Work Text:
“Ned? Are you alright?”
The piemaker the question was directed toward blinked, realized he’d zoned out holding a strawberry-that-was-once-dead, and dropped it back onto the cutting board in front of him. “Yeah,” he lied, blinking again as he realized Charlotte "Chuck" Charles was standing across the counter from him, staring at him worriedly.
In truth, the piemaker’s head felt hot, pounding with a minor headache, and the rest of him felt chilly, shivering in the normally warm Pie Hole, but he didn’t want to say this to Chuck. Historically, fevers and illnesses were something Ned had always taken care of himself, usually by pretending he wasn’t experiencing them and downing some cough syrup before he went to bed. He was used to lying about them, and used enough to pretending that he wasn’t sick that it didn’t feel like lying to him. It didn't occur to him that this was the first time he was lying about an illness to someone who actually lived with him.
Chuck, would-be world traveler and former shut-in, didn’t have much experience with reading people. In this particular instance, that lack of experience wasn’t too much of a hindrance. There was sweat beading the piemaker’s brow, and Ned’s eyes had that glassy, glazed-over look of a person in the depths of an illness. She leaned forward, fully intending to press herself against the counter, to reach over, and to push the back of her hand against the piemaker’s forehead, before she realized that she couldn’t do that at all. Pulling back, a look of hurt flashed across her expression.
Had Ned truly been feeling alright, he would have spotted the look, but as it was, he was trying to remember if he’d already finished with the day’s strawberries, or if there was another batch in the food storage. Oblivious to his beloved’s inner turmoil, he picked up the knife in front of him and used it to sweep the strawberry he’d just held into a pile with the rest, returning to his daily ritual of alive-againing fruit and making pies, a route routine he'd often felt he could have accomplished in his sleep. He was nearly doing so at the moment as it was, the fever's hold on him stronger than he'd realized.
Chuck, meanwhile, had turned slightly to face the Pie Hole’s dining area. She was hoping to spot Emerson, or even Olive, both of whom, she reluctantly admitted in the security of her mind, had known Ned for longer than she had in terms of minutes spent with the grown piemaker, and might therefore know how to handle the situation. Unfortunately for her, neither was in sight. It was a rare day off for Olive, and Emerson had only muttered something about business elsewhere the last time he’d bid them farewell.
Normally, Chuck would have worried what that business was for Emerson, but on this particular spring morning, she was far more worried about the man who had brought her back to life.
“Are you sure you should be working?” Chuck said, asking the same question again but phrased in such a way as to suggest a course of actions, rather than merely prodding at the piemaker’s well-being. Chuck hoped that, by doing so, Ned might actually stop and head upstairs, rather than blatantly lie to her.
The piemaker, only half paying attention, just blinked again, then dismissed her worries. Again, had Ned truly been alright, the outcome probably would have been quite different: the smitten piemaker was usually willing to go along with anything his childhood love would have suggested, so long as it didn’t carry too great an element of risk (although Ned and Chuck rarely agreed on what was an acceptable risk for the once-dead former-traveler). But the growing fever was dulling his brain as well as his sense of smell, so he didn’t pick up on Chuck’s concern the same way he barely noticed the smell of dead fruit when he went to fetch the next batch of strawberries.
Said batch of strawberries, however, didn’t actually exist. Ned had already brought them back to life, much more carelessly than he usually did. As the realization came to the piemaker, he wavered a little where he stood, the temporary trembling of his legs equal parts disorientation and the fever.
Chuck hurried to his side, ready to help him if he fell, before her brain caught up with her and reminded her that if they touched they would both be falling to the floor, and only one of them would be getting back up again.
“We’re not that busy today,” she said, stepping back in body while her heart tried to leap forward. Her throat was tight with her worry, and the fact that she knew she wouldn’t be able to properly see to the piemaker’s well-being. “I can close up while you head upstairs.”
The first time, Chuck had simply inquired into how Ned was feeling. The second time, she had suggested a break. Now, she wasn’t asking. The piemaker wasn’t well enough to work, and she wanted to get him lying down, with a cup of warm tea in hand, sweetened by her own honey.
“Ned?” she prompted, when the piemaker didn’t immediately respond. Everything in her urged her to take a step closer, see how he was doing. Had he been anyone else, she would have. But he was Ned, with the power to bring dead things back to life, and the power to take that away with a second touch, and a fever that threatened to dampen his cognition of both effects. For her own safety, Chuck couldn’t risk it, even if it was Ned’s safety she was worried about, in that moment.
Chuck hated that. This was the first time either of them had taken ill since their reunion, and Chuck already wasn’t handling it well.
Oblivious to Chuck’s turmoil, Ned’s mind was still trying to process her command. He couldn’t close the Pie Hole, could he? But, no, he did make a little income, helping Emerson. Was that… could he…? The piemaker’s mind was addled, but when Chuck prompted him again he turned blindly and agreed with her before he realized what he was doing.
Ned might have been used to pretending he wasn’t ill, but he was also used to being alone when doing so – having Chuck there was a balm he was nearly unaware of, an outside force that could instruct his mind on the details of life that had grown foggy. Like walking up the stairs to his apartment while Chuck closed up the Pie Hole. He made the trip mostly unaware, Chuck hurrying through the motions beneath his feet.
The piemaker’s body took him without issue, without thought, and without notice into his familiar, sparse apartment, and he lingered in the kitchen for a moment without fully knowing why. The fever had dehydrated him even as it had disoriented him, and he was nauseous and hungry and sweaty and cold all at once, a confusing amalgam of experiences that threatened to pull him under.
“Ned?”
Chuck, again. Chuck, who’d managed to close up the Pie Hole and enter the apartment behind him without him noticing, without him leaving the kitchen.
Ned wavered on his feet again, and again Chuck had to physically hold herself back from trying to catch him.
“Ned!” she cried out. The situation, she feared, was worse than she’d imagined. She wondered if the fever had afflicted the piemaker yesterday, and she just hadn’t noticed, or if it’d just come on quick and strong. There was little she could do, though: she couldn’t touch him, and couldn’t risk getting too close lest he reach out and try to touch her in turn.
There wasn’t nothing she could do, though. Resolve hardening, she made a circular route through the apartment, entering the kitchen from the other direction so she could stand in front of Ned without passing him by. “You need to lay down, Ned,” she said, worried and soft, hating the way Ned stared at her, the way he blinked absently.
“Hmm?”
“The couch, Ned,” she said, thinking of a big stick to prod him with, thinking of armor she could encase herself in to move him along. She swallowed past the tightness in her throat yet again, remembered the stick Ned used to pet Digby with, and used it to hustle him along to the couch.
The piemaker was cognizant enough to know that Chuck was someone he trusted, and someone he should listen to, but he’d been moving on routine all morning, mindless, repetitive motions that he’d done a thousand times before. This was outside of that routine, and his body didn’t know what to do: until it did, folding his long legs onto the couch, tucking his head into the provided pillow as a blanket was draped over him.
He could hear only the shuffling of familiar feet on familiar floors, the melodic muttering of a familiar voice, the comforting clink of someone working in the kitchen. As it stood, Chuck was fetching the piemaker a glass of water as she put the kettle on, and setting out a plate of crackers, worrying all the while.
She couldn’t feed him. She couldn’t wipe the sweat from his brow, or tuck the blanket tightly around him. She couldn’t guide him to his bed, or check his fever with the back of her hand. She couldn’t even just sit there and hold him and soothe away his hurts.
She and the piemaker had created so many workarounds, so many methods to meet that craving for human touch, but here, and now, there was nothing she could do.
It broke her heart.
She set the glass of water and plate of crackers on the coffee table in front of Ned, a fever reducer beside them, though she wasn’t sure how well he could swallow it.
“Ned, you need to get something in your stomach.”
Ned turned toward the sound. “Chuck?”
“On the table,” Chuck prompted, hovering on the other side of it.
Moving, at the moment, rather sounded like a lot of effort, but Chuck wheedled and prodded (metaphorically and literally, as it turned out, the Digby-petting stick still in hand) until he slumped forward, swallowing the pills with a gulp of water, biting into the crackers. It pained the piemaker, but he knew it was best, and for once he didn’t have to handle things alone.
“Chuck?” he said again, slumping back onto the couch.
“Yes, Ned?”
“Don’t leave.” There was a double meaning to the piemaker’s entreaty. A triple meaning even: don’t leave me here, now; don’t leave me here, ever, like my father left. Don’t die.
Don’t touch me, don’t get too close, but don’t ever get too far.
Charlotte Charles thought of all the places she’d wanted to go and all the things she wanted to do. She thought of all the things she couldn’t do with Ned.
They couldn’t hold hands. They couldn’t sleep in the same bed. They couldn’t kiss, or hug, or hold each other close. They couldn’t tend to each other’s hurts or be a shoulder to lean on. They couldn’t bump into each other in the hallway or touch hands as they each grabbed for the salt.
She was legally dead now, too, and she couldn’t be recognized in public. Couldn’t travel the world. Couldn’t see her aunts.
Her life, these days, was a list of things she couldn’t do, with the person she most wanted to do them with. But she had a life, had a second chance, had a whole other list of things they could do, things they wanted to try. There were adventures to be had, right here, with Ned.
It broke her heat, not to be able to help him, but her heart mended as quickly as it had broken, to have him there at all.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised him, and meant it in a thousand and one ways.