This is the other one shot that wouldn't let me be. It's all about Charlie, who just doesn't get that much love. It's short and sort of pointless, but now it's gone and I can work on other stuff. The musical inspiration is Five For Fighting's "Superman". Please enjoy:
Superman
Charlie had been a man with great potential once.
Not many people in Forks remember the Charlie Swan before he was broke by Renee- the man with so much potential. He was the kind of man that heroes wished they could be.
That was a long time ago.
Now Charlie is a shell of the great man he could have- should have- been. Now he's a man that's never left Forks, when once he had the potential to be whatever he wanted.
There are times when Charlie sees glimpses of the great man he should have been in Edward- the man all the older citizens of Forks talk about. The man he was going to be before that girl (they always call Renee that girl, as if saying her name somehow sullies theirs) came along and seduced him. Before she left him a few harsh words, a beaten, broken man who no longer cared about being great.
Mostly he sees these glimpses when Edward's with Bella.
Charlie knows that Bella doesn't think he notices that much about her. But Charlie sees everything- he sees the way her face brightens when she's with Edward, and he sees the way Edward looks at her.
It's the way he once looked at Renee- the way he would still look at her, if she ever visited him.
Charlie hopes that Edward won't make the same mistakes he did, and he hopes that Bella is really as different from Renee as she appears. Edward has the potential to be a great man- if he has Bella with him.
Because if there's one thing that Charlie's positive about, it's this: Bella Swan brings out the best in both of them.
I'm only a man
In a silly red sheet
Searching for kryptonite
On this one-way street