Title: Between the Lines
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: Based upon Scattered Like Light by citikitti. Charlie and Dan are friends, and now Charlie needs Dan's help more than ever if he's going to find peace.
Characters: Daniel, Charlie
Word Count: 1,483
Disclaimer: I own neither Lost nor the fic-verse upon which this story is based.
They become friends, he and this ghost. Charlie visits Daniel nearly every day. He also takes him places. Charlie shows him where the best fresh water source is, where he played golf and where the hatch used to be. In fact, there's only one place that Charlie won't show him, but Dan doesn't mind. Charlie says it's more important to know where a person lived than where he died and Dan agrees.
He seems quite comfortable here, on the island, as if it were home. Dan supposes it is Charlie's home now. Dan feels like a guest.
A guest at the home of a ghost, he thinks and he laughs out loud.
"What?" asks Charlie, as they cross a field where oddly a Volkswagon bus sits. Charlie gets a far off look in his eye when he looks at it, but he won't share the memory with Dan.
"Nothing," says Dan, shaking his head, pointing back and forth between the two of them. "Just… this… again."
"Oh yeah," says Charlie, "I've always considered myself a constant source of entertainment."
"Forget it," says Dan, feeling even more awkward if such a thing were possible.
Although he has remarked on their relationship before, Dan wonders if Charlie is insulted this time because he disappears again. He'll have to apologize the next time he sees him, and by now Dan assumes there will be a next time, so he repeats his intentions in his head, working hard to remember.
Afterwards he stands alone in the vast field, and wonders how a bus got there when there are no roads.
"Have you met Claire yet?" Charlie asks him from time to time.
His new friend is quite literally nothing if not persistent. Dan thinks that if it weren't for this one goal of his, that Charlie would actually be nothing at all. It seems to be the only thing keeping him there. Dan tries not to feel jealous or delude himself into thinking that Charlie stays for him.
"No," says Dan, a bit more sullenly then he intended and then quickly adds, "But I know who she is now. Charlotte told me. She's in Locke's camp right?"
A pleasant smile creeps across Charlie's face and Dan feels a surge of satisfaction that he had remembered something important and made Charlie happy at the same time.
"Yeah, that's right," says Charlie. "And you're going to get her and her baby rescued, yeah?"
Dan nods vigorously. "Yeah, yeah, absolutely, only it's like I told you… it's not really up to me."
He flinches when he says it. He's afraid of letting Charlie down. There's just something about this young man. Daniel takes one look at his watery blue eyes and his hopeful expression and he only wants to please him, to tell him anything he wants to hear. He fears that if he doesn't, Charlie may go away and never come back. Worse yet, he may move on to someone else who could get the job done, someone like Jack or Juliet. Daniel couldn't bear that happening.
Charlie listens, but is undeterred by his words, not at all bothered, as if he knows something Dan doesn't, maybe even something about Dan himself that he has yet to discover.
"What if it were up to you," Charlie suggests, with a hand on Dan's shoulder that is surprisingly solid yet cold. "How about we just pretend?"
Dan could pretend. He's pretending right now, in fact. He tells Charlie he will try his best, when the truth is he fears that if he succeeds and Claire is rescued, Charlie will go away and he doesn't want that. So he delays.
It starts with the bees.
Everything is going fine, just splendidly in fact, when without warning life transitions from mildly disturbing to terrifying. Dan goes to sleep in his tent and is awoken by a buzzing sound. At first he swats blindly at whatever mosquito is intruding upon him but when he feels a tickle on both his arms and his face he has no choice but to open his eyes.
He's covered in bees.
Dan bolts upright and screams. The insects cling to his skin as though stuck with adhesive. He can feel their tiny stingers, and their sounds amplify, enraged. He runs from his tent, too frightened to worry about what people will think, and is caught within seconds by Charlotte. She has her arms around him, and Dan wonders how she can do that and not get stung. Why isn't she being more careful?
"Dan? What is it? What's wrong?" she cries.
Can't she see? Maybe it's too dark. He can still feel them. He grabs two fistfuls of his own hair, trying to brush them out, still feeling their lumpy, fuzzy shapes on his palms. Their hum is like the engine of a Ferrari. He's crying now, uncontrollably. He wants to warn Charlotte to stay back but he can't force the words out.
Then Charlotte's hands are at his, pulling them down, "You were dreaming! Stop it now!"
Charlotte sends some reassuring words to the rest of the camp and leads Dan back to his tent, still trembling and sobbing. She holds his hand and tucks him back in under his blanket like his mother or caretaker would after a nightmare. He doesn't have the courage to tell her what he saw, so he admits it was a dream just like she says.
He wants to please her too, so he pretends to be as sane as he can.
After she leaves, Dan lays awake for another hour, waiting, until Charlie appears at his side. Charlie looks down upon him with a mixture of concern and regret, as if Dan had caught some terrible sickness and he was to blame.
"I'm sorry Daniel," he says.
"What was that?" Dan asks him.
"Something's starting to happen," Charlie says. "I can't control it, but you can. You have to rescue Claire."
Dan wonders if maybe he's done a bit too much pretending.
Charlie seems to be getting thinner.
Not like when a person loses weight, but flatter -- more two dimensional and transparent. Charlie's imaginings are spilling out now like water seeping through paper, as if he no longer has the capacity to hold them in. Dan sees them everywhere, both awake and asleep. He is living them.
He is falling off a bridge.
Rocks are raining down on his head.
Someone is punching him – hard.
Charlotte thinks he's finally losing it completely. She becomes convinced when they are walking together and suddenly Dan acts as though he's being strangled. He grabs for his neck like his tie is choking him. He can smell the lush jungle around him, feel the burn of the rope, and hear a distant scream. He flails wildly, turning blue until Charlotte shakes him back to his senses.
Dan feels ashamed but he knows he can't tell her the truth, that he's being visited by a dead person and reliving the ghost's worst memories from the island. That's how Charlie explains it anyway. Dan can almost see through him now. Charlie tells him that he's having difficulty controlling his thoughts, that he just thinks of a memory and it happens again. Only it doesn't happen to Charlie.
It happens to Dan. Somehow, they've become linked and Dan finally understands why he's the only one that can do what Charlie asks. He also knows that regardless of whether he succeeds or fails, Charlie is going to go away.
He closes his eyes and he is drowning.
He is surrounded by water and its filling his lungs, bone-chilling and paralyzing. Why did Charlie do this again? He can't remember now, but he wonders if this was what it was like for him. Was he cold, was he scared? Is this what it feels like to die? It's strangely comforting, like a friend with open arms. At first he struggles but after a moment, Dan wants to run into that embrace and allow it to take him in, wondering why he ever resisted…
Suddenly something grabs Dan by the back of the neck and yanks him hard upwards. He feels the opposing pull of the water, reluctant to let him go and then a hand is slapping his face repeatedly until he remembers how to breathe.
"Snap out of it!" orders Charlie. "You're not meant to die to be a hero, you've got work to do."
That's right, Dan recalls. Claire and her baby. He needs to make sure they are rescued. He is perfectly dry, lying on the beach where he was sitting with Charlie making plans until the water poured out from Charlie's consciousness and into Dan's own.
Without even being told Dan somehow knows that in a few days Charlie will be gone, and the rest will be up to him.