Title: Here and Now 1/2
Characters: Charlie, Claire
Genre: angst
Spoilers: up to and including 3x10
Original Post Date:12/05/2007
Summary: A juxta positioning of Charlie's outlook on life and death at the beginning and end of "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead". Sometimes all you need is a little bit of faith and trust in order to see yourself through the darkest of hours.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine, not mine. Sigh.
Authors Note: This is the angsty bit where Charlie is woeful – rest assured we will get some nice fluffy stuff in the second instalment of this fic. Which will be posted...soon?
The beach settlement had come alive again.
Everyone was smiling, rushing forward in small clumps... Charlie held back quite deliberately, allowing himself only an indulgent half smile as Kate and Sawyer were welcomed back into the fold. Despite the crispness of the day and the joyful proceedings before him, he couldn't help but feel the terrible weight of the shadow that seemed to have been hanging over his head since the evening barely three days ago when Desmond had told him that he was going to die.
Charlie was undecided whether or not he was still in shock about the revelation of his imminent demise or not. A part of him was still in a state of stunned disbelief – he still had at least another fifty years right? How the hell could anyone die as young as he was?
But then there is also another part of him that answers that question far too readily with a resounding 'very easily actually'. He only has to look over at the sad collection of dilapidated crosses that mark the graves of the other young and fallen Islanders. Boone, Shannon, Ana-Lucia, Libby, Nikki, Paulo…
In retrospect, and hypothetically speaking, any of them could easily have been him. He's certainly cheated death more than once here. Maybe he should have died in the plane crash, overdosed on heroin within the first week, had his internal organs squished to goo by a rampaging boar, been left swinging by his neck, gone mad from lovesickness and jumped off a cliff, been hit by lightning and drowned in the ocean and…and…
Why the hell has he lived so long in this bloody place only to be told now 'it's been fun and all but your times up now'? It seems inordinately cruel also, to give him a chance for redemption, have it blow up in his face, have it all fall back into place and then threaten to take him away from the one thing that truly matters to him now.
Some would call that ironic. Just like the song. Charlie just thinks its bollocks and he's been in a shitty mood but pretending he isn't for several days now.
Kate looks about as far away as the moon as Locke and Sayid gather her to them and begin to lead her away from the crowd, drilling her as they go. Something about her has changed Charlie thinks as he watches her stride along the sand with them. There's something painful, a secret hiding behind her hazel eyes that wasn't there before. Her eyes fall blankly on him for a brief moment as she walks parallel to where he's standing. Charlie wonders if she can see the same thing in him as he can in her but she just blinks at him once, vacantly and continues on her way.
Charlie turns his attention back to Sawyer who is still busy greeting everyone – the man of the hour again. He at least doesn't seem to have changed that much and in a strange way, Charlie is glad of it. Even in a crowd of smiling people, he still manages to look like he's alone.
That's exactly how Charlie feels nowadays – like he's tainted, like he doesn't deserve the fondness of the people he shares his life with. Sawyer seems to have the same disease that he does – but a lot more advanced. Sawyer doesn't seem to get lonely in his loneliness – Charlie just feels like he's drowning in it all the time.
He's just about to withdraw back into himself and painful, blissful, solitude when Claire comes running up excitedly from behind him, Aaron tucked hastily into her arms.
"I almost forgot about Aaron when I saw them!" she gushes breathlessly, tucking a wayward curl behind her ear as she beams up at Charlie. "I was going to go say hello to Kate but then I remembered and I had to run back to get him. Can you believe they all got back safely? It's amazing isn't it?"
Charlie grimaces at her choice of words and the way her free hand hovers lightly at his waist as she grins over at the sight of Sawyer being hugged again and again. "Not all of them got back safely Claire," he says pointedly. "What about Jack?"
Claire's face falls slightly but her smile comes back just as quickly and she takesa step closer to him, just enough to press herself into the hollow underneath his right arm. Charlie deliberately doesn't take the non-too-subtle hint and stubbornly keeps his hands in his back pockets even as Claire leans up against him and tilts her face towards his, that dazzling smile on her lips brightening her pale eyes. "Well yeah, but they'll go out looking for him properly now that we know he's still, you know, alive and safe and everything right?"
Charlie chuckles mirthlessly. "Oh yeah sure. Jack is alive and safe – with the people who hung me from a tree."
This time Claire's smile falls completely and she begins to look upset. The guilt kicks in immediately, even before she starts to speak. "Well there's no need to be so negative about it," she says reprovingly, shying away from him a little, as though his negative energy is going to rub off onto her. "What's up with you today?"
Charlie rubs a frustrated hand over his face whilst he thinks of a plausible lie.
"Sorry," he apologises finally, sighing. "I don't mean to be cranky or anything. I just… well I didn't sleep very well last night is all and…"
Claire starts to look guilty and Charlie feels even worse – if that's at all possible. "Oh...did Aaron keep you awake too? I'm sorry Charlie, he was just being so fussy all night and you know, I couldn't just keep seeing to him or he'd just have fussed all the more and…"
"S'ok," Charlie brushes aside her flustered apologies as he finally slips an arm around her shoulders and gazes down fondly at the culprit of his fall out story. "It's not really his fault after all. God, if I had you for a mum I'd be constantly demanding your attention too." The joke slips out without him even meaning it to happen in the first place, but then Claire chuckles and he is taken aback.
"You are terrible sometimes Charlie Pace," she chides him teasingly. "Absolutely terrible."
Charlie winks at her and tries for a roguish grin. After a moment however, he feels just how thin it's been stretched across his face and he can feel it growing becomes blander by the second. "It's just a by product of my natural charm I'm afraid," he says despairingly. "I just can't help my being so hopelessly attractive."
"Ohhh," Claire returns knowingly. "Like I just can't help feeling helplessly attracted to you – is that it?" her eyes are sparkling and Charlie…oh good Christ he just can't stand flirting with her. Not now when he feels like he's a stranger living his own life. How can he hold her and her son in his arms when he knows that he's nothing more than a body living on well after its soul's expiry date?
How the hell do you do that?
There's only one person who can really answer that question for him and so Charlie smiles again, the blandness apparent from the offset this time, and gives Claire a quick squeeze.
"It is more than highly possible. Now if you can bear to let my handsome face out of your sight for a moment, I've got a hot date with a certain Scotsman."
Claire looks…disappointed? Yes that's definitely disappointment on her face, and hurt as well. Again. Charlie feels like somebody is stabbing him in the gut repeatedly with a skewer – a slower and more painful way to go than with a knife for sure. He wishes it was easier – that he could just tell her that he's a walking time bomb of death but somehow he can't bring himself to do it.
It doesn't seem fair after everything else he's already put her through.
And so when her mouth droops, and she begins to voice her desire to spend some time together, go for a walk with just the two of them or something and since when was he such good friends with Desmond anyway? he conciliates his own wretchedness of heart with a soft kiss to her lips. Claire seems pleased by it, although not entirely sure of the motive behind it.
"I'll catch up with you later okay?" Charlie resolves. "I've just got something I need to talk to Desmond about first. You go enjoy a morning to yourself for once without me butting in all over the place."
Claire still looks uncertain until he bends to kiss her once again.
She sighs against his mouth and Charlie feels once more (and much stronger this time) the taint of death on his skin. It crawls like a thousand poisonous spiders, burrowing into the back of his skull, even as she presses up against him and into his mouth. He feels like he's siphoning his own bad karma directly into Claire's soul and he hates himself for doing it.
But at the same time he can't help but hold onto her even tighter in the wake of his own mortality.
Should a dead man be allowed to love someone as unconditionally like this? He doesn't think so. The fact that Claire and Aaron are full of more life than Charlie has ever seen before within two people doesn't help his resolve either.
With this thought, he pulls back, his skin prickling and Claire gazes up at him softly, her lips are beginning to swell from the pressure and Charlie wishes like all hell that he could linger here, in this moment, but he knows that he can't. Every second he spends with her could possibly be the one that could irreversibly damage her innocence and as much as he doesn't want that, he's loathe to let his hand slip from her hair (how did it even get there in the first place?) and his lips from hers.
"I'll see you later," he whispers, surprised at the lump in his throat as they part ways.
As he heads slowly to Desmond's shelter there is more than one thought on his mind but only one of them has been playing in an infinite loop which has been running for days now. Different metaphors belie the same question and the same answer every time.
If the dead are better off with the damned as he's been led to believe – and if he's destined to die as he's been led to believe, then why the hell does he keep coming back to Claire as though drawn by some invisible magnet?
Because, you're not ready to die yet Charlie – you're not ready to the emptiness and loneliness that will accompany your departure from this world. Because you know that your days are numbered, because you're counting them down one at a time. Because you love that girl and her child more than you could ever possibly express in words and you want to love them as much as you can before you…
His chest swells with emotion as he comes up from behind Desmond (So when's it gonna happen?) and he's surprised at how angry he feels when the man denies him the answer he wants.
Desmond can see his future – he knows he can – and as long as it's an uncertainty, all Charlie has is the here and now.
And he's beginning to realise that he doesn't want to waste it anymore.