lost fic; one of us is a hero
Title: One of Us Is a Hero
Characters: Kate, Jack, Rose, Claire, Desmond
Genre: angst
Rating/warnings: PG-13, character death, infrequent coarse language, adult themes
Spoilers: up to and including the season three finale
Summary: The aftermath of the season three finale through the eyes of five of the castaways.
Disclaimer: Lost belongs to ABC, Darlton, JJ, Bad Robot etc. The lyrics in the cut are from “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias.
~*~
“I was getting sick. Puking. My one tangible contribution to the trek.”
“No, I’m glad you came, Charlie.”
“Every trek needs a coward.”
“You’re not a coward.”
Kate remembers the first time she ever laid eyes on Charlie Pace so clearly it could have been yesterday. He wasn’t exactly an impressive specimen - pale, slightly built and twitchy to an almost comical degree - Kate was certain that he wouldn’t last five minutes. And yet he had proven himself surprisingly resilient.
There weren’t many people in this world who could boast having been clinically dead and then beaten back to life again.
She still had nightmares sometimes about that day, the sound of his sternum cracking beneath Jack’s fists and her own sobs echoing in her ears. The only redeeming feature about these dreams were that they always finished as Charlie took his first joyous, gasping breath - the breath that had brought him back to them.
This time however, she knows that there will be no coming back for him.
She wasn’t there when Charlie died but she’s heard enough from Jack after his interrogation of Desmond to discover the reason behind his death. She stands on the edge of the ocean and sinks into the sand and she shivers, though it’s not cold. The shudder that ripples through her instead comes instead from the knowledge that Charlie’s body is still out there, beneath the waves that are lapping hungrily at her feet.
As she stands there, ankle deep in the water, Kate remembers how utterly shattered Charlie was when Jack brought him back from the brink of death. The blank, dead look in his eyes when he realised that he had failed Claire, that he hadn’t been able to save her.
She wasn’t at all shocked that in the end, he died to save her. After all, he’d already done it once before. No. What shocks Kate is the fact that she simply can’t fathom the idea of dying for anyone - or having someone else die for her for that matter.
She remembers that once, a long time ago, her father told her that true bravery wasn’t the absence of fear, but rather, the decision that something else was more important than being afraid.
She counts to five (slowly under her breath) and closes her eyes as a single tear traces down her face. She steps backwards out of the ocean and treads her way back to her shelter.
This is the only tear that she will ever shed for Charlie - but she will never forget him all the same.
~*~
“You think I’m useless and a junkie to boot.”
“Useless? You’re not useless. That took a lot of guts getting in here and trying to rescue me. I won’t forget that.”
It seemed strange to Jack for a while that he essentially owed his life to a drug addict. But then, what was strange on an island where there was a cloud of black smoke that could kill people and polar bears were found in the midst of a tropical rainforest?
Despite returning the gesture and saving his life in turn, Jack felt like he hadn’t payed Charlie enough attention when he had been alive. He hadn’t even known about Desmond’s prophecies when he had agreed to let Charlie swim into the Looking Glass station. He hadn’t known that he and Claire were less-than-officially together. He didn’t know that he’d nearly died another half dozen times whilst he, Jack, had been away.
The guilt was enough to overwhelm him.
It was stupid, he knew. How could he have known what was to happen, what had been happening while he was away. How could he have changed the outcome? Even if he had asked and known and been aware of what had been going on since he had been gone?
The short answer was that it wasn’t his fault. And yet he still felt somewhat responsible for Charlie’s death. Every time he saw Hurley sitting alone, every time he saw Claire sitting silently and staring blankly out at nothing, every time he saw Desmond hunched over his knees, every time he heard Rose saying her nightly prayers and imploring the Lord to watch over Charlie for them all…
Jack felt guilty because Charlie had been a friend - his friend. He had seen him at his lowest points, at his greatest moments, and everything that came in between. From the very beginning, Charlie had always been there, not always in the foreground or right in the action but he had always been quick to jump in and offer a hand or to make Jack smile - even if he was the one trying to make Charlie feel better.
Somehow though, despite all his best intentions, Jack had never been able to truly save Charlie from anything - death, addiction, himself...the honour of the final of the three was awarded solely to Claire who, despite her initial apprehension to his affections, seemed to grow to understand that Charlie needed her. She and Aaron were his saving grace, the only two people in the world who had been his anchor when he was lost at sea.
And she had saved him, just as Charlie had saved her, as he had saved Jack. If Charlie hadn’t been there the day of the cave in, he - Jack - would have surely died in there. If Charlie hadn’t come back to life after he’d been hung, Jack would have never forgiven himself for letting him die in his arms…
Jack owed his life and (in some small part) his sanity, to a man that the world would remember as little more than a womaniser and a junkie. Jack won’t ever remember him that way - to him Charlie will always be (a flawed man yes, but) a loving man, the only father figure he could ever imagine for Aaron, and a hero in his own right.
And the man who, in the end, saved them all.
~*~
“You did everything that you could do, and you came very close to dying yourself.
“Yeah. Maybe I should have died.”
Rose had always thought the Lord was merciful, that His actions were all part of a larger, more universal plan. But even she had been surprised at His decision to take Charlie from this world. There wasn’t a soul in the beach camp who hadn’t felt the impact of his death. Some felt it more keenly than others of course but the general mood in the camp was bleak now, with a communal sense of grief unfelt with all of the previous deaths.
Rose had known almost as soon as she had first spoken to him that Charlie had once been a man of great faith. And yet there was something in his manner that had called out silently, beseechingly. He had come to the island as a lost soul, wandering blindly, searching for something that his previous life had denied him.
Despite his shattered faith, his fragmented soul, he was able to love unconditionally and immediately. He was always a willing helper to anyone who cared to ask, a smile just when you needed one, a hand to help you to your feet when you couldn’t stand alone.
Why would a merciful Lord bring such a man to a place like this? Why would He test him and hurt him and break him down? Why would He give him a chance to redeem himself only to take him away again from those who had grown to love him?
It makes her insides feel heavy to admit it, but Rose is well aware that once you’ve done all you are meant to do in this world to do it’s only a matter of time before you leave it again. Some people spend years denying that their time is up, struggling on through their lives. Charlie it seemed had realised that his time was nearly up and he had left peacefully and with nary a complaint.
It might have been God’s will that Charlie should die - but it was Charlie’s acceptance of this fact that had ultimately been the reason for his death.
Nobody who had been left behind by him seemed to understand that maybe Charlie could have stayed longer (maybe he could have married, raised a family, loved and laughed and lived) but once you begin to realise that you’ve set out to achieve everything you ever wanted to do in life, when you start to think that there might be somewhere else you’re meant to be, there is no turning back.
Rose prays for him every night, her hands pressed together firmly. She prays that he has found his peace and that the ones he left behind will one day find theirs, in this new world without him.
~*~
“I just wanted to take care of you…”
From their very first meeting, all Charlie had seemed to want to do was to look after Claire in any way he could.
At first it was just little things; an extra blanket, a slightly larger helping of food, a bottle of water. When she moved up to the caves there was his company, a hand to make herself a cosy nook to sleep in, someone to sit with her and keep watch throughout the dark nights when Ethan was terrorizing her…
He sacrificed himself to try and rescue her, helped her to remember herself when she had forgotten everything, built her beach shelter, rescued Aaron from Rousseau, took care of Aaron so that she could - in turn - take care of herself. He brought her the vaccine, protected her from his own demons so that she wouldn’t worry herself about him, shielded her from all harm...
And despite his best intentions he had still ended up hurting her in the end.
He had lied to her more than once. About Ethan, about the drugs, about Desmond’s flashes, the real reason he was going to The Looking Glass station…
The Looking Glass incident had made her far angrier than any of the other times. If he had told her she wouldn’t have let him go. Or at the very least, before he went she would have told him that she…
And what hurt the most about Charlie leaving her and basically going to his death was the knowledge that he had done it deliberately. He had truly believed that dying for her would be a better course of action than to stay with her here and wait for rescue to come in its own time for them. And if it didn’t - well then they could have stayed here together couldn’t they? What did rescue mean to Claire in the short term if she was going to be leaving this place without Charlie?
He had come to mean so much to her in such a short time. With his arms around her and his whispered reassurances in her ear she felt warm and completely safe even on the darkest nights when the moon and stars were hidden by clouds and there were cold voices whispering terrible things from the jungle.
When she awakes from both dreams and nightmares she reaches out to touch him and he’s not there and when she cries he’s not there to wipe away her tears. Desmond has been stubbornly insisting ever since it happened that Charlie was a hero and that his sacrifice for her was one of the sort of love and devotion one only reads about in fairytales.
Claire doesn’t feel like she’s in a fairytale. The fairytale was having Charlie with her, alive and whole, holding her so close that she could feel his heartbeat matching her own, could feel his breath against her skin…
You won’t ever hear Claire calling Charlie a hero - she remembers him as the man who taught her how to trust again, the man who taught her to love again, the one man who will hold a place in her heart forever and the only man worthy to be the father of her son.
Because in the end, he wasn’t a hero to her - she loved him just as her Charlie.
~*~
“You and I both know. You're not supposed to take my place, brother.”
Desmond remembers the sick feeling in his stomach, the burn of cold glass against the palm of his hand, the blurred vision that came from his tears as he sank slowly to the ground in the Looking Glass station and let his grief completely overwhelm him…
Desmond remembers a cheeky smile, a red guitar pierced with an arrow, torn jeans, a rumpled mane of blonde hair set atop a set of boyish features that belied the complex, analytical, creative mind beneath…
Desmond remembers crying so hard that he was actually sick, remembers screaming out his anguish until his voice gave out completely, remembers how his hands trembled and shook as he clutched at his face and hair…
Desmond remembers Claire’s face when he told her what happened. He remembers Jack’s anger, Kate’s incredulity, Hurley’s tears, Jin’s confusion…
Desmond remembers being physically unable to stand up, to swim out of the station, to avenge Charlie’s death, to make sure that the others found out that Naomi wasn’t with Penny, that it was the wrong boat…
He remembers every single flash. Every single way that Charlie died. Arrows and rocks and water and lightning and…
Nothing could have prepared Desmond for the reality of Charlie’s death. Nothing could have stopped his heart from breaking as he watched Charlie finally accept his fate whilst he, Desmond, cowered outside the door and lost his shit.
Charlie had stared death in the face a dozen times and although he had been afraid, he had still gone to his death. He had denied Desmond the opportunity to take his place, he had made sure that everything happened the way it was supposed to.
Through a haze of grief, Desmond finds himself rocking back and forth, tears and gasping breaths, and he begins to sing. Quietly at first, then louder and louder until his sobs stop choking him and he’s singing out at the ocean and one by one the other survivors lift their heads and listen intently to his words.
“I said maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me. You’re gonna be the one that saves me. You’re gonna be the one that saves me. And after all - you’re my Wonderwall.” He pauses to swipe angrily at his tears and then mutters to himself, mutinously. “You were my bloody Wonderwall.”
Everyone here seems to have a hero complex of some kind. Jack tries too hard to be one, Sawyer tries not to be one and Desmond tried his best to become one and somehow he ended up failing all the same.
He’s not a hero, he never will be. He’s the man who let Charlie Pace die and Charlie will forever be - at least in his mind - the hero who gave his life so that a coward could live.