ONESHOT
"She's in a long black coat tonight waiting for me in the downpour outside, she's singing baby come home in a melody of tears as the rhythm of the rain keeps time." –Fall Out Boy (Jet Pack Blues)
Charlie couldn't help but wake up in a cold sweat every time she fell asleep. Especially when those horrific images filled her head in her dreams every time. Those terrible images of her first everything lying bloody and unconscious on an endless path of perfectly placed yellow bricks. An old hag looking over her limp body and Charlie's voice echoing out in a bloodcurdling cry so that all of Oz could've heard it. The witch cackling and disappearing before Charlie's eyes, leaving her perfectly orchestrated mess behind. The redhead quickly making her way over to her unconscious companion and shaking her shoulder as though she could just magically wake up and this whole thing would be over. Charlie had been warned when she'd decided to come along for the ride that bad things might happen, but the young hacker hadn't listened. She'd believed that her time in Oz would be all sunshine and rainbows, but she also knew rainbows couldn't happen without rain.
But this, this was a downpour.
"You have to wake up," Charlie remembered crying for hours. "Please..."
But her companion, her partner, her everything didn't wake up. She lay there on the yellow bricks. She'd bled out and all of the life had left her eyes as she stared blankly wide eyed up at the pink sky. Charlie remembered right then, that was when her whole world had fallen apart.
Dorothy Baum was dead.
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Charlie remembered the sinister smirk on the Wicked Witch's face when she'd gone to see her. She'd buried Dorothy at the foot of the tree they'd first kissed under and then moved on. Dorothy's aviator jacket wrapped around her thin frame and tight to her chest. Charlie remembered the look on her face. She couldn't see it, but she remembered it being a look of pure rage, anguish, and determination all mixed into one. She remembered the fire swamp on the edges of the forest and how the berries were pure black there. She remembered crushing enough berries into a poultice and dyeing the jacket so that it was completely black. She remembered looking into the nearby river and running her fingers through her long red hair. Images of Dorothy doing it instead with her slender and perfect fingers, a smile on her face ever growing flashed through Charlie's mind. She remembered taking a knife that Dorothy had given her for defense and as she ran her own fingers underneath all of the hair she chopped it all off in one swipe of the blade. Then the wind from the mountains blew it all downstream.
Charlie recalled making her way towards the witch's castle and then inside. She remembered standing before Dorothy's killer and resisting the urge to pulverize her into oblivion. The witch's laugh had chilled Charlie to her core, but she'd stood strong...for Dorothy. Oz wasn't her home anymore and she certainly didn't have to play by the rules.
"Tell me why," Charlie had asked. "Just please tell me why."
"That brat has been working towards my downfall for years now," the witch's words had cut Charlie. "I for one am personally glad she's gone and I get twice the satisfaction of knowing I have her soul trapped within my grasp and you on the end of an emotional leash."
Charlie remembered her force as she'd pushed the witch against the wall and threatened her with every weapon known to man. Her eyes had stung with tears in the corners of them, but she had refused to cry in front of a monster. What she remembered most of all was the witch's deal and Charlie had been a fool to listen.
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Memories were too painful. That was why Charlie refused to think about them most of the time. Especially now that she was out of Oz, the redhead checked herself over in the mirror before exiting the bathroom and shrugging on Dorothy's dyed black jacket. She often questioned why she'd chosen to change the color, but she figured the new color resembled her feelings inside better than brown.
Sharing a brain with an old hag wasn't the worst thing that could ever happen. Death was and Charlie was more than familiar with that. When she'd made the deal with the witch all she'd thought about was Dorothy's soul ascending slowly into the sky before her and as the witch had promised, to Heaven. It was worth doing a witch's dirty work to have Dorothy where she belonged, besides in Charlie's arms once again. Charlie was willing to fight whomever the witch chose to keep her soul safe. God knows the witch would probably go back on her promise.
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That was why when Charlie came face to face with the Winchesters busting in on her about gut a woman's throat, she didn't know what to do or say at first. They were her friends, but she was caught in a situation she couldn't explain. She figured by now that the body count she'd racked up would catch their attention and somehow she figured that was exactly what the bitch wanted.
"Charlie," Dean asked with great confusion evident in his face. "What the hell happened in Oz?"
Charlie thought of what had happened for a split second. She thought of her and Dorothy's first kiss, walking down the yellow brick road, the adventure, the thrill, but mostly Dorothy's body entangled in her loving arms and her refusal to let go even at the end when Dorothy lay bloody and dead on the road.
"Everything I ever wanted." Charlie replied.
It wasn't exactly a lie?
Reviews are appreciated!
This is just my headcannon as to why Charlie went nuts.