Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2010-09-03 01:41 am
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2010-09-03 01:41 am
Charlie - The Light of Grace
Fandom: Beyond the Rift
Title: The Light of Grace
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iluvroadrunner6
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Charlie Wellman, Neil Porter.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
tamingthemuse Prompt: As for those who disbelieved, their deeds are like a mirage in a desert.
Content Warning: Character death, war situations.
Summary: He should have seen it coming.
Author’s Note: So this is an OC I’m thinking about tossing into BtR, and I’m not really sure of him as a muse yet, but he got REALLY LOUD in terms of this prompt. The basics: he’s an Angel of Death who also decided to join the army, thinking that he’d never see combat. Then 9/11 and the War in Iraq happened, and that didn’t work so well. So that’s that. I even wrote it in present tense! Also, BtR peeps, if you have any crit for me, lemme know. Because I would like to play him in the game at some point.
Disclaimer: This … is mostly mine. Don’t steal.
He should have seen it coming.
He probably did see it coming. He sees so many deaths every day that his brain probably just shuffled it away with the rest of them and tried to make him forget he saw it. Neil’s death is also one he never wants to even consider, but he knows that it’s coming. His calling somehow blares through the explosions and gunfire of the battle field, and it doesn’t matter who he’s working on right then. He’s needed somewhere, and he considers his calling first before anything else. He’s an angel, after all. And this is his best friend.
Neil has dragged himself over behind one of the fallen walls, bleeding heavily from his side. It didn’t take Charlie long to find him. He sits down next to him, leaning back against the brick and trying to drown out the sounds around him and focus on what he was supposed to do. He wouldn’t say that it had gotten easier over time, but he had started to dissociate a little more, bottling up the emotions so that he could do his job and not necessarily letting them out later. It was a dangerous way to live, especially for an angel of death, but it is what he needs to do to survive here.
The setting itself is familiar. He and Neil used to sit against the back wall of their high school after football practice, just talking and hanging out without a care in the world. He wishes, for a moment, that they could go back there and make different decisions—ones that wouldn’t end with them here, at this moment in time—but if anyone knew how unavoidable death was, it was Charlie Wellman. So he just sits with him, placing one hand on his side, using his abilities to take away the pain of the death and getting him to focus a little more. Neil’s eyes are glassy, unfocused, but he manages to turn enough to look at Charlie, and give him half of a scared smile.
“This probably isn’t gonna be good for me, is it?”
Charlie places one hand on the wound, pushing up as though he’s trying to stop the bleeding, while the other comes across his body and holding it out to his friend. Neil weakly takes it, gripping Charlie’s hand and Charlie gives him a weak smile. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got you.”
Neil swallows shakily, before starting to glance around at the last things he’s going to see. “Y’know, I never asked—you believe in God, Wellman?”
His first reaction is to say no. His parents never raised him to be a believer in a higher being, mostly because they are angels. There had never been any evidence to the contrary. But when it comes to a place like this—in a war for reasons that the ones waging it couldn’t explain—he had to believe that there was something more to it than luck and skill. Faith in something bigger than what he is able to see probably helped him make it through this war without losing his mind a long time ago from all the deaths he sees and processes every day. After all—where did he help them go if not to somewhere transcendent? What he’s unsure about, however, is whether or not he believes that that’s God.
“You know,” he says with a bit of a smirk. “I’ve never really thought about it until right now.”
Neil laughs, something that turns into a cough towards the end. The heat of the desert is pressing down on them like a vice, and it makes it hard to breathe, but Charlie isn’t so concerned with that at the moment. He’s just worrying about helping his friend. “Think you do,” Neil rasps. “Not sure you could sit here with me lookin’ so goddamn calm otherwise.”
Charlie’s hand tightens in his as he gives him a half a smirk. “Or maybe I’m just happy to see your sorry ass go, ever think of that? One less back I have to watch.” He chokes up towards the end, and Neil’s hand tenses through a spasm as more blood spills between Charlie’s fingers. He looks up at his friend, a bit of a broken look in his eyes as he asks the next question.
“Think I’m goin’ to a good place?”
“Yeah,” Charlie nods. “Yeah, I do.”
Neil relaxes a bit at that, before his head falls back a bit and his breathing stops. Charlie has been doing this job long enough to know when someone dies, and when he finishes processing the situation—leading him away from the battle and towards the version of Valhalla or Heaven or whatever it is that awaits him on the other side. Once he finishes and the safety net of his job as an angel is gone, the wave of grief that crashes over him is unstoppable.
Charlie feels grief with every death, but understands that it’s a natural part of the circle of life. People need to die in order for the world to keep moving on, and he knows that his job is important. However, this grief isn’t the residual grief that a person would feel for any deceased—this is his best friend. A man that is the closest thing he’s ever had to a brother. His own personal grief overwhelms all the defenses he had put in place in order to protect him and his mind. His thin semblance of soldier’s control cracks, and he collapses over Neil’s lifeless body. He’s unable to stop his wings from exploding out the back of his shirt, shaking with uncontrolled sobs that vibrate through his shoulders. He ignores the fact that there is a war going on around him, or the fact that he is most likely needed back at the medic tent. All he knows is that he didn’t want to be this person anymore. He didn’t want this job.
He just wants his best friend back.
***
They parade him around the VA hospital like he’s some kind of mascot—if ‘broken angel’ is capable of being a mascot.
He doesn’t respond to much as a whole—just lets them wheel him around and talk to him like he actually understands. He does, but he chooses to keep quiet. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t look people in the eye. He doesn’t want to see another death and have to honor it. Instead, he just waits—waits for his parents to visit, waits for the shrinks to deem him a lost cause, just waits for everyone to leave him alone. He doesn’t want to deal with people anymore. Yet no one can seem to see that.
One of the orderlies, a guy he never manages to catch the name of, wheels him around all day and talks to him like it’s some kind of therapy. Charlie doesn’t mind—the guy is interesting enough, and the stuff he talks about isn’t heavy enough to make him want to talk. Occasionally the guy is witty enough to get a snort of laughter out of the stubborn GI, but other than that Charlie is as morose as ever. He didn’t want to talk about his problems. He just wants to have them, mostly as an excuse. It gets him out of a lot of things and he’s happier that way. It’s on one of these long wheelchair trips around the building that Charlie sees it for the first time.
It’s a small room, off the beaten track of the rest of the hospital, which is understandable, because it probably didn’t get a lot of use. He lets the orderly pass it the first time around, but when he reaches it again a few days later, he sticks out a foot, setting it down on the tile in order to force the wheelchair to stop. He looks over at the room, eyes wandering over the doorframe before speaking. His voice is rusty, as it hasn’t been used in months, but he manages to get it to work, raspy and dull as his voice is.
“What’s that?”
“That?” the orderly blinks, before turning back to him. “That’s the chapel. Doesn’t get a lot of use unless there’s family here, but it’s still fully functional.”
He forces them to stay there, watching them for a moment, before pushing up from his chair on shaky, stiff legs and stumbling towards the entrance. The orderly tries to stop him, wanting him to get back into his chair before he hurts himself, but Charlie shoves him off, looking around the interior of the chapel as he lets his weight rest on the doorframe. It’s bigger than he thought it would be. He can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not before the chaplain comes over to him.
“Can I help you with something, soldier?”
Charlie still doesn’t look him in the eye. But he at least he responds.
“Yeah. How does this work, exactly?”
Title: The Light of Grace
Author:
iluvroadrunner6Rating: PG-13
Characters: Charlie Wellman, Neil Porter.
tamingthemuse Prompt: As for those who disbelieved, their deeds are like a mirage in a desert.Content Warning: Character death, war situations.
Summary: He should have seen it coming.
Author’s Note: So this is an OC I’m thinking about tossing into BtR, and I’m not really sure of him as a muse yet, but he got REALLY LOUD in terms of this prompt. The basics: he’s an Angel of Death who also decided to join the army, thinking that he’d never see combat. Then 9/11 and the War in Iraq happened, and that didn’t work so well. So that’s that. I even wrote it in present tense! Also, BtR peeps, if you have any crit for me, lemme know. Because I would like to play him in the game at some point.
Disclaimer: This … is mostly mine. Don’t steal.
He should have seen it coming.
He probably did see it coming. He sees so many deaths every day that his brain probably just shuffled it away with the rest of them and tried to make him forget he saw it. Neil’s death is also one he never wants to even consider, but he knows that it’s coming. His calling somehow blares through the explosions and gunfire of the battle field, and it doesn’t matter who he’s working on right then. He’s needed somewhere, and he considers his calling first before anything else. He’s an angel, after all. And this is his best friend.
Neil has dragged himself over behind one of the fallen walls, bleeding heavily from his side. It didn’t take Charlie long to find him. He sits down next to him, leaning back against the brick and trying to drown out the sounds around him and focus on what he was supposed to do. He wouldn’t say that it had gotten easier over time, but he had started to dissociate a little more, bottling up the emotions so that he could do his job and not necessarily letting them out later. It was a dangerous way to live, especially for an angel of death, but it is what he needs to do to survive here.
The setting itself is familiar. He and Neil used to sit against the back wall of their high school after football practice, just talking and hanging out without a care in the world. He wishes, for a moment, that they could go back there and make different decisions—ones that wouldn’t end with them here, at this moment in time—but if anyone knew how unavoidable death was, it was Charlie Wellman. So he just sits with him, placing one hand on his side, using his abilities to take away the pain of the death and getting him to focus a little more. Neil’s eyes are glassy, unfocused, but he manages to turn enough to look at Charlie, and give him half of a scared smile.
“This probably isn’t gonna be good for me, is it?”
Charlie places one hand on the wound, pushing up as though he’s trying to stop the bleeding, while the other comes across his body and holding it out to his friend. Neil weakly takes it, gripping Charlie’s hand and Charlie gives him a weak smile. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got you.”
Neil swallows shakily, before starting to glance around at the last things he’s going to see. “Y’know, I never asked—you believe in God, Wellman?”
His first reaction is to say no. His parents never raised him to be a believer in a higher being, mostly because they are angels. There had never been any evidence to the contrary. But when it comes to a place like this—in a war for reasons that the ones waging it couldn’t explain—he had to believe that there was something more to it than luck and skill. Faith in something bigger than what he is able to see probably helped him make it through this war without losing his mind a long time ago from all the deaths he sees and processes every day. After all—where did he help them go if not to somewhere transcendent? What he’s unsure about, however, is whether or not he believes that that’s God.
“You know,” he says with a bit of a smirk. “I’ve never really thought about it until right now.”
Neil laughs, something that turns into a cough towards the end. The heat of the desert is pressing down on them like a vice, and it makes it hard to breathe, but Charlie isn’t so concerned with that at the moment. He’s just worrying about helping his friend. “Think you do,” Neil rasps. “Not sure you could sit here with me lookin’ so goddamn calm otherwise.”
Charlie’s hand tightens in his as he gives him a half a smirk. “Or maybe I’m just happy to see your sorry ass go, ever think of that? One less back I have to watch.” He chokes up towards the end, and Neil’s hand tenses through a spasm as more blood spills between Charlie’s fingers. He looks up at his friend, a bit of a broken look in his eyes as he asks the next question.
“Think I’m goin’ to a good place?”
“Yeah,” Charlie nods. “Yeah, I do.”
Neil relaxes a bit at that, before his head falls back a bit and his breathing stops. Charlie has been doing this job long enough to know when someone dies, and when he finishes processing the situation—leading him away from the battle and towards the version of Valhalla or Heaven or whatever it is that awaits him on the other side. Once he finishes and the safety net of his job as an angel is gone, the wave of grief that crashes over him is unstoppable.
Charlie feels grief with every death, but understands that it’s a natural part of the circle of life. People need to die in order for the world to keep moving on, and he knows that his job is important. However, this grief isn’t the residual grief that a person would feel for any deceased—this is his best friend. A man that is the closest thing he’s ever had to a brother. His own personal grief overwhelms all the defenses he had put in place in order to protect him and his mind. His thin semblance of soldier’s control cracks, and he collapses over Neil’s lifeless body. He’s unable to stop his wings from exploding out the back of his shirt, shaking with uncontrolled sobs that vibrate through his shoulders. He ignores the fact that there is a war going on around him, or the fact that he is most likely needed back at the medic tent. All he knows is that he didn’t want to be this person anymore. He didn’t want this job.
He just wants his best friend back.
***
They parade him around the VA hospital like he’s some kind of mascot—if ‘broken angel’ is capable of being a mascot.
He doesn’t respond to much as a whole—just lets them wheel him around and talk to him like he actually understands. He does, but he chooses to keep quiet. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t look people in the eye. He doesn’t want to see another death and have to honor it. Instead, he just waits—waits for his parents to visit, waits for the shrinks to deem him a lost cause, just waits for everyone to leave him alone. He doesn’t want to deal with people anymore. Yet no one can seem to see that.
One of the orderlies, a guy he never manages to catch the name of, wheels him around all day and talks to him like it’s some kind of therapy. Charlie doesn’t mind—the guy is interesting enough, and the stuff he talks about isn’t heavy enough to make him want to talk. Occasionally the guy is witty enough to get a snort of laughter out of the stubborn GI, but other than that Charlie is as morose as ever. He didn’t want to talk about his problems. He just wants to have them, mostly as an excuse. It gets him out of a lot of things and he’s happier that way. It’s on one of these long wheelchair trips around the building that Charlie sees it for the first time.
It’s a small room, off the beaten track of the rest of the hospital, which is understandable, because it probably didn’t get a lot of use. He lets the orderly pass it the first time around, but when he reaches it again a few days later, he sticks out a foot, setting it down on the tile in order to force the wheelchair to stop. He looks over at the room, eyes wandering over the doorframe before speaking. His voice is rusty, as it hasn’t been used in months, but he manages to get it to work, raspy and dull as his voice is.
“What’s that?”
“That?” the orderly blinks, before turning back to him. “That’s the chapel. Doesn’t get a lot of use unless there’s family here, but it’s still fully functional.”
He forces them to stay there, watching them for a moment, before pushing up from his chair on shaky, stiff legs and stumbling towards the entrance. The orderly tries to stop him, wanting him to get back into his chair before he hurts himself, but Charlie shoves him off, looking around the interior of the chapel as he lets his weight rest on the doorframe. It’s bigger than he thought it would be. He can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not before the chaplain comes over to him.
“Can I help you with something, soldier?”
Charlie still doesn’t look him in the eye. But he at least he responds.
“Yeah. How does this work, exactly?”
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I loved this.
I love, love, love the concept of him and want to see more. I love how Charlie views his calling as a job that is important to carry out, despite his grief, despite what it costs him. It's why Angels of Death are so compelling to me. If you need enabling to bring him over YOU HAVE ALL THE ENABLING FROM ME EVER.
Because I want your OCs. ;__;
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I'm working on it. I'm still figuring out all his little quirks and things and I want to take my time with it but hopefully he will make it over there. Eventually.
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I'm so glad you joined the Rift. Seriously. ;__;
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