Hello, this is Sherlockedmyheart, whilst the lovely neverintendedtoexist is away, I'm going to be posting the chapters for her. :) Enjoy her work.
AN: Prompt/idea from Lunabell Marauder Knyte. Thank you!
"An' I do sci' like Fa and be doc like Dada!" I hear Hamish say from the floor. I'm researching a few types of hybrid plant that are poisonous kill someone if they have touched it, I have seen this more but these are hybrids, so a lot more lethal that the other types.
"Who are you talking to?" I ask and put the laptop down sit next to him on the floor.
"No one." He says and turns away from me
"Your teddy?" I ask him, indicating the bear on the floor.
"No." He turns again away, focusing on the same place in the air.
"You weren't talking to me, as you referred to me in third person. And if it wasn't one of your toys, who was it?" I ask, thinking through all the experiments that I had done in the past few days and if there are any of the chemicals that I had used could cause hallucinations. No. I was fine on that. He hadn't eaten anything unusual, or too much of something - even the small amount of caffeine in chocolate can cause hallucinations.
"No one." He says again and stands up.
"There must have been something, Hamish. Come on, tell me. I'll keep it a secret of you want." I tell him and pull him around to face me.
"No." Hamish says and steps away from me.
"Come on. It's only me. You can say who you're talking to." I pull him down so he's sat on my knee.
"Yes." Hamish says after a moment, I wait for him to finish "Charlie." He says finally and looks over to the same place in the air as before.
"Charlie? And who's that?" I ask calmly, my head thinking through all types of schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder, but apart from the incident right now he hadn't shown any symptoms of either.
"Charlie friend. Charlie good." Hamish says and gets up. "Here." He points at the same place he's been looking at for the last few minutes "You see?"
"No. I can't see anyone." I tell him and he frowns, then grabs at the air next to him
"Here." He complains, stressing each letter
"No, I don't see anyone. Maybe you can, but I think 'Charlie' is a figment of your imagination."
"Wha'?"
"No Fa. Shhhhhh. Charlie he'e."
"He can't be, Hamish or I'd be able to see him." I say and Hamish steps forward again, stamping his foot.
"No Fa, You see. Charlie here!" Hamish shouts.
"I can't see. There isn't anyone there. At all."
"He is!" Hamish shouts again, his face going red.
"Don't get annoyed with me. I'm just telling you that this is someone you made up. It's completely normal in children your age - well older. You just need to see that he isn't real and it'll be better, you can play with me or Dad instead."
"No. My Charlie. He he'e!" Hamish protests, still shouting and quickly escalating into a full blown tantrum.
John walks in then, fresh from the shower and goes straight to Hamish and picks him up.
"Hey, hey. Why are you shouting, what is it?" Hamish sits up properly in John's arms, breathing heavily and hiccupping "Char-lie. " he hiccups again, "Fa mean."
"I wasn't being mean, Hamish. I was telling you the truth. I'm sorry if it upsets you but I'm not going to lie to you."
"Who's Charlie?" John asks quickly
"Hamish's imaginary friend. I told him he wasn't real but he seems to find that distressing."
"Really Hai? A new friend?" John asks, placating him Hamish smiles at this and leans on John "Let him have this, Sherlock. It won't be for long, Hamish gets bored of all of his games very quickly. Most children have imaginary friends. It's good for them."
"I know all that, but it isn't true. I'm not stopping him I'm just not going to let him believe that this friend is real or pretend that I can see them too."
"Humour him. Come on, it's like Santa. You remember that?"
"Letting a child be a child, of course I do. But this is directly encouraging something whereas with Santa there are people embodying the character and even some basis for the character, with this it's all imagination."
"I know that this something different for you, but you could think of it as an experiment." He says with Hamish still hiccupping and wiping his face on John's shirt.
I stand up then, this could be interesting. I go over, reaching my arms out to Hamish "I'm sorry I made you angry, Hai. Do you want to tell me about Charlie?" Hamish stares at me slightly warily then shifts in John's arms and I take him.
"Tell me then. What does this Charlie do?"
"So then Charlie say-"
"Said. And how did Charlie say it, what did he do while he was saying this to you? Give me detail, Hamish." I instruct if this is going to work out as an experiment, though this would be the only time-probably- that I'd use Hamish as a test subject, then I needed to have everything. This may even give me more insight into the minds of killers, those that are mentally unstable. Though this was far from what Hamish was thinking of, it seemed to have stemmed from the same principle originally as far as research can tell. Also, this was likely to allow me to see more into Hamish's mind.
"Charlie look big. An' he tal' like TV. He said you an' Dada should gi' me more choc."
"How tall? Show me. " I say and gesture at various heights, he tells me to stop at just a foot taller than him. "And who on television does he talk like?" Hamish shrugs "And tell him that we are not going to give you more chocolate."
Hamish frowns then speaks to the empty space on the couch next to him "Fa say no. Wha' I do?"
"So he's right there?" I ask and move so I'm straight in front of Hamish, so I would be covering up and interaction between him and this 'Charlie'.
"Move. You squashing him." Hamish orders and I step back.
"Did I hurt him? What happened?" I ask, trying not to grin and sound too eager.
"No." I lean over again and cut my hand through the air.
"Tell me when I touch him."
"He move. Gone now." Hamish tells me and walks away.
"Where? Where has he gone to now?" I ask, following him.
"Away. We play now." Hamish tells me and picks up a toy car. Over the next few days, Hamish doesn't speak of his imaginary friend in front of us but when he's alone we can hear him talking.
"How long do you think he'll keep this up?"
"Hmmm?" John asks as he sips tea. Hamish is at a small plastic table we bought for him and John's reading the paper as I watch.
"When do you thing this 'Charlie' will disappear? Imaginary friends can be with children for years. Though I think that Hamish will quickly get bored with something like this, another part of me thinks that Hamish's imagination is so vast that he'll keep on with it."
"True, but I would go with the former. Simply because Hamish has been talking of him and too him less and less over the past week. So it seems much more likely."
"I know that, but maybe he's just becoming more reclusive about it, talking to the imaginary friend in his head rather than out loud."
"That's not his personality, so I think he's getting bored." John says and gets up as he finishes his tea. "You haven't taken me out in ages."
"Why can't you take me out?" I ask, smiling.
"Because you do nothing around the house. So you owe me."
"It's not like we don't share everything." I say and he grins and turns back to kiss me.
"You know what I mean." He goes to wash up our cups.
"How much do you like Charlie. Hamish?"
"Bit…he get bo'in." Hamish says and goes back to the drawing he'd been doing. "This him." Hamish says.
I look at the drawing, which is in his usual style. What I can seem to understand from it is that his hair is orange, his eyes are blue and he's wearing something purple, which I would guess is a top, and something green which I would say was trousers.
"Nice." I say "I'll put it up on the fridge with the others."
"No. Mine." Hamish says and takes his drawing back. "Charlie gon' draw too." Hamish says and sets out an extra sheet on the opposite side of his table.
"You want it for your room?"
"Yes." He says and takes out another sheet of paper.
Charlie appears less and less over the next few months, then later only when Hamish is particularly upset or tired. It's nice for him to talk like this, however so I can hear more of his thoughts without asking. So when I ask Hamish about his imaginary friend, I feel slightly reminiscent but I had known that this, and all childish things that Hamish does now, would come to an end at some point.