Title: Two Minutes

Summary: Jack asks Charlie what he remembers about the abduction, but all Charlie can remember is two minutes.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this stuff—I wrote this after seeing "Cowboys" but for some reason didn't get around to posting it until now. It still works with what has happened since. Feel free to review.

TWO MINUTES

Two minutes. That was all he could really remember. But they weren't the two minutes that Jack wanted to hear about.

It's funny how life goes on.

There were times when he really thought it wouldn't. There were times when he thought surely it would just end.

But life is without mercy. At least for those who don't deserve it.

He didn't deserve it.

If only he could remember. Maybe if he could save her, maybe that would make him worthy. There was something about her. Maybe it was just her pregnancy that made her innocent, more innocent than maybe she was. But, to him, she was like a saving grace. Or she was grace and he needed to save her.

That seemed funny to him, somehow, after everything that had happened so far. All he had done for her was help her make believe in peanut butter. All she had done for him was make him smile.

He couldn't remember, not really. He could remember fragments, images. Claire's tear streaked face. Ethan's zombie expression. The voices. There were so many voices.

Then two minutes. Two vivid minutes. Two minutes where his feet didn't touch the ground. He frantically searched for ground, for anything, to push himself up. Two minutes of struggling against the entwined vines wrapped around his neck. He couldn't remember how he got there or why he was there, he could only remember the sensation of disconnection as his feet swung wildly and his hands clawed violently.

His eyes searched the blackness of the blindfold. He could have taken it off but that wasn't his first concern.

He couldn't pull himself up. He couldn't release the pressure on his throat. He realized that he actually might die.

After surviving Liam's addiction, after finally kicking his own, after surviving a plane crash…

The only thing he could think of was the irony. Of all the times for life not to go on.

He thought of Liam in Australia and wondered if he had let go of his baby brother. He thought of Hurley back in the caves and wondered why he had thought he'd have peanut butter. He thought of Locke and wondered why that man seemed to know everything about him. He thought about Claire and wondered why he wanted to love her.

He thought about his drugs in the fire, disappearing into the embers in the night air.

As the world dimmed, he thought of how he'd rather be in withdrawal.

Two minutes is a long time to die but not nearly long enough to relive a life.

He hadn't really asked how life had gone on. He didn't need to know. Every time he thought he'd hit bottom, the bottom just fell out of his world and he reached a new low.

He couldn't close his eyes. He was terrified that the blackness would consume him—that he would never find his way back into daylight again—that he would never have the chance to see her smiling face.

So why couldn't he remember? Why couldn't he help Jack save her? Why could he only remember two singular minutes of dying and nothing that would help bring her back? It had only taken a second to love her. It had only taken a second to watch his drugs evaporate into the haze. So why did it take two minutes to die and to wipe everything else out?

It was two minutes further from her, and two minutes he wasn't sure she could spare. But the minutes since were even worse. But maybe he still didn't deserve grace. After all, what can change in two minutes?