Nanda Parbat, Tibet - Monday
Time stands still in Nanda Parbat.
Weeks, days, hours... they don't mean shit here. Everything is set by routine. Felt like she'd been here forever at this rate.
Charlie said he brought her here to train under Richard Dragon. His old teacher. What he was teaching her, other than falling down and getting her ass kicked, was a mystery.
He said she needed to stop running away and run with. When she asked how, he just told her 'acceptance'.
Her pain, her cold, her frustration, her heartache... he told her to cherish it. "Only when you want it to stay, you will release it."
Nothing here made sense. "If I cherish it, I won't want it to leave," Renee hissed, throwing another punch at his still form.
"Someone else said the said thing. I'll tell you what I told him. I never said it would be easy."
Richard Dragon, ladies and gentlemen.
Charlie's friend Tot...? Has been trying to decode the book they found. The Crime Bible. Days of that. Light reading, huh?
But Charlie. What did Charlie do this time here?
Charlie sat at the edge of a precipice, looking out over the stark landscape. It was somehow pure here. Clean in an unforgiving way.
Hearing Renee's approaching footsteps he turned and forced a grin. "It's not," he coughed twice, roughly, "As bad as it sounds."
She was a pack a day smoker and he'd been trying to tell her that it was just trouble acclimating.
Richard brewed him tea, did acupuncture, pressure point massage... and Tot gave him enough pills to have been an entire pharmacy.
Needless to say, Renee was more than a little worried. He was sick and not getting better. How long--?
"I'm wondering how that's possible," Renee said. "When'd you quit?"
For just a moment the smile was pain-free. Good observation, Renee.
His eyes flicked over to the pack in her hand and he shrugged, "Not soon enough."
Looking down, she crumpled the pack and tossed it away. "How long have you known?"
Charlie shrugged again, "About seven months." Just long enough to find someone to carry on for him.
She paused, not really wanting to know. "How long you have?"
They weren't sitting far apart now, but while they weren't looking at each other, they weren't really looking at the snowscape either. "Not," he coughed, "Not long now."
"Tot says it's already metastasized." There's nothing to do now but wait.
"Why me, Charlie?" Renee asked, composure breaking finally. "Eight billion people, why me?"
"That," Charlie pushed himself slowly to his feet, a hint of his old smile ghosting across his face, "Is the question, isn't it?"
She didn't watch him go back to the temple.
Just tried to follow Richard's advice and cherish it or whatever the hell that meant. Just so the pain of losing another would stop.
[[OOC: Preplayed with the usual suspect, iseewhatyoumean]]