Disclaimer: Lost belongs to J. J. Abrams and ABC. Lyrics by Peggy Lee.
Warnings: None!
AN: Had a slow day at work and my sappy side kicked in (especially after watching 'The Constant') so I decided to write a little something for the Charlie/Claire ship, 'cuz it could always use some love. Enjoy!
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Promised Land
She wonders what age she was when she stopped believing in fairy tales.
Because she remembers the beaten, but well-loved, copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales that she kept under her bed and would leaf through by the glow of her night light. She remembers looking at the pictures of the tall, handsome princes (although sometimes they were penniless knights) and beautiful, benevolent princesses (although sometimes they were orphaned maids) and thinking that lives were like stories and people fit right into them like perfectly shaped blocks. Childhood memory is always a little fuzzy and tends to gloss over certain areas, but she guesses that maybe she stopped believing when she realized that her mother's story, and thereby her own, lacked a prince and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't force someone to be something they weren't. So, her once beloved book got shoved further and further back towards the wall until the time came when she didn't reach for it anymore, and it became lost among her other forgotten belongings, collecting dust bunnies alongside its spine.
When she was in high school, her English teacher made her read A Midsummer Night's Dream and she hated it, mostly because it was glaringly obvious that Shakespeare's world was dead. And it bit at her that the grand romances and happy endings he chronicled never happened anymore, though she'd never admit it.
She'd look into the mirror and imagine her face with a few more lines and longer hair and guess what her life would be like. She was young, and bitter and prideful and all the things people are when they haven't had a steady ground to depend on and instead of grasping desperately for normalcy in her life, she chose to reject it. She chose something else; society's expectations never really mattered much to her because she didn't ever feel she fit in with them to begin with.
But now, when Claire looks into the mirror, she peels back her skin like an onion and sees herself when she was so fiercely independent and wonders what her younger self would think. Back then she would have scoffed, but life is never what you predict when you're sixteen.
She looks at the morning glories (her mother's favorite flower) as they bloom a brilliant ocean-blue on the windowsill. Idly, she picks one and slips it behind her ear like she's done hundreds of times before. She regrets that Aaron will never meet his grandmother because she was such a good woman and Claire will never understand how her mother was able to raise her alone. Sometimes, she's a little terrified that Aaron will be too much like her, but that'd be karma and nobody can really escape that. For now, (as a memento, or maybe an apology) she keeps a pot of morning glories, that tangible little piece of her, to pass along to Aaron.
Claire, blonde hair pulled back from her face and falling down her back, turns on the kitchen radio with a press of a button. It crackles to life and a voice, warm and smooth like scotch, sings through the static.
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right…
She hears the front door open and sound of his jacket being dropped on the sofa. The afternoon heat spills into the house like lava as he loosens the tie around his neck. He always hated the hot weather; the leather seats of his car would stick to him, just like the cotton of his clothes, and sear white-hot against his bare skin. He had complained it made him sluggish, but she had insisted that the sun made her feel more alive and sometime between then and now he'd come to agree with her.
He wades into the kitchen and gives her a smile, and it's a routine she's grown fond of because there aren't many people she's met whose smile catches so easily with her own. Charlie grabs a bottled water from the refrigerator, stalling as long as he can with his face in the door. His hair is shorter now and darker too than it was when she first met him; she likes the change. He looks at her suddenly, and asks what she's thinking. He sees it in her eyes, and she doesn't hesitate when she says, the island. She wonders briefly when she became so easy to read because she's always thought of him as the unlocked diary. He nods and she traces a finger along the fading scar above his eyebrow, the one Sayid cauterized with gunpowder. But he knows she's made her peace with the island, even though she should lament her time there and all the horrible things that became of it. But she can't bring herself to, because that miserable stretch of land was where Aaron was born, and where she met Charlie. He kisses her, and she feels his stubble nick lightly against her face, though she's told him he needs a shave. (And, ultimately, he will, but in the meantime his passive defiance is endearing.)
He's another unexpected turn, though she's probably the same for him. She's certain that Charlie would not have been her mother's first choice, or a choice at all for that matter, as a candidate for her to marry. She probably would have even said that she disapproves of Claire being with him. (There's nothing worse, Claire thinks, than that ever-so-subtle feeling of disappointing your parents)
She smiles as he rolls up his sleeves, past the elbows, and joins her in washing the dishes that she's neglected all morning. Charlie's likeness will never be depicted in childhood storybooks, riding a white steed through the forest with sword drawn in all his princely glory as he rushes to save the fair maiden from peril, and Claire's decided that she's fine with it because saints are so hard to come by nowadays, but miracles, on the other hand, are not as distant as she once thought. (For what else could you call it? That look of complete serenity tucked away in Charlie's eye that says that he's finally become the man he's always wanted to be.) This isn't the life she wanted, but she knows that this is the life where she belongs, and she'd never be this happy anywhere else. She thinks, somehow, her mother knows.
The radio is still playing, the song winds it way through the house like silk ribbons (What a lovely way to burn…) and Claire thinks she's found what everyone seeks and so few find and she would write it down on the open book of Charlie's soul, if she had the time to write forever.
But she doesn't, because any minute Claire will stop dreaming and open her eyes. She'll see the pale blue sky above (not a cloud in sight) and feel the wet sand under her palms (gritty little grains) and remember that she's still on that damn island and the truth will burn her worse than a flame because she already knows there are no happy endings.