AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
Disclaimer: No son mios.
SUMMARY: What Charlie saw on the other side of death is coming back to haunt him.
RATING: R, for violence and some gore
WARNING: Based on spoilers for "Homecoming," mixed with my own speculation.
NOTES:
Well, if "Guys, Where Are We?" was fun fluff, this is the EXACT OPPOSITE. This is dark and very heavy. It goes into all kinds of unpleasant corners. If you're looking for something to perk up your Saturday afternoon, I suggest reading something else. Hoo-boy, do I ever. If not, then by all means, read away!
With a sigh,
You turn away
With a deepening heart,
No words to say.
You will find
That the world has changed forever…
It came on him like the black heart of winter. Frost, when touched, burns as clean as fire, but with less passion and more clinical malice. It spiderwebs across glass and kills roses on the vine. It is a punishing, calculating villain.
Rage is cold. There is no fire, no passion, in rage. Sing in me, Goddess, Achille's rage, black and murderous. It wells through the soles of the antagonist's feet and coils like cold springs in his belly. Where fury clouds the vision so the world seems red, rage clears the sight and throws the world into sharp contrasts of black and white. Limbs grow heavy, the brow turns to lead. There is no motion save the inertia of the inevitable. The world stops moving, and for those few sharp minutes of light and shadow, even the birds are silent.
No beautiful thing was ever done in the name of rage. Charlie knows this, and does it anyway.
This is what he sees. Two men. One clutches a pregnant woman. They don't see him, and this is good. The setting is the edge of a clearing in a jungle that has gone from beautiful to treacherous. The trees throw deep shadows that swallow him whole.
"She's dead," the first man says, hovering near the tree line, and the words drop like pennies in a well. They echo.
"You won't kill her," the second man says, inching forward as if treading on broken glass.
"If you come closer, I will. And then I'll have to take another. You don't want me to take another, do you, Jack? You don't want me to take another."
The girl is saying nothing. Charlie thinks she's afraid. The emotion radiates off her in waves, coupled with confusion and exhaustion. She doesn't understand what's happening, where she is, who these people are or why they're fighting over her. She wants to go home and sleep in a bed with a real pillow and a feather stuffed duvet and pretend all of this is a bad dream. She wants to forget what's happening right now just as she's forgotten everything that's happened since a psychic pressed an airline ticket into her palm and told her to follow his American dream.
She doesn't remember Charlie. That is one-tenth of his rage.
None of this is her fault. He doesn't blame her for the fact that his chest has become a chunk of black ice; the kind with pebbles and bits of twig stuck in it that won't come free until the last gasp of winter gives over to the warm embrace of spring. Really, she has nothing to do with this, except as a catalyst. Odd that her lack of memory should trigger the flooding return of his own.
The first man has a knife to her swanlike white throat. His name is Ethan, and he is nine-tenths of Charlie's rage.
Throats. Always throats. Ethan must have a fetish for the jugular vein. This would be a good time for Charlie to rub the scabbed-over scars on his neck in a thoughtful fashion, but he doesn't. He creeps through the shadows, invisible to the trio in the clearing; an afterthought.
This is why he hates Ethan: the man killed him, but not enough.
The killing alone should be reason enough to hate him, but it is the resuscitation that galls Charlie more than that. At least in death it would have been over. At least in death he wouldn't have to fall asleep at night thinking of the promises he couldn't keep to the only person on this island who gave a damn about him. At least in death he could have said he'd done all he could. At least in death he could rest easy.
But could he?
This is why he hates Ethan: the man killed him, but not enough, and now Charlie knows what's waiting.
He'd been raised a good Catholic boy. He could make the Sign of the Cross and recite the Hail Mary. His rosary beads were worn and shiny from the constant pressure of his fingers. He understood things like sin and redemption.
He understood things like sin.
He understood sin.
And he has not been to confession in over three years.
It had all come rushing back to him like a stampede when Claire stepped into the circle of firelight in the cave camp, sandwiched protectively between Locke and Boone and looking twice as scared as when she'd been taken in the first place. That was the first memory to hit Charlie -- the fear on her face as Ethan's hand had closed around her arm to drag her away. It was a drop in the bucket. The rest came as a flood.
The sense memory of choking vines around his neck was a comfort compared to the yawning vacuum of black eternity after he died.
There had been angels. He couldn't form their image in his mind, but he knew they'd been there. And they'd turned him away. Not to send him back -- to send him elsewhere.
Hell was not a place of fire and brimstone. Hell was black and cold and utterly apart from God. There was no mercy, no justice, no kindness, no hope. A kernel of it had lodged in his chest beneath his heart, and it festered. A small voice hissed continuously in his ear: This is what waits for you, boy. This is where you'll be.
The first night Claire was back, he fell to his knees and prayed for salvation. No man should have to face his own soul and find it wanting.
Now Hell is welling up within him, buoyed on his sea of rage, turning the world to black and white. Hatred, anger, violence, despair -- they pour through his veins like ice water. Ethan has caused this. Ethan, who opened Charlie's eyes to the sorry state of his soul. In a strange way it is a blessing; he has a second chance at life.
It is also a curse, because Charlie doesn't think he's strong enough to save himself without help; and the only one who could help him doesn't even remember his name.
All Ethan. Ethan and only Ethan. He's robbed him of his dignity, his charity, a piece of his sanity. Ethan, who took Claire and stole her memory. What is left to him that the man could take?
The gunmetal in Charlie's palm is cool. He'd stolen it from the briefcase Kate thought she'd hidden safely away. She was wrong.
"Let Claire go, Ethan," Jack is saying, as if he can talk to the Devil and win. "You can't get away. We'll find you."
"Like you found me before?" Ethan asks, and the sneer in his voice is evident even if Charlie can't see it from his position in the shadows. "To bargain effectively you have to work from a standpoint of strength, Jack. And right now, I'm holding the lever that moves the world." Claire gasps, and Charlie imagines a thin trickle of blood coasting down her porcelain throat as the knife breaks her skin.
Things happen quickly. To Charlie, it is as if the jungle disappears, absorbed into a black room that forms around him like a tunnel, and all he sees is Ethan. Rising like a specter from the shadows behind his nemesis, Charlie watches his hand raise the gun. Watches the barrel press against Ethan's temple behind Claire's head. Watches Ethan stiffen in surprise.
There is a click. The gun is cocked.
"What are-?" Ethan begins to ask, but never finishes.
BANG!
The bullet is clean as it enters, but messy on the exit. Charlie barely feels the blood that spatters his face and soaks Claire's golden hair. He pours his rage into the shot and feels it yank out of his body like a physical force as the bullet streaks across the clearing to embed itself in a tree. Now there is clarity and color again. He sees red blood and black matte metal and Claire's ashen face as she screams and screams and screams.
"CHARLIE!" he hears Jack holler, in shock and disbelief. He ignores him.
Dropping the gun next to Ethan's crumpled body, Charlie spins around to press his chest against Claire's back, wrapping his arms around her pregnant belly and holding her immobile. She hasn't moved since the shot except to hold her stomach protectively while she doubled over to scream.
"Don't look…!" he whispers fervently near her ear, desperate to be heard over her fear, smearing fresh blood on her hair. "Look at Jack. Watch Jack!" Her shrieks singe the air and he feels her struggle to get away. "I didn't do this because of you," he assures her, his slick, bloodied fingers squeezing her hands, and her screams dissolve into hysterical sobs. "This wasn't because of you. Remember that! You didn't kill this man…!" He gives her a small shake. "Remember, Claire! Please, for the love of God, remember that!"
Now he's crying, too, and the tears make streaks on his bloody face. He gives up and sobs into her hair, ignoring the blood. At some point he feels Jack peel his arms away from Claire's waist, and without the support of her warm body he slumps to the ground in a heap. It's with only passing interest that he realizes he's collapsed over Ethan's dead legs.
"Charlie!" The voice comes to him as if through a velvet curtain. Raising his head, he stares up through the blur of his tears. Jack hovers over him, a look of confusion and horror on his face. Claire is huddled against the doctor's chest, her face buried in his collar as if she were trying to climb under his skin to hide. She is still trembling with frantic sobs and the halo of her hair is half matted with thick red blood.
"Why, Charlie?" Jack asks, his voice still muzzy and faint. He sounds like static behind a closed door.
"He already took everything else…!" Charlie manages to gasp through gritted teeth, staring at the legs beneath him. "I GAVE this to him!"
"What? What did you give, Charlie!"
Now he raises his eyes, and he can tell from the look Jack gives him that they're as black as they feel.
"The same thing he gave me," he growls, feeling feral and unhinged. "But he gets no second chances."
Jack must not know how to respond to that because he says nothing, contenting himself with rubbing Claire's back and trying to soothe her tears. Charlie eventually lets his eyes drop, though he doesn't look at the corpse. He looks at the trees and the shadows and the sky that's been growing steadily more overcast all afternoon.
He feels light touch his skin, and knows Claire is looking at him.
Their eyes meet, and he thinks it's only natural that he should be crouched on the ground at her feet while she towers over him with her head wreathed in cloud. Her gaze is bloodshot, but her blue irises shine despite the red. He's a stranger to her, a face with an unfamiliar name, and the way she stares at him now makes him believe it. He wonders if maybe she finally remembers the person he was, and can't rectify that man with the imp kneeling before her in the bloody mud.
You're safe, he wants to tell her. I had to save you. You're the only hope I have.
He wonders if she'd like to know that the angels expected two souls that day he met them at the pearly gates. He wonders if she'd like to know that all they wanted was Claire.
THE END
From Homer's The Illiad, translation by Stanley Lombardo