Debt of Nature [1/3] - Lost - Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Charlie
Title: Debt of Nature [1/3]
Pairing: Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Charlie
Word Count: 2431
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For philosophy_20's 'Time' prompt. AU post-Through The Looking Glass, using the concept from Pushing Daisies.
Summary: One touch life; second touch death. Claire's not ready to give up on Charlie.
She felt ill as she looked down at the body on the sand, the corpse that had once held so much life. His eyes had been closed by Desmond before he summoned her here, but his skin was too pale for him to be sleeping. It looked blue and the colour was gone from his lips. His blonde hair had turned to wet tendrils that clung in uneasy clumps to his forehead.
This wasn't her Charlie, not any more. Claire looked down at the dead body and felt it as her stomach churned as if she might throw up - she found herself glad that she'd left Aaron with an alarmed-looking Sawyer. He couldn't be near her as she did this. The potential consequences… It was too much.
"Claire," Desmond said, crouched by the body. "You don't have to look."
Yet she couldn't stop staring. Wet sand clung to his expressionless face, grains that would have been itchy if he'd been conscious - if he'd been alive - to register them. She kept looking to his chest to try and detect the rise and fall as he breathed, but there was nothing there. He'd been underwater for nearly a week before they'd gone back to find the body. Of course there was no flicker of life there-
But she could fix that, couldn't she?
She looked down at the body, the corpse, lying there in front of her, cushioned in the sand. Kate and Jack were arranging a burial, a funeral. They were preparing to say goodbye, but Claire wouldn't do that. She had to hold on.
"You might want to step back," she said to Desmond, glancing up at him. The confusion registered on his face, but he listened to her and shuffled away from Charlie's side. She looked down at Charlie's pale face, his peaceful body, and she prepared to say goodbye.
One minute, she reminded herself, then she leaned down for this: one last kiss, warm lips to cold. Just a second, just a moment, just a heartbeat, and then-
A deep gasp was taken and Charlie started coughing, water flooding from his lips as it escaped his lungs. Claire scuttled back, out of the way, as Charlie rolled onto his side and continued to splutter as he fought for air. His skin was still deathly pale and his lips still blue, but gradually he seemed to be returning to normal as the gasping seconds passed.
"Charlie?" Desmond said, mouth gaping, as Claire got to her feet and took several long paces back. She couldn't risk Charlie touching her and accidentally cutting this limited reunion short. "Charlie, you're alive?"
He didn't answer, too busy coughing, but Claire looked up to him. "We only have a minute," she said. Only a minute, just one, how could that be enough? God, there was no way - no way at all. "Just a minute, Charlie. Can you hear me?"
He nodded, palm flat against the sand as he tried to push himself to sit up. With a deep frown Desmond helped him, but Claire couldn't pay attention to anyone but the non-dead man in front of her. How much longer was left? How many seconds had passed?
"Did I do it?" he asked, after wiping sea water from his mouth with the back of his hand. "The code… The boat- It's not Penny's, Des. I was talking to her, on the monitor. Naomi, she's-"
"It's okay, brother," Desmond whispered, letting Charlie lean against him as he struggled to get his bearings. "We're handling it."
"Right. That's vague. Vague and… and- And the…" He waved his hands, words not coming easily. "What's happening?"
"You died, Charlie," Claire said - her voice broke half-way through his name, and maybe she should have known to stay well away. The dead should stay dead. Sometimes goodbyes just made it harder. "You drowned."
"I what?"
"You stupid bastard!" If she could, she'd slap him. There wasn't time. There just wasn't time… "Damn it, Charlie, what am I supposed to do? Why can't you ever think? What about Aaron? What about-"
"Claire, please. I had to. I had to do it, you get that don't you? Desmond's flash said…"
"Don't," she said. She couldn't hear about flashes or rescues or freighters or any of the nonsense that had filled Charlie's last moments. This was her time now, not his. Not Desmond's. Not this island's. "I don't know what to say," she admitted. A thousand times as she'd watched her mother lying hopelessly in that hospital bed, she'd wished the stubborn woman would die already so that she could bring her back and talk to her - she'd never thought of what she'd say when she did that.
"You don't have to say anything." And he smiled, lop-sided and bright-eyed, so alive and so brilliant and so effortlessly annoying.
"What am I going to do without you?" she whispered, too high-pitched and constricted.
He caught her eyes even if they were sparkling with tears, and that smile only wavered for a second. "You'll be fine, Claire. Take care of Aaron - you too, Des - and… Christ, I don't know. Eat your greens and wear sunscreen and don't cross the road without checking both ways. Stay safe." He checked his wrist for a watch that wasn't there. "That must be my minute up, Claire. It's been…" But there was no word he could finish that sentence with. "I love you."
And that was it, that made the decision for her - she should have kissed him again, touched her skin to his, and let go. The afterlife waited for her Charlie, for Aaron's father, for their hero, but her hands twitched in her lap and she couldn't make herself kill him again. One touch and he was back to what he'd been, a lifeless corpse forevermore. How could she do that? How could he expect her to?
"Claire?" he said, but she shook her head.
"No," she whispered. "No, I'm not doing it. You shouldn't have to die, Charlie. It's not fair."
The minute was gone now: it was too late anyway. To touch him now, to send him back to that deadly state, it would be pointless. It would be a waste of someone so vital and alive.
"What happens?" Desmond asked. "Claire, what happens now? You can't just bring people back; it doesn't work like that, does it?"
Of course it didn't, and she knew that, and she could only hope that the person taken in Charlie's stead was someone who deserved it - one of their enemies, someone who wished them harm. She closed her eyes to block out the memories from the last time she'd done this, the rabbit her mother's car hit when she was eight exchanged for her pet dog in the back seat, and she shook her head. "It's okay," she whispered. "It'll be okay."
"Claire," Desmond said - his hand grabbed her bicep, strong and unrelenting even as she struggled to pull away. "What's going to happen?"
She had to open her eyes to meet his, and she could see the worried way that Charlie was watching the pair of them from behind Desmond - "Stay back," she said to Charlie. "You can't touch me now."
"Claire, answer his question," Charlie said, but his hand reached to Desmond's shoulder to pull the man back from Claire. "You can't just bring people back at random, right? I mean, otherwise you'd have done it for Boone, Shannon, Eko…" So many names, a long endless list. People she could have brought back, should have brought back, people who deserved to have their last goodbye as well.
She shook her head and tried to force the answer, the consequences, from her tongue, but before she could confess to what she'd done it came to meet them on the beach with a rush of blinding panic-
Hurley came running, eyes wide and mad. "Help!" he yelled. "Someone! Help - it's Jack!"
Claire didn't move as she heard that: she didn't need to go and see, she didn't need to be told the details to know what it was she'd done. He'd have dropped dead right there in the jungle, with no warning, no pain, no sign of what was to come. His heart just stopped in exchange for the steady beat in Charlie's chest.
Their doctor, gone because of her.
She looked to Charlie's panicked face as he scrambled to his feet, ignoring Hurley's startled yelp as he saw a dead man walking. Her Charlie, eager to help and easy to guilt. She should have felt guilty - she tried to - but as she watched Charlie and Desmond run back in the direction that Hurley had came from, she could only wrap her arms around her legs and tell herself she'd done the right thing.
The camp needed a doctor, but Aaron needed a father - and she needed him.
*
"You need to undo it," Charlie said when he approached her after the sun had set. She held Aaron in her arms, hushing him to sleep, and used that as an excuse not to acknowledge him as he knelt down in front of her. "Claire, please. You need to do undo it. Jack…"
"Jack's dead, Charlie," Claire snapped. Apparently she wasn't as good at ignoring him as she'd like to be. The air between them seemed to crackle now she knew that she couldn't reach out to calm him down. No more casual touches, no holding his hand when she felt scared, no slapping him when he pissed her off. One touch, one brush against him, and he was gone all over again. "I can't bring him back."
"You brought me back."
"That was different. I don't understand it, but it was different. I don't really know the rules…" 'Rules'. That made it sound so organised, as if this power wasn't something that had crept up on her to invade her childhood with no explanation. "I can't bring him back."
"Can't you swap us back?" Charlie asked. "Me for him? Everyone needs him here."
"And I need you."
He frowned and smiled simultaneously at her, a look that was nothing but pitying. She wanted to yell at him again - she wanted to tell him that if she really meant that little to him then, yeah, maybe he should have stayed dead, but she knew she didn't mean that at all. Every single time she looked at him she found herself burning with the need to grab him and hold him tight, to never let him go again and to tell him what an idiot he was.
"Claire, please-"
"Even if I could do it, I wouldn't," she admitted. "I know that makes me a bad person, but I don't care. Do you get that? I don't care."
Yet how was she going to cope at Jack's funeral tomorrow? How could she watch them bury the man who had pulled them all through the months on this island and not collapse under the guilt? Already it pressed in at all sides, threatening to consume her. Jack would understand; he'd have done the same thing if it was Kate, Claire was certain of that.
"Jack is dead," Charlie stated, the rising anger in his voice causing her look up from Aaron to meet his eyes. His skin was still pale, and after this long she didn't think it would ever return to its natural colour. He'd changed out of the soaking wet clothes and he was barefoot until he found new shoes; in the dim moonlight, it was as if the past few days had never happened. "He's dead when I should be. You can't expect me to live with that."
She shrugged and stood up, walking carefully around him, to place Aaron in his cradle and smooth through her child's hair with her hand. "You don't really have a choice," she answered before he walked away - and that was cold, that was cruel, but he talked as if she didn't understand what she'd done.
She understood-
Her heart ached because of it-
She would give anything to be able to apologise to Jack for what had happened-
- But that didn't mean she regretted it, not for one single second.
*
The hushing sound of the sand being shifted over the body in the grave burrowed its way into Claire's temple like a needle. The crunch of the spade, the thud of the sand as it fell onto the covered body in the pit, the soft sobbing and silent tears, the sounds of grief crushed in around her until she felt she might faint: until she wished that she would, just as an excuse to get away from this place. The pinched expression on Sawyer and Kate's faces as they quietly buried the body was more than she knew how to take.
Charlie was silent beside her, and Desmond beside him as they watched. There had been attempts at the customary speeches - eulogies that had crashed and burned - but now they stood in silence, gradually fading away though no one knew how to continue on from this point. Jack had always been such a stable force in their lives here, always there, always providing answers, always making decisions.
"Charlie," she said as the three of them left the scene, Charlie leading the way with his head bowed down. He wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't even look at her. "Charlie, please. Will you wait up?"
It was hard to keep up while she was carrying Aaron and while her chest felt tight, tears on her cheeks that she wished she could will away. She'd done the right thing. She knew she'd done the right thing, yet that didn't stop the quiet ache in her chest.
"Let him go," Desmond advised, holding her back. "He needs some time."
She didn't know how time could fix what she'd done, but maybe it could numb the guilt for him. His shoulders were slumped as he walked far from them, like a physical weight was holding him down and pinning him to the earth. Claire's jaw clenched and she had to watch him go, watch him leave her, watch him turn his back. She'd done this for him - and maybe that was exactly the problem.
*
Part Two
Pairing: Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Charlie
Word Count: 2431
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For philosophy_20's 'Time' prompt. AU post-Through The Looking Glass, using the concept from Pushing Daisies.
Summary: One touch life; second touch death. Claire's not ready to give up on Charlie.
She felt ill as she looked down at the body on the sand, the corpse that had once held so much life. His eyes had been closed by Desmond before he summoned her here, but his skin was too pale for him to be sleeping. It looked blue and the colour was gone from his lips. His blonde hair had turned to wet tendrils that clung in uneasy clumps to his forehead.
This wasn't her Charlie, not any more. Claire looked down at the dead body and felt it as her stomach churned as if she might throw up - she found herself glad that she'd left Aaron with an alarmed-looking Sawyer. He couldn't be near her as she did this. The potential consequences… It was too much.
"Claire," Desmond said, crouched by the body. "You don't have to look."
Yet she couldn't stop staring. Wet sand clung to his expressionless face, grains that would have been itchy if he'd been conscious - if he'd been alive - to register them. She kept looking to his chest to try and detect the rise and fall as he breathed, but there was nothing there. He'd been underwater for nearly a week before they'd gone back to find the body. Of course there was no flicker of life there-
But she could fix that, couldn't she?
She looked down at the body, the corpse, lying there in front of her, cushioned in the sand. Kate and Jack were arranging a burial, a funeral. They were preparing to say goodbye, but Claire wouldn't do that. She had to hold on.
"You might want to step back," she said to Desmond, glancing up at him. The confusion registered on his face, but he listened to her and shuffled away from Charlie's side. She looked down at Charlie's pale face, his peaceful body, and she prepared to say goodbye.
One minute, she reminded herself, then she leaned down for this: one last kiss, warm lips to cold. Just a second, just a moment, just a heartbeat, and then-
A deep gasp was taken and Charlie started coughing, water flooding from his lips as it escaped his lungs. Claire scuttled back, out of the way, as Charlie rolled onto his side and continued to splutter as he fought for air. His skin was still deathly pale and his lips still blue, but gradually he seemed to be returning to normal as the gasping seconds passed.
"Charlie?" Desmond said, mouth gaping, as Claire got to her feet and took several long paces back. She couldn't risk Charlie touching her and accidentally cutting this limited reunion short. "Charlie, you're alive?"
He didn't answer, too busy coughing, but Claire looked up to him. "We only have a minute," she said. Only a minute, just one, how could that be enough? God, there was no way - no way at all. "Just a minute, Charlie. Can you hear me?"
He nodded, palm flat against the sand as he tried to push himself to sit up. With a deep frown Desmond helped him, but Claire couldn't pay attention to anyone but the non-dead man in front of her. How much longer was left? How many seconds had passed?
"Did I do it?" he asked, after wiping sea water from his mouth with the back of his hand. "The code… The boat- It's not Penny's, Des. I was talking to her, on the monitor. Naomi, she's-"
"It's okay, brother," Desmond whispered, letting Charlie lean against him as he struggled to get his bearings. "We're handling it."
"Right. That's vague. Vague and… and- And the…" He waved his hands, words not coming easily. "What's happening?"
"You died, Charlie," Claire said - her voice broke half-way through his name, and maybe she should have known to stay well away. The dead should stay dead. Sometimes goodbyes just made it harder. "You drowned."
"I what?"
"You stupid bastard!" If she could, she'd slap him. There wasn't time. There just wasn't time… "Damn it, Charlie, what am I supposed to do? Why can't you ever think? What about Aaron? What about-"
"Claire, please. I had to. I had to do it, you get that don't you? Desmond's flash said…"
"Don't," she said. She couldn't hear about flashes or rescues or freighters or any of the nonsense that had filled Charlie's last moments. This was her time now, not his. Not Desmond's. Not this island's. "I don't know what to say," she admitted. A thousand times as she'd watched her mother lying hopelessly in that hospital bed, she'd wished the stubborn woman would die already so that she could bring her back and talk to her - she'd never thought of what she'd say when she did that.
"You don't have to say anything." And he smiled, lop-sided and bright-eyed, so alive and so brilliant and so effortlessly annoying.
"What am I going to do without you?" she whispered, too high-pitched and constricted.
He caught her eyes even if they were sparkling with tears, and that smile only wavered for a second. "You'll be fine, Claire. Take care of Aaron - you too, Des - and… Christ, I don't know. Eat your greens and wear sunscreen and don't cross the road without checking both ways. Stay safe." He checked his wrist for a watch that wasn't there. "That must be my minute up, Claire. It's been…" But there was no word he could finish that sentence with. "I love you."
And that was it, that made the decision for her - she should have kissed him again, touched her skin to his, and let go. The afterlife waited for her Charlie, for Aaron's father, for their hero, but her hands twitched in her lap and she couldn't make herself kill him again. One touch and he was back to what he'd been, a lifeless corpse forevermore. How could she do that? How could he expect her to?
"Claire?" he said, but she shook her head.
"No," she whispered. "No, I'm not doing it. You shouldn't have to die, Charlie. It's not fair."
The minute was gone now: it was too late anyway. To touch him now, to send him back to that deadly state, it would be pointless. It would be a waste of someone so vital and alive.
"What happens?" Desmond asked. "Claire, what happens now? You can't just bring people back; it doesn't work like that, does it?"
Of course it didn't, and she knew that, and she could only hope that the person taken in Charlie's stead was someone who deserved it - one of their enemies, someone who wished them harm. She closed her eyes to block out the memories from the last time she'd done this, the rabbit her mother's car hit when she was eight exchanged for her pet dog in the back seat, and she shook her head. "It's okay," she whispered. "It'll be okay."
"Claire," Desmond said - his hand grabbed her bicep, strong and unrelenting even as she struggled to pull away. "What's going to happen?"
She had to open her eyes to meet his, and she could see the worried way that Charlie was watching the pair of them from behind Desmond - "Stay back," she said to Charlie. "You can't touch me now."
"Claire, answer his question," Charlie said, but his hand reached to Desmond's shoulder to pull the man back from Claire. "You can't just bring people back at random, right? I mean, otherwise you'd have done it for Boone, Shannon, Eko…" So many names, a long endless list. People she could have brought back, should have brought back, people who deserved to have their last goodbye as well.
She shook her head and tried to force the answer, the consequences, from her tongue, but before she could confess to what she'd done it came to meet them on the beach with a rush of blinding panic-
Hurley came running, eyes wide and mad. "Help!" he yelled. "Someone! Help - it's Jack!"
Claire didn't move as she heard that: she didn't need to go and see, she didn't need to be told the details to know what it was she'd done. He'd have dropped dead right there in the jungle, with no warning, no pain, no sign of what was to come. His heart just stopped in exchange for the steady beat in Charlie's chest.
Their doctor, gone because of her.
She looked to Charlie's panicked face as he scrambled to his feet, ignoring Hurley's startled yelp as he saw a dead man walking. Her Charlie, eager to help and easy to guilt. She should have felt guilty - she tried to - but as she watched Charlie and Desmond run back in the direction that Hurley had came from, she could only wrap her arms around her legs and tell herself she'd done the right thing.
The camp needed a doctor, but Aaron needed a father - and she needed him.
*
"You need to undo it," Charlie said when he approached her after the sun had set. She held Aaron in her arms, hushing him to sleep, and used that as an excuse not to acknowledge him as he knelt down in front of her. "Claire, please. You need to do undo it. Jack…"
"Jack's dead, Charlie," Claire snapped. Apparently she wasn't as good at ignoring him as she'd like to be. The air between them seemed to crackle now she knew that she couldn't reach out to calm him down. No more casual touches, no holding his hand when she felt scared, no slapping him when he pissed her off. One touch, one brush against him, and he was gone all over again. "I can't bring him back."
"You brought me back."
"That was different. I don't understand it, but it was different. I don't really know the rules…" 'Rules'. That made it sound so organised, as if this power wasn't something that had crept up on her to invade her childhood with no explanation. "I can't bring him back."
"Can't you swap us back?" Charlie asked. "Me for him? Everyone needs him here."
"And I need you."
He frowned and smiled simultaneously at her, a look that was nothing but pitying. She wanted to yell at him again - she wanted to tell him that if she really meant that little to him then, yeah, maybe he should have stayed dead, but she knew she didn't mean that at all. Every single time she looked at him she found herself burning with the need to grab him and hold him tight, to never let him go again and to tell him what an idiot he was.
"Claire, please-"
"Even if I could do it, I wouldn't," she admitted. "I know that makes me a bad person, but I don't care. Do you get that? I don't care."
Yet how was she going to cope at Jack's funeral tomorrow? How could she watch them bury the man who had pulled them all through the months on this island and not collapse under the guilt? Already it pressed in at all sides, threatening to consume her. Jack would understand; he'd have done the same thing if it was Kate, Claire was certain of that.
"Jack is dead," Charlie stated, the rising anger in his voice causing her look up from Aaron to meet his eyes. His skin was still pale, and after this long she didn't think it would ever return to its natural colour. He'd changed out of the soaking wet clothes and he was barefoot until he found new shoes; in the dim moonlight, it was as if the past few days had never happened. "He's dead when I should be. You can't expect me to live with that."
She shrugged and stood up, walking carefully around him, to place Aaron in his cradle and smooth through her child's hair with her hand. "You don't really have a choice," she answered before he walked away - and that was cold, that was cruel, but he talked as if she didn't understand what she'd done.
She understood-
Her heart ached because of it-
She would give anything to be able to apologise to Jack for what had happened-
- But that didn't mean she regretted it, not for one single second.
*
The hushing sound of the sand being shifted over the body in the grave burrowed its way into Claire's temple like a needle. The crunch of the spade, the thud of the sand as it fell onto the covered body in the pit, the soft sobbing and silent tears, the sounds of grief crushed in around her until she felt she might faint: until she wished that she would, just as an excuse to get away from this place. The pinched expression on Sawyer and Kate's faces as they quietly buried the body was more than she knew how to take.
Charlie was silent beside her, and Desmond beside him as they watched. There had been attempts at the customary speeches - eulogies that had crashed and burned - but now they stood in silence, gradually fading away though no one knew how to continue on from this point. Jack had always been such a stable force in their lives here, always there, always providing answers, always making decisions.
"Charlie," she said as the three of them left the scene, Charlie leading the way with his head bowed down. He wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't even look at her. "Charlie, please. Will you wait up?"
It was hard to keep up while she was carrying Aaron and while her chest felt tight, tears on her cheeks that she wished she could will away. She'd done the right thing. She knew she'd done the right thing, yet that didn't stop the quiet ache in her chest.
"Let him go," Desmond advised, holding her back. "He needs some time."
She didn't know how time could fix what she'd done, but maybe it could numb the guilt for him. His shoulders were slumped as he walked far from them, like a physical weight was holding him down and pinning him to the earth. Claire's jaw clenched and she had to watch him go, watch him leave her, watch him turn his back. She'd done this for him - and maybe that was exactly the problem.
*
Part Two