To Pull the Strings - Lost - Charlie/Sawyer
Title: To Pull the Strings
Pairing: Charlie/Sawyer
Word Count: 2100
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: S4 flashforwards
A/N: Written for lostpicksix's "First time" prompt. And, well, it's weird. Very weird.
Summary: "He doesn't remember it. In this nowhere land, this empty echoing corridor, it's hard to remember anything that came before."
He doesn't remember it. In this nowhere land, this empty echoing corridor, it's hard to remember anything that came before. Sometimes words stick in his mind, but nothing more. Imaginary peanut butter. Diaries. The long con.
There is no time to remember, just as there is no time to forget. There is no time at all. Heart beats and eternities.
He can remember the things he does not remember: he knows that he is not whole, and when he sits and talks with Hurley in front of the mental health hospital his head tilts to the side and he thinks - I used to be somebody. I was once a person too.
But the person is gone and this is all that is left. Dead but also here; fragments of a ghost.
He does what he has to. He does what they want him to without knowing why. You have to go back, he whispers into their ears. In their minds he can see the memories that he's lost: sunshine and islands and plane crashes. He sees himself in Jack's head, hung by the neck. Is that it? Is that how he died?
Yes, he knows he is dead - but the how and the why escape him. Perhaps they aren't important. They aren't needed.
The child stares at him with wide blue eyes when he is sent there to plant the seed of a dream in his blond head. Charlie hesitates: he does not know why. He is not meant to question his instructions. He is not meant to think at all. He does not know his connection to the child, so he can smile and smooth his fears away. "Don't worry, turnip-head," he says. The name feels right; the details he needs always appear, even if he doesn’t understand them. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"I know," the boy whispers.
"I've got a message for your mum." It doesn't feel right. When he tells the child the message - always the same words, the same phrase, and he still doesn't know what it means - it feels like soil running over his tongue. He's happy when he gets to leave, even if there's a ring on the nightstand that lets him almost - almostalmostalmost ¬- remember bright lights and loud music and the tattoo on his arm.
Fade to white. Fade to black. Fade to nothing at all - nothing but the endless, empty corridor he spends his waiting time in. Sometimes he thinks he spies movement and colour in the far distance, but by the time he reaches that spot it's gone. Better to wait. Better to count his non-existent heart beats as he stares at the white wall and longs to be useful.
He blinks.
He opens his eyes and he is in a hotel room. Sayid - yes, Sayid, the torturer, the soldier, under Ben's thumb, empty and broken - lies there. He stares at the ceiling.
"Anything interesting up there?" He looks up as well and cranes his neck. Flops down onto the bed, though he can't feel it. The soft sheets mean nothing to him. "Can't say I see much entertainment in the ceiling myself. I'm more of a floors-man."
Sayid barely affords him a glance, but a soft smile curls at the corner of his lips. Charlie wishes he could remember that smile. He wishes that he could remember Sayid, their friendship. He thinks they were friends. It's hard to tell. Were any of them friends on the island?
"Hello, Charlie," Sayid murmurs. Charlie, that is his name. It will fade quickly once he leaves this place but he holds onto it for now. Sayid's voice is like spun silk. "I thought I might get a visit soon."
"Well, I would've hated to disappoint you."
"Hurley is next door." Sayid looks to the wall now, as if he can see through it. "Perhaps it is him you are intending to visit. You don't need to convince me that we need to return."
"Don't need to convince our dear Hugo either. He's right on board with the plan." The words come to him from nowhere, like a memorised script. He would have liked to remember who he was when he was alive. He talks a lot, his voice winding through the ages. He thinks that he must have been a nice man before he died. "And you're on board in theory, not so much in action. I need you to visit Sun."
"I can't."
"You'd better, 'cause I can't. She won't listen to me. We'd send Jin, but it's… difficult. He didn't die on the island, his body's not there. Technically mine isn't either, but that's different. I'm still there, y'know. Just in one of its many assorted hatches. Jin was on the freighter."
"And this means he can't visit the living like you can?"
"Something like that." It's interesting to hear these explanations. He died in a hatch: he hadn't been aware of that. A hatch that was only technically part of the island. It sounds interesting, but his script won't elaborate. Sayid already knows that part of the story - there is no need to retread old ground with him. "Which is where you come in. Hurley's not got too much credibility these days. Checking into a loony bin'll do that. I'm working on Kate and Jack. Just - help us out, yeah?"
Sayid is watching him closely. They all do that when he visits. They watch him, tracking every single movement. "I'll see what I can do," Sayid promises. His voice is a whisper.
He grins his thanks and nods. "Nice one, mate."
An eye blink later the white corridor takes over. It is time to wait, time to think, time to try his hardest to remember - but it fades. Sayid's face whispers away and eventually the name goes too. He is a prop, a puppet, and whoever directs his actions and writes the script is not in this long corridor. He closes his eyes and leans against the wall. Waiting, always waiting.
There is gunfire when he opens his eyes once more but it doesn't scare him. The bullets roar like a drummer's beat. Deafening. He crouches on the ground, hidden casually behind a set of crates with a large-set, trembling man beside him. His hair is wild and his eyes are screwed-shut.
"Hurley," he says - Hurley, Hugo, golf courses and comic books - and the man looks up. They appear to be on a boat. There are dead bodies littering the sea. "Hurley, you need to stay calm. Breathe. You're going to be okay. Trust me."
Hurley's left eye peeks open reluctantly. "I trust you, dude," he whispers.
He knows he's not lying and he smiles. "Good. Just stay where you are, alright? Got any clue where Sayid got to?"
Sayid.
Sayid.
The name should register - he can feel the gap where it ought to go - but it spills from his mouth with no conscious recognition. He thinks he can hear the script-writer laughing at him. Its laughter is deep, rich and full.
Hurley shakes his head. "He just told me to stay here."
"Good advice," he murmurs. He stands up - the bullets go right through - and looks around. He doesn't know what he's looking for. There are men with guns that look right through him and people are yelling, screaming. He blinks.
He blinks and he is by a man's side, a man clasping his leg as the blood runs from a bleeding, gory wound. It's already soaked through the denim of his jeans. "You're okay, Jack," he says. Jack. Nothing comes back. Nothing has to.
"Charlie?"
Charlie. That's him. That's his name. Sometimes that fades as well. He smiles, a devilish grin. "Just a flying visit. Remember, mate: count to five. You'll be fine. This is all gonna be over soon anyway."
"The captain… Everyone. They just turned on us. They just…"
If this man is surprised to see a ghost here to help him then he is too startled, scared and sore to question it. Perhaps he has visited him before. He kneels down beside Jack, skimming his fingers around the bleeding wound. It feels wet, sticky. "The others are all nearly dead by now anyway. Widmore's men - planted on the boat. Tricksy bastards but between Ben and Sayid I'd say you're okay. Find Kate once the smoke settles, okay? She's down below with Aaron. Think she's freaking out a bit; it's been a while since she's been near a gun. Bad memories, y'know?"
Jack nods, breathless, and Charlie finds himself in the corridor before he gets a chance to say or think any more. The white calms him and the sound of the bullets fade from his mind. They don't echo in his ears. When he closes his eyes Jack's face no longer remains in his memory. Hurley is gone. The boat has vanished.
All is calm; all is quiet; all is dead. This is the waiting room. This is where the puppets are hung up to dry.
He takes a long, calming breath - opens his eyes on an island. Blue skies, white sand, green jungle. The colours are startling, eye-breaking, breathtaking. He can't move at first: there is no script pushing him forward. No people to be seen at first, but a voice comes from the tree-line.
"Charlie?" the male asks, stepping forward in confusion.
Charlie turns to face him - he is tall, strong and tanned, but he can't remember the name - and waits for the scripted words to come. Nothing arrives. His mouth is empty and he blinks, confused. "What?" he asks, the first word he has said that truly belongs to him in years.
"Charlie, what…" The man steps forward and Charlie fights with the instinct to move away. There are no instructions. He finds himself in control of his own body, his own movements, his own decisions. It makes him feel ill. "Are you real?"
"Yeah," he says breathlessly. "I'm real."
He's real, he's real and he doesn't know what that means. He can feel his heart beating heavily in his chest, feel his blood pounding through his veins, feel the air rushing in and out of his lungs. He wishes he could sit down.
"I'm really real."
The stranger surges forward without any care for danger. He grabs his arms first, squeezing as if to make sure his hands won't slip through, but then his touch shifts upwards. His hands cup Charlie's face and his blue eyes scan every feature, every inch. Charlie doesn't know what he's looking for - but seconds later they kiss and he remembers.
He remembers the first time they did this, arguing in the jungle over some ridiculously unimportant point, remembers how frustrated he'd been, remembers the hard and uneven feel of the tree bark behind his back when he'd been shoved against it and remembers exactly how Sawyer's hands had felt, hot and greedy. He remembers Sawyer.
He laughs, muffled and disbelieving, and his hands run through Sawyer's hair. It's longer than it was the last time he saw him, the last time they spoke, the last time they touched like this. An afterlife ago. "Can't believe…" Sawyer whispers, but he doesn't need to finish that sentence.
"I'm sorry." Charlie knows now that he should have told him about Desmond's flashes, about the decision he'd made to die. He'd been too focused on Claire, on Aaron. He'd never thought of how it would affect Sawyer because, well- Sawyer was Sawyer. He should've known from their first time together, slow and exploring, that there was more between them than the occasional fumble when they could find somewhere alone. "I'm so sorry."
"Good," Sawyer snorts. "You and your stupid-ass heroics."
Charlie rolls his eyes and looks out to sea: he can see the boat approaching now, a dark splodge in the distance. He nudges Sawyer. "Look, over there," he says. "They're coming home."
Sawyer frowns and watches the slowly approaching ship. His arms still sling loosely around Charlie, keeping him weighed down - though if he has to go back to that white corridor, this wouldn't be enough to stop him leaving - but he's distracted now. "Who are?"
"Hurley, Sayid, Jack, Kate, Des, Sun… Everyone. Think we finally managed to talk them into it - been working on it since I died, more or less. Or since they left, anyway. It was- weird. Really sodding weird, mate. It was like it wasn't me at all."
It hadn't been. It had been his body but nothing else at all. Not his words. Not his thoughts. Like he was possessed; like he no longer owned his own existence. He rests against Sawyer and they watch the boat approaching, watch normality returning. He knows he might disappear at any second - he's supposed to be dead - but he clings onto Sawyer, onto his memories, and onto his self of self for as long as he can.
Pairing: Charlie/Sawyer
Word Count: 2100
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: S4 flashforwards
A/N: Written for lostpicksix's "First time" prompt. And, well, it's weird. Very weird.
Summary: "He doesn't remember it. In this nowhere land, this empty echoing corridor, it's hard to remember anything that came before."
He doesn't remember it. In this nowhere land, this empty echoing corridor, it's hard to remember anything that came before. Sometimes words stick in his mind, but nothing more. Imaginary peanut butter. Diaries. The long con.
There is no time to remember, just as there is no time to forget. There is no time at all. Heart beats and eternities.
He can remember the things he does not remember: he knows that he is not whole, and when he sits and talks with Hurley in front of the mental health hospital his head tilts to the side and he thinks - I used to be somebody. I was once a person too.
But the person is gone and this is all that is left. Dead but also here; fragments of a ghost.
He does what he has to. He does what they want him to without knowing why. You have to go back, he whispers into their ears. In their minds he can see the memories that he's lost: sunshine and islands and plane crashes. He sees himself in Jack's head, hung by the neck. Is that it? Is that how he died?
Yes, he knows he is dead - but the how and the why escape him. Perhaps they aren't important. They aren't needed.
The child stares at him with wide blue eyes when he is sent there to plant the seed of a dream in his blond head. Charlie hesitates: he does not know why. He is not meant to question his instructions. He is not meant to think at all. He does not know his connection to the child, so he can smile and smooth his fears away. "Don't worry, turnip-head," he says. The name feels right; the details he needs always appear, even if he doesn’t understand them. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"I know," the boy whispers.
"I've got a message for your mum." It doesn't feel right. When he tells the child the message - always the same words, the same phrase, and he still doesn't know what it means - it feels like soil running over his tongue. He's happy when he gets to leave, even if there's a ring on the nightstand that lets him almost - almostalmostalmost ¬- remember bright lights and loud music and the tattoo on his arm.
Fade to white. Fade to black. Fade to nothing at all - nothing but the endless, empty corridor he spends his waiting time in. Sometimes he thinks he spies movement and colour in the far distance, but by the time he reaches that spot it's gone. Better to wait. Better to count his non-existent heart beats as he stares at the white wall and longs to be useful.
He blinks.
He opens his eyes and he is in a hotel room. Sayid - yes, Sayid, the torturer, the soldier, under Ben's thumb, empty and broken - lies there. He stares at the ceiling.
"Anything interesting up there?" He looks up as well and cranes his neck. Flops down onto the bed, though he can't feel it. The soft sheets mean nothing to him. "Can't say I see much entertainment in the ceiling myself. I'm more of a floors-man."
Sayid barely affords him a glance, but a soft smile curls at the corner of his lips. Charlie wishes he could remember that smile. He wishes that he could remember Sayid, their friendship. He thinks they were friends. It's hard to tell. Were any of them friends on the island?
"Hello, Charlie," Sayid murmurs. Charlie, that is his name. It will fade quickly once he leaves this place but he holds onto it for now. Sayid's voice is like spun silk. "I thought I might get a visit soon."
"Well, I would've hated to disappoint you."
"Hurley is next door." Sayid looks to the wall now, as if he can see through it. "Perhaps it is him you are intending to visit. You don't need to convince me that we need to return."
"Don't need to convince our dear Hugo either. He's right on board with the plan." The words come to him from nowhere, like a memorised script. He would have liked to remember who he was when he was alive. He talks a lot, his voice winding through the ages. He thinks that he must have been a nice man before he died. "And you're on board in theory, not so much in action. I need you to visit Sun."
"I can't."
"You'd better, 'cause I can't. She won't listen to me. We'd send Jin, but it's… difficult. He didn't die on the island, his body's not there. Technically mine isn't either, but that's different. I'm still there, y'know. Just in one of its many assorted hatches. Jin was on the freighter."
"And this means he can't visit the living like you can?"
"Something like that." It's interesting to hear these explanations. He died in a hatch: he hadn't been aware of that. A hatch that was only technically part of the island. It sounds interesting, but his script won't elaborate. Sayid already knows that part of the story - there is no need to retread old ground with him. "Which is where you come in. Hurley's not got too much credibility these days. Checking into a loony bin'll do that. I'm working on Kate and Jack. Just - help us out, yeah?"
Sayid is watching him closely. They all do that when he visits. They watch him, tracking every single movement. "I'll see what I can do," Sayid promises. His voice is a whisper.
He grins his thanks and nods. "Nice one, mate."
An eye blink later the white corridor takes over. It is time to wait, time to think, time to try his hardest to remember - but it fades. Sayid's face whispers away and eventually the name goes too. He is a prop, a puppet, and whoever directs his actions and writes the script is not in this long corridor. He closes his eyes and leans against the wall. Waiting, always waiting.
There is gunfire when he opens his eyes once more but it doesn't scare him. The bullets roar like a drummer's beat. Deafening. He crouches on the ground, hidden casually behind a set of crates with a large-set, trembling man beside him. His hair is wild and his eyes are screwed-shut.
"Hurley," he says - Hurley, Hugo, golf courses and comic books - and the man looks up. They appear to be on a boat. There are dead bodies littering the sea. "Hurley, you need to stay calm. Breathe. You're going to be okay. Trust me."
Hurley's left eye peeks open reluctantly. "I trust you, dude," he whispers.
He knows he's not lying and he smiles. "Good. Just stay where you are, alright? Got any clue where Sayid got to?"
Sayid.
Sayid.
The name should register - he can feel the gap where it ought to go - but it spills from his mouth with no conscious recognition. He thinks he can hear the script-writer laughing at him. Its laughter is deep, rich and full.
Hurley shakes his head. "He just told me to stay here."
"Good advice," he murmurs. He stands up - the bullets go right through - and looks around. He doesn't know what he's looking for. There are men with guns that look right through him and people are yelling, screaming. He blinks.
He blinks and he is by a man's side, a man clasping his leg as the blood runs from a bleeding, gory wound. It's already soaked through the denim of his jeans. "You're okay, Jack," he says. Jack. Nothing comes back. Nothing has to.
"Charlie?"
Charlie. That's him. That's his name. Sometimes that fades as well. He smiles, a devilish grin. "Just a flying visit. Remember, mate: count to five. You'll be fine. This is all gonna be over soon anyway."
"The captain… Everyone. They just turned on us. They just…"
If this man is surprised to see a ghost here to help him then he is too startled, scared and sore to question it. Perhaps he has visited him before. He kneels down beside Jack, skimming his fingers around the bleeding wound. It feels wet, sticky. "The others are all nearly dead by now anyway. Widmore's men - planted on the boat. Tricksy bastards but between Ben and Sayid I'd say you're okay. Find Kate once the smoke settles, okay? She's down below with Aaron. Think she's freaking out a bit; it's been a while since she's been near a gun. Bad memories, y'know?"
Jack nods, breathless, and Charlie finds himself in the corridor before he gets a chance to say or think any more. The white calms him and the sound of the bullets fade from his mind. They don't echo in his ears. When he closes his eyes Jack's face no longer remains in his memory. Hurley is gone. The boat has vanished.
All is calm; all is quiet; all is dead. This is the waiting room. This is where the puppets are hung up to dry.
He takes a long, calming breath - opens his eyes on an island. Blue skies, white sand, green jungle. The colours are startling, eye-breaking, breathtaking. He can't move at first: there is no script pushing him forward. No people to be seen at first, but a voice comes from the tree-line.
"Charlie?" the male asks, stepping forward in confusion.
Charlie turns to face him - he is tall, strong and tanned, but he can't remember the name - and waits for the scripted words to come. Nothing arrives. His mouth is empty and he blinks, confused. "What?" he asks, the first word he has said that truly belongs to him in years.
"Charlie, what…" The man steps forward and Charlie fights with the instinct to move away. There are no instructions. He finds himself in control of his own body, his own movements, his own decisions. It makes him feel ill. "Are you real?"
"Yeah," he says breathlessly. "I'm real."
He's real, he's real and he doesn't know what that means. He can feel his heart beating heavily in his chest, feel his blood pounding through his veins, feel the air rushing in and out of his lungs. He wishes he could sit down.
"I'm really real."
The stranger surges forward without any care for danger. He grabs his arms first, squeezing as if to make sure his hands won't slip through, but then his touch shifts upwards. His hands cup Charlie's face and his blue eyes scan every feature, every inch. Charlie doesn't know what he's looking for - but seconds later they kiss and he remembers.
He remembers the first time they did this, arguing in the jungle over some ridiculously unimportant point, remembers how frustrated he'd been, remembers the hard and uneven feel of the tree bark behind his back when he'd been shoved against it and remembers exactly how Sawyer's hands had felt, hot and greedy. He remembers Sawyer.
He laughs, muffled and disbelieving, and his hands run through Sawyer's hair. It's longer than it was the last time he saw him, the last time they spoke, the last time they touched like this. An afterlife ago. "Can't believe…" Sawyer whispers, but he doesn't need to finish that sentence.
"I'm sorry." Charlie knows now that he should have told him about Desmond's flashes, about the decision he'd made to die. He'd been too focused on Claire, on Aaron. He'd never thought of how it would affect Sawyer because, well- Sawyer was Sawyer. He should've known from their first time together, slow and exploring, that there was more between them than the occasional fumble when they could find somewhere alone. "I'm so sorry."
"Good," Sawyer snorts. "You and your stupid-ass heroics."
Charlie rolls his eyes and looks out to sea: he can see the boat approaching now, a dark splodge in the distance. He nudges Sawyer. "Look, over there," he says. "They're coming home."
Sawyer frowns and watches the slowly approaching ship. His arms still sling loosely around Charlie, keeping him weighed down - though if he has to go back to that white corridor, this wouldn't be enough to stop him leaving - but he's distracted now. "Who are?"
"Hurley, Sayid, Jack, Kate, Des, Sun… Everyone. Think we finally managed to talk them into it - been working on it since I died, more or less. Or since they left, anyway. It was- weird. Really sodding weird, mate. It was like it wasn't me at all."
It hadn't been. It had been his body but nothing else at all. Not his words. Not his thoughts. Like he was possessed; like he no longer owned his own existence. He rests against Sawyer and they watch the boat approaching, watch normality returning. He knows he might disappear at any second - he's supposed to be dead - but he clings onto Sawyer, onto his memories, and onto his self of self for as long as he can.