Note: Yes, I am watching the show :) Going a little AU from it, of course, as one does with these things. But yes, I am watching it. Cooper is going to much stronger in this fic, and so is Charlotte, incidentally-some angst, but some necessary character growth. I think (hope) you will like the direction, which will become more obvious in the next chapter after this one. In the meantime, enjoy (I hope!)


Part 2

She waits for Cooper to drift off again, then slips quietly put of bed, pads into the living room. Her now cast-free hand hesitates for just a second over the speed-dial button on her cell phone, debating which one of them she needs more. She closes her eyes, letting instinct guide her.

"Charlotte?" Amelia answers. She seems to know, without waiting for the hello, that nobody else would call her at this hour. "You okay?"

"I need to go to a meeting," she says. "Right now."

"It's two in the morning, Char."

"Then you'd better go on-line and start looking. Cause if you can't find one happening now, you'll need to come and sit with me until."

There's a moment's pause. "That bad?"

"My hands are shaking. Amelia, I wouldn't call- not even you- if I wasn't...if it wasn't..."

"Got it. Can you hold for ten minutes?"

"Guess I have to."

"Okay. Get dressed. Pour yourself a tall glass of water. Say your mantras. I'll be down as soon as I can."

By the time Amelia gets there, she's bundled in grey sweat pants and her warmest sweater, and she's curled up on the couch with a blanket on top of all that. She's still shivering, and her hands are shaking so hard she hasn't even tried to pour the water yet. A pillow has fallen to the floor and she's kicking it as hard as she can with her foot while she waits.

"Oh geez," Amelia says, taking all of it in with a methodical, professional examination. "Um, first thing. That pillow do something you didn't like?"

She shrugs. "Felt like hitting something. Wasn't sure my hand was up to it yet."

"Fair enough. You want to talk, or you want to sit?"

"I want to go to a goddamned meeting."

"Next one I could find is 6 am. In the valley. That's four hours away, but we can leave for it in three."

Her fists clench. "Too long."

"Then we'll have one, right here, right now. Just us. My name is Amelia Shepherd, and I am a narcotics addict."

"Damn."

"Your turn. Say it, come on."

"My name is Charlotte King and I am a narcotics addict."

"Good girl. Hi, Charlotte. So, who would like to speak today? Char?"

She sighs. "Well, we've been working it, Coop and I. He's getting his little therapy tricks from Sheldon. I'm getting mine from Violet. But it ain't enough sometimes. He says what he's supposed to say, and it ain't enough. And then what am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to recognize that the craving you're feeling is a stress response, and you can control your reactions to it. A pill won't fix this, Charlotte."

"No. But it will slow everything down for awhile. Give me a break from all this."

"Slow what down?"

"My thoughts. My breath. My heart."

"Oh, sweetie..."

"I see him, when I close my eyes, Amelia. And he comes at me again in these quick, hard flashes, and the rest of me speeds up along with the pictures. And now, they've found him, and Cooper wants me to do this line-up, to look him in the eye so that he has a face again. Hard enough when he comes at me all fast and blurry. If he comes at me when it's slow and clear too, then when am I supposed to breathe, exactly?"

Amelia sighs. "We need Violet for this."

"Uh huh. How long until the meeting?"


When Cooper comes out in the morning, She's curled up on the couch, body still shaking a little, her head resting in Amelia's lap. Amelia has not been sleeping She's kept vigil all night, stroking her hair, rubbing her back, doing her best to just be there and let her rest. She figures she's managed an hour of fitful sleep among the three they've spent together.

Cooper rubs his eyes, stares dumbly at Amelia. "When did you get here?"

"Couple of hours. Think Violet will be up yet, Coop? I've been waiting, to call."

"She's probably been up for awhile already. Lucas is teething."

"Ah. Call her, will you?"

"What happened?"

"What happened is, I've been holding her together until it was day enough to call Violet. She needs to talk about the line-up, Coop. She has some legitimate fears about this."

"I'm right here," she grumbles. "I can hear you two."

Cooper smiles. "Morning, sweetie."

"Bite me."

"That's my girl. Amelia, how worried should I be about this?"

"Worried enough to call Violet, Cooper. Now."

"Got it." He turns to her., deposits a kiss on the top of her head. "Am I bringing you in with me? Or should Violet meet you here?"

"I'll go in. Get out of here for awhile, I guess. Need a drink. Or a pill. Or something."

Cooper winces. Well, too bad for him, if he can't deal. It's not as bad as what she's feeling. She hasn't had cravings this bad since the night itself, when Pete did up her arm in the casts and bandages...

"I wonder if getting the cast off triggered some of this," Amelia is saying.

"Stop head-shrinking me. Just...just try and distract me, Amelia, I'm floundering here."

"Okay. So, this one time, when I was in college? Addison came down for a visit, and and we snuck into this air force base to go see this band, and..."

It's a start. By the time they get into the office, she's juiced up on coffee and when Amelia speaks to her, she can focus a little and actually comprehend. Her hands are still shaking. But she thinks it's from the caffeine this time.


Violet takes one look at her and grabs the cell phone and appointment book off her desk. "Give me five minutes to shift some stuff around," she says.

She sits in Violet's office. Waits. By the time Violet comes back, she's shivering, and she's crying and her hands are still shaking. Violet sits again, waits. And a quarter of the way through the allotted session time, she's still waiting.

"Charlotte? You ready to stop now?"

She can't catch her breath. She shakes her head, takes a deep, heaving breath and tries to shut everything down a little, but it's all going fast again and all she can feel is the panic as her breath quickens and her heart pounds and the pictures flash like pinpricks behind her eyes...

"Now, none of that," says Violet firmly. She's left the desk and come to sit where she is, arm around her, hugging her close and trying to ease her thrashes and bring her back again.

"Come on, Char. You know what to do for me. Breathe, hon. Slow and steady..."

And Violet is breathing with her, mirroring the smooth, even pulse of normality, rubbing her back in gentle circles, and she finds herself soothing a little.

"Okay," she says a moment later. "Okay. I'm ready now."

"Good girl." Violet keeps her hand moving, massaging her back, keeping up the contact. Speaking to her in the same soft, matter-of-fact tone she uses with any patient. "Been awhile since you had a stress response this bad."

"Yeah."

"You know what I think? I think this might be blowback from your arm coming out of that cast. You haven't got an injury to focus on anymore. So all of your repressed emotions are coming out and you haven't got anything else to distract you."

"They found him."

"Well, that too. But like I said. Nothing else to deal with, now that the arm is healed, except for what you're feeling."

"Just...just hate losing control like this. It's like one minute I'm fine and then the next minute, everything just goes fast on me."

"Yes, you said that yesterday. Can you explain to me what you mean by everything going fast?"

"I start seeing the pictures again, like little flicks of blurry light behind my eyes. And then everything else speeds up too, and it all gets ahead of me, and then I can't breathe..."

"Classic panic attack," Violet says. "Textbook, really."

Well, fine. It's a relief, at least, to have something about her be normal.

Violet introduces a new idea to her, once she's calmed down enough to listen. The idea is that of a safe place- a place she has in her memory which she can substitute for the scary ones her mind is going to while she works through all this.

"You feel it speeding up on you again, and you tell yourself 'I'm not there right now.' And you picture your safe place, where everything is warm and friendly and peaceful. And you tell yourself you're there instead. Can you think of a place like that, Charlotte? A place where you once felt warm and safe and happy?"

Not home, certainly. Indifferent brothers, a distant mother and the force of nature that was Big Daddy, her only anchor through it all. Not her grandmother's either; warm and safe though that was, they would flee there when Momma had been drinking, and that's hardly a memory she needs to cling to right now. She thinks for a second about Holcomb Creek, that childhood play spot that ran behind the bandstand at the park near school. But then she remembers that she lost her virginity to the youngest Holcomb brother there, and the memory of that almost makes everything go fast again...

"No," she says. "I can't think of anything like that."

"Come on," Violet says. "Think back to your childhood. Your homes. People you love. Places you've been. You can't think of a single spot on earth where you felt at peace at one time in your life?"

"No."

"Work with me, Charlotte."

She sighs. "Guess I'm not a fuzzy person."

"Look at me." Violet stops the back rub, pulls her hand away. All-business now. "You're a good person, don't ever doubt that. Okay, so maybe your sentimental side is a little...under-developed...but that does NOT mean there's anything wrong with you. It's like any other angle you work in life. You practice, and it gets easier. And maybe exploring this side of yourself will turn out to be an enriching experience for you."

It disturbs her a little, to think that what's happened might lead to any kind of enriching in her life. She doesn't want to be enriched. She wants to drop this whole thing into a box and never think about it again, and she doesn't understand why Violet can't help her do this...

"Charlotte, look at me," Violet says. "I know what you're thinking, and you have it wrong. Therapy is...well, it's life, really. Self-work is a part of life, and it can help you no matter what else may be going on. Developing this side of yourself is something you may have gotten to anyway, at some point."

"But it isn't some point. It's now, from this. And I can't...I can't take anything away from this, Violet. Cause if I do, it means I am carrying this with me, every day, as part of myself."

"Won't you be?"

"To be honest, I thought I would just move on and pretend this never happened."

"Not really an option, hon. These things don't work that way."

"So, how am I supposed to work it, than?"

"You're supposed to grieve. Work through your feelings. And come away from this as strong and as whole and as complete as you can be so you can have your life again. In some ways, that life may be worse for awhile. In some ways, it might be better in the end. Because you'll do things to make it better, the same as you would have if this hadn't happened. It's life, Charlotte. You can't break pieces of it off and lock them away, because it's all a part of life."

"So...what, than?"

"So think of a place for me. A place where you felt loved and safe and happy."

She frowns. "There was a beach house," she says after a moment. "A little B&B five steps away from the ocean. Coop and I stayed there once. Had little muffins and orange juice in the mornings. Walked in the sand. All that crap. More for him than me, I guess. But there are no bad memories there, no fights, no work, no drama. Just Coop and me. At this little house on the beach."

"Okay. Now, close your eyes. Can you see the little beach house, Charlotte?"

She sees the flashy movement of a blurry hand coming down to strike at her. But she blinks, tries to focus. Sees the house. "Yes."

"Can you smell the orange juice mixing with the salty sea air? Can you feel the weight of the little muffin in your hand as you walk across the shoreline with the sand crunching beneath your feet?"

"Yes."

"This is your safe place, Charlotte. Nothing bad can happen to you there."

"But...he can't come at me? While I'm..."

"No. He can't. Cooper is there too, Charlotte. He's there, watching over the safe place. And Amelia is there, and I'm there, and everyone who cares about you. You can't see us, because the safe space is just for you. But we're there, and we're watching, and we'll keep him away for you."

She breathes, and for a second, she really can smell the ocean just like she was there. "Well, that's awful nice of you."

"No problem. Now, I have a job for you. I want you to keep the image of that safe place handy. And next time everything goes fast, you bail on it and you go and hide at the beach house until it slows down again. You understand?"

She understands. It's like Pete and the hoodoo, it's nonsense, of course. But it makes everybody feel better- even her, a little- when she plays along.