Chapter Text
“This is it,” Charlie says around a shaky breath. He grasps a note in one hand and a red string that Tori holds out to him in the other.
The note, in the now familiar handwriting, just says two words: “Follow Me” with a date and a time. It had been attached to the string and he had found it wrapped around a rock under the last message Charlie had painted.
It has taken almost a week for those two words to appear. In that week, Charlie has second-guessed his conviction that it is Nick Nelson about a million times. About as many times as he's talked himself out of storming into “The Reading Rainbow” and grilling Tara and Darcy for information.
Tori had talked him out of it, and she had also insisted on delaying her return home, sending Michael back without her. She had given an excuse of being too invested in the mystery, but Charlie suspects there are other motives.
He again feels shame for how he'd forgotten what a true champion his sister had always been in his life. How well she always took care of him.
“Thank you,” he says. “For everything.”
She rolls her eyes, but is saved from having to say anything back by the arrival of the rest of his support team, his found family.
Elle hugs him tight. Isaac says that it's just like a book he wants to read someday, Tao says it's not too late to change his mind. But then when everyone else scowls at him, he smiles wide.
“Go. We'll be here.”
Charlie nods. Takes another cleansing breath and he puts one foot in front of the other, letting the string lead him. Not looking back. No longer scared.
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“Are you ready?” Tara asks.
Nick nods his head, but says, “No.”
Darcy hugs him tight from behind. He tilts his head to rest on her shoulder. Tara runs a hand up and down his arm. “You were so brave to take this step, set this meeting in motion. Don't you dare give up now! It’s going to be good. Great. You’ll do this and then you’ll know.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Nick mumbles.
They pretend to not hear him. Nick gets it. They probably want this to be concluded more than he does--he’s been so insufferable in his fear and uncertainty.
Tara holds the red string out to him. “Go get your boy.”
“What if it's not him?”
Tara sighs. “Then you’ll know and you can go from there.”
He sighs too. “I don’t know if you know this about me, but going from there is not my strong suit.”
She slugs him. “I did in fact know that about you, but you have me.”
“And you have me,” Darcy breaths into his ear.
“And,” Tara continues as she tugs on the red string, “If you don’t have Charlie here, you still could have him up there in the world.”
He doesn’t want to think about that quite yet, so he smiles and takes a deep shaky breath and takes his first pull on the string. “Okay. Wish me luck.”
Tara wraps her arms around him and Darcy. “Luck.”
They let him go, and he takes another deep breath and he takes his first step. Then another… and another…
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As Charlie follows the string, he thinks of the first time he'd been led by a red string and how very much like fate it had been. How it had given him his life back. It gave him a family. A place to belong.
He thinks about how much harder and easier that had been. It had been easy because he was so desperate for anything extraordinary to happen and make sense of his suffering, his hurts. He had had literally nothing to lose. It was hard though because he also had no evidence that he could have, or even deserved to have anything even ordinary, forget extraordinary.
This time it is both easy and hard: easy because he knows what he wants at the end of this string, but hard because he's not used to wanting things and is working desperately to come to terms with the idea that he deserves them. Also, now he wants, he demands extraordinary. He'll have nothing less.
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Nick takes one last look back before he turns the corner that the string guides him too. Darcy and Tara wave, they give him a thumbs up, and they blow kisses. They buoy him. He swallows and smiles.
He walks on.
He comes to the wall that the first words he had seen in this journey was painted all those weeks ago:
Limitless Possibility
And: “The question isn't am I or aren't I?
But rather; should I or shouldn't I?
And: You should.
You must.”
And he remembers, with shocking clarity the way his whole body had buzzed, how his synapses had fired, the dying ember of inspiration had been re-ignited.
Only now, when he reads those words again, he hears them spoken softly with Charlie's voice. He wants them to be Charlie’s words so badly.
He feels a tug on the string and he walks away, and follows the printed red string and the one in his hands to where they want him to go. To his fate.
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Charlie approaches the alcove where they had started writing the words that weren't for public consumption. The thoughts that were just theirs. He slows. And as if he's on a horse, he pulls on the string as if to Whoa it to stop.
He's not sure why he’s slowing, or even stopping, but the impulse is immediately forgotten a moment later when his tug is answered with a tug from the other end.
It takes everything in Charlie not to run, risking a trip and fall, a splattering on tracks, a collision with the third rail.
He takes a steadying breath and continues forward at a safe speed. But his heart pumps faster all the same.
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As Nick walks along the spray painted history of these two characters, he remembers how he'd started first as an observer, an admirer and then as a participant. He marvels on how much this experience has changed him. From a passive spectator and chronicler of other people's lives, to an active main character. He went from never knowing what he wanted, to knowing with every fiber of his being and then actually, miraculously taking steps to get it.
He gets to the Hi and the Hey you and he stops. There's a bow around the red string indicating the halfway point between the two ends. Now, he just has to wait.
He pulls on the string to make sure there is still someone on the other end. Instead of an answering tug, he hears footsteps. His heart jumps to his throat before it stills, his breath held beside it.
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“Nick Nelson?” Charlie asks, taking the last step, the last turn, feeling the last tug on the red string.
“Charlie Spring,” Nick sighs, letting the string drop. Staring at Charlie in wonder, as if working a puzzle and finally having all the pieces lock into place. Of course Charlie. Had he ever truly doubted?
“I knew it was you,” Charlie says, taking another step closer.
At the same time, Nick takes a step and says, “I wanted it to be you.”
They just smile at each other for a moment.
“Are you real?” Charlie asks like he had all those weeks ago, this time aloud.
Nick steps closer still and whispers his same two word answer, “I am.”
“Pinch me,” Charlie whispers, offering Nick his arm.
“What?” Nick asks.
“I need to make sure. Pinch me. Not too hard though.”
Nick takes the last step, their shoes touching before taking Charlie’s arm, gently running his thumb under the hoodie and long sleeve shirt and across the scars he knows are there. “I would never hurt you, Charlie.”
Charlie is having a lot of complicated feelings play along his features and in the shiver that runs through his body. Nick fights the urge to hold him close and make more promises. All the promises.
Charlie stops him though, as if reading his mind. “You can't promise that.”
Nick steadies himself before taking the biggest leap he's ever taken. He brings Charlie’s wrist to his lips with both hands and purses gently at his pulse point. He takes a deep breath and says, “Maybe not. But I can promise never to hurt you on purpose.”
Charlie shivers again and wants to crumble right here at Nick's feet so that he can be reborn, so that they can, together, pick up the pieces and make their beautiful, weird sense of him.
Then he remembers he's not the only one with scars, the only one who wants to start over, be reborn. “Where are your scars hidden?” he asks.
Nick swallows thickly and after a beat, taps his temple with two fingers.
Charlie gently wraps his fingers around Nick’s neck, his thumbs stroking his jaw as he pulls his head slightly down so he can rest his lips on Nick's forehead. He breathes deep and hears Nick's release of breath too, feels it on his throat.
“You belong here,” he whispers into the skin of his temple before pulling away, looking in Nick's eyes. “I see you. I see all of you.”