Title: Be Careful What You Wish For
Characters: Charlie, mentions of all of the O6 and various other members of the ensemble
Spoilers: goes AU mid season 4
Summary: He didn't mean to do it – any of it. He never wanted to hurt any of them the way he has. It's unforgivable what he's done to each of their lives. But it's hard to control yourself when every whim you make seemingly comes to life and the people you left behind have a habit of infuriating you. Written for the 50_darkfics prompt "Destruction"
Disclaimer: dbah!Charlie isn't mine and neither are any of the other characters that I've mentioned in here.
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He didn't mean to do it – any of it. He never wanted to hurt any of them the way he has. It's unforgivable what he's done to each of their lives. But it's hard to control yourself when every whim you make seemingly comes to life and the people you left behind have a habit of infuriating you.
He's never known betrayal like that of Claire's reaction to his death. A mere handful of tears was followed by a long period of time in which he waited and watched, convinced that any day now she might give him a sign, some proof that she actually missed him, that she had cared for him enough to grieve.
But there was nothing.
She was exactly the same as always – chastising him in his absence, complaining about his shortcomings…and when she wasn't bad mouthing him, she was seemingly ignoring the fact that he'd ever even existed.
The anguish that tore at his soul when he realised that she had never really loved him was beyond all comparison. He howled out his misery for the whole uncaring universe to hear and there was no answer for him, no excuse to be made for her actions, for her callousness, for her cold hearted treatment of his fragile heart, his bruised soul.
How could he have been such a fool? He had given his life for her and for her son only to have her turn around and treat his memory like this? Aaron he did not regret saving, could never regret loving – but Claire?
He had never regretted anything more in his life or death.
She needed to be taught a lesson – they all did. He had died for them all, died a hero's death no less, and they had all conveniently decided to forget about him? Rock stars and heroes were meant to be immortal, remembered for all time. He was both of those things so what the hell had gone wrong to make him be forgotten so easily?
Consumed by his despair and overcome with bitterness he began to move the pieces around the board, planning and plotting. And slowly, deftly, deliberately, he began to tear all of their lives apart.
First came the war. He watched in fascinated horror as people he had once called his friends were tortured or killed or disappeared into the jungle and turned feral. He watched as Claire was separated from Aaron, as her heart broke, shattered into a million pieces and for the first time since he had known her he felt no remorse for her suffering.
He pushed Aaron towards Kate instead – the girl who always ran away from responsibility. She would be so torn he thought viciously, caught between her obligation to care for the child and to just run away from it all, run and run and run and never stop. She had never done well with commitment and to have a child? It was something that he knew she had always been terrified of. All he really wanted for Aaron was that he get off the island, that he was saved. This was just a temporary situation he assured himself, he wasn't really going to leave his son with Kate.
He separated Sun from Jin. Not out of any real animosity for either of them but rather for the endless reunions that he had been denied with Claire that these two had shared instead. How come after everything, these two had been allowed second chances, third chances and beyond? It hardly seemed fair. Let them feel what it was like to be forcibly separated from the one person that you loved more than anything else!
Jack he led into a downwards spiral of depression so deep that the darkness threatened to swallow the man whole. He felt a vicious pleasure at the mirror image of the junkie-turned-hero watching the hero-turned-junkie slowly fall apart. Jack may have saved him before but when push came to shove he had all but sent Charlie to his death. Never mind that it was predestined anyway – Jack had agreed far too readily for Charlie's liking.
Hurley and Sayid he left alone. He had no quarrel with either of them, and so he showed his merciful side by rescuing them and then deciding to just let fate run its course with them.
Penny he kept well away from her beloved Desmond. He stewed on his jealousy and envy of the Scotsman. Why should Des get a fairytale ending when he had not? Why should Desmond have the undying love of a woman like Penny when Charlie's own love had remained unrequited to his bitter end? He watched Desmond descend once again into something close to madness, his photograph of his one true love his only saving grace.
The physicist, Daniel, also clung to the Scotsman like he was some sort of parasite, trying to keep himself sane and at the same time endangering Desmond's fragile mental state even more. Together they were falling deeper and deeper into oblivion and he watched. Just watched and did nothing.
It wasn't until some time had passed however that he realised exactly just how much he had screwed everything up.
Kate was happy – so much in love with her surrogate son that you would hardly believe that Aaron wasn't hers. Aaron meanwhile had no memory of either Claire or his once-upon-a-time father, the long forgotten Charlie. He was blissfully unaware of the lie that his life had become. Ji Yeon was also fatherless and because of the lack of a positive male role model in her life she was developing an unhealthy distrust of all men that utterly broke Sun's heart.
Both Claire and Jin were miserable and lost, their only remaining family so far out of their reach that they despaired of ever seeing them again. Desmond and Daniel were so far gone that it was doubtful they would ever fully recover from their respective mental ailments and their frighteningly dependant relationship was becoming darker and more twisted by the day.
Penny was still out there, desperately searching for her lost love with a fervour that was almost painful to behold – she was getting harder and harder to keep pushing back from her goal – and Sayid was being coerced into working for Benjamin Linus.
Jack was the worst of all. He was delusional, suicidal, blaming himself for everything that had ever gone wrong – on the island, off the island, when they left the island…and really, none of it was his fault at all. How could he possibly know that it was Charlie who had ruined so many lives? And all in the sake of getting revenge on the people who he had once loved enough to sacrifice his life for.
In his desperation, he visited Hurley to try and get his old friend to begin undoing all the damage that he had done. He couldn't just be subtle anymore, nudging around the troops on the battlefield to where he wanted them to go. He needed real, tangible help.
Unfortunately for him, Hurley reacted very badly to his appearance and ended up admitting himself to Santa Rosa again. The others were just as bad, panicking, running away, ignoring him, getting psychiatric appraisals...in the end he knew there was only one person who might be able to help him.
He went to Penny.
"I've done terrible things," he told her in a trembling whisper from behind dark glasses. "I've made so many mistakes and now I don't know if I can fix them. Can you help me?"
She nodded slowly but then raised a finger to stipulate her only condition.
"Only if you help me first."