Caduceator
by icedteainthebag

Email: davephile@yahoo.com 
Rating: R

Summary: He was seven years old.

Tw: implied child sexual abuse and assault. Filler to explain
Charlie's estrangement from his mother in Home Again
(S10x4)


Quiet whispers amid darkened pews, mahogany-walled offices
like closets, dark and smelling of old paper and incense,
candlelight and fear and moving up, beyond himself, above his
body.

The voice says it's okay but it's not.

Charlie recalls those dark moments like shards of stained glass
that endlessly pierce him, that press deeper with time. He
envies those who can forget, who can put it all away and lock it
up and never pull it out. Why can't I be one of those people,
he's asked.

But he never was one of those people.

This pain was deep, so deep he forgot about most of what it
was like to be young. There were months and years of his life
that had gone dark, like they didn't exist. A few sparse
memories remained, and of those, even fewer were happy. Bill
and Dana would go out for hours and explore the timber and
bring their mud-covered selves back with insects and sticks and
rocks and he would lie up on his bed, listening to them chatter,
listening to their mother's approval, waiting for a dream like
that to happen to him.

He was no longer curious. He was no longer interested. He was
no longer a child.

He was seven years old.

His sister, his beautiful sister, with her freckled cheeks and
stunning hair and her obsession with the hard science of the
natural world and the mythology of the stars. Her innocence
was grand, so grand, in a world where he recoiled from the idea
of joy because joy might hurt.

Dana, whose love for him had shone through her eyes and her
cautious cuddles when he flinched in her arms.

Charlie remembers showing Dana how to use a B.B. gun. He
taught her to aim at snakes, real snakes, and when she cried
when she killed one he was not upset. The snake may have
been an innocent, but not all snakes are, and he knew she
would eventually encounter one and need to defend herself.
Maybe she would have this a gun in her hand and the strength
to use it.

Sometimes he fantasized about taking that gun and 

Once, Father Terrence gave him a quarter, a quarter to go buy a
pack of gum or a bag of candy or "whatever you want."

Charlie wanted to buy his freedom, to pay this quarter back to
the man on a guarantee that he wouldn't be touched again. But
it was too little to offer, though it was all he had.

This quarter he kept balled up in his fist all the way home that
day.

This quarter he kept for several years in a drawer.

This quarter, he threw at Maggie in his rage, hit her in the
cheek where her tears began to fall, left her with a reddening
welt that didn't do nearly enough to sate him. 

Do you want to know pain? he asked, an indignant teen, a
wreck of a young man. Mom, I know pain.

She stared at him, horrified, the truth in her eyes. She quietly
stopped making him go to church because she knew. She knew.

And that is when his true anger began, his anger directed solely
at her. For not protecting him, for ignoring his subtle
insinuations that something was just not right. Whether she had
her head in the sand or was afraid to acknowledge the truth in
front of her (in the shadows, in the corners), he would never
truly know. No matter what she said, or what she tried to
explain, he would never truly know.

As soon as he turned 18, he left. It was all the power he had.
She would pay this price, she would regret her denials, she
would get sick at her shifting eyes and sweet smiles at the man
who she had to know, she had to know, was destroying her son.

He left no phone number, no details on his life. Because this
was finally his life, and he was going to control it. Control
where he went and what he did. Control who he spoke to, who
came into his heart and was able to leave it. He would give this
permission only to those who earned it and to those he could
trust.

As time went by, this continued to be a very small number and
at moments, he realized, he couldn't even earn his own trust.

This zero sum game lasted for years, each anniversary of his
departure marked with a bottle of bourbon and the thought that
Maggie was aching inside, dying inside, just like he did.

Bill calls him one night, years and years in; he'd reluctantly and
under duress given his older brother his contact information for
"the sake of the kids, so the kids can know their uncle."

"Come on, man," he'd said at the time. "What gives?"

Not him. Still not him.

But this call is different; Bill sounds like he needs something
and this is a rare event indeed from someone who never needs
anything from anyone. Charlie listens to his request, his heart
pounding within his rib cage, reinforced and protected.

"Why should I?" he asks.

"She only asked for you. Only you," Bill says. "Dana's there
with her now. She's crying and begging me to get you to call."

His little sister, now armed with her own gun, now grown up
into her own self with her own damage he's only heard about
filtered through crackling phone lines and manipulated points
of view.

-

Her voice, wavering on the line, is that of a desperate angel he
used to know.