This is the last one today, I swear! Once again, this is an entry for pdfichallenge. It won round #3, light and dark.
DISCLAIMER/WARNINGS: I do not own Pushing Daisies, or the song "Sunrise, Sunset," by Bright Eyes, which inspired this story. This story contains character death and angst.
"For a sunrise or sunset.You're either coming or you just left but you're always on the way.Towards a sunrise or a sunset, a scribble or a sonnet.They are really just the same.To the sunrise and the sunset.The master and his servant have exactly the same fate.It's a sunrise and a sunset.From a cradle to a casket.There's no way to escape."
--Bright Eyes, "Sunrise, Sunset"
Birth. Death. Light and dark, sunrise and sunset.
The steady stream of life flowed between the two, ebbing and rising like the tide. There'd be the occasional snag, or unseen current tugging this way or that, but for the most part, the path was straight and narrow. Unpredictable, yes, but always following the same pattern, unless something else got in the way.
Such was the unfortunate case of Charlotte Charles.
It seemed that somehow she'd washed ashore along the way. She was stranded, able to do little but watch others as they floated past her and into the distance. Friends and lovers withered with age, bending and bowing with the weight of their years until they slipped below the surface and were gone, gone away.
Her aunts had been the first to go, one slipping away within weeks of each other. She'd been a silent observer at their funerals, lingering near the back with her brunette curls tucked neatly beneath a black veil. They were laid by her parents, and the empty grave that bore Charlotte's name.
Olive passed next, almost before her golden years had really begun. Any loss of life was tragic, but time cut short by violence brought a grief much more intense. A reckless trigger stole Olive away, and Chuck could do little but watch as the light faded from her friend's eyes.
Emerson lasted long enough to start and family and witness a few generations grow and begin lives of their own. For a man who always spoke his piece in life, Emerson went quietly in his sleep, his children and grandchildren close by his side. Charlotte lingered in the shadows of the hospital, watching as his teary-eyed descendants filed from the room.
And Ned. Dear, sweet Ned. He was charming and loyal and everything Charlotte could have ever wanted…but it wasn't to be. Nothing had cut her deeper than leaving him, stealing away at the crack of dawn, with the sun's first light shining in the window. But when she'd realized what was happening to her (or more precisely, what wasn't happening to her), she knew she had no other choice.
She always meant to make it back in time, and plant a kiss on his lips even as he breathed his last breath. But the news had come too late, and by the time she'd slipped back into his life, he'd already slipped out of it.
So here she was, left to watch the time tick away as the world shifted and changed. And oh, how it changed.
Somewhere along the line she lost track of the years, a passive witness as the world around her crumbled. Careful hands build cities from the ground, only to have them leveled by war and bombs. The quiet order of life melted into chaos, as fear and rage ran rampant over a wounded earth. People were falling like flies, consumed by vicious acts of nature and mankind alike. Charlotte could only watch as the once bright and beautiful planet clamored with the cries of the dying, and the sky wept crimson tears.
Until finally, it was quiet.
She sat there on a hilltop, watching as the sun set for what she knew to be the very last time. One hand was curled up in Digby's still-golden fur, as the loyal hound rested his head on her knee. They had lapsed into a companionable silence, watching as a deep red sun sank closer and closer to the horizon.
Charlotte didn't really know what would come next. Would she cease to be, would the light of her life finally extinguish after years and years of pleasure and pain? Or would she remain like this, a watcher for all eternity?
For the first time in a very, very long time Charlotte felt close to those that she'd loved and lost. If she strained her eyes, she thought she could see them, right there at the bottom of the hill. Her aunts, and her mother and father, perched on the steps of her childhood home, glowing in the light of the fading sun. Olive, bouncing on her heels and waving her arms, besides a smirking Emerson. And Ned, that same, patient smile, familiar even after all these years.
The deep red sun dipped below the horizon. A flash of red lit up the sky.
Everything went dark.
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Child of a Pineapple (aka orangeyarn on LJ)