Title: Sympathy for the Devil
Disclaimer: LOST and all its related properties belong to ABC, Bad Robot, JJ Abrams, and Damon Lindelof. "Sympathy for the Devil" belongs to the Rolling Stones. And Dom Monaghan belongs to me... :sigh: Guess which one of these is not true?
Author's Notes: Songs used are "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones and "Everybody Hurts" by REM. Also, for those who have no experience with music theory, a low E is the lowest note on a normal bass (without using drop tuning), and a minor second chord...well, let's just say it will set your teeth on edge. Not a pretty thing.
...So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste...
all the best cowboys have daddy issues
Jack was on his way to the waterfall when he noticed a small brown-haired girl sitting in the shadows at the edge of the caves, strumming Charlie's guitar. He couldn't remember seeing her before; he guessed she must have just recently come up from the beach. He stepped in front of her, but when that failed to gain her attention, he cleared his throat. She looked up and lowered the volume of her playing, but didn't stop. Jack glared at her.
"Did Charlie give you permission to play that?" He knew that Charlie's guitar was his most precious possession and he couldn't imagine that he would let a stranger use it, even in his current condition.
"No," she replied nonchalantly, as if she didn't understand why Jack would be asking such a stupid question.
"Don't you think you should?"
"No."
Jack was getting frustrated. He glanced over his shoulder at Charlie, who was, as usual, staring off into the fire. He knew Charlie could hear her, and he had no idea why he hadn't come down and taken care of it himself. Seeing anyone else holding the guitar seemed so wrong, so...sacrilegious, somehow. Like she was holding his soul in her hands.
"Fine, then, just put it away when you're done."
"I know how to handle an instrument; I play six of them," she snapped, sounding remarkably like Shannon. She was about Shannon's age, too, but she had deep brown, nearly black, eyes, round cheeks, and dark hair instead of Shannon's angular Aryan appearance.
Jack sighed and had no choice but to continue on to the waterfall. As he left, he heard her increase the volume of her playing and, after a few seconds, starting to sing.
Please allow me to introduce myself...
"I'm a man of wealth and taste," Charlie whispered, locking eyes with the girl.
She grinned. "I've been around for a long, long years / Stole many a man's soul and faith."
Charlie found himself walking toward the girl. He felt that she was drawing him in somehow...
like a moth to a flame
He sat down in front of her, his eyes never wavering from her gaze. She stopped playing and Charlie shivered, a sudden chill racing up his spine. "Do you know where your faith is, Charlie?" she asked in a soft yet slightly menacing voice.
Charlie looked away. He rubbed the fresh scars on his neck. "Ethan took it," he told her. He looked at her with a haunted desperation in his eyes. "I don't know how to get it back."
"How do you know you want it back?" she asked, softly finger-picking the bridge of the song she'd been singing. "How do you know there isn't a better offer?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I want to help you, Charlie. I've helped a lot of men like you." She switched keys then and started on a simple D-G progression. "Sometimes everything is wrong / now it's time to sing along..."
When your day is night alone, hold on, hold on
If you feel like letting go, hold on, hold on...
"What do I have to hold on to?" Charlie murmured. "She's gone."
"What if I told you..." G- F#- E- "That I could give her back to you?"
She could see the emotions warring in his face, naked hope fighting to overcome utter desolation. Desolation won out, and he jumped to his feet. "Why are you doing this? Who are you? Why are you tormenting me? I saw them take her! She's gone! All he wanted-" He dropped down to the ground again, wilting like a deflated balloon. He shook his head, running one hand through his greasy hair. "All he wanted was Claire."
She leaned over and turned his head so he was facing her. "If you want her, she's yours."
"Who are you? Why should I believe you?"
"Because, Charlie, you want to believe." She took his hand in her own and suddenly the fire in front of them roared up and, when Charlie could see again, he realized he was once again hanging in the tree. Only it didn't hurt. The vines were there; he could feel them with his fingers but not on his neck. He could breathe. He looked downward and saw the girl standing on the ground below him, smiling.
"What the bloody hell are you?" he screamed. He was hanging by his neck and he could still scream at the top of his lungs.
"What's puzzling you is the nature of my game," she answered, grinning slyly. "Tell you what: you guess my name, I let you down. And then we'll talk."
Charlie had had far more coherent conversations while high on smack, and that was saying something. "Guess your name? What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Memory's not all it used to be, apparently," she replied snidely. "Such is the life of the rock star - and the junkie."
This was getting very old, very fast. "What are you on about? Get me down, Goddammit!"
"Not so fast, rock god. You do your part, I do mine. What's my name? I gave you more than enough hints." She started to hum a tune. It took Charlie several seconds to work it out. He stared at her in disbelief. "You're saying you're the Devil."
"The one and only." She grinned and made an exaggerated bow. The next thing Charlie knew, he was back on solid ground and standing next to her.
"You're not serious." He turned back to the tree, where he could see no evidence of vines or ropes. "Okay, all right, this isn't real. This can't be real."
"Why not? I used to hear from you quite a bit back in the old days. You'd offer your soul up three, four times a week. 'Just one more hit,' you needed. Always one more hit." She got right up in his face, and Charlie realized she was taller than she had been at the caves. Now she was tall enough to look him square in the eye. "Why do you think they were able to take her? You spent so many years destroying your body, your mind, your soul...you're weak, Charlie Pace. You're the weakest man on this island. You're bloody useless, that's what you are," she finished in a mockery of his accent.
"No I'm not!" Charlie yelled, but inwardly he knew she was right. He i was /i bloody useless, and now Claire was probably dead. And he should have been.
"It's not too late to make that happen, you know," she offered.
Charlie's breath hitched. "You want to kill me?"
"No, silly!" She smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "What does that accomplish? No, I wasn't talking about killing you. I was talking about helping you keep your promise."
"What promise?"
"You said you'd do anything to keep Claire safe, didn't you?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Now's your chance." She held out her hand. "This is a limited time offer. You get no second chances on this one. No takebacks. No 'I didn't mean it's. You do this, it's a done deal."
Recognition hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. "You're talking about selling my soul."
"I'll take 'Obvious Answers' for a hundred, Alex," she sneered. "Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. You get Claire; I get your soul."
Charlie took a deep breath. This was exactly what twelve years of Catholic school had warned him of. Well, except for the sarcasm; he'd never expected the Devil to have the appearance of a Driveshaft fangirl and the personality of Sawyer. But that was exactly what made Him so insidious.
He owed it to Claire; he knew that much. He had promised to protect her and utterly failed, just like he failed everyone else he cared about. Claire was going to be his fresh start, his chance to put his useless junkie past behind him.
Look how that turned out. He was so pathetic he couldn't even die correctly. He remembered when he was 13 his friend Robbie had jumped off a train trestle after his dad walked out on his mum. Father O'Toole had told them, in his heavy brogue, that "none of us go before our time. We go when the Lord and his Son need us to come home." Apparently the Lord hadn't needed him to go home, but Claire sure had.
"I don't have all day," the girl snapped, interrupting his reverie. "I just need a simple yes or no. Think you can handle that?"
Charlie looked up to the sky, but finding no divine guidance, turned back to the brunette.
i'm sorry
He grasped her hand. "Yes."
And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
homecoming I
When Boone and Locke stumbled into the caves carrying Claire, Charlie was sure he had finally lost it. They must have brought back a particularly large boar; sure, that was it. But when Jack yelled "Claire!" and jumped forward, Charlie decided that he might not be going crazy after all.
He looked behind him. The Devil-girl was sitting cross-legged at the entrance, barely visible under the ratty tarp that marked off the sleeping area. She gave him a small nod. Then she got up and walked off toward the waterfall.
Charlie turned back to Claire. Jack had dampened a rag and was gently washing the ugly lump on her forehead. "Claire?" he said, tapping her cheek lightly. "Claire, wake up."
Her eyes slowly opened. Charlie held his breath, his relief at seeing her alive not quite strong enough to overcome the panic he felt when he thought of the unholy bargain he had made. He'd always thought of the whole 'selling your soul' bit as a metaphor. Now, in this garden of terror, it seemed that he had been wrong. Dead wrong (pardon the pun).
Her scream pierced the breathless silence. "Who are you?" Charlie leaned in to comfort her, but she fought him off. "I don't know you!"
Stunned, Charlie fell backwards into the damp grass. He sensed the Devil-girl watching, and sure enough, there she was at the edge of the shadows. He jumped up. "You!" He shouted. "We had a deal!"
She shrugged and smiled innocently. "You got what you wanted."
He was so infuriated that he could barely form the words. "This? You think this is what I wanted? She's not safe. She's not okay. Her life is ruined!" He pounded his fist on the cave wall in frustration. "She's dead inside! You call that safe? That wasn't the deal! Take it back!"
"Ah-ah-ah, remember our terms," she replied in a mocking singsong voice. "No takebacks. What you see is what you get. I held up my end. Now you get to hold up yours."
"This isn't what I agreed to! You can't do this! It's not fair!" Charlie started to back away from the eerie brunette, who seemed taller than she was at the start of their conversation.
"Fair?" She laughed. "You want fair, you don't bargain with Satan. Didn't Sister Mary Margaret teach you anything? You got what you asked for. Claire is safe and she's back in your care."
"That's not Claire! That's some hollow shell of her that I don't even know anymore. I wanted my Claire. I want the woman I love back!"
"Well, then, you should have been more specific. You asked for her safe return. You got it. She's alive, the baby's fine, and she's with you. End of story."
"This isn't-you're not-you can't-" Charlie sputtered, grasping at frayed threads of thoughts. "This isn't right!"
She sighed. "Haven't you learned yet?" She gestured towards the ocean. "Your 'right' and 'wrong' have no place here."
She held out her hand. "It's time, Charlie."
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
homecoming II
burning
Charlie had always been fascinated by fire as a child. Most young boys are, but Charlie had never really grown out of it. As an adult, he always had four or five lighters on him at any given moment. When he got high he loved to watch things burn. He could see every molecule of the fire, every intricate shade of red and yellow, shades no painter had ever dreamed of. He would have made a good fireworks designer if only he's had the brains for it. Chemistry was never his strong suit; he was banned from the lab in year 9 after the fifth cupboard fire.
The fire that burned inside him now was like none he'd yet encountered. He couldn't see the color so much as sense it; it was a deep crimson red, so dark as to almost be violet, and it felt not so much like burning as vibrating, the way he'd feel when he cranked his amp to its highest and struck the low E. The sensation was instantly replaced by a bone-rattling chill, an icy subzero shiver that tasted blue and sounded like a high E-flat minor second.
The world around him blazed red, then white, and then he fell into the blackness.
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
"Charlie? Charlie! Come on, wake up."
It wasn't the voice he would have wanted to ease him back into consciousness, but it was enough. He forced his eyelids open to reveal Jack crouching over him, shaking his shoulder. "Charlie, stay with me." He helped Charlie to sit up, and Charlie realized that he had been brought back to the fire. Most of the cave residents were gathered around him, but Claire was sitting off to the side, trying to avoid his eye. She seemed to sense that whatever had happened to him had happened because of her.
"Charlie, what happened back there? Who were you talking to?"
"What do you mean, who was I talking to? The bloody Devil, that's who!"
"What?" Jack took a deep breath, and when he spoke again it was in his calm, measured 'doctor voice'. "Charlie, what did you see?"
"That girl! You saw her, Jack, she was playing my guitar."
"And when was that?" Jack's voice grew softer.
Charlie's eyes widened. "It was just the other day! You talked to her, Jack! You saw her, and you talked to her, and don't tell me I'm just making it up!" Panicked and frustrated, he started to hyperventilate.
"Charlie, calm down. Just breathe. It's okay." Jack was rubbing his arm now. "That's it. Just breathe. Now, this girl, what does she look like?"
"Sorta like Shannon, but with brown hair and brown eyes...she's kinda small, unless she's angry, and then she gets taller..." He scrubbed one hand across his eyes. "God, I sound like a loony. I'm not crazy, Jack, I swear. You talked to her. I talked to her. She played my guitar. She touched me. I could feel her, Jack!"
"What did she tell you?"
"That I could get Claire back, safe and sound, if I sold her my soul."
"Charlie-" Jack sighed. "I need you to tell me everything. Everything you've seen, everything you've said."
"No, you don't." replied Charlie. "All you need to know is that I said yes."
I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Charlie never knew that death smelt of warm spring rain. There were other notes, like damp leaves and gunpowder and the coppery tang of blood, but what he would remember, what he would always remember, was the smell of warm rain. For the rest of this life, every time he was caught in the heavy humidity of a sudden summer shower he would remember what it was like to hold death in his hands, to feel it hanging in the air around him, every molecule beating him down with sledgehammer intensity. He would remember the gunshot as the crack of a whip wielded by his Devil.
He'd always thought that the Devil would have horns and a tail and a big flaming pitchfork. He knew never the Devil showed up as mysterious islands and film canisters and little girls with big brown eyes who hung around in shadows. He wondered why God had never warned him about that. Why the Bible didn't mention that the Devil might show up looking like your little sister.
Why he never knew that the only thing worse than losing your soul was losing someone else's in the process.
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith...