The Paradox - Chapter Seven
Title: The Paradox - Chapter Seven
Authors: falafel_fiction, sapphire_child and pacejunkie
Character’s: Charlie/Claire, Liam, Penny, cameos from most of the rest of the Losties and numerous flashback characters
Rating: PG
Summary: Charlie chases a Scottish man through the rainy streets of London, which leads him to a fateful meeting in an antique shop. Six years later, he starts to experience strange dreams about being stranded on a mysterious island. As he discovers more about this island and its occupants, he begins to realise that he is living out two different lives simultaneously. What will happen when these two existences finally collide?
Disclaimer: Lost doesn’t belong to any of the three of us (sadly). The Paradox theory belongs to cylune9 and pacejunkie.
Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six
Previously on Lost in "The Paradox"...
Charlie felt himself losing it. His hands were shaking and hot tears were spilling over his eyelids. Karen quickly stripped off her gloves and pulled him into a hug. They stood together for a moment, as Charlie wept against the soft wool of her cardigan. He clung to Karen like she was a life buoy in the middle of an ocean. When Charlie finally raised his head he saw Liam standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his face pinched and considerate.
“Charlie’s just come over all sentimental,” Karen said softly.
Liam reached out a hand and stroked it through his brother’s hair.
“Chin up mate,” he said stiffly. “Don’t cry...you’ll upset Meghan.”
Charlie nodded and sucked up his tears. He sat down in a quiet corner of the living room, watching Meghan giggle as she watched the Muppets Christmas Carol on TV. Later that evening Karen came in to read her daughter her bedtime story. Charlie didn’t try to get involved or interrupt. Karen glanced at him with a pitying stare and even asked him if he would like to read at one point. But Charlie shook his head and kept his eyes turned down. The book Karen was reading was ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. For some reason the story was making Charlie’s skin crawl. He didn’t want to be alone right now, but it felt like the island was invading his every moment.
Charlie excused himself and fled up the stairs. When he stepped into his bedroom he noticed that his guitar strap, several of his ties and various sharp objects had mysteriously disappeared from his shelves and drawers. Liam must have crept in and removed them while he was watching TV. Charlie rolled his eyes. They were making the house suicide proof. He supposed he had set himself up for that.
His day of busy chores had left him feeling exhausted. At first he thought he might sleep easily tonight. When he slipped into his dreams he found that they weren’t as vivid as usual. His dreams were filmy and blurred...
Then Charlie realised why.
He was underwater.
This is it, Charlie realised. He felt his throat constricting and his heartbeat thundering in his chest. He was deep in the ocean, so deep that it was growing dark. He felt himself kicking his back legs, his arms clawing back the water that felt thick as soup. He pushed and fought his way forwards. There was a light up ahead of him. Dying people always see lights don’t they? But this light was shining on...what looked like a surface...
Charlie jerked upright in bed and took a sharp breath into his lungs.
He was drenched in sweat, wide eyed and panting. Once his breathing settled, he released a nervous fearful laugh. He had been worried for a moment there. But no, his other self hadn’t died. It’s okay, he told himself, feeling his pulse slow again, I’m alive! Maybe he wasn’t going to die after all. Charlie felt giddy like he had been leaning over the edge of a cliff and had only pulled himself back at the last moment...
He lay back on his pillow and stared at the moon through the window for a while. But then he realised that a chill was slowly spreading over his skin and goosebumps were rising on his arms. Grimly he realised that it wasn’t quite over yet. His limbs began to stiffen. His chest and wrists felt as if they were being constricted by a thick coarse rope. Charlie still didn’t dare close his eyes. But after a few more minutes of lying awake his head began to throb. It felt as if somebody were beating him around the face. He wanted to stand up and pace the room, but he felt certain his body would seize up and collapse if he tried.
So Charlie sat huddled in bed, sweating and wincing through most of the night. The pain in his head was slowly increasing. At one point his nose began to bleed. He had to hold his sleeve to his nostrils to stem the flow. Charlie chewed his lip, trying to stop himself from crying out. He knew exactly what was happening. His other self was being beaten and interrogated. He could feel the blows and the binding securing him to a chair. It felt like he was experiencing sympathy pains for this other Charlie. He had heard that identical twins sometimes share a certain telepathy, that they could feel each other’s pain and emotions over hundreds of miles. Charlie spent the whole night in terror and agony.
He thought morning would never come, but eventually the light crept into his room. When Charlie heard Liam and Karen breakfasting downstairs in the kitchen, he got out of bed and sat down at his piano. He took out a fresh page of sheet music and held a pencil between his teeth ready to scribble down the notes as they came to him. He flinched at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Liam stuck his head around his door.
“Do you fancy some cereal, Charlie?” he asked. “A cup of coffee maybe?”
Charlie shook his head frantically. “I’m fine, Li. Listen...can you do me a favour? Just...don’t interrupt me for the next hour or so, okay? I really feel the need to concentrate on this new song. But I’ll come downstairs as soon as it’s finished.”
Liam nodded with a reluctant understanding, but he still seemed suspicious of him and carefully left the bedroom door ajar. Charlie sighed and turned back to his piano. He had written so many songs for his friends on the island, but he had yet to write a song just for himself. Or rather his other self. He decided he would write that song now. He hoped this song would reach this other Charlie somehow and distract him from the raining blows of his captor’s fists and the terrible fear of his looming death.
The melody came naturally in a slow steady ripple of notes. The song had a watery feel, but it wasn’t the kind of water that suffocated and drowned you. This was the sort of water that cleansed you, refreshed you and washed away your sins. Charlie played the melody a few times over. Then he closed his eyes and he heard another voice singing and finding lyrics to fit with his music. Charlie realised that he was accompanying his other self. They were writing this song together. They had never been closer than this.
“I told you to shut up!” said a voice, cutting through their melody.
“You know when you get a tune stuck in your head? This song...it just started coming to me. It’s almost finished. I just need to find the bridge...”
Charlie almost laughed. It seemed like his other self was dedicating his final moments to driving his captor’s up the wall. His smile faltered when it occurred to him that this Charlie who was imprisoned in the underwater station really had resigned himself to his fate now. He was starting to feel a pinch of survivor’s guilt. He couldn’t help feeling that if one of them needed to be eliminated from the universe...then it really ought to be him. This other Charlie was twice the man that he was. Claire and Aaron needed him. Charlie would have fallen down on his knees and begged for the forces of fate to take his life instead. But he was too bloody scared. He wasn’t ready to die yet. He wasn’t prepared for it...not like his other self was. So he just kept on playing.
He kept playing until...
...his feet were numb on the pedals.
Pins and needles, Charlie told himself, shaking his feet. He blinked his eyes and tried to focus on his sheet music. His breath caught in his throat. He didn’t remember writing it...but suddenly there was a message scrawled over his notations...
A message that read ‘Not Penny’s Boat’...
Charlie rose from his chair and paced the room, trying to clear his head and get some feeling back into his limbs. But this wasn’t ordinary pins and needles. His feet were freezing. The chill was quickly spreading up his legs and crawling up his chest. He started to feel strangely weightless like he was being lifted from the floor. Charlie sat down, grasping the carpet hairs in his fingers, but it didn’t help. The creeping numbness was above his head now. He couldn’t breathe. He felt his head hitting the floor. His body was flopping all over the place. He was drowning like a fish in the air...
Suddenly a pair of strong arms lifted him by the shoulders.
“Jesus Christ, Charlie!” It was Liam’s voice, hitching with fury and terror. “What did you do? What did you take?! What sodding drugs have you taken?!!”
Charlie shook his head, trying to turn away from Liam’s accusing glare, but his brother was gripping the side of his face. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and...
...there was a small round window. There was a face on the other side of the glass and a hand pressing against his own. At first he thought this was his own reflection, but no. It was the Scottish man. The man who had been the herald of all this. Charlie pushed away from him now...he pushed back into...into darkness. Sightless. Weightlessness. It was almost like returning to the womb. But even so…Charlie could not understand why his other self was so bloody calm. The thing that was scaring him most was not the cold water that surrounded him. It was the body that floated through this water, refusing to fight and struggle...giving into its own merciless death...
“Breathe, Charlie!” Liam cried in desperation. “Breathe!”
But Charlie couldn’t breathe. If he tried to breathe the seawater would pour into his throat and choke him. He felt his mouth filling with foam. It bubbled from the corners of his lips as he clenched his teeth together and his body convulsed on the rug. His vision was growing fainter now, his eyes darkening as his connection with the island rapidly beginning to fade. He couldn’t feel his body or even hear his own thoughts anymore. He was just a pair of lungs, burning with the desire for air. But even the pain would melt away soon...very soon there would be nothing at all.
Charlie was only dimly aware that Liam was lifting him from the carpet and carrying down the stairs in his arms.
“Karen!! Get the car started! We’re taking him to the hospital...”
~*~
“He’s been acting odd,” Liam confessed. “Mood swings and panic attacks, that sort of thing. Then just the other day he starts telling us that he loves us and crying and…well, at first I thought it was a suicide attempt…”
Liam stood in the hospital corridor, speaking in a low murmur to the doctor who had taken charge of his brother’s case. Charlie had been revived in the emergency room and admitted for testing. Now they were just trying to fathom what had happened to him.
“Has he been taking any medications recently?” the doctor asked.
“Well, he’s taking methadone for heroin withdrawal, but…” Liam frowned. “But I’ve been giving him that. He never takes it by himself.”
“Any chance he might have stolen it and taken too much?”
Liam shook his head, “I checked it this morning. I started keeping it under lock and key once I suspected he might do something like this. I don’t know what he could have gotten his hands on. Just check for everything, yeah?”
Karen had to take Megan back home so Liam sat alone in the family area, waiting for news and feeling a sympathetic pain in his chest. He had hoped the piano might be the thing to give Charlie a new focus in his life. But maybe it had been little more than a fool’s hope. He was quickly coming to the conclusion that Karen was right, and he had just been refusing to accept the harsh reality that his brother would require more care than Liam could give. He wondered how Charlie would take the news.
Three hours later the doctor returned with the results of Charlie’s workup.
“Well, Mr. Pace,” the doctor began as he sat down next to him, “I hope you’ll consider this to be good news but I am extremely perplexed.”
“What do you mean?” Liam asked, “Did you find out what he took?”
“Nothing, according to our toxicology tests,” the doctor said, reading from the chart in his hands. “We found no substances whatever in his system apart from the approved amount of methadone that you had informed me of. Nothing more.”
Liam breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s good. But if it wasn’t an overdose then what happened?”
“That’s just it,” the doctor said, shaking his head, “There is nothing physically wrong with him. It wasn’t a reaction to the methadone, the drug wasn’t tainted and he’s been taking it without adverse reaction for quite some time now. We’ve tested him for everything from poison to asthma to cardiac arrest, all negative. He’s perfectly healthy; we simply can’t find a cause for his sudden inability to breathe.”
“So, what does that mean? Can he come home?” asked Liam.
“I see no reason to keep him here now that he’s stable. But I’ve ordered a consultation with Psychiatry and pending their report, he’ll be discharged, with a possible diagnosis of anxiety and depression I suspect.”
So Liam waited another two hours while Charlie met with the Psychiatrist. After an exasperating wait, Liam was finally allowed in to see his brother. Charlie was already up and dressed when he arrived, getting ready to leave.
“Hey,” said Liam, entering the room slowly, “how’re you feeling?”
Charlie looked up and then back down at the shoe he was tying, “They’re telling me it was a panic attack. They’re prescribing anti-depressants and anxiety meds now.”
“Well, that’s good right?” said Liam. “Maybe they’ll help.”
“I don’t need them,” Charlie muttered, still not meeting his eye. “Everybody thinks I’m crazy but I’m not. I know exactly what’s happening to me.”
“I…I don’t think you’re crazy Charlie,” Liam lied, sitting down on the bed next to him. “But if you know what’s going on, I wish you’d clue me in. You can tell me anything, baby brother! But if it has to do with that bloody plane crash...”
Charlie glared at Liam, sprang up and started for the door. “Let’s just go home, Li.”
Charlie was silent the entire trip and Liam felt helpless. He knew his brother was holding back but he had no idea what could have caused him to stop breathing like he had, or to nearly drown his daughter or suddenly go barking mad over a thunderstorm for that matter. None of it was making sense to him but he knew once he got home, Karen would once again bring up the subject of an institution, and Liam didn’t think he had any cards left to play that would dissuade her.
~*~
When they arrived home, Charlie went straight to his room without a word and shut the door. Once he was alone, he pulled the two bottles of pills they had given him out of his pocket and tossed them in the trash. Then he threw himself down on the bed, thinking back on all that had just happened.
His other self had died now. He was sure of it. His connection to the island was now completely severed. A heavy gloom came over him as he grieved for his lost twin. It truly had felt like a part of him had died too - his better part, no less. The other Charlie had friends, a girl he loved, and a baby who was like a son to him. The tragedy of it struck him and he choked on his tears. It was him and yet it wasn’t; Charlie didn’t know if he could ever be that person that had given his life so heroically. Yet he was the one the universe had chosen to preserve.
He had grown so accustomed to his other life playing constantly in the background like music. Now his world was too quiet. It felt like he was carrying a ghost around inside him. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on those people he had come to know but nothing came to him. Somehow he knew when he went to bed that night he would sleep the dreamless sleep of the dead. Charlie was now utterly dependant on that call from Penny to re-establish his link to the island.
He stayed in his room all day. Liam didn’t bother him again until evening.
“Charlie?” he said, poking his head into the dark room. “Dinner’s almost ready if you’d like to join us.”
“Tell Karen thanks, but I’m not hungry,” Charlie muttered from the bed.
Liam sighed, turned on the light and entered fully. “Baby brother, there’s something we need to talk about...”
“If it’s about sending me away to a padded room I already know about that,” Charlie said darkly. “I heard you and Karen talking about it the other day.”
Liam grimaced, “You know I’d rather cut off my arm, right? This is hard for me.”
Charlie sat up abruptly, “Hard for you?! Are you joking? Do you have any idea what this has been like for me?”
“No, Charlie!” cried Liam. “Now that you mention it, I don’t! That’s the whole sodding trouble. So how about you come clean with me? What the bloody hell is going on with you?”
“You promise you’ll hear me out, no matter how it sounds?” said Charlie.
“All right, I promise,” said Liam, settling in to listen.
Charlie spoke for twenty minutes, starting with his first encounter with the Scotsman in London all those years before and the strange warnings from the lady in the antique shop. He told him about the plane, the other passengers he was dreaming about and the parallel existence he’d been experiencing since the crash with the other Charlie on the island. Finally, he explained about the other Charlie drowning and the call he would get from the Scottish man’s girlfriend Penny that would lead him back to the island with a rescue team.
Liam didn’t interrupt once but the longer Charlie went on, the more strangely Liam looked at his brother, straining to follow as if Charlie were someone he didn’t know at all and was speaking in a foreign tongue. When he was finished, Charlie feared he had accomplished little more but to convince his brother that having him committed was the right thing to do.
“Look,” said Charlie when Liam had still not responded, “I know what you must think of all this...”
“Charlie, even if this were all true,” Liam interrupted, “It doesn’t solve my problem. I still have to be concerned for Meghan’s safety and Karen isn’t comfortable with you in the house anymore. You’ve got to see things from my side!”
Charlie snorted, realising that Liam hadn’t considered a single thing he had said.
“So you’re choosing your family over me again?” he muttered bitterly.
Liam threw up his hands, “I’m trying to help you, you ungrateful wanker!”
“You can’t help me!” Charlie snapped back. “All I need from you is time - time to prove I’m not crazy.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“So far everything the lady from the antique shop told me has come true,” Charlie explained. “All that’s left is Penny. She’s supposed to call me on Christmas Eve. All I’m asking is that you hold off on your decision to call in the men in white coats to pack me off to the funny farm until after Christmas. Just see if I’m right.”
When Liam didn’t answer, Charlie went on.
“You can lock me up in my room if it makes Karen feel better. I’ll stay away from Meghan. Anything you want. Just give me one more day Liam.”
It was December twenty-third. One more day to see if this Penny would call and if not, then he would have no choice but to do what Karen wanted.
“Okay,” said Liam. “I’ll fix it with Karen. You should spend Christmas with us anyway. She’ll understand. But Charlie, if you’re wrong about this,” Liam continued warningly. “I won’t be able to do anything for you.”
“I know, but don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll call. She has to.”