#the fallout of Cam's death for Charlie part 1

[reluctantwonderchild]

The Actions of Grief

Under the cut for a really long post

@honeycombwerewolfe

Professionally, Charlie had it all covered. A job that was going well with plenty of career prospects. From most people’s perspectives, she had it all going her way. Personally, though, it was completely different.

The past two years had been difficult, and that was an understatement. Dealing with her mother’s ‘death’ had been horrible but survivable. A shock, that hit her squarely in the chest and had knocked her off balance for quite some time. But she’d managed to right herself, eventually. Instead of trying to live up to Bernie’s image, like Cam had, Charlie focused on working hard to be the best she could be. The best of herself, and not her mother. As it turned out, that and burying herself in her work had really kept her together over the months that followed. Charlie flourished while Cam floundered. Later on, Charlie would be filled with a guilt that she hadn’t been able to help her brother. Hadn’t spotted the signs. It would be something that haunted her for a long time.

Then she had found out that Bernie was alive after all, and that came with its own challenges. Sure, she was filled with many positive emotions that her mother wasn’t dead, but it was difficult to process something when the person involved was living in another country. When you couldn’t touch them or really make sense of how you should be feeling about it all. Still, Charlie carried on. She tried to do the right thing for Bernie. To be around but give her the space she clearly needed. To give Bernie the time to heal and trust that she would survive it all.

In the end, it was Cam’s actions that threatened to do the most damage. The murders, his abusive behaviour. That someone she loved so dearly, someone she thought she knew so well, could do those things. It was unfathomable.

After Cam went to prison, Charlie was left on her own. People avoided her but she could still sense the eyes staring. Boring holes into her back. Judging her. She would be forever linked to Cam. Not the brother or doctor, nor the kind and caring person she’d grown up with. But Cam the killer. Bernie was in Spain, Marcus was in London. Charlie was an easy target for those local and with enough knowledge to guess who she was.

First came the spray paint on her door. Next the letters. She kept a file of them. Evidence in case the police ever decided to investigate. Charlie vowed to never let anyone scare her out of her own home but they came close.

The end of her brother’s life came all too quickly. Charlie hadn’t even been told that Bernie had come over to see him until it was all over.

Cam was dead. Her parents were left grieving the loss of a child.

And Charlie. Charlie was left with the grief. With pain and with anger. So much anger. Stuck in the middle, feeling the pressure of needing to live up to an imaginary idea of what she and Cam could have achieved. Of having to now face the future without Cam. Of separating her arguing parents on her own. It was overwhelming.

The stares and whispers did not stop. If anything, they only got worse.

One saving grace was Cam having a private burial. It took a weight off Charlie’s shoulders. Enough had been made public recently. She couldn’t bear this day being dragged through the gutter too.

In the end she had left her parents and Serena to their grief. Walking slowly back through the streets, coat pulled tightly around herself, Charlie moved on autopilot, making her way back to her home in a daze. There she found an unopened bottle of vodka and a hook up app.

In the end it had been all too easy. A swipe here. A message there. To ask for what she thought she needed. What she thought might help. A temporary plaster against the tidal wave of sorrow threatening to break her. The amount of vodka she’d drunk had a lot to answer for. As did her sudden desire to do something risky. To have someone come along and take away her ability to focus on anything but the moment. To feel good again for the first time in ages.

Not that it really worked out that way. From what she could remember it wasn’t that enjoyable a night, and it was going to come back to bite her in the arse. In the most embarrassing way.

The man she picked up, she couldn’t remember his name, went straight to the local rag. An article was published. One everyone she knew would read. One her parents would read. Her lowest, possibly most desperate moment, on show for everyone to see. Another way to disappoint her parents. Another way to torture herself that she wasn’t enough.