Title: Wait Forever
Original Post Date: 08/05/2007
Summary: Charlie and Claire find each other in the next world but they soon realise that sometime during their struggle to leave their lives they left someone else behind...
Disclaimer:not mine not mine not mine. Happy?
Author's Notes: written for the claim of "Charlie and Claire" for 50darkfics for the prompt of "forever"
The white sand beach is quiet but for the waves rolling against its edge. Bare feet sink deep with each step down the never ending shoreline. The prints he leaves behind fill up with water and eventually the waves wash them away again.
There are no obstructions. There are no coves to skirt or rocks to climb over or rivers to swim. There is nothing to stop him from walking forever.
The sky is a brilliant cerulean blue and his eyes reflect the colour as he turns his face towards it and breathes the salted air as deep into his lungs as he can.
After so long on the island, he never thought what came next would be simply more of the same. But at least here the sand doesn't stick and the sun doesn't burn. And the colours are so bright and beautiful…
Around the next bend his guitar sits up on the softer, drier ground away from the waves that tickle his feet. He treads over and plucks it out of the sand without even thinking. It feels surprisingly tangible in his hands (full of pins and needles, half numb) as he continues on, slinging it over his back.
He's not entirely sure why he's walking anyway. Maybe it's the thought, the idea of maybe being able to find her around the next bend? He doesn't know how long he walks the endless shore before he finds her (it might've been years for all he knows in this world of eternal nothingness) but when he sees her face he knows it can't have been any more than a year because she's exactly the way he remembers her.
Her golden hair fans out behind her, flickering with an almost flame-like quality as she rushes to embrace him, her touch gentle and welcoming. Her body beneath his hands feels just as tangible as his guitar - if not more so. Despite this, her presence seems almost muted somehow, the touch of her breath against his skin just as dreamlike as the rest of this world.
"I thought you mightn't have made it," her voice is no more than the ghost of a whisper against his ear as she brings her lips first to his cheek and then to his lips for a brief, chaste moment. "I was worried that we wouldn't be together."
"Where's Aaron?"
Her lip trembles slightly at the name.
"I don't know. He isn't with me."
"He can't've survived could he? How could he have survived when we didn't?"
She shakes her head, lip still trembling. "I don't know."
He casts his guitar aside and they sit on the cool, dry sand. They wait there together – there on the beach, together, their fingers twined like coils of rope.
Together they will wait forever – for a child who won't ever come.