Title: What Dying Feels Like
Genre: angst
Spoilers: Set during "Live Together, Die Alone"
Original Post Date: 31/07/2007
Summary: In the split seconds before and after the hatch implodes, Charlie and Claire ponder their own mortality.
Disclaimer: Lost belongs to ABC, Bad Robot etc and not to me blah blah.

The air is thick with sparks, falling debris and acrid smoke and Charlie chokes as he stumbles to his feet. The washing machine that just nearly flattened him is still trembling like crazy in the wake of the electromagnetic waves that are pulling painfully at his fillings. The whole bloody hatch is shaking like a demented washing machine for that matter, like its right on top of a fault line or a volcano about to erupt.

Where the hell has everyone gone? Locke and Eko and the crazy Scotsman? Desmond? Only two seconds ago it seemed, he'd been helping Eko towards the door and then he was being attacked by a washing machine and now…Charlie's the only person left in the world.

Maybe he's dead.

Is he dead? He's not entirely sure. The burns and scrapes on his arms seem testimony to his mortality – not to mention the humming in his ears. But how exactly does somebody escape from a fireball that big? By all accounts he should be dead.

The scene before him seems to flicker as he stumbles – in what direction he doesn't know. His eyes are still seeing but the picture doesn't seem to be getting to his brain. His hands touch metal, then soil and the crisp softness of heat rotted vegetation.

Then there comes a sound like the world is being torn apart at the seams – a sound that permeates even his affected hearing and for one blissful moment he's completely empty of everything, all thoughts, all feeling.

And just before the world melts into blackness, he feels his feet lift from the ground and he sees before him (quite clearly although it's only for a split second) an almost heavenly vision.

It's Claire – his Claire. And she's smiling.

And his final thought before darkness takes him is that if this is what dying feels like then it can't really be that bad.

The sky is purple - violet - and the sound that accompanies it washes over and through her, reverberating through her body like she's a drum. For a moment she certainly seems hollow enough to be one. Aaron is in her arms (although she can't remember picking him up in the first place) and she can feel him screaming, his tiny body tight and tense in her arms. She shushes him automatically but in this world of echoes of sound and light there's no point in it.

It lasts for an eternity (the light and the sound) and she shields her son from the world as best she can – but her body is too small, too slight to protect him from whatever new horror this is. If something were to strike her down at this moment, she would not be able to protect him. Terrified at this thought, she clutches him even tighter as he screams noiselessly against her thin chest.

And then everything stops.

Claire opens her eyes. The sky has faded back to blue and the almost mechanical whirr of whatever just happened has disappeared. Her hearing returns suddenly, the crash of waves and wind rushing into her conscious mind like a flood.

But there is another sound as well – a new sound. She looks up at the sky and is immediately transfixed (hypnotised, mesmerised, frozen to the spot where she stands) by the image of her imminent death heading straight for the spot where she is standing.

She read once that when you're about to die your whole life flashes before your eyes and she's never quite believed it. But now, with an unidentifiable something heading straight for her from the sky (and she's still not moving. Bernard is grabbing her arm and starting to make her move…) she sees not many flashes but just one.

It's Charlie - her Charlie.

And he's smiling.

And the funny thing is, she's not surprised to see him at all.