Title: Nightmares
Author: Artemis Rain
Fandom: Numb3rs
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Harvest, brief, non-spoilery reference to The Uncertainty Principle
Warning: may contain traces of total insanity.
Disclaimer: Sooooooo not mine.
Summary: During the final scene of Harvest, Charlie considers the real reason he doesn't want to become an organ donor.
Feedback: I'm a fairly new writer who is REALLY looking to improve. I live for feedback of any kind. Be merciless. I can take it.
Author's note: After watching Harvest, I couldn't let Charlie get away with those dumb comments at the end. I sensed an ulterior motive and ran with it. Also, on a note unrelated to the plot of the story, that final conversation in Harvest totally reminded me of the "Live Organ Donation" sketch in Monty Python's Meaning of Life… "So, can we have your liver, then?"
Author's note 2: I know I said I'd never write Charlie, and, well, I still don't think I have. His brain is a total mystery to me. However, I'm using the third person to describe what Charlie might have been thinking and feeling during that conversation. The voice is not right at all, but I hope it gets the point across.
Extra special thanks to Jo and Ceares, without whom this thing never would have seen the light of cyberspace.
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"It's just, you know, what if I'm not dead, and they think I'm dead because I, like, look dead?"
It is probably the single most idiotic thing that has ever come out of his mouth. He looks down, aware of, but not seeing, the stunned and amused faces of his family and friends.
Okay, it was a stupid thing to say, but it's not like he planned it. He just thought to himself "anything but the truth," opened his mouth, and out it came. He'll probably never live it down, but he doesn't mind, because it wasn't the truth. That, he will take to the grave with him.
Unlike his organs, apparently.
Don takes a moment to get past the shock of a statement that stupid coming from such a brilliant mind, and eventually retaliates with, "Yeah, well, in your case I could see that happening…"
Everyone laughs, uncomfortable, but glad that the tense silence has been broken. They rib him gently and shower him with reassurances. He pointedly ignores them as he attaches the little pink sticker to his recently re-acquired driver's license.
How can he tell them the real reason he resisted becoming a donor for so long? How can he tell them that, like Larry, he, too, was plagued with nightmares involving the theft of his internal organs?
That every time he speaks with the head of the Math department, or consults with outside organizations, or gives a lecture at a conference, or receives an award, or fields unnecessarily difficult questions in his classes, he feels like he is being sliced into pieces, and there's not enough of him to go around?
That all the schools he's attended, all the Agencies he's consulted for, all the glory-seeking students who have taken his classes, want nothing more than to take a piece of him, claim it for their own and hold it up for the world to see?
That he often wishes he did have a precious bubble that he could draw up and conceal himself inside of; in which he could feel safe and whole, and pretend that every part of himself belonged only to him?
That death scares him more than anything because it will leave him completely defenceless, and the vultures circling overhead will finally get their chance to take a bite?
That the physical act of organ donation is so much like the emotional and psychological acts that claw at him daily that his first instinct upon hearing mention of it is to wrap his arms around his chest and scream, "It's me, do you understand? It's all me and you can't have it!"
"It's his brain that I think people want. Maybe we should keep that and put it on eBay."
How can he tell Don that, for all intents and purposes, it's already there?
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