Charlie says, furrowing his brow. "Everything's sorta numb."
Jack nods. "That's the morphine. I had to operate. The tree hit you right on the spine and, I won't go into the medical terms, but it did a little damage on a couple of the vertebrae."
Charlie purses his lips. "But I'll be okay, right?"
"It's too early to tell at this point without any equipment. In time, we'll know." Jacks says, pursing his lips.
Charlie lets out a shaky sigh. He completely trusts Jack. Everything will be okay. After repeating these mantras in his head a couple more times, Charlie drifts into a restless sleep.