Disclaimer: Not mine, but Bad Robots (!)
Rating: PG 13 / 12A for implied adult situations.
Summary: Set during "All the Best Cowboys have Daddy Issues." Charlie doesn't speak. He just craves, and remembers…
Notes: British writer, British grammar.
Home
By NorthernStar
Everything hurt. His legs, his chest, his neck…
Someone was talking to him, but he couldn't really focus beyond the pain to hear. The only things real right now was the pain. And the need, the heavy craving for that beautiful door to the Calm Place inside him.
There was only one key.
Charlie needed a fix.
The ground was spongy underfoot, slick with mud. Had it been raining? Was that why Kate's cheeks were wet?
He stumbled. Hands caught him, held him up. He wasn't really walking after that. Supported, lulled.
Charlie lifted his head. Was that music?
Crowds cheered, lighter flames flickered somewhere inside him.
He stumbled again. This time his own weight was taken from his feet. The crowd roared.
"You can't carry him all the way to the caves."
But Charlie was lost to the words; the crowd carried him away…
--back--
The world was huge and hazy and loud. Charlie laid limp, arms outstretched to embrace Forever, cradled by adoration. He buzzed inside, felt the feeling slip from his pores to bathe the people below him. Each hand holding him aloft was electric, receiving his gift. Any man could surf an ocean, only a king could surf a crowd.
And Charlie was king.
He was God.
He was DriveShaft.
Security 'rescued' him moments later, tugging him from the crowds, bundling him away. Back at the stage, Liam reached down and gripped his wrist, hauling him back up.
"We rule the world, Baby Brother."
---
Time passed and then he was sitting, ground wet against his backside, seeping into his already damp jeans. He could feel his own breathing, tight against the bruises on his chest. Odd to be aware of such automatic things - the air in his lungs, the rise and fall of his ribs.
He knew, distantly, that he was lucky to be aware of anything at all.
Hands touched him, small bones against his forehead. A flush ran through him and he waited for the scratch, the sting of Heaven in his veins. Never could inject himself.
Didn't like needles.
Charlie opened his eyes, welcoming the drug. His breath hitched painfully in his sore lungs when he saw brown hair instead of blonde.
--back--
Karen grinned at him over the hypo, her pale lips chapped and cracking. Then he screwed his eyes shut against the sight of sharp metal and his own arm and then…
Then the rush, and then the bliss… At once there was no pain, no dark, no grey, no hate, just warmth and purity and contentment. Complete peace.
There was nothing he couldn't do, nothing that he couldn't have. He just was.
---
Charlie walked now, Kate at his side. She was talking and it might even have been to him, but it was like watching the world through plate glass, like that one Christmas in Manchester, when he'd stared in through the windows of the Arndale and watched the crowds pushing and shoving, completely removed from the moment, detached from life itself.
He hadn't been high then either.
But he hadn't craved, like he did now. That was Before. He hadn't known the gentle kiss of heroin back then. Could never have understood the need, the wanting, that was now eating at him, dulled not a second by the knowledge he could never have what he craved.
The island had taken so much already and he was one of the luckier ones. He hadn't had much left to take. Just his life, just his music…
…and the heroin.
And now it had taken Claire.
Charlie stumbled again, falling so quickly and sharply that Jack couldn't catch him in time. The ground bit into his knees, the jolt through his body harsh and painful.
Claire was gone. He knew that. Didn't know how, blackness where memory ought to be, the rest jumbled and dizzying.
It didn't make any sense.
Only thing that did was what he couldn't have.
Only heroin.
Kate took his face between her hands. There was concern in her eyes, brow furrowed. Her lips moved as if speaking to him.
"Charlie?"
--back--
Denny cupped his cheeks in his hands, made Charlie look straight into his own ravaged eyes. Charlie stared at his friends' clammy, sweating skin. Didn't know whether the tremors he saw were chasing through Denny's body, or came from his own, or both.
"You know what to do, Charlie." He told him. And he did. Holy Mary, Mother of God. He did.
Beg, borrow, steal, sell…
It hurt. God, Jesus, it hurt. But he twisted at the thought. He shook his head (or was his head shaking him?) "Can't."
…sell…
"Last time. Just this once."
Charlie wiped his eyes. Were these real tears? Or just the relentless watering of withdrawal? He wanted so bad to feel normal again.
"It'll take it away." Denny murmured, and pulled Charlie up onto unsteady legs, made him walk towards the mirror.
Charlie stared at his own reflection, clothes hanging on his thin frame, skin pasty and dull, eyes sunken and lost.
…sell…
"You're gold, Charlie."
---
It was getting dark. There was a faint scent of wood smoke in the dusk. They were almost… home? ...back at the caves.
Without Claire.
Charlie had brought her there, tricked her into it.
Maybe she would have been safe on the beach.
"He hasn't spoken." Kate's voice broke through the thickness surrounding him, sounding far away, even as he felt her warmth at his side.
"He will." Jack. Even more distant, distracted.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I am."
"How? He wasn't breathing. Maybe…maybe it did something. Starved his brain."
"No."
Hands ghosted on his arms.
"He's just shocked, Kate, all right? He'll come out of it when he's ready."
A head rested on his shoulder, curls tickled his cheek. And yet it felt hollow against the heavy wanting ache and the whisper memory of smack. Nothing ever matched those moments. Nothing ever could.
Maybe Claire would have come close. He wouldn't know now.
But Liam had once found his…
--back--
It was starting again. Charlie couldn't stand still. The room was hot; his skin felt slick and sweaty, chilling him. He kept his hands in his pockets, his right hand twirling his baggie between his fingers like a lover's secret caress.
He wouldn't be able to smoke it in the hospital, could set off the fire alarms. He'd have to snort it instead. Charlie licked his lips in anticipation of the powder jolt up his nostrils.
"Liam…" He said, jerking his head in the direction of the door.
His brother looked up from the tiny bundle in his arms.
"Isn't she beautiful?" He murmured.
Charlie licked his lips again. "Yeah." He swallowed. "You coming?"
But his brother wasn't listening, too wrapped up in the scrap of life he held. "Can't believe I missed it, Charlie," he said.
Charlie's eyes flickered to the woman in the bed, watching Liam with tired, but forgiving eyes. He shuffled his feet. Inside his pockets, his hands shook.
He turned and left, heading for the first loo he came across. He banged through the door, ignoring the 'patient's only' sign and locked the small room behind him.
Babies cried, wails echoing down the corridor. On the floors above and below him, the hospital worked, people lived, people died, were born, were saved...
And in the maternity toilet, Charlie Pace bent over the sink and snorted up Joy.
---
It was dark when they got back. Kate settled him by the fire and Jack checked him over carefully. Charlie let them, unconnected from their touch. He stared at the fire, red and orange tongues lashing the night air.
"Here." The doctor held out a cup in one hand and opened his other. Nestled in his palm where two capsules. Charlie didn't look, didn't move.
But he still watched as Jack broke open the capsules, pour the gritty white powder into the water and swish it around. Then he pressed the cup to Charlie's lips.
Charlie drank, feeling the grit of the tablets grate against his throat.
"That'll take the edge off." Jack said.
Perhaps the doctor meant the pain. Maybe not.
The fire crackled and spat, flames danced, blurred by his unfocused eyes. Charlie felt the heat on his face, the chill night on his back. Time passed.
The sedative in his belly filtered into his veins, warming and calm.
Maybe he was home after all.
--FIN--