Time-line: Set during 'Everybody Hates Hugo'
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. I am not affiliated in any way, shape or form with anyone who does.
It's hard. It is really, really hard. Charlie just left and he's pissed, he may never talk to me again because I didn't give him any peanut butter for Claire. He might realise how much it hurts me, but I doubt that he does. Nobody seems to realise it, they're all fooled by my façade.
Not that it isn't a good thing. I worked hard to revert back to Hurley, to remove all traces of Hugo Reyes from me and be the man I used to be. The man who people liked and treated as an equal. I had thought that Hurley was lost forever, nothing more than a memory, but I brought him struggling back to the surface, and it feels good to have him there.
Because if he slips, then I'll be alone. One by one everyone will abandon me and I'll be alone. So I have to be Hurley, because this has happened before, when I won the money. I'd been happy where I was but suddenly everything changed. I had no friends, and that wasn't down to the numbers, that was because I had something they wanted.
Like peanut butter or shampoo. They want those things and I have them. But if I gave the peanut butter to Charlie then everyone else would want peanut butter and I wouldn't be able to give it to them because I already gave it to Charlie! So they'll hate me for it and I'll end up alone.
I don't want to be alone.
So I had to say no to Charlie. Now he'll hate me but if I'd said yes then Jack would have hated me. And everyone else would have hated me. And it's better to have one person hate you than everyone else. So it was the only way to stay safe, to stay surrounded, to keep from being alone.
Although that still doesn't take away the pain that Charlie will hate me.
And it doesn't take away the fact that I will have to decide eventually. Decides who gets what and when and where and why and how. I should never have taken this job, but Jack was so insistent and I had been scared he would hate me if I said no. So I said yes and now everyone is going to hate me. So that was a bad move, I should have just suffered from Jack.
Kate took shampoo. I would have stopped her but I was scared that she would hate me. And now, if Jack finds out, he will hate me. It was easy to chose between Charlie and a crowd hating me, but between Kate and Jack? Between one person and another? That's friggin' impossible! So I chose to keep Kate, she was there at the time, and it was easier not to argue.
I have to find a way to do this. I have to find a way to stop everyone from hating me.
But, if there isn't a way, then I should just resign myself to the fact that my new start on the island is over. It's all over. It's all gone. And I'll morph into Hugo Reyes again.
It was bound to happen eventually. It was always going to. But that doesn't mean that the pain is any less.