Living Nightmare - part One
Title: Living Nightmare
Spoilers: season two finale
Warnings: DARK FIC. ANGST.
Summary: Starts where “Live Together, Die Alone” leaves off. That night, Claire has a nightmare and her worst fears are confirmed when in her waking hours, it seems to be coming to life before her very eyes…
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Lost because dangnamit how awesome would this be? I mean really…
Authors Notes: Okay, so this has practically been discredited already but I thought I’d get it out there before season three premiered just the same because I’ll be getting bunnied for goodness knows how many fics then.
~*~
It was early in the morning and Claire was tidying her shelter when Charlie came running up, his hair wildly tousled by the morning breeze. She wanted to reach out and flatten it a little, smooth it back against his head where it belonged but before she could do anything, he took both her hands in his and stared at her, silently earnest.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ Claire asked quickly, noticing for the first time that he had his backpack slung across his shoulders. Like his guitar, it was one of his possessions that was as familiar as the ring on his right hand, the checkered shoes on his feet, the twisted leather necklace around his neck…
‘I’m going with Hurley,’ Charlie said simply, as though it explained everything. His voice was breathless from running. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back.’ Leaning forward, he planted a sweet kiss on her forehead. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ Claire murmured back, her eyes shut as she breathed in deep. She frowned - Charlie had always had a very distinctive smell to him but this Charlie was all salt and sand and rotted vegetation…
Charlie pulled back abruptly and without even pausing to look back at her, he strode off down the beach, following the large silhouette of Hurley. Claire watched him go feeling uneasy. Her arms wrapped around her stomach as the cold began to claw up her spine and then she was running through the jungle, branches tearing long scratches across her fine skin. She screamed his name as she ran - he had to hear it, had to.
‘Charlie! Charlie!’
She burst out of the trees and back onto the beach, a scene of bloody carnage meeting her with a foul, twisted grin. A blur of blue sky and yellow beach swirled around her as she spun in a wide circle, smoke and blood mingling together, enough to make her gag but she had to find him and so she began to search the bodies strewn across the shoreline. There were bodies everywhere, the coppery smell of blood mingling with the fiery scent of gunpowder to create a potent cocktail that smelt like death. There had evidently been a battle here not long ago - the fires were still burning as she searched frantically, tears running through the collection of smoky ash on her face as she continued to call his name but all of these bodies were unmoving and she didn’t recognise any of them…
She had all but given up hope when one of the bodies stirred feebly. Racing over, she skidded onto her knees and rolled Charlie onto his back. Despite the fact that she knew it was him, it was still a shock when she flipped him over. His body seemed mostly unmarred, the occasional scratch or mark - except for the gaping hole in his gut where someone had clearly shot him. Her eyes moved frantically up his body and what she saw made her cry out in horror - his face was almost unrecognisable. His nose was completely crushed, one ear had been almost torn off, half of his teeth were missing…
Claire gathered him into her arms swiftly, desperate to offer him some small semblance of comfort. For a moment she wasn’t even sure if he knew she was there but then one of his hands clawed upwards and found her shirt, leaving half a bloody handprint there. She gazed into his face and…god, his eyes were pale. So pale and blank and she didn’t think that he could even see her - didn’t even know if he could feel her arms or know she was there.
She began to whisper his name over and over, a soft keening mantra and Charlie suddenly began to cough, a violent storm of blood staining the front of Claire’s shirt, dripping down the front of her like some nightmarish dye. And as she held him in her arms, as he trembled and shook and choked on his own blood, he drew a final heaving breath and the hand clutching her shirt fell away quite gently.
Leaning her head down to hide the sobs that had paralysed her throat, Claire pressed her lips to his bloody forehead, the copper of his blood mixing with the salted sand as she began to give herself over to the complete overwhelming sensation of grief.
‘Claire?’
She looked up from his body and screamed.
~*~
Of all the things Charlie had expected of Claire when he had come to see her this morning, this certainly wasn’t it.
‘Christ!’
Charlie took a hurried step backwards as Claire screamed and launched herself from the sand, reaching for him, her fingers snarled like claws. He flinched in pain as her fingernails found the flesh of his forearms and tore through his skin but he didn’t step back, instead he reached forward to grab her wrists, trying to calm her down, repeating her name over and over again. Despite himself, Charlie was reminded of the time that she had woken from another nightmare and days later he had found himself swinging from a tree.
It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.
‘Claire,’ he said as loudly and clearly as he could. ‘It’s Charlie. It’s just me, just Charlie okay? Calm down okay? You just had a nightmare…’
Claire took a deep breath and for a moment Charlie thought she might be all right but then she began to scream again, trying to fight off the hands that were so tight around her wrists.
Charlie struggled against her for several seconds - she was surprisingly strong for someone so small and he was close to losing his grip on her. And then, in a moment of impulsive genius, he grabbed her by the shoulders and smashed his lips up against hers.
It worked. Claire’s arms fell limp to her sides as Charlie slowly softened the kiss and then she collapsed against him slowly, sobbing, her lips falling away from his as her knees buckled and she fell into his arms.
Charlie held her on her feet for what felt like an hour as she cried into his shoulder, not even able to muster the coherency to explain herself, just crying. Charlie held her tightly, terrified and close to tears himself. Whatever she’d been dreaming, it must have been pretty shocking to garner this sort of a response from her. Which is why he was so surprised when she cried out again and pushed him away with such force that he actually fell backwards into the sand. Her tear blurred eyes trained on him, she took several small steps backwards and then collapsed to the sand too, her legs curled underneath her body and one hand against her cheek as though she’d just been slapped.
Charlie approached her carefully, crawling across the sand to her. A small crowd had gathered now and were watching fearfully from the sidelines as Charlie reached out a tentative hand to touch Claire’s shaking shoulder. To his great relief, she didn’t lash out this time. His forearm stung madly from where she had dragged her nails into the skin.
‘Claire?’
Charlie paused as her eyes flew up to meet his; the dark rims around her infinitely paler irises seemed three shades darker than usual, an almost endless black.
‘Are you okay?’ he bent in a little closer and she shied away from him, wriggling backwards through the sand. Non-plussed, Charlie allowed her a moment before repeating his question, not leaning in this time.
She didn’t answer.
‘Did you have a nightmare?’ he asked, his voice gentle.
Claire nodded her head and then frowned and shook it again, opening her mouth with a frustrated look on her face. Charlie paused, waiting for her to verbalise her thoughts.
‘Not a nightmare,’ she managed finally, her voice rasped and she had to clear her throat and repeat what she’d said.
‘What then?’ Charlie pressed.
Claire opened and closed her mouth noiselessly for a moment and Charlie began to get to his feet.
‘Okay, well how about you just sit down for a minute while I go get you some water…’
‘No.’
Charlie stopped where he was, Claire’s hand in a death grip on his left bicep. It was the first word she had uttered and she had said it with such conviction and force that he was inclined to stop and listen to her reasoning. She paused to take a breath and then looked up at him through eyelashes sparkling with tears.
‘No. Just…please come and sit with me at my shelter for a little while.’
Charlie obliged readily, allowing Claire to lead the way back to her shelter - less than ten metres seemed like an infinite journey. The other survivors who had emerged sleepily from their shelters to see what the fuss was all about eyed them curiously as Claire led Charlie to her shelter, holding tight to his hand. Charlie swallowed nervously as their eyes followed them.
When Claire sat down next to Aaron’s cradle - where he lay, mercifully still asleep - Charlie noticed for the first time that she had actually started trembling at some point and now her hands were shaking that badly that she had to twine her fingers together to still them. Charlie sat nervously at the other end of her shelter but Claire looked up sharply at him and gestured him closer, closer, closer until he was sitting right next to her.
‘You going to tell me what all that was about?’ Charlie said presently, worrying the torn skin on his forearms. ‘And why you felt the need to rip my arms to pieces?’
Claire looked down at his arms and a flicker of embarrassment crossed her face.
‘Sorry,’ she said but didn’t elaborate any further, her attention returning to her hands - still trembling and shaking.
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a long while and Charlie fidgeted restlessly. There had never been a time when they had felt this uncomfortable in each other’s presence - even back when they had first met. Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore and he spoke again, hoping to get some sort of reaction from her - anything.
‘Look, obviously you had a nightmare of some kind or something so do you want to talk about it or what?’
‘Or what,’ Claire muttered immediately.
Charlie threw his hands up into the air and stood. ‘Fine. Clearly you don’t want to tell me what’s bothering you so how about I go on my merry way and you can come and get me when you feel like you can talk to me.’
‘No, wait,’ Claire stood up too, her fingers slipping on empty air as she tried to catch his hand.
Charlie pulled his arm out of her reach. ‘You kissed me yesterday Claire,’ he said bluntly. ‘This morning I come and find you - you’re sleepwalking, you’re terrified and suddenly you won’t talk to me about it.’
‘You want to talk about last night?’ Claire snapped, suddenly angry. ‘Fine! Which bit did you want to psychoanalyse Charlie?’
‘I don’t want to psychoanalyse anything!’ Charlie snapped back, his anger matching hers instantly. ‘I just want to know that you’re really all right! You wake up screaming, you attack me when I try to comfort you and then you act like there’s nothing wrong at all and yet you wont let me leave you!’
‘That’s because I’m bloody scared!’ Claire shrieked. ‘Jesus Charlie! I don’t want to talk about anything right now - I just need someone to sit with me, just be there for me until I can wrap my brain around this awful dream I’ve just had…’
‘I think we need to talk,’ Charlie interrupted her flatly. ‘I don’t care if we don’t talk about your nightmare or whatever it was but we need to talk about last night at the very least - I don’t know what to expect from you right now and that’s not fair.’
‘I don’t want to talk,’ Claire said petulantly.
‘Well if you don’t want to talk then I don’t want to sit here with you,’ Charlie said abruptly and before Claire could stop him, he began to storm back off down the beach. She sat there for a long frozen moment, wringing her hands and glancing from Charlie’s rapidly retreating back to her son, who had woken and begun to cry although she couldn’t remember exactly when.
‘Charlie!’ she called after him pleadingly but he ignored her. Claire panicked. Abandoning her son she chased after Charlie, grabbing him by the shoulder and swinging him around.
‘It wasn’t a nightmare,’ she burst out. ‘I saw you…I saw you die. But it wasn’t a nightmare.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth Claire knew that she had said it in the completely wrong way. Charlie’s face seemed to crumble before her, his mouth turned down and his eyes seemed to go greyer as she watched.
‘No!’ she said suddenly. ‘I mean…it’s not that…Charlie…’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ Charlie said shortly. ‘Last night…you didn’t…I can’t believe I thought…’ he looked liable to burst into tears or punch something. He ended up kicking a spray of sand towards the ocean instead.
‘You don’t understand!’ Claire felt herself close to tears again. ‘It wasn’t a dream! It wasn’t a nightmare! It was real.’
‘Oh so last night when you kissed me wasn’t real?’ Charlie snapped. ‘You can’t just fucking play around with people’s heads like that Claire!’
‘I’m not,’ Claire insisted. ‘If you’d just listen to me for a second…’
‘I’m done with listening!’ Charlie yelled. ‘All I did for two months was bloody listen to you!’ he affected a horrible, mocking voice. ‘“I’m a terrible mother, I should have given the baby up for adoption, help me, save me, leave me alone I don’t want to talk to you ever again, oh my life’s been such a sad story - lost and alone on a deserted island with no daddy for my poor baby.”’
Claire flinched. ‘Charlie…’
‘Did you ever once ask me if I was okay?’ Charlie steamed on, he almost seemed to have forgotten that Claire was there and was just venting. The other survivors were peeking out of their shelters again. ‘Did you ever think that maybe I was having a tough time too? That maybe I needed some help? That maybe I needed someone who I could confide in? You wonder why I didn’t tell you about the sodding drugs? Look at the way you reacted!’
‘Because you lied to me!’ Claire burst out, disbelieving. ‘If you’d just told me back at beginning then maybe we wouldn’t still be on about the fucking drugs!’
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, glowering, before Charlie’s face creased into an expression of bewilderment.
‘Did you just say fuck?’
Claire let out a derisive snort and stormed back to her tent, Charlie staring after her.
It wasn’t until her crying son was in her arms that she remembered what their argument had been about in the first place. Swinging back around, she chased after Charlie’s retreating figure for the second time, wheeled him around to face her and smashed her lips up against his in a kiss with enough force to bruise.
Charlie obviously wasn’t sure how to react to this - he seemed frozen until she forced her tongue into his mouth and then he reeled back, away from her. Even then, despite his obvious anger, he looked like he wanted to kiss her again.
‘Don’t believe me if you want,’ Claire said heatedly. ‘Just don’t you dare go anywhere with Hurley.’
She felt his eyes burn incredulous holes into her back as she stormed over to her shelter again. Aaron was silent in her arms as though he was scared of her as well.
Spoilers: season two finale
Warnings: DARK FIC. ANGST.
Summary: Starts where “Live Together, Die Alone” leaves off. That night, Claire has a nightmare and her worst fears are confirmed when in her waking hours, it seems to be coming to life before her very eyes…
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Lost because dangnamit how awesome would this be? I mean really…
Authors Notes: Okay, so this has practically been discredited already but I thought I’d get it out there before season three premiered just the same because I’ll be getting bunnied for goodness knows how many fics then.
~*~
It was early in the morning and Claire was tidying her shelter when Charlie came running up, his hair wildly tousled by the morning breeze. She wanted to reach out and flatten it a little, smooth it back against his head where it belonged but before she could do anything, he took both her hands in his and stared at her, silently earnest.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ Claire asked quickly, noticing for the first time that he had his backpack slung across his shoulders. Like his guitar, it was one of his possessions that was as familiar as the ring on his right hand, the checkered shoes on his feet, the twisted leather necklace around his neck…
‘I’m going with Hurley,’ Charlie said simply, as though it explained everything. His voice was breathless from running. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back.’ Leaning forward, he planted a sweet kiss on her forehead. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ Claire murmured back, her eyes shut as she breathed in deep. She frowned - Charlie had always had a very distinctive smell to him but this Charlie was all salt and sand and rotted vegetation…
Charlie pulled back abruptly and without even pausing to look back at her, he strode off down the beach, following the large silhouette of Hurley. Claire watched him go feeling uneasy. Her arms wrapped around her stomach as the cold began to claw up her spine and then she was running through the jungle, branches tearing long scratches across her fine skin. She screamed his name as she ran - he had to hear it, had to.
‘Charlie! Charlie!’
She burst out of the trees and back onto the beach, a scene of bloody carnage meeting her with a foul, twisted grin. A blur of blue sky and yellow beach swirled around her as she spun in a wide circle, smoke and blood mingling together, enough to make her gag but she had to find him and so she began to search the bodies strewn across the shoreline. There were bodies everywhere, the coppery smell of blood mingling with the fiery scent of gunpowder to create a potent cocktail that smelt like death. There had evidently been a battle here not long ago - the fires were still burning as she searched frantically, tears running through the collection of smoky ash on her face as she continued to call his name but all of these bodies were unmoving and she didn’t recognise any of them…
She had all but given up hope when one of the bodies stirred feebly. Racing over, she skidded onto her knees and rolled Charlie onto his back. Despite the fact that she knew it was him, it was still a shock when she flipped him over. His body seemed mostly unmarred, the occasional scratch or mark - except for the gaping hole in his gut where someone had clearly shot him. Her eyes moved frantically up his body and what she saw made her cry out in horror - his face was almost unrecognisable. His nose was completely crushed, one ear had been almost torn off, half of his teeth were missing…
Claire gathered him into her arms swiftly, desperate to offer him some small semblance of comfort. For a moment she wasn’t even sure if he knew she was there but then one of his hands clawed upwards and found her shirt, leaving half a bloody handprint there. She gazed into his face and…god, his eyes were pale. So pale and blank and she didn’t think that he could even see her - didn’t even know if he could feel her arms or know she was there.
She began to whisper his name over and over, a soft keening mantra and Charlie suddenly began to cough, a violent storm of blood staining the front of Claire’s shirt, dripping down the front of her like some nightmarish dye. And as she held him in her arms, as he trembled and shook and choked on his own blood, he drew a final heaving breath and the hand clutching her shirt fell away quite gently.
Leaning her head down to hide the sobs that had paralysed her throat, Claire pressed her lips to his bloody forehead, the copper of his blood mixing with the salted sand as she began to give herself over to the complete overwhelming sensation of grief.
‘Claire?’
She looked up from his body and screamed.
~*~
Of all the things Charlie had expected of Claire when he had come to see her this morning, this certainly wasn’t it.
‘Christ!’
Charlie took a hurried step backwards as Claire screamed and launched herself from the sand, reaching for him, her fingers snarled like claws. He flinched in pain as her fingernails found the flesh of his forearms and tore through his skin but he didn’t step back, instead he reached forward to grab her wrists, trying to calm her down, repeating her name over and over again. Despite himself, Charlie was reminded of the time that she had woken from another nightmare and days later he had found himself swinging from a tree.
It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.
‘Claire,’ he said as loudly and clearly as he could. ‘It’s Charlie. It’s just me, just Charlie okay? Calm down okay? You just had a nightmare…’
Claire took a deep breath and for a moment Charlie thought she might be all right but then she began to scream again, trying to fight off the hands that were so tight around her wrists.
Charlie struggled against her for several seconds - she was surprisingly strong for someone so small and he was close to losing his grip on her. And then, in a moment of impulsive genius, he grabbed her by the shoulders and smashed his lips up against hers.
It worked. Claire’s arms fell limp to her sides as Charlie slowly softened the kiss and then she collapsed against him slowly, sobbing, her lips falling away from his as her knees buckled and she fell into his arms.
Charlie held her on her feet for what felt like an hour as she cried into his shoulder, not even able to muster the coherency to explain herself, just crying. Charlie held her tightly, terrified and close to tears himself. Whatever she’d been dreaming, it must have been pretty shocking to garner this sort of a response from her. Which is why he was so surprised when she cried out again and pushed him away with such force that he actually fell backwards into the sand. Her tear blurred eyes trained on him, she took several small steps backwards and then collapsed to the sand too, her legs curled underneath her body and one hand against her cheek as though she’d just been slapped.
Charlie approached her carefully, crawling across the sand to her. A small crowd had gathered now and were watching fearfully from the sidelines as Charlie reached out a tentative hand to touch Claire’s shaking shoulder. To his great relief, she didn’t lash out this time. His forearm stung madly from where she had dragged her nails into the skin.
‘Claire?’
Charlie paused as her eyes flew up to meet his; the dark rims around her infinitely paler irises seemed three shades darker than usual, an almost endless black.
‘Are you okay?’ he bent in a little closer and she shied away from him, wriggling backwards through the sand. Non-plussed, Charlie allowed her a moment before repeating his question, not leaning in this time.
She didn’t answer.
‘Did you have a nightmare?’ he asked, his voice gentle.
Claire nodded her head and then frowned and shook it again, opening her mouth with a frustrated look on her face. Charlie paused, waiting for her to verbalise her thoughts.
‘Not a nightmare,’ she managed finally, her voice rasped and she had to clear her throat and repeat what she’d said.
‘What then?’ Charlie pressed.
Claire opened and closed her mouth noiselessly for a moment and Charlie began to get to his feet.
‘Okay, well how about you just sit down for a minute while I go get you some water…’
‘No.’
Charlie stopped where he was, Claire’s hand in a death grip on his left bicep. It was the first word she had uttered and she had said it with such conviction and force that he was inclined to stop and listen to her reasoning. She paused to take a breath and then looked up at him through eyelashes sparkling with tears.
‘No. Just…please come and sit with me at my shelter for a little while.’
Charlie obliged readily, allowing Claire to lead the way back to her shelter - less than ten metres seemed like an infinite journey. The other survivors who had emerged sleepily from their shelters to see what the fuss was all about eyed them curiously as Claire led Charlie to her shelter, holding tight to his hand. Charlie swallowed nervously as their eyes followed them.
When Claire sat down next to Aaron’s cradle - where he lay, mercifully still asleep - Charlie noticed for the first time that she had actually started trembling at some point and now her hands were shaking that badly that she had to twine her fingers together to still them. Charlie sat nervously at the other end of her shelter but Claire looked up sharply at him and gestured him closer, closer, closer until he was sitting right next to her.
‘You going to tell me what all that was about?’ Charlie said presently, worrying the torn skin on his forearms. ‘And why you felt the need to rip my arms to pieces?’
Claire looked down at his arms and a flicker of embarrassment crossed her face.
‘Sorry,’ she said but didn’t elaborate any further, her attention returning to her hands - still trembling and shaking.
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a long while and Charlie fidgeted restlessly. There had never been a time when they had felt this uncomfortable in each other’s presence - even back when they had first met. Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore and he spoke again, hoping to get some sort of reaction from her - anything.
‘Look, obviously you had a nightmare of some kind or something so do you want to talk about it or what?’
‘Or what,’ Claire muttered immediately.
Charlie threw his hands up into the air and stood. ‘Fine. Clearly you don’t want to tell me what’s bothering you so how about I go on my merry way and you can come and get me when you feel like you can talk to me.’
‘No, wait,’ Claire stood up too, her fingers slipping on empty air as she tried to catch his hand.
Charlie pulled his arm out of her reach. ‘You kissed me yesterday Claire,’ he said bluntly. ‘This morning I come and find you - you’re sleepwalking, you’re terrified and suddenly you won’t talk to me about it.’
‘You want to talk about last night?’ Claire snapped, suddenly angry. ‘Fine! Which bit did you want to psychoanalyse Charlie?’
‘I don’t want to psychoanalyse anything!’ Charlie snapped back, his anger matching hers instantly. ‘I just want to know that you’re really all right! You wake up screaming, you attack me when I try to comfort you and then you act like there’s nothing wrong at all and yet you wont let me leave you!’
‘That’s because I’m bloody scared!’ Claire shrieked. ‘Jesus Charlie! I don’t want to talk about anything right now - I just need someone to sit with me, just be there for me until I can wrap my brain around this awful dream I’ve just had…’
‘I think we need to talk,’ Charlie interrupted her flatly. ‘I don’t care if we don’t talk about your nightmare or whatever it was but we need to talk about last night at the very least - I don’t know what to expect from you right now and that’s not fair.’
‘I don’t want to talk,’ Claire said petulantly.
‘Well if you don’t want to talk then I don’t want to sit here with you,’ Charlie said abruptly and before Claire could stop him, he began to storm back off down the beach. She sat there for a long frozen moment, wringing her hands and glancing from Charlie’s rapidly retreating back to her son, who had woken and begun to cry although she couldn’t remember exactly when.
‘Charlie!’ she called after him pleadingly but he ignored her. Claire panicked. Abandoning her son she chased after Charlie, grabbing him by the shoulder and swinging him around.
‘It wasn’t a nightmare,’ she burst out. ‘I saw you…I saw you die. But it wasn’t a nightmare.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth Claire knew that she had said it in the completely wrong way. Charlie’s face seemed to crumble before her, his mouth turned down and his eyes seemed to go greyer as she watched.
‘No!’ she said suddenly. ‘I mean…it’s not that…Charlie…’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ Charlie said shortly. ‘Last night…you didn’t…I can’t believe I thought…’ he looked liable to burst into tears or punch something. He ended up kicking a spray of sand towards the ocean instead.
‘You don’t understand!’ Claire felt herself close to tears again. ‘It wasn’t a dream! It wasn’t a nightmare! It was real.’
‘Oh so last night when you kissed me wasn’t real?’ Charlie snapped. ‘You can’t just fucking play around with people’s heads like that Claire!’
‘I’m not,’ Claire insisted. ‘If you’d just listen to me for a second…’
‘I’m done with listening!’ Charlie yelled. ‘All I did for two months was bloody listen to you!’ he affected a horrible, mocking voice. ‘“I’m a terrible mother, I should have given the baby up for adoption, help me, save me, leave me alone I don’t want to talk to you ever again, oh my life’s been such a sad story - lost and alone on a deserted island with no daddy for my poor baby.”’
Claire flinched. ‘Charlie…’
‘Did you ever once ask me if I was okay?’ Charlie steamed on, he almost seemed to have forgotten that Claire was there and was just venting. The other survivors were peeking out of their shelters again. ‘Did you ever think that maybe I was having a tough time too? That maybe I needed some help? That maybe I needed someone who I could confide in? You wonder why I didn’t tell you about the sodding drugs? Look at the way you reacted!’
‘Because you lied to me!’ Claire burst out, disbelieving. ‘If you’d just told me back at beginning then maybe we wouldn’t still be on about the fucking drugs!’
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, glowering, before Charlie’s face creased into an expression of bewilderment.
‘Did you just say fuck?’
Claire let out a derisive snort and stormed back to her tent, Charlie staring after her.
It wasn’t until her crying son was in her arms that she remembered what their argument had been about in the first place. Swinging back around, she chased after Charlie’s retreating figure for the second time, wheeled him around to face her and smashed her lips up against his in a kiss with enough force to bruise.
Charlie obviously wasn’t sure how to react to this - he seemed frozen until she forced her tongue into his mouth and then he reeled back, away from her. Even then, despite his obvious anger, he looked like he wanted to kiss her again.
‘Don’t believe me if you want,’ Claire said heatedly. ‘Just don’t you dare go anywhere with Hurley.’
She felt his eyes burn incredulous holes into her back as she stormed over to her shelter again. Aaron was silent in her arms as though he was scared of her as well.