This was written for lj comment fic, for the prompt: "Pushing Daisies, Ned/Charlotte, she's not aging."
This hasn't been beta-ed as of yet, either.
This is my first Pushing Daisies fic, but I've wanted to write one for ages, so. I apologize in advance for the potential feelings. Enjoy!
They don't notice at first.
Which makes sense, really. Charlotte Charles is one of the only people that the piemaker brought back to life that did not become dead, again, forever. And she wasn't covered head-to-toe in bandages, hadn't been squashed in some horrible accident, and moved through each day so utterly and completely alive that it was hard to believe she had ever been otherwise.
So, it takes a rather long while for anyone to notice.
The first sign comes a few years after Ned the Piemaker brought her back to life, and as with so many things in their world, it started with something seemingly small and innocuous.
It was like any other day, any other morning. Nothing big would happen, there would be no exclamations or sudden revelations, but it was the start.
Chuck had never quite moved back in with Ned. After Olive left to run her macaroni and cheese restaurant, the room that she and Chuck had been sharing together was completely free, and Chuck took advantage of it. That being said, over half the nights during the week one of them would sleep in the other's room, and for all intents and purposes they were living together. And separately. It was both and neither, but it suited them fine.
In the mornings, sometimes Chuck would go into Ned's room and wait with him while he finished getting ready, talking about the dreams that she'd had and her thoughts on new pies to make while Ned brushed his teeth and shaved.
This was one of those mornings, but this time Chuck noticed something small on the back of his shirt.
"What's that?" She asked.
"What's what?" Ned replied, his face still half covered in shaving cream, freezing with the razor on his cheek. He looked mildly alarmed. "Is there - is there a thing on me? Is it a bug?"
"No. It's - " Chuck frowned. "Reaching," she told him, and obediently he didn't move a muscle while she reached forward and pulled it off of him. She studied it for a second. "Just a grey hair," she said with a smile.
Ned relaxed. "Oh. Yes, I've got a few of those." He resumed shaving.
Chuck rolled the hair around in her fingers. Something was niggling at the back of her mind, something that made a sense of dread rise up in her chest. She shook her head, and flicked the hair to the floor.
"What were you saying about adding to the pie filling recipe?" Ned asked her, and Chuck smiled again, telling him excitedly about her idea for putting cheese crumbles in certain pies, and forgets about the grey hair all together.
(~-~-~-~-~-~)
Not quite a year after that, another event occurs that brings aging to the forefront of Chuck's mind.
Olive doesn't work at the Pie-Hole anymore, but they still see each other as often as they can. Olive is her friend, and she's Ned's friend, and even Emerson's friend (not that Emerson would ever admit it, though he's gotten better about that kind of thing with his daughter in his life again).
Now that Olive is on her secret, that makes things easier too. They usually get lunch together, at somewhere other than their respective restaurants. Chuck loves pie, but she does like to eat other food as well, and Randy doesn't know the truth about her the way that Olive does. It's nothing against Randy, not really, but Chuck trusts Olive with her life (or her un-life) in a way that she doesn't Randy.
Sometimes they eat with her aunts (when they're not touring), and other times Ned joins them, or Emerson and his daughter, but most of the time it's just the two of them. They talk about annoying customers and silly things that Ned or Randy do, the latest case they're working on with Emerson, and everything in-between. It's one of Chuck's favorite parts of the day.
Today, Olive had called to ask if they could meet a little earlier than normal, but Chuck didn't think anything of it.
"Hey, Olive!" Chuck smiles and waves her over to their table. It's outside, and the sun is shining brightly, warm on her shoulders.
"Hey!" Olive replies, smiling back, an almost cheek-to-cheek grin that kind of takes Chuck by surprise. They hug, but the moment Olive sits down - practically vibrating with energy, as if she's resisting the urge to bounce up and down in her seat - she's talking.
"Okay. So. I invited you here early to tell you something." Olive says, and Chuck puts down her menu, intrigued.
"Oh yeah?" She asks, unable to help her own grin at Olive's obvious happiness.
"Yes! I - well, I probably should have told Randy first, but you told me your big secret so I feel like I want to tell you mine, though it's not as big as yours. Well, speaking literally of size I guess it is, or will be, but - " Olive waves her hands as though shooing the words away. "The point is, I'm pregnant!"
For a moment, Chuck is so surprised that all she can do is stare. Then she clasps Olive's hands in excitement. "Pregnant! Olive, that's amazing!"
Olive seems relieved at her reaction. "I know, right? I guess I could just feel that biological clock a-tickin'." She laughs, and Chuck does too, though the words make something sort of ping at the back of her mind.
"...something I've been wanting for a while, anyway, you know? The restaurant is doing well, and Randy's always said that he wants kids, so..." Olive shrugs, and Chuck returns her attention to her friend, putting her strange feeling out of her mind.
"So you feel good about this?" Chuck asks, just to make sure, because that's what friends do.
Olive smiles a little more softly, squeezing Chuck's hand. "Absolutely," she says, and the rest of their lunch passes with them talking about potential names and colors to paint a room.
Unlike the grey hair, Chuck does not forget about this moment. She couldn't, not with the way the news of Olive's pregnancy spreads among her aunts and her friends, and the way the upcoming months will be spent preparing for it.
Olive's comment about biological clocks had been a joke, Chuck knows that. She also knows that it might not be applicable to her; she's never actively desired children, and it's honestly not something that she and Ned have ever even discussed. Their respective fathers kind of loom over both of them when she thinks about it, but she also knows that it's something that they should talk about.
"Ned." She says one night, a few weeks after Olive's news has been shared with everyone.
He looks over at her, seeming a little distorted by the plastic sheet between them. "Yes?" Despite the distort, she can tell that he's smiling.
"Do you want kids?" Her voice is quiet.
For a second he just stares at her, and then he runs a hand through his hair, and lays back down, staring at the ceiling. Chuck does the same.
"I..." He lets out a deep breath. "I don't know." He hesitates, and then adds even more quietly: "Not really."
She can tell that he's worried that he's going to upset her, but all Chuck feels is relief. She wants to live her life. To travel. To make pies with Ned and be friends with Olive, and sure maybe babysit her friend's child, but she doesn't want one of her own. Truthfully, she isn't sure that she could even have children. That part does bother her, a bit; it wasn't something that she wanted, but she hates the idea of the choice being taken from her.
Still, she has to ask: "Are you sure?" She doesn't want him to make a choice that he'll someday regret, or for him to make the decision based solely on his own father's actions.
"...Yeah," he says. "It's not - I've never wanted that." He pauses again, and then adds: "Just you. That's - that's all I've wanted."
Tears fill her eyes, and she laughs a little. "Well, you've got me," she tells him, and she reaches through the glove in the partition, and grabs his hand. He wraps his fingers around her gloved ones, and once again Chuck puts her vague, nameless worries away.
This time, though, she knows they'll be back.
(~-~-~-~-~-~)
It's when Ned turns forty that things really change.
Or rather, that's when she notices the change.
It's been building and building, always fluttering at the edge of her thoughts. Maybe it was something she'd always known, but just refused to acknowledge.
Ned turns forty, and she doesn't.
The day itself starts normally; she has been planning his party, has woken up early to decorate the Pie-Hole to surprise him. His birthday pie is ready and waiting (his mother's recipe, without any changes from Chuck, because she knows that will mean something to him) and she's put on one of her dresses that she knows he especially likes, judging from the way he always looks at her when she's in it (and sometimes how eager he is to get her outof it).
Later, when the party is in full swing, with Ned awkwardly standing among his friends, Chuck finds herself next to Emerson. His daughter is with Olive, and Olive's little girl Angie, and Olive is telling a story about the old days at the Pie-Hole, before Chuck was there. She smiles at the sight, helping herself to a piece of pie, and cutting one for Emerson, who grunts his thanks.
He's watching the scene fondly as well, and she's about to tease him when he makes another grunting noise, this one like he's in pain, and then Chuck is looking at him in concern.
"You okay?" She asks, and he waves her off when she steps closer to him.
"I'm fine, dead girl." He rubs at his fingers. It takes her a second to put it together, the motion, combined with the bad weather outside.
"Do your joints hurt?" She asks.
Reluctantly he nods, but then he shrugs it off. "Not a big deal," he tells her. "I'm gettin' old, is all."
"You're not old," she says automatically, but he snorts.
"Compared to pie-boy over there, I am," he says. And he looks at her, about to say something, but then his head cocks to the side, and he's studying her in a new way. It's the look he sometimes gets when he's on a case. "Or to you," he adds slowly. For a moment he doesn't say anything else, and Chuck can't say anything.
"Dead girl," he says finally. "You look the same as you did when I first met you."
Before either of them can do anything more than stare at each other, Chuck is being called over, and then pulled over by Olive, who says she wants to take a picture of her and Ned.
She automatically stands as close as she can, careful as always to not even brush him, and she forces a smile on her face as the camera flashes.
She goes upstairs as soon as she can, hoping that Ned and Olive will be too distracted by the party to notice that she's upset, but she sees Emerson watch her knowingly as she leaves.
She goes to her room, and pulls out the photo album she keeps in her closet. She's not super consistent about taking pictures, but it was something that she like having from her childhood, so she tries to take pictures of her every day life as well. Chuck flips through the pages, finding the ones from her earlier days at the Pie-Hole. There are a number of them, but she keeps scanning until she finds one of her and Ned together. She stares at the picture, knowing that Ned's face looks a little different now. She hadn't even noticed.
She turns more pages, watching the years pass with each one. The most recent pictures were from nearly a year before. It was winter. She and Ned were in the kitchen together. Ned was rolling out some dough, she was making filling. Ned was smiling lopsidedly at something she was saying, her hands slightly blurred as she moved them to make her point.
She looked exactly the same. Ned...there were lines on his face. If she looked closely enough, she could see more grey hair coming in at his temples. He was still young, but he'd gotten older, and she hadn't.
Chuck knew now that she never would.
She sank slowly to the floor, leaning her head back against her mattress. Digby padded into her room, curling up beside her with his head in her lap. She hugged him close, burying her face in his fur. She'd wished several times over the course of her second life that Ned could touch her, but she'd never wanted it more than she did in this moment. She wanted Ned to hold her. To tell her it would be all right.
But it wasn't all right, and for several minutes she cried alone in her room.
(~-~-~-~-~-~)
She has to tell Ned.
She knows that. She knows that she can't keep it from him. Not only would he notice eventually, but they've kept things from each other in the past and it hasn't been good for them. So, she has to tell him.
But it's his birthday.
So Chuck waits one day. She keeps it to herself, dries her eyes and makes herself smile, tries to forget all the moments that suddenly come rushing back to her - his grey hair, biological clocks, and more - and if they have sex with a little more desperation on her end than he'd been expecting, she doesn't hear him complaining. She thinks that he knows something is off, but he doesn't bring it up, and they fall asleep with their gloved hands holding each other's.
She tells him the next night.
Chuck had tried, several times over the course of the day, to tell him, but the words had never come out, and then they had customers and things to do and it was so easy to stay quiet. But she had to do it. She had to.
"Ned." She's sitting cross-legged on her side of the bed. He looks at her, finishing putting on his pajamas.
"Chuck." he replies, with a hint of a smile, and she tries to smile back, but it doesn't quite work.
Her hands twist in her lap. "Ned, I - there's something - " She lets out a shaky breath. "I'm not aging," she says, and she can't look at him while she says it.
For a few seconds he doesn't respond, and she looks up at him. His eyebrows are pulled together, and he slowly sits down on the bed opposite from her. "I don't understand what you mean," he says finally, but she can tell by the way his voice chokes at the end that he does, or is starting to.
"I don't age," She says, sharper than she means to. "I don't - I've looked at pictures and and you've got grey hair and I don't, and I'm exactly the same - exactly - " she's crying now, and she takes a shuddering breath, trying to keep her words from becoming unintelligible. When she speaks again her voice is higher, warbling. "I don't think I'm ever going to get older."
Ned doesn't respond. She knows that there are a million things for them to discuss, what it means for them, what it changes, but neither of them say anything at all.
(~-~-~-~-~-~)
They stay together.
In the end, Chuck doesn't know if that's a good or a bad thing. If she could add up the losses and struggles and hardship, if the equation would say that it was all worth it. She doesn't know.
She kind of hides herself again. Dyes her hair. For a while, Olive would apply makeup to make her look older, to give her wrinkles and lines where she had none. She adopts different accents, uses different names, and ultimately no one seems to notice that she's the same.
But the evidence of it gets harder and harder to ignore as time goes on.
She gets postcards from her father. From different places, irregularly and sometimes at random. He sends her gifts from his travels, and asks when she's going to join him, because of course he knows that every one around them will die and they'll stay the same.
Vivan and Lily die. Lily first, which is somehow a surprise, though it really shouldn't be. Vivian dies not long after. It's a blow that Chuck doesn't know how to recover from, a hurt that stays with her in every moment of every day. The fact that they lived a long life, that their last years were spent out in the world they used to be so afraid of, is a little bit of a comfort.
Emerson dies, and in some ways that's harder. One moment he'd been on a case, and the next he was gone. With how many people he'd put away, it wasn't surprising that eventually some of them would try to get revenge, but it's like a kick in the stomach all the same. Ned brings him back long enough for Emerson to tell them who killed him, and to give some last words to pass on to his daughter, and then he's gone again. Ironically enough, it was the easiest case they'd ever solved, and the last.
Olive is next, when what they'd thought was a simple cold turns out to be much worse. She dies in her sleep, and Chuck hates that perhaps most of all: Olive deserved to die doing something she loved, deserved to die by living. Of course, Chuck learned long ago that people rarely get what they actually deserve.
After Olive dies, there are days where Chuck considers ending it all. It would be so easy. She could trip, accidentally touch Ned. She could ask him finally for that kiss. She thinks that Ned knows what she's considering, and it terrifies him. He never brings it up, and ultimately she never asks.
Chuck never stops loving him. No matter how old he gets, he's still Ned, and she loves him more than it sometimes feels like she has proper words for. He makes her smile. He holds her the best way that he can. He doesn't complain when people think that he's her father, her grandfather, though she knows that it hurts him, that he feels as though he's holding her back or keeping her trapped.
They travel when they can. See the world. Take pictures together. Write their names on one of those locks on a bridge in Paris. They come home and they make pies, and give each other plastic wrap kisses.
Ned tells her one day that the thing he's frightened of the most is forgetfulness. That he'll accidentally touch her, forgetting that he can't. He doesn't remember things the way that he used to, not that he has any kind of illness or anything. He's just getting older. Chuck isn't so afraid, and tells him so. He knows her down to his bones, and if there's one thing he'll always remember, it's that.
She tells him that she loves him whenever she can, because she knows how suddenly death can happen, and she wants it to be one of the last things that he hears.
(it is)
After Ned dies, Chuck is tempted to touch him. A part of her wonders if it would still count, if he's not really there any more. It would be so easy, the poetic way to go. It would be her choice, and she'd get to fulfill one of her long time wishes - to feel him - doing it.
But that's not the only choice she has.
Chuck keeps the Pie-Hole, because she can't bear to see it go, but leaves most of the day-to-day business to Emerson's granddaughter, who inherits her grandfather's love of pie.
Most of the time she sees the world. She brings with her only a few things: the photo album, Digby (who, of course, never ages either), a pair of monkey statues, an old Darling Mermaid Darlings costume that she never wears but keeps close, knitting needles, and a pair of buttons Olive had made for them both one year that says "The Pie-Hoes".
Chuck knows that her father is waiting out there for her. Maybe she'll see him, and maybe she won't. Her father never quite understood the importance of places with certain people in them, but she does.
In some ways it's a relief to not hide so much, to not have to be worried about touching. She makes friends, has sex, reads and bakes and laughs and cries, and never ever forgets. She knows she may have lost her chance, that there may be no end, and sometimes it's enough to make her doubt herself, doubt everything, but she pushes through it.
Chuck still doesn't know, really, if it was all worth it, mathematically, logically. She thinks, though, that it was.
Ned gave her a second chance at life. She's going to live it.