"Charlie. Go back. Please."
Charlie looked away from Jack sharply, not about to acknowledge that he wasn't wanted.
"Really, Charlie, go back, Kate needs someone."
"It's not my frickin' fault she got hurt," he spat back at his companion, walking unusually slow through the unnaturally green woods. For once it wasn't raining. Yet.
"Oh, isn't it. If I remember right...-"
"Shut up, Jack. Just shut up. And I'm coming with you."
Jack fixed Charlie with a harsh glare that not even the cheeky Brit could hold his eyes to for more than half a moment.
"Look, she needs somebody to keep her company, or something, she was about to kill me for leaving without her, even though she couldn't afford to try to hike the four miles back to the cockpit again," Jack said patiently. The younger man asked interestedly how Doctor Jack knew it was four miles, and was that something else he learned in pilot school, or was that something taught for the medical profession?
Now it was Jack's turn to look away, this time irritably.
Knowing he was winning, Charlie tormented the older man that much more.
"If you're so terrific, why don' you stay with Kate? I mean, you're the doctor, I mean, come on. Or is she mad at YOU? Did you get in a fight wiv yer little girlfriend, doc?" Charlie poked Jack hard in the side a few times with a hoodie-sleeve covered finger, just for good measure.
Charlie paused. Jack wasn't reacting anymore. He sighed, in a strangely strangled sounding way. He turned back towards Charlie with pain in his eyes.
"Maybe we did fight. What's it to you, Charlie," he asked quietly. His obvious heartache was oddly contagious. Charlie choked. "What'd she say to you?"
Jack looked away once more, and down, scanning the moss and leaf covered ground for something to help him speak. "Nothing."
Charlie blinked a few times. She'd said nothing? And... so... the problem was....?
"That IS the problem, Chah-lee." the doctor said, reading Charlie's thoughts written clearly across his face. "She said nothing, when she could have said everything. Should have said everything. I said everything. I opened up to her. She didn't. I had thought she'd understand."
Both men were silent for a moment. The air was still, too still, too quiet, hinting at the storm that everyone knew was to come. They had come to dread the night.
"She loves you, Jack."
Charlie's suddenly fragile voice broke the silence, as thick as it was, with little more sound than his own breathing.
Jack stared into Charlie's bizarrely expressive face, and shook his head, muttering silently to himself.
"She may have. But..." he trailed off, whispering something to himself and looking down and away yet again, anything not to meet his eyes.
Charlie chuckled softly to himself and started back towards the beach, where Kate awaited him in broken-ankled fury.
"I love you too, Jack."