breathe
Characters: Wren then Wren and Charlie Setting: her room/cafeteria
Wren stared at the computer screen, and while she read the whole message, one particular part stood out to her, like it was burning it's way onto her retinas.
But if you don't - I'll stay away.
There had been a sick feeling in her stomach while they'd been replying back and forth. It got worse, until she had to rush to the bathroom to lose what little was in her stomach in the first place. She coughed and curled up, having massive trouble breathing. Or, no. That wasn't quite it. She was breathing too much, too fast. Hyperventilating. It felt like she couldn't get enough air, though. Like all of it had been sucked out of the room.
Slumping over onto her side, she put her arms over her head, trying to shut everything out, but it felt like there was too much going on. The lights were too bright, she could hear the buzz of the electricity, she was breathing too fast, her heart thudded in her chest.
It all came with a dreaded certainty that everything was crashing down around her ears. She’d found people she liked, people she wanted in her life and they were fleeing at an alarming rate. She’d given advice earlier in the day, and she was probably wrong. She wasn’t qualified to guide anyone. Adam was going to work out that she wasn’t worth his time either. Everything was going to go away, and it was going to be just like before, only she wouldn’t be wading through a sea of bodies, she’d be drowning in an ocean of the indifferent.
There was a mewling sound, and it took her longer than it should have to recognize it was her. She was crying and that was something Wren didn’t really do. She often times felt disconnected, even if it was just slightly, from everything around her. So even when bad things happened, sometimes it was like it was happening to someone else. It was often how she felt when Brian would stay at her house at the commune.
It felt like it took forever, and an exhaustion took her, but eventually she started to calm down. She sniffled, and wiped at her eyes, slowly sitting up.
But if you don't - I'll stay away.
But if you don't - I'll stay away.
But if you don't - I'll stay away.
Maybe she just needed to find him. Make it better somehow. Try to make it better. Try...anything. Because she couldn’t breathe, and she was sick, and this wasn’t okay. She needed to try and make it okay.
~*~*~*~
After Wren recovered, she stared at her computer again. She re-read her conversation with Chester, over, and over, and in the end she felt absolutely no better. And that twist in her stomach wouldn’t ease. Not even a little. Squeezing her eyes shut, she went to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth, then left. She wandered, not sure where to find him, but she quickly discovered he was nowhere to be found in block B.
That brought her to block A. She rushed as fast as she could through the underground tunnel, running outright by the time she got to the elevator, and she hit the button about six times before the doors opened. Practically falling into it, she got herself back up to the cafeteria, not even sure where to start looking. She hadn’t even truly noticed that she’d splashed through water on her way through the tunnel.
When she walked into the room, she noticed that it wasn’t vacant. And even if he wasn’t facing her, she knew him instantly. There was the man in question, drinking.
Charlie had been there for a while. In fact, he had headed to the bar the moment he had realised that she wasn’t going to reply to his latest message. Not that he was surprised: he had felt the end of things for a while now. And, sure, he realised that getting drunk was a bad plan. He’d realised that after the first day. But, right now: he didn’t give a fuck. He needed to lose himself and this was the quickest and easiest way to do that. So, he’d gone solo, drinking shots of hard liquor, downing one after another and waiting for oblivion to take him.
She watched him for a long moment--he clearly hadn’t noticed her presence. Now that she’d found him, she didn’t know what to do. In the end, she quietly walked up to him, and took a seat beside him. Reaching out, she took the bottle, and after a short consideration, she took a pull from the bottle, immediately squinting her eyes shut and coughing when she was done.
Charlie looked over as the bottle was taken off him. When he saw who it was, he looked surprised for a moment, then narrowed his eyes and took the bottle back, practically pouting. She wasn’t meant to be here. He was meant to be drowning his sorrows. the object of those sorrows was not meant to rock up and join him. That wasn’t how this shit worked.
Wren didn’t protest when he took the bottle back, and resisted what she wanted to do. “Tell me to go away, and I will.” she said, voice almost too quiet to hear, but not quite. She probably needed another drink if she was going to stay, but he wasn’t sharing. However, she wasn’t going to get up and get her own yet either. Her eyes were firmly ahead of them, not putting the pressure of her gaze on him as she made the offer.
“Free country,” he said, pouring himself another shot and then setting the bottle between them before he downed it.
She took the bottle and took another drink from it, then she did look at him. She shifted, facing him. “You’re angry with me.” she said.
“Not angry with you,” Charlie said, leaning over the bar and snagging her a glass. He pushed it across to her, then took the bottle and poured them both a shot.
"Then what is this?" she asked, motioning to him. She wanted to find that out before she got into the fact that she'd gone looking for him in the first place. Before she started to talk to him, or attempt to. She was sure that she wouldn't do well.
“It’s alcohol,” he said, clearly stating the obvious.
Wren gave him a Look. "I mean...what is this, with you, drinking the alcohol. And you're being very snappy with me. So, if you aren't angry with me, what's going on?" she asked, trying to be much more thorough with her questions this time.
Charlie looked across at her, then downed the next shot. “I’m not angry at you,” he said, sullenly. “Don’t like the situation, but that doesn’t translate to me being angry at you.” He looked away, not in the mood to talk. He was always this way when he was upset: he got insular, his inner petulant child showing through clearly.
Wren was certain she'd never really seen him like this. He did say he wasn't going to be pretending anymore. she reminded herself. Perhaps this was him, not pretending. He also sounded like she had. That she wasn't happy with things but it didn't mean she was mad at him. "I came looking for you." she told him. "I don't like the situation either." She was surprisingly calm. She'd felt a lot more like she was falling apart earlier, but realized with him in this state, she automatically dialed her own upset back.
“You didn’t have to come looking for me,” he told her, still not looking at her. He had been trying to do the right thing. Clearly him being in her life had been bad for her, and so - no matter how desperately he wanted it, he had made the decision to take himself out of that equation unless she specifically wanted him there for some reason.
"I'm aware." Wren told him. She reached out for the shot he'd poured her, and knocked it back, having to stop and cough for a minute again. "But after we were done messaging, I couldn't breathe." she told him. Which was really downplaying what had really happened, but she didn't want to get into the whole thing.
“I never meant to make you feel that way,” Charlie said, pretty much repeating what he had typed before. Still, he didn’t look at her.
"I know." she told him. She was quiet for a beat, still watching him even if he refused to look at her. And, after waiting another minute, two, she reached out and put her hands on his cheeks, physically turning his head to look at her. "I don't want you to only be around if I 'need' you." she told him. "I will always need you there. You were my first and only friend, and the thought of you not being a part of my life makes me...I don't know. Panic." she told him, frown flickering over her expression. "Please don't abandon me for my own good."
He looked at her, long and hard, overly aware of her palms against his cheeks. Eventually, he spoke. “I can’t be around if you’re going to take my word and my opinion as law and then be miserable about it,” he told her. If she wanted to listen to him and be content with that then fine. He would be more than happy about that. But, if she was going to be miserable with his opinion, but listen to him anyway... That he couldn’t be okay with.
She didn’t let go of his cheeks, not wanting to lose the eye contact. "Can you be patient with me? I still...I still don't know what I'm doing. I still don't know how to do any of this. My life feels like it's absolutely falling apart. Every time I turn around, I just see something else I don't know how to deal with. Can we try to come up with something else? Something together? Or maybe just get to know each other again?" she suggested. "Like you said. Like you were talking about...you said you wanted to get to know who I was now, help me figure things out. Can we do that? Is the option still there?"
Charlie eased himself back out of her touch. He was drunk, he knew that, but he wasn't drunk enough yet to completely lose all sense. Just drunk enough to know that what he wanted to do was just throw it all away and kiss her. Kiss her the way he had always wanted to kiss her. Kiss her the way he'd dreamed of being able to kiss her. But - he wasn't drunk enough for that, because he wasn't drunk enough to stop being aware that if she was confused and unbalanced by everything now, his throwing his feelings for her into the mix would only make things exponentially worse. After all, he had never presented himself to her as anything but her friend. She had no idea how he really felt. "I don't know, Wren," he said, rotating his empty glass on the bartop. "I'd like to - but I don't know if I'm good for you. I don't know if this is what you should want."
She let him go when he pulled back, sort of only truly aware of it when he did so. She sat back herself, recognizing that her behavior had likely been out of line. She bit her tongue on the 'I'm sorry' that tried to make it out, because he was talking. Wren fell quiet as he said that, and her shoulders slumped. She sat there for a long moment, then looked at the bottle again. She poured herself another drink, and it made her cough less this time when it burned down her throat. She really wanted to say something, but she didn't have the words. That sick feeling was twisting in her stomach again, and she didn't really want to have the bad reaction she'd had in her room right there where he could see it.
He was, however, drunk enough to turn his head to look at her. "What - you're not going to argue with me now?" he asked. He was disappointed and felt a little unreasonably betrayed that she hadn't immediately leaped to argue against his assertion that he wasn't good for her. He wanted her to fight harder for them.
"I am unsure what may sway your stance." Wren told him. "And I need to stop feeling sick first." she added, squeezing her eyes shut. She needed to stop feeling sick, she wasn't going to throw up--she didn't even think there were public bathrooms in this place, and the last thing she wanted to do tonight was clean up sick off the floor. She drew in deep breaths, trying to keep them slow.
"Then you need to stop drinking," he said, firmly, reaching for her glass. If she felt sick, that made things understandable for now. He got up off his stool and headed, a little unsteadily, around to the other side of the bar, searching. He found a bottle of still water and poured her a glass, spilling some of it onto the bar top - his hand was not the steadiest. "You should drink that," he told her.
"I don't feel sick because of that." she told him, though she did drink the water. "And you're...very unsteady." she noted. "You shouldn't be drinking either." she added. "Why are you, anyhow?" she asked, watching him.
"I felt like it," he told her, pouring an equally sloppy glass of water for himself. Part of him knew he was being unfair right now. But he was drunk and he was in a bad mood, and that had always affected his communication skills, shutting them firmly down. He gave a sigh and looked over at her. “I don’t like this. That you feel like that. That I’m the cause. I wanted to be a good thing in your life and I’m not. Apparently now I make you miserable just by being me. So, I’m losing you. And if that’s the case - I need another drink.”
At his first statement, Wren was prepared to leave. She even started to do so, because he so very clearly wanted nothing to do with her. He spoke again, however, and she looked back at him. She said nothing, watching him for a truly miserable minute before she found her voice again. "Adapt." she told him. "I've been having to since the day you disappeared. Maybe it's time you learned to adapt too. You said before that you wanted to learn who I am now. Well, who I am now may require you to adjust. What you think of me, who you think I am and how you react to me. Don't just sit there and drink, because you made me feel bad. Say you're sorry, and make it better. Don't just give up, and decide it's done. If that's the case, then I wasn't that important to you in the first place. You aren't 'losing' me, unless this is all you plan on doing." she said, gesturing to the bottle. "If you failed to notice, I just chased after you."
“‘Ve already said sorry for making you feel bad. But that didn’t make you feel any less bad,” Charlie pointed out to her. “I don’t want you to feel bad. I hate that I did. I’m sorry that I did,” he told her.
Wren had never felt like she'd had to take care of Chester. Never. But she sure as hell did now. It even went beyond that. She felt like he was throwing himself off the nearest cliff, because she didn't fall in line and react how he wanted her to. Because she didn't instantaneously 'feel better' when he hurt her feelings. Wren shut her eyes. "I didn't ask for another apology. I accept yours. I was just saying what was a better course of action than the one you've chosen." Eye of the storm. She was going to have to find it again. Shut herself down and find a calm place to get someone else through things.
Charlie frowned at her. "But... You said I should apologise," he said, looking confused, all wrinkled brow and floppy curly hair. It was a puppish look if ever there was one. "But... Okay, you've accepted my 'pology. What now?" he asked her. He made a face which said he was considering things. "I can promise to try not to make you feel bad again in the future?" he suggested. He had done that in the past. He had just edited large chunks, he had been careful what he said to her and how he put things. The issue was that, back then, he was already lying to her. Now, it felt different. But clearly being very honest didn't help her.
"I meant--" Wren started, but cut herself off. "Doesn't matter." she said, sighing. She looked at the water she had, and took another drink, but she was wondering if more of the alcohol wouldn't make her feel better. At least mentally. Maybe then she'd be able to find that calm space again, where she stopped feeling like her world had tilted so far off it's axis that she no longer had any sense of up or down. She shook her head, however, at his offer. "I would have the feeling that you were just...telling me what I wanted to hear, and I don't want that. I think people have done that my whole life and Chester, you can't even imagine what it's done." she said, a moment of honesty for the both of them. She needed to hear it out loud just as much as he did.
"See - that's just what I was trying to avoid!" Charlie proclaimed. "This time, I wanted to be honest with you. Like totally, actually, really, honestly honest. No holds barred and nothing like that, just you... And me... But if it's going to upset you then... I... I really care about you Wren. Like a lot a lot. Loads. But no matter what I do, I seem to upset you and I don't want that. I don't want to be that guy. And like I feel like it's gonna be wrong no matter what I do now."
Wren definitely decided she needed another drink. She glanced around for the alcohol, and got it, taking another pull, which had her squinting one eye shut, but oh well. She was quiet for what felt like forever, but wasn't actually that long. "If you actually care about me that much," she said, speaking slowly not for his benefit, but her own. "Then you shouldn't want me to be some useless, broken little doll you keep in a room away from everything and everyone else all the time." she said, not quite looking at him. "I know...I know I'm broken. I know. But I'm still here. I made it this far." She looked up at him then, and she turned her arms over, where the scars were. "See? I've been through a lot." she said.
And, because she was in such a state, she reached out to take his hand, and she brushed his fingertips over one of the worst ones. "Upsetting me isn't the end of the world." she told him. "Shutting me down, is." She let go of his hand, sort of realizing what she'd done in the first place. "You're never going to be able to only say things to me that won't upset me, and it's hurtful to think that you think me that fragile that you would have to. Just because I'm upset doesn't mean I'm going to turn my back on you. Sometimes it just might mean I need to process." She bit her lower lip a moment. "And I get to argue." Which she decided just this second.
She may have let go of his hand, but he didn't let go of her arm, instead gently taking hold of it properly, the pad of his thumb brushing over her skin, on the end of the scar she'd directed him to, though he didn't quite realise that was what he was doing. "I don't think you're useless," he told her. "I don't think you're broken. I'm just used to how things always were. But I'll try and change. I just... I don't think you're broken, but you think you're broken and I don't want to make you think that more. So - I'll try and change, if you try not to think that I think you're like that?" he suggested, trying to think whether that actually made sense, or whether it was merely a drunken ramble. It felt like it made sense to him.
Goosebumps rose up on her skin, and a little shiver worked it's way down her spine at the light touches there, but she didn't try to get her arm back away from him. As confusing as his statement was, she did actually understand it. "I don't think you have to change, so much as just adjust." she said, because she did think that. "I would't want you to change. Just take in new information and react accordingly." she said. She looked down at the bartop, and then took another drink from the bottle. "I feel broken." she told him. "I feel like...my whole world is this big storm? And I have to shut it all down sometimes, just to function."
Charlie knew how that felt. He still wasn't convinced that he had entirely adjusted to his sentence, to suddenly being a criminal. but he kept his mouth shut about his own feelings, focusing on her instead. "Go on," he pushed, lightly, leaning against the bar across from her, but not letting her go. He attention was entirely on her.
She considered her words before she spoke. "I keep thinking about my mother." she told him. "She brought me to the commune, and I never left. And I feel like that was the right thing to do. Like I'm not cut out for the outside world." she told him. "I don't know how to do anything. I've never had a job. I've never had to pay for anything. I just...I know there's all this stuff out there that I simply have no true concept of. I'm far too old to be that ignorant. But I am."
She shook her head, looking at the bar instead of him. "I still have this drive to help people. It's never gone away. I got here, and some people wanted readings, and I just felt better. But...it's all stupid, isn't it? I don't know anymore. I don't know what to believe. And that...throws me. All the time."
"I'm gonna warn you that I'm probably too drunk to be properly having this conversation, but I'm gonna have it anyway, and if I say stupid things, then that's the alcohol, okay?" Charlie told her, straight off. "But - I think that's kinda normal? I mean, even if you weren't raised the way you were, even if you were out there in the world all the time, you're not any more. You're here, and you've been in this environment that's strange for all of us. Prison - it's like this totally different way of doing things that none of us was used to until we got here and everything. And I think it's perfectly normal for you to cling to things that are normal for you. Like doing readings for people. I mean - look at it. We have a doctor here who didn't have to volunteer to work, but he did. Because prison isn't normal for him - but being a doctor is. And nurses and a cook and... All people who are in a strange environment who are all stepping up to do things that make them feel more like who they were before their lives took a hard turn to the left. So, you feel better doing readings. That doesn't surprise me - it's something you know and it's something people have always come to you for. It's this huge part of who you were. And especially if you're realising how much else you don't know - I think it's really important for you to have that. Otherwise, you're not going to have any pillar to hold onto. Nothing to ground you so you can say 'okay, this is definitely me, let's find out what else is me too'."
At his first statement, Wren actually smiled, just a hint of one. But it was there, as she looked back up at him, and listened. She hadn't thought about things the way he was presenting them. She wanted more definitive answers, she supposed, even if there weren't any. But she got what he was saying. "My problem," she started, so he'd understand, "Is that the doctor went to school, and became a doctor. Carmel was a cook before she got here. She learned how to do that, did it for a living. But this?" she asked, turning then arm over that he wasn't still touching, showing the row of runes arching across her skin. Tattooed there. "Who am I to help guide anyone, when I'm so lost in the woods myself?"
"But - you could do this before you got here. I know you could. I watched you do it for years. And - you must have learned to read the cards and runes and things, right? I mean, you don't just make that up. I've seen that too. The same cards come up and you tell people the same things each time a card comes up. So, you learned what they mean. Same as with the doctor and the cook. Learned skills that require some ability to be able to do it. And... You say you're lost. I think that's allowed. A doctor gets sick. A cook needs to eat. Just because something's what you do doesn't mean that you have to not be that thing yourself."
Wren looked at him, and in the end, decided her point was best made bluntly. She pushed herself up on the bar a little, getting much closer to him, and she got them at eye level. "Look me in the eyes, and tell me you believe in Fate."
Charlie looked her in the eyes, leaning in a little more. "It doesn't matter what I believe," he told her.
"It matters to me." she answered, voice slightly quieter than before.
"I believe that you believe it. I believe that other people believe it. I - I don't know what I believe," he admitted to her. Before it had always seemed like a way to tether her to Brian and the cult, and so he had wanted nothing at all to do with it. Now, to him it felt like a religion. Just because you may not follow that particular religion didn't mean it did not have any validity. It was a matter of faith, not fact.
Wren could accept that answer. She nodded, then sat back down where she'd been, not liking it, but satisfied. "I don't feel like a real person." she told him. "I feel like whoever I might have been got ripped out and other things got stuffed back inside." she added. "And I don't know what that makes me anymore. Besides...uninformed, unable to work in society and thrown to the wolves."
Charlie let her go and walked back round to the other side of the bar, so he could sit next to her on a stool. "When I was eighteen," he told her, deciding that it was a good time to do that - possibly influenced by the alcohol. "I went off to college. I was going to be an architect. I had my whole future planned out. Then I got the call from my parents to say my brother was missing and my entire life changed. Since then, I've spent my life bouncing from... commune to commune. Trying to help people who got themselves stuck there and can't get out on their own. And it was a whole other world for me that I knew nothing about and I was having to be a totally different person. And then I screwed up, and I was arrested for kidnapping. And there was a trial and I was found guilty and... here I am. I'm not saying that I know exactly how you feel, but some of it. I get."
Wren took another drink for three, then curled her arms on the bartop in front of her, resting her cheek against them to pillow her head as she gazed at him, listening. She stayed quiet as she let that sink in. "Didn't you get lonely?" she asked. "Always...being someone else, being somewhere else, never just you?"
"Most of the time," he admitted. "Except for this one time that I met this amazingly great girl. I wasn't so lonely then," he added with a smile.
She smiled a touch then too, taking a moment to just look him over. "I missed you." she told him, voice quiet. She might have added more, but she didn't. It would have taken away from the statement itself. And in that moment, all she wanted him to know was that she'd missed him, very much. Nothing else thrown into the mix diminished that.
“I missed you too, Little Bird,” he said, maintaining the smile and looking her over. He really had. So much.