Disclaimer: I still do not own Revenge or its characters. But I am getting more Vivid moments this year so askjdlajhsdjah!
Author's Note: This is a one shot, (shh April), inspired by my binge watching of Grey's Anatomy from the beginning. Way, way too many episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Like I was sick for a week and that's all I watched. Includes character death, a painful death for me to even think about but one I find oddly inevitable.
All mistakes are mine, please message me if you find any I missed.
Reviews would be lovely.
The beeping of machines. That's all she could hear, there was a pounding pressure in her ears that felt like it was swallowing her whole and she could still hear the beeping over top of it. She hated hospitals, hated the smells and the cheery false faces the doctors wore when they spoke to you. She avoided hospitals like the plague, and clearly remembered more than once not telling her parents she was sick so she didn't have to go to the hospital, and yet here she was. Just like she always was when she got a call, she was still just the same good girl she always was. She had gone when they got the call about Conrad being found in the woods, when Carl broke his leg climbing a tree and they couldn't get a hold of Jack, and she had gone when her dad had a heart attack not long after being tossed between two of the women he loved. Charlotte Clarke was a very good girl, but right now she didn't feel very good. She had been given the power to make a decision that would change what was left of her family's life, and she hated it.
But at the same time, a part of Charlotte, the part she assumed was her mother speaking through her from beyond, felt powerful about it. She had the power to finish this, all of it. Everyone could go back to what was left of their normal lives and try to put the past and pain behind them. And while Charlotte would never wish a vegetative state on anybody, especially not someone she was related to, a small part of her thought this was payback for all of the terrible things that had happened. Just like her mom got hers for all the things she had done, it was just a cycle that never ended. But it was going to; Charlotte would make sure of that. And no, she didn't want it to have ended this way, that the Great Emily Thorne died because of something so simple as a drunk driver t-boning the car, nearly killing Nolan too, but Charlotte guessed that even the most complicated of people sometimes deserved the most simplest of deaths.
Footsteps echoed in the hall as a lone figure came to stand beside her, he stood stoic at first as he watched the young woman but a decision had to be made and there wasn't much time.
"Is there anyone that might want to say goodbye to her?" The doctor asked as Charlotte quickly, too quickly, shakes her head.
"No one." She said flatly, arms wrapped around herself like a steel guard.
"Are you sure, there might be some people who want a chan -"
Charlotte whipped around and stood nose to nose with the doctor, a fire in her eyes you could swear hadn't seen the light of day in years. "To what? Say goodbye? No, Amanda Clarke is dead. This person here, isn't Amanda. She is nothing; she was a crazy person who hurt others to make herself feel better."
The doctor reached out to comfort her and she jerked back before he could lay a hand on her. "So to answer your question, no. There's nobody that would want to say goodbye to her. Just pull the plug, get it done with. She'll know why." Charlotte slowly walked back to the viewing window, sniffling and wiping at the corners of her eyes.
"Maybe I wanted a chance to say goodbye, huh. To my Mom, before your patient here decided to "finish what she started" and bring it all "full circle" and shit. But I didn't get a chance, I came home to find my mom gone, and cops swarming the house. She'd been arrested for premeditated murder and within days of arriving, before her trial even started, she'd been poisoned in the cafeteria and smothered to death in her cell. When they found her, she was laying there like she was sleeping, except her eyes were still open. She'd been posed there; Amanda left her there like some kind of sick present, for me, for my dad. She didn't just have me kidnapped as a kid and messed around with the lives of everyone we never knew, no, that was enough for her... She was so angry at him for coming back and picking up with my mom like nothing happened. She lost it, but she was always crazy, her mom was crazy. Like clinically. I didn't get to say goodbye, and I loved my Mom, so why should she?"
She slowly grazed the glass with her fingertips as she glanced over at the doctor whose name she hadn't bothered to learn, who looked at her like she was the crazy on in the room as opposed to the "helpless" woman in the bed opposite them, trying not to cry as she thought about her mom. "Amanda couldn't deal. She spent so much time pretending and ignoring.. And only focusing on the hate and when it came time to deal, really deal with it, with what she'd done, the lives that were lost because of her.. She couldn't. It was all about her, truly, deep down, not about him. She kept insisting it was, but it wasn't."
The doctor licked his lips, and pondered what information he'd learned so far, knowing that he should go but felt oddly compelled to see it through.
"What wasn't?" He asked as Charlotte took a deep breath, holding it for a moment while she figured out where to start her explanation, a gesture which he imagined she had done once or twice before.
As Charlotte began her story with "When my sister was a little girl..." he knew this was not going to be a story of forgiveness, but one of loss and pain, for a lot of people. By the time she was done the doctor thought he needed the psychiatric help, he couldn't believe the life of his patient had been so entangled in the lives of others that he had known his time here, in the patients he might have treated at one time or another. Why even this young woman speaking to him had been his patient once, as a child. He couldn't imagine the difficult time that she had gone through to make sense of it all.
"Our father learned to forgive my mom for the part she played in all of it, he loved her and Amanda doesn't.. didn't understand. And how could she, I mean she married my brother while she was sleeping with her ex and was, or is, in love with her childhood best friend. She's never had a stable relationship. But after our dad came out of hiding, after everything that happened he still loved my mom. She was partially the reason he was still alive, she helped him get out of prison and kept him safe. Amanda didn't understand how he could still love someone that she only saw as the monster under her bed. That after all of this time, he could still forgive her for all of the bad things she'd done, and she'd done a lot of them. It was never about how our dad was wronged, Amanda knew he'd learned to forgive, whether by choice or because he had to, he asked her to do the same and she chose to go down a different path..."
"It was always about how she had been wronged as a kid, what she had lost, missed the chance to have. She felt so wronged by the world that she decided nobody else could have those things either. All she ever did was leave a trail of destruction in her wake; nobody was allowed to have peace. Until now. And I know how terrible it sounds, but that person is there is not my sister. Amanda Clarke no longer exists, and she hasn't for a really long time."
Charlotte stopped and turned away from the glass, as a third pair of footsteps came towards them. This time when a hand reached out and touched her shoulder she didn't shrug away, but instead wrapped her fingers around it and held it in place. Charlotte squeezed her fingers gently and gave one last look at the doctor and brushed her hair behind her ears, before speaking to him one last time.
"Just... give her the peace she was never going to have when she was alive, okay? Do that, for all of us left behind to clean up her messes. But mostly for her. She doesn't deserve to get the easy way out but she doesn't deserve to be a vegetable either."
Looking over at her silent companion, she lowered her arm and let go of his hand. "I'm gonna go see how Nolan is doing and then I'll meet you in the car, okay?"
At the figures small nod, Charlotte pushed off of the glass and slowly began to make her way down the hall, only taking one small look back at her sister lying motionless in the other room before turning away and leaving. She'd already said her goodbyes to the woman she knew as Amanda Clarke, a long, long time ago. There wasn't a need for it now.
The doctor watched Charlotte walk away before turning to face the other man, a man who had been dragged through the mud by the world, betrayed by the woman he loved and avenged by a child that was now nearly dead before him. He didn't know where to start, couldn't imagine what he would do if he were in the other man's place, but he had to try.
"Mr. Clarke?" He asked, cautiously, unsure of how the man in front of him would react to the situation.
David cleared his throat and nodded before sticking his hand out to shake the doctor's hand, "Before you say anything, I just wanted to say thank you for everything that you've done for my daughter. None of this is normal, as I'm sure Charlotte told you, but nonetheless..."
Dr. Brown nodded and shook David's hand, noticing a wedding band, Charlotte hadn't mentioned the fact her father had been married.
Gesturing at the ring, David glanced down at it and pulled back with a small chuckle. "Yeah. She's gone and I haven't taken it off. I'm not going to. This was what started the final balling rolling as it were. But it helps me think of the few good times I got, amongst all the bad, and that's something."
"My daughter was wronged, and despite the fact that I was able to find peace.. Despite my urging she was never able to, Amanda was never going to live a happy life, not truly. She was always going to go down with her ship and she was going to take a lot of people down with her, and she did. I don't even think that I could have saved her, I tried. Her friends tried, Amanda just didn't want to be saved and everybody knew it. She was sick, she had what her mother had and it was only a matter of time... Knowing what I know now about my daughter, she would have wanted it this way. Quick and with dignity. Amanda always loved the stories where the Captain went down with the ship and she would not want to be stranded here. Don't strand her here, doc."
Andy crossed his arms and leaned against the glass of the window, staring at his patient and then at her father. "Are you sure? We can't go back afterwards."
David nodded silently, mirroring Andy in crossing his arms. "I'm sure."
Tapping his hand on the glass, Andy nodded and pushed off. "I'll get started then. Shouldn't take long once we shut off the machines, you don't have to wait if you don't want to. But I have a feeling you'll see it through. It was nice meeting you Mr. Clarke, and I am sorry, truly."
David waited until the doctor was finished pulling all the wires off of his daughter, waited until he left the room to give him his final moments with his firstborn. He had so many things he wanted to say and no time to say them; they hadn't gotten to talk it all out. She wouldn't listen and he didn't want to either. They wasted a lot of time and now they wouldn't get it, and that would be his biggest regret until the day he died. Resting his forehead on the glass, David took a few deep breaths, trying to gather all of the thoughts racing through his head.
"I know you think that I must be the blindest man on Earth to get into a relationship with a woman who hurt me, but what you don't understand is that I hurt her too. She had to raise our daughter on her own, lie to her and hurt her just to protect her. I couldn't be there, for any of you and I know you never understood, and I tried, I tried Amanda. But you were never going to listen and I know that. Parents are supposed to lead their kids on the path to happiness and I'm sorry I wasn't able to give you that, Charlotte was right you weren't going to find happiness here. Jack wasn't going to be enough, he should have been and he wouldn't have been. And that's my fault too."
David paused and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, "I hope that you can have the peace and happiness you deserved in life, in death, Amanda. I'll take care of them, Carl, Jack, Nolan.. And of course, Charlotte. I promise. I love you." Leaning in towards the glass he steamed it up with his breath, hearing the monitor that showed heart rate slowing. Reaching up he traced out a symbol that meant the world to him, a symbol he'd drawn out for her a hundred times before and as the beeps slowed in frequency he kept his pace steady. "I love you infinity times infinity, Amanda." he whispered, one last tear rolling down his cheek as he finished, a loud flat line sound shattering the silence.