Title: Someone To Blame
Spoilers: season one
Original post date: 5th December 2005
Summary: Charlie's always had someone to blame for his mistakes – but Claire wont let him blame this one on her.
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost. But we've already established that yes?
It's in his most lucid and coherent moments that she comes to him. Constant abuse of the drug has addled his brain and sometimes he doesn't even know who she is and sometimes when he does he pretends that he doesn't so save himself the embarrassment.
He doesn't want her pity. Or her charity for that matter. But she still comes, even after all he's done to her. She never brings Aaron with her though, it's been months, maybe even years since he's seen him, the closest thing to a son he's ever known. It's both good and bad, not being able to see him. It's always painful to see her but to let Aaron see him like this would simply tear him apart.
He's ashamed.
Sometimes she catches him leant over his palm and then she leaves without even saying anything. There's no point in being there when he's high, he never has anything to say that she's interested in.
It's a lonely existence for him and one day he reaches for her and tries to kiss her but instead his lips rasp uselessly at the air as she pulls away and he begins to weep, pathetically clawing at the ground.
'I won't,' she says simply and leaves him to get over it.
The next day he's exhausted himself and can't even summon the energy to have a fix so he's surprisingly lucid if bordering on paranoid. His hands twitch nervously and Claire holds them until they stop trembling.
'Why do you bother with me at all?' he asks weakly.
'Because if I don't then nobody else will.'
His eyes are bleary as he gazes at her but then his gaze drops and he nods. 'Yeah.'
For a while he's better and he can sit up again and do some things for himself. This means that Claire stops coming as regularly however and he panics, nearly has an overdose and spends almost a week shivering and sweating, Claire clasping his clammy hands between hers and staring out of the door at the outside world.
It seems so far away sometimes – for both of them.
When he recovers from this latest indulgence, he dares to ask her if he can see Aaron but she doesn't answer and so he tries again.
'Claire?'
'What Charlie?'
'Can I see Aaron?'
'No.'
'Why?' his voice is so small and sad that she feels a small tug of sympathy for him, which is swiftly pushed aside by anger.
'You know why.'
He begins to cry again and she sighs impatiently and waits for the tears to subside. She doesn't really know why she bothers herself with him – this ruined human being, so broken that he can't live anymore but is too tied to the world to just die.
'It's your own fault Charlie,' she says unfeelingly.
His eyes widen then and he looks angry, the first life coming into his eyes for a long time.
'Me! You're the one who did this to me! If you hadn't...'
'No,' she stands to leave. Still cold. Distant. 'You did this to you, Charlie.'