Jack gently set her down against a wall and sat beside her, his breathing coming quickly as he looked up at the ceiling, the wails of the sirens and the crashes of explosions deafening their ears. He looked over at Charlotte with concern. "Are you alright?"
Charlotte tried to nod, but just managed a grimace. Everything was so blurry and she felt so dizzy, yet light-headed. "I think my head is bleeding..." she managed to murmur.
"Just a little," Jack assured her, brushing his hand over her forehead. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to her head. "It should stop in a few minutes if you keep the pressure on it."
"I don't want to," Charlotte said stubbornly, not quite realizing what she was saying. She dropped the handkerchief and began to lay down. "I just want to sleep for a few minutes..."
"No, Charlotte. That's not a good idea," Jack said gently, helping her back up to a sitting position and picking the handkerchief up, placing it gently against her forehead. "If you've hit your head, the last thing you want to do is sleep. And we need to keep you upright so that your head will stop bleeding."
Charlotte frowned sleepily. "I just feel so tired..."
Jack sighed and sat with his back against the brick wall. He pulled Charlotte close to him and settled her between his arms so that her head rested back on his chest. Then he took the handkerchief and held it to her head. With his other hand, he gently took hers and kept intertwining their fingers together in constant motion.
"Just stay awake, Charlotte," he asked her quietly. "Please. For me. Everything will be alright. It'll be over soon. And then we can go back to the theatre. I'm sure Helen and Lewis are worried sick about us. They'll probably take us to dinner or prepare some elaborate dessert as a celebration for us. We'll drive back home in my comfortable car and you can go up to your room and read whatever you'd like. I'll even let you borrow my new copy of Macbeth if you'd like."
"I already have Macbeth," Charlotte murmured back.
"Then you can borrow something else, if you'd like. I'll even read to you. Just please, Charlotte. Stay awake. I'm sure the worst is almost over."
It felt as if it were years before the all-clear finally sounded. Charlotte had stayed quiet, which had worried Jack. He kept moving her hand the entire time, trying to keep her awake, and if she so much as closed her eyes for a moment, he was gently asking her not to fall asleep. As the others began to file out of the tube, Jack looked at Charlotte seriously. "Are you alright?"
Charlotte nodded. "Still a bit woozy, but I'm fine. Can we just please walk slowly?"
"Of course," Jack agreed.
They made their way back up to the streets of London, twilight gleaming in the streets. The lamps and lights shone so brightly that Charlotte winced.
"The man over there said that the street is blocked off," Jack said walking back to her after looking for his car. "I guess there was a fire over there. He said I could come pick it up tomorrow. But for now we have to walk back to the theatre. Do you think you can make it?"
"Yeah, I'm feeling a lot clearer. Now my head and my ankle just really hurt."
"It's better for you to feel the pain than for you not to feel anything," Jack smiled at her, relieved. "You had me so scared for a while, there. Imagine what my parents would do to me if you got hurt while on my watch."
Charlotte smiled. "Well I'm fine, so you won't have to worry about it. And the cut on my forehead is barely noticeable. Nothing a little stage makeup can't fix."
Jack grinned. "Well, at least you're looking on the bright side of things."
Charlotte looked down at her shoes as they made their way down the cobblestone streets. Everything seemed so still, so quiet. Everything seemed rather perfect in the twinkling darkness of the streets. But a nagging feeling kept tearing at her heart.
"I'm sorry, Jack," she finally told him, "for being so terrible. You're definitely not the easiest person to get along with most of the time. You're actually very difficult. But I treated you badly. I said things I shouldn't have and...I just shouldn't have." Charlotte smiled uncomfortably, unsure where she was going with her apology. "I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have said anything at all." She looked back down at her shoes.
"No. I'm sorry, too," Jack told her quietly. "I've been much too hard on you. It wasn't fair." He sighed. "The problem is...that we've always been at one extreme or another. Either we're very close and affectionate, or we're screaming at each other at the top of our lungs. We've really never been in the middle of it."
"I guess that's not really the best way to be," Charlotte pondered.
"Yeah. Can I ask you a question?"
Charlotte's heart raced in anticipation. "Of course."
"Why do you care so much?" Jack asked, looking sideways at her curiously. "Why is it that whenever I screw up my life, do something stupid or reckless, that you always care so much? You take care of me or you get really mad at me...but there's no way you can deny that there's a reason why you care so much."
Charlotte looked back at him in surprise. She didn't know how to respond. She had no idea what to say to him, to make him think that she really didn't care so much what happened to him. And then she realized...why was she even being defensive about caring about him in the first place? He had been like her brother. And then he had been her enemy. But at the end of the day, she did care about him. Whether she wanted him to know or not.
"What?" Jack asked again, still looking at her.
Charlotte could just shake her head. "I don't know what you're talking about," she finally said, her mouth feeling dry as cotton as they rounded the corner to the theatre.
And then she wished she never had. Her heart felt wrenched like it never had before. Because laying before her, amidst a cloud of smoke and dust, was only the remains of the great theatre, which now lay in a crumbled heap of stone and debris.
In an instant, Charlotte had forgotten about her throbbing ankle. All she cared about was Lewis and Helen. She needed to find them. She needed to know that they were alright. Without even thinking, she began sprinting the distance standing between her and the fallen theater, stumbling over the debris and pushing past the clouds of smoke and dust. It didn't matter that the sirens were wailing. It didn't matter that the police officers and firemen were calling after her. All that mattered was finding them. And she knew Jack felt the same way, because he was running even faster than she was.
"Lewis!" Jack screamed, louder than Charlotte had ever heard him yell before. "Helen!" His voice was hoarse, and the look of panic on his face was something that would always be imprinted in her memory. He was no longer the strong, rebellious person she had come to know over the past long months. He was now a child: lost, scared, and confused, and in desperate need of his parents. " Mum!" he yelled again, but his voice weakening. "Dad!"
Charlotte squinted as the ambulances began to arrive and smoke began to clear a bit, trying to catch any sight of Helen's bright dress or Lewis' suit. She strained trying to remember which he had been wearing that day. The tweed gray? No, it had been the deep blue with the pinstripes. She remembered teasing him only earlier that day, saying he looked like a gangster from one of the movies. She had made him smile, and he had laughed, something unusual for his quiet demeanor. Oh god, he had to be alright.
"Charlotte!" Jack yelled over the screams of the sirens, wrenching her hand in his own. She followed his gaze, his bright eyes now panicked and terrified, and caught sight of medics lifting someone onto a stretcher, carrying him over to an ambulance.
"Oh, god," Charlotte breathed, her heart seizing with pain. "Wes." She stumbled toward him, but he was much too far away. They were already shutting him into the back of the ambulance, but she could make out his bloodied clothing, his agonized expression, his dirtied face. And his eyes were closed. God, Charlotte began to pray, please don't let him be dead. Please, please, please don't let him be dead.
She heard Jack's sharp intake of breath beside her, and he took off running toward the theatre, faster than
she had ever seen him run before. Faster than during the air raid at the theater, faster than when the bombs were falling only hours earlier. Charlotte ran after him, but only half-heartedly as sobs began to rack her body. She didn't want to see what he saw. She didn't want this to be happening. This couldn't be happening.
Jack ran to the side of the building, near where the basement would have been. Of course Lewis would have thought to run down there with Helen as soon as he heard the sirens. But now, it looked as if everything had collapsed in. There wasn't any movement…except for the figure of a man in a blue suit, crouched low over the debris.
"Lewis!" Charlotte heard Jack cry from afar as he ran to his father, nearly bowling him over with an embrace. But startlingly, Lewis didn't react to Jack. He couldn't be torn away from the debris, looking down at it, clutching at something, his body shaking with sobs. Jack looked down, and even from so far away, Charlotte could see his face immediately change from relief to unspeakable sorrow and disbelief. He looked up, searching for Charlotte's face among the ruins, and when he caught her eyes in his, he gave her a terrifying stare which could only mean one thing.
Jack found Charlotte some time later. She sat by herself in silence, away from all of the commotion, the ambulances, the police, the injured, the grieving. It was all too much. If she ignored it, maybe it would all go away. But Jack had found her, and as he sat beside her on a piece of rubble, she knew that he had brought everything terrible with him.
He sat quietly for a few moments, but then confirmed the worst. "Helen is dead," he told her in a strangely calm tone, just matter-of-factly.
Charlotte nodded. She had assumed as much. But she hadn't wanted to think about it. She had forced herself to be stone cold, to not cry, to not wish for otherwise. But she knew that if Jack had cried, she would cry as well. Maybe they were more similar than she had thought. Maybe neither of them wanted to show that they cared, because that would mean that this was all real. That would mean that Helen would really never walk through the front doors of the house again, carrying a bouquet of flowers or weighed down with shopping parcels. She would never rush out the door for a show, in such an excited flurry as she always was. She would never sit down to dinner with her usual flair or hug Lewis around the shoulders and plant a kiss on the top of his head, as she always did when she interrupted him in his study. That was all over. But neither Charlotte or Jack were ready to admit it.
Charlotte could do nothing but nod.
"I tried to console Lewis," Jack said dryly. "But there is no use. He's terrible. He's like I've never ever seen him before. He needs to go home. I need to take him home. There's nothing more we can do here."
Charlotte managed to nod again and tried to speak through her clogged throat. "I'll come," she croaked.
"No," Jack told her.
Charlotte looked up at him in surprise, wondering why he was going to be stubborn in a time like this. But when she looked at him, her heart melted. He was looking down at her with the saddest smile she had ever seen. It could hardly be called a smile, for it barely reached the corners of his lips. But she could make it out all the same. He was trying, in his own way, to tell her that everything really would be alright, that now they really had experienced the worst of it. Nothing could be worse than this. Charlotte gently reached up to his face, where tears, now dry, had run their course down his dirty face. She cupped her had around his cheeks, looking up at his blue eyes, so dry, so emotionless.
"I want to go," she said quietly, although she really didn't. What she wanted was to be there for him, to comfort him, to hold him.
But he shook his head again. "No," he repeated. He looked at her solemnly. "I can do this. You need to go to the hospital, to be there for Wesley and the rest of your cast. They need someone there. They need you there."
Charlotte sighed, her breath short and shaky. "I don't know if I'm the right person to see them," she confessed. "I'm not sure how I can help them."
Jack gently put his hand on her back and shivers ran down Charlotte's spine as his palm skinned her hair. "You can help them," he said quietly, "by just being you."
Charlotte looked up at Jack with the smallest smile, now matching his. And although everything was so terrible, so inconceivable, she felt a little less weak knowing that he had such confidence in her.
She got to her feet, although the heels of her shoes crackled unsteadily against the gravel from the explosions.
"It won't be easy to find a car in this chaos," Jack told her, standing up and taking her elbow in his hand, as if to steady her. "And the tube won't be in order."
"It's alright," Charlotte told him confidently. "I can walk. It isn't very far, is it? A few blocks?"
"Yeah, but your ankle…" Jack began before Charlotte silenced him with a cocky smile.
"Jack," she told him. "I'm stronger than I look."
He chuckled a bit, but nodded, smiling back at her with the same sad smile. "I know that, Char," he said admiringly. "But still, my mum would be so upset with me if she knew you were walking three blocks by yourself…" His voice drifted off as he realized what he had just said. For a moment he was silent in pure shock, but Charlotte couldn't risk seeing him break down.
"I'll be fine," she assured him with another smile."Like we've established, I can handle myself."
"Okay," he finally agreed and pulled her into an embrace. "Be safe."
Charlotte nodded against his chest. "I will," she told him.
"He's still unconscious from surgery," a nurse told Charlotte as she led her to Wesley's hospital room. "But you can see him. Five minutes."
"Thank you," Charlotte said quietly. This had been the general response she had received about nearly all of her castmates, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to visit most of them, who would be lying in their beds unable to even hear her well wishes, let alone talk back. But she had to see Wesley. After everything he had done for her, she owed this to him.
Charlotte timidly stepped into his room, dimly lit at such a late hour but still illuminated by the stark white-washed walls. And there lay Wesley in the hospital bed, his face very pale and a bandage covering his left cheek. His bloody clothing had been changed and he now lay in clean, white hospital bedclothes with the sheets and blankets drawn up to his chest, except for on his leg with had been wrapped in a cast and was elevated above the bed. Charlotte looked down at the flowers in her hands. She had seen a florist on the way to the hospital and picked out a small bouquet of lilies. It felt so strange to be giving him flowers just as he had given her only earlier that same day, but under very different circumstances.
Charlotte set the bouquet down on the nightstand and pulled a chair up beside the bed, smoothing her skirt under her as she took a seat, her gaze still lingering on Wesley's face. She reached out and took his hand in her own, intertwining her fingers with his, just like they used to do when they took their walks together. Everything had seemed so simple and easy.
She sighed and leaned closer to him, watching his easy breathing as his chest rose and fell, rose and fell, so calmly, as if he were only sleeping and not dreadfully hurt. She brushed her fingers along his forehead, the wisps of hair delicately bending beneath her fingertips. It was strange. In France, Charlotte had only ever been the little girl who needed caring for. But here, whether it be Wesley or Lewis or Jack, all she wanted to do was care for them, make sure they were alright. How things had changed.
"I'm sorry that this ever happened," Charlotte told him apologetically. "I'm sorry. We shouldn't have had the party after the show tonight. And I was so stupid to fall over that rope and have to visit the doctor. I should never have left the theater. I should have stayed with all of you. Maybe the party would have ended early and we all would have already been on our ways home before the bombs began to fall. Maybe we could have hidden in the tube together, like Jack and I did." She paused, remembering how he had cared for her while she was so dizzy and disoriented. How sweet he had been. "I never should have left you al
l there. I should have been there with you. I should be laying in this hospital bed right here, instead of you. I'm the one who deserves it."
She sighed and stared at the pristine sheets on the bed, making out patterns in the wrinkles where his hand lay. "Helen is dead," she finally said aloud, bringing her eyes up to Wesley's face, as though expecting a reaction from him. "I'm so sorry," she told him, her voice quivering. "I'm so sorry, Wesley. You've always been so perfect, such a perfect gentleman, and I always seems to ruin everything. With you, everything is perfect. Everything is like a novel or a film or a play. And with Jack, everything is always so terrible. And still, I always find myself running back to him whenever he gives me the slightest notion that he doesn't absolutely hate me. It's terrible. And now…Helen was like your mother. She was your mother. And now she's dead. And I can't help but blame myself for everything. Because it was my play," she rambled, her breath coming in short spurts. "If Lewis hadn't written it for me, she wouldn't have even been there tonight. And now she's dead.
"I wouldn't blame you if you hated me forever," Charlotte continued, clutching his hand, feeling hot tears pricking her eyes. "You should hate me forever. But I still don't want you to. Because I love you. So much. Maybe I don't love you as a soul mate or as a boyfriend. Maybe I love you as a brother. I don't know. But I do know that I love you, and that I don't want anything bad to happen to you. And lately, I'm the bad thing that's happening to you. So now…I don't know what to do." She angrily brushed away the tears that fell from her eyes.
"I just want you to be happy," she finally told him. "Whether that's with me or not, I don't know. But you need to be happy. I need you to be happy."
"Miss," said the nurse from the doorway. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now. The doctors have to change his dressings."
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