Tired, sunken eyes stared back at Charlie from his reflection in the bar’s mirrored splashback, visible over the bottles of spirits, slices of lemon and lime and little, silver measuring cups. The same bottle of beer than he’d ordered nearly thirty minutes before sat, untouched, on the bar between his hands, growing warm.
He didn’t know why today was the day that he’d given in to temptation. He passed Dive every day on his way to and from work and he’d always been able to force himself to walk right on by. Today, however, he hadn’t.
It probably didn’t help that he hadn’t been sleeping very well, not since getting back from the arena. He’d thought it would get better once it was all over and all their people were back but it hadn’t. In fact, losing the comfort of the live feed, which he’d got so used to doggedly monitoring in his every spare moment, had made things worse. Without the distraction, his mind just kept straying back to the sense of terrible realisation he’d experienced in the moment before the box had exploded, taking him with it. It must have barely been a second in reality but echoes of the sheer, overwhelming panic he’d felt seemed to ripple on and on.
He couldn’t help wondering whether Adam had been just as scared when he’d realised he was going to die. The thought made him feel sick. His own “death” had been near enough instantaneous but Adam’s had taken much longer. Charlie had still been able to feel his friend’s body convulsing in the shower, while the cold water pounded down on them both, minutes and minutes after finding him unconscious on the lounge floor and dragging him up the stairs to the bathroom. The wait for the paramedics had felt hopelessly long (although Charlie guessed it could only have been about ten minutes or so by the time they’d broken down the front door and got up to them) and he clearly remembered the heartbreaking feeling of Adam’s body gradually giving up and falling still as he clung to him. He already felt crushingly responsible for Adam’s death but imagining his friend experiencing the kind of terror he had… it was almost too much to bear.
Closing his eyes, he forced down the taste of bile that had risen in the back of his throat. The beer would help wash it away, he knew, but once he started down that path, he didn’t know where he would end up. He’d never been very good at applying the brakes, even when he knew he was hurtling towards an inevitable sheer drop.
He lifted one hand and let his fingertip run around the rim of the bottle while his inner demons did battle with common sense. The words of a song he’d heard at the shop earlier in the day were swimming around in his head:
‘I'm a mess and I will always be.
Do you want to stick around and see me drown?
Fuck, I'm about to lose it all.
I'm a drunk and I will always be
Beggin baby take my hand before I fall back down.
Fuck, I'm about to lose it all.’
Maybe some things really were just inevitable. His eyelids fluttered wildly as he picked the beer bottle up and lifted it slowly to his lips.
Dive wasn’t a place that Rey visited very often, it wasn’t that she didn’t like it there, it was just that she didn’t drink all that much and preferred flavored water to alcohol, There were times though when she would stop by and order some of their spiked lemonade and this was the perfect day for it.
As soon as she opened the door, she felt it, a wave of despair and confusion, someone who was having a very bad time of it and she looked around, trying to guess which of the bar’s patrons it could be and her eyes lit on Charlie almost immediately. Rey didn’t know him really but she’d seen him in the broadcasts from the arena so it didn’t take much to guess what was on his mind. Even if he didn’t want any company, Rey felt drawn to him and walked over to the bar, sat next to him and placed her order. When the bartender had turned away, she looked over at Charlie and said “Hello, I’m Rey, do you mind if I join you?”
Charlie guiltily placed the beer back down on the bar when someone sat next to him. He glanced at the girl out of the corner of his eye. He thought he recognised her from the network but he wouldn’t have been able to remember her name if she hadn’t told him. He wondered why she’d want to come and sit with a sad sack of shit like him but he guessed it was a free country.
“No,” he replied with a shrug. “I don’t mind. I doubt I’ll be great company though.”
“I’m Charlie,” he added.
“I’m Rey,” she replied. “And that’s okay. I know the last few weeks have been tough on us all. Some more so than others.” She didn’t want to bring up the arena, he might not want to talk about that and she certainly couldn’t blame him if he didn’t. “You’re studying that drink awfully hard,” she observed. “Is there something wrong with it.?”
The knot in Charlie’s stomach grew tighter when Rey mentioned the beer in front of him. He bit at a dry piece of skin on one side of his lower lip as he considered his answer.
“There’s nothing wrong with the beer,” he said, putting emphasis on the last word. There was a problem but it wasn’t the beer’s fault, just like it hadn’t been the heroin’s fault or the weed’s fault or the coke’s fault. It hadn’t even been Adam’s fault. Charlie had always made his own, terrible choices. There was no one to blame for his current predicament than himself, although Charlie enjoyed pretending it was all his parents’ fault.
“How come you’re alone?” Charlie asked, trying to deflect attention away from him and his barely touched, warm beer.
“A lot of my friends went home so I spend a lot of time by myself. I’m kind of used to it really, I grew up on another planet and it was just a big desert. The village was tiny so there weren’t many people there,” she stopped and took a breath. “I lived by myself for a long time. Being here is the first time I’ve lived with more than just a few people. I do have my dog though but she can’t come inside so she’s at home.”
Charlie suddenly felt like a dick for probing. Losing friends, in whatever way, was fucking shit and he felt bad for bringing up difficult memories for this girl who’d gone out of her way to approach him, when he was easily the most depressing looking person in the room.
He wasn’t really sure whether he should ask more or not. Rey seemed very open about herself and her life, much more so than he was used to people being. Perhaps it was just that the kind of people he tended to be around had more secrets to guard than the average joe.
“How are you finding it?” he asked, turning his head so he could look at her properly. If nothing else, she was drawing his attention away from the beer for the time being.
“I like it here. It’s been a little over a year now and there have been some hard times but it’s never been boring,” she paused for a moment. She knew that Charlie had been in the Arena and she could understand a little of how he was feeling so she decided to tell the whole story. “I was kidnapped last year, COS took ten of us and tortured us. It was awful but thankfully we all survived but emotionally it took some time.” That wasn’t even taking into account what she’d gone through on the Finalizer before she’d arrived. “I’m sorry for all you went through in the Arena. I know it was difficult.”
Charlie frowned when Rey described her ordeal, his lips parting in a stunned expression. He knew that being in Atlantis and dealing with COS could be intense - he’d witnessed that first hand, even in his relatively short time on the island - but kidnap and torture… that was another level. He couldn’t deny, if he’d known about that particular incident when he’d first arrived, it would have made him think twice about staying.
He gulped and licked his lips, glancing down at the bar, as he tried to think of what to say.
“How did you cope?” he asked after a moment, lifting his head again so he could meet her eyes. “You know, afterwards. How did you carry on?”
“We all had to talk to one of the therapists, I imagine you have to do that too?” Charlie nodded. “For me though what helped me,” she felt her cheeks grow warm. “I had a teacher but he was more than that, he was a friend. He’d been teaching me how to deal with the powers that I have, well I really don’t have them because the Force exists regardless but not everyone is sensitive to it. Luke helped me learn to focus on that, meditate when I was scared, he showed me how to fight the nightmares, I couldn’t have gotten through it without him. But every now and then I still have nightmares but now I can control the fear better. He went home a few months ago, I miss him a lot.” There was so much more that she missed about Luke but she never talked about the more personal side of their relationship. It still confused her, she’d never felt anything like it before but she was grateful for it and for all he’d taught her about life.
Charlie wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. It had taken him a moment but he’d just clicked that she was talking about Luke Skywalker and the sudden and completely inappropriate urge to comment on that fact had tried to take hold of him. Luckily, he’d spent enough time around celebrities, thanks to his dad’s careers, first as an actor and then as a politician, to know how to keep his cool when he needed to. Moreover, he knew exactly what she was going through.
“I lost my best friend a couple of months ago too,” he told her, deciding to let his barrier down just a little, for the sake of a sense of affinity. “Although he definitely wasn’t a teacher. He was a stupid asshole.” He shook his head, giving a mirthless but affectionate snort.
“Even so, he was your friend and that’s hard even if they’re a….stupid asshole,” she said. Rey had learned a good deal about the slang and swear words here but she had a hard time saying them sometimes or remembering which ones were worse than the others. “I’m sorry about your friend, it’s never easy to lose one. I didn’t have many friends for a long time when I was growing up so now that I do, I want to keep them around as much as I can.”
Charlie face fell back into a serious expression and he nodded. Adam had many faults but Charlie had loved him like a brother. Losing him had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to deal with in his life.
“Why?” Charlie asked after a second, glancing back up at Rey. “Didn’t you have many friends?” he clarified. She seemed… well, friendly, so much so that he couldn’t imagine her not having friends.
“Jakku is a small planet, not very many people live there. I lived in the desert, the whole place is a desert actually, and I scavenged for things to sell at the town market. It was small too and most everyone there was an adult. There weren’t any people my age. Every now and then some might come to town but it wasn’t often.” Then she’d happened upon BB8 then Finn and things had changed in a matter of hours. “So I can’t begin to judge how big this place is since I’m used to Jakku being so small.”
Rey’s childhood sounded truly bleak... and Charlie had thought he’d had it bad.
“I don’t envy you,” he said, looking down at the bar with raised eyebrows. “I spent six months in the desert and it nearly made me lose my mind.” If he hadn’t been able to escape into classic comedy, he probably would have. “I can’t really imagine what a whole planet being desert must be like.” He gave an involuntary shudder.
“I’m from LA,” Charlie told her, adding, “On Earth.” It was still weird, having to specify. “It’s pretty much the opposite. Something like four million people live there. There must have been over a thousand kids at my high school.” Still, only one had bothered to stay in touch when he’d been shipped off to rehab in the middle of the night. “It was lonelier than it sounds.”
“I understand. You can be in the middle of all those people and still feel alone. When I first came here, it was like that and then I made some friends.” she took a sip of her drink. “I have heard of Earth, I think most of the people here come from there, from all sorts of times but from Earth itself. It must be a very big place.”
Charlie nodded, watching as she took a drink. He glanced at his own beer but didn’t pick it up again.
“I don’t really know,” Charlie replied honestly. He knew a little about how Earth compared to the other planets in its own solar system but he had no idea about its size in relation to any of the planets in the Star Wars universe which - he had put two and two together - Rey came from. “I guess it’s all just a matter of perspective.”
“Maybe you’ll go there one day,” he added, offering a small smile. “Then you can judge for yourself.” Who knew what was possible in Atlantis?
“Maybe I will. Who knows? I never thought that I’d ever be anywhere but where I started out.” Her life had changed so quickly and then she’d come here. “I couldn’t imagine traveling to another planet not that long ago and certainly not an entirely different universe. It’s all kind of amazing.”
“Believe me, you’re preaching to the converted,” Charlie said with a little smile. If anyone had told him, a few months ago, where he’d be right now, he’d think they were high.
“You’re right, though,” he added after a moment of retrospect, finally trying to think about it all in perspective: how far he’d come since leaving his parents’ beach house and everything he’d faced and dealt with already here in Atlantis. “It is kind of amazing.”
The bartender was on his way past them and Charlie signalled him over.
“Can I get a coke?” he asked, before picking up his nearly full bottle of beer and holding it out. “I’m done with this one.”
He glanced at Rey and gave her a small smile of gratitude, even if she wasn’t completely aware of what it was she’d actually done for him. She’d reminded him of all the reasons he’d decided to stay here in the first place. Atlantis was a fresh start for him and having that kind of opportunity really was amazing. People didn’t get do-overs just every day. He couldn’t throw his away.