Title: One of Us...
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. Not yet anyway.
Summary: Inspired by the Channel 4 Promo for Season 1. A collection of Charlie-centric musings, and really just an excuse for me to get writing. Still, I hope you enjoy them all the same. First up. . .
One of Us is a Sinner
Charlie was a good Catholic boy, once upon a time, before rock and roll beckoned and heroin became his undoing. Once, he was an altar boy, went to church on Sundays, confession twice a month. Once, he murmured prayers beneath his breath at nightfall, rosary beads dripping through his fingers like water. Once upon a time, Charlie was good.
That was a very long time ago now.
Since then, Charlie has become intimately acquainted with every sin in the Bible, a thousand times and more. Greed and Gluttony, Envy and Wrath, Pride and Sloth and Lust (always a personal favourite of his, that one).
Charlie found them all in a tour-bus, in gold records and groupies, and truly, he thought himself a god (albeit a rock one). That was the highest of sins, he remembered, thinking yourself equal to God. There was no forgiveness for that. But Charlie was past caring about such things, not when there was crowd chanting his name and his own hymns to sing.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
That one was scuppered by youth, to be replaced by rhythms and melodies and heroin. Charlie can't even remember anymore how it felt to talk to God, only that it never felt as good as a high, and the buzz of a waiting audience outside his dressing room.
Honour thy mother and thy father.
He wanted to make his mum proud, wanted to earn his precious piano and what it had cost her to give him such a gift. He was going to buy her a house with the earnings from Oil Change. Somehow the money ended up in his veins instead.
His dad disowned them both the minute Driveshaft hitNo.1. He didn't bring them up to be godless rock stars, and he would be damned sure that the world knew that. They were no sons of his, no, not anymore.
Thou shalt not kill.
Charlie is a murderer now, and it's the only one in his long list of sins that he's not sorry for. Given the chance, he'd do it again, and again, and again if he had to. Even the fear of God, of what he had seen as he died, what awaited him in payment for his sins, will not dissuade him from this.
He said he would protect her and whatever else he may be, Charlie is not a liar.
Claire could save him. She could be his redemption, his saving grace. He might do some good in this world, with her.
But Claire deserves a father for her son, and a husband she can trust to stay, and the only thing that Charlie can give her is the blood on his hands.
Charlie wants to sing lullabies now, not rock anthems.
But he is sinner, and sinners don't deserve families and lullabies and children to sing them to.
He is a sinner and there is no forgiveness for that.
Not for him.
AN:
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