Just A Small Memory || Scar
Charlie bolted upright in his bed. The clock on his bedside table blinked 3:36. He really needed to fix that. It’d been like that for years now, but he just couldn’t find it in him to change it. It was a constant reminder to him that he couldn’t control everything, no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much he tried. His dream, or whatever had woken him, was long forgotten as he stared at the blue numbers. On, off, on, off… The light was bright enough to wash over everything in his room, the soft color matching his mood. Things had been harder for him recently, especially with Daria. It felt like things were starting to fall back into place, but the nagging feeling at the back of his mind warned him not to get too comfortable. He knew his thoughts were right, everything was too perfect, too mirrored. It was as though his life had become a bad episode of deja vu. The only difference was the woman in question. And not even they were that different.
Meg had been just as headstrong, just as meticulous in her habits, just as explosive, just as doting. He saw many similarities between her and Daria. Except she’d been a brunette, not a blonde. Perhaps that was why he’d been so desperate to keep Jane by his side through everything despite their incompatibility. In the end, though, perhaps too late, he’d figured it out. Daria made more sense. She challenged him like Meg did, yelled when he deserved it, and didn’t try to change him. Maybe he was trying to fill a void with her. Maybe. But he saw Daria as he own person, not always comparing her to the last one, so maybe not. Not to mention she’d been the only one to see a different side of him. One he kept well hidden, even from his sister. Meg had always stayed away from the scar, away from the memories. She knew it wasn’t something he wanted to relive, and she never once pressed it. But Daria had gone straight at it without intending to. At least, he didn’t think she’d intended to. And he hadn’t backed away from it. He’d met her halfway, let her change the bad to the good. It was as though every time she kissed or touched the offensive mark, she was taking a painful memory and replacing it with one that maybe he wouldn’t hate in the future. One that he could look back and maybe smile. Since their first meeting, he’d been thrown off by everything she said or did, and it’d only gotten worse since that night. At least he could recover quickly from whatever Meg had tossed his way - literally and figuratively. Daria was definitely her own person, even if she did often remind him of her.
Charlie pushed a hand through his dark locks and closed his eyes against the flashing blue light. Despite its soft hues, it was harsh to him and it had begun to give him a headache after staring at it for so long. He took a long, deep breath to clear his mind before standing from the bed and making his way over to the dresser against the wall by the window. Charlie didn’t usually visit his past for this long, preferring instead to smother it and forget about it all, but it was something he needed to get past, and there was really only one way to do that. Just one more time, he told himself. Hopefully. In the back of the top drawer was a hidden storage space. It was where he kept things he wanted to forget but couldn’t. In that spot sat three items, two of which he pulled out at this time. The first was a ring, a wedding band. It was the one he never got the officially wear, but they’d been only weeks away from the wedding when everything had happened. A fleeting thought crossed Charlie’s mind: what Megara had done with hers. Had she kept it? Sold it? Melted it? Thrown it away? But the thought was gone just as soon as it came, and he decided that was probably for the best. He didn’t really want to linger on the thought of what his ex-fiance was up to now.
Knowing it was a bad idea, Scar slid the platinum band onto his left ring finger. There was a feeling he couldn’t quite place that washed over him as he stood there in the flashing blue light, and he flexed his hand and curled his fingers as though testing the feel for the first time. His eyes were empty as he stared at the cold metal. Even the heat of his hands couldn’t seem to warm it up even a degree. Funny, he could have sworn it had been full of life when they’d first gotten it. Maybe when she left, she took its life, its meaning, with her. Maybe it was just another ring now.
If only the same could be said about the other item. The photograph in his right hand was small and a little blurry. The dull sepia tones were hard to see in the dim light, but anyone who’d seen one before would recognize it. He’d memorised it, every single inch of it, so it was clear as day in his mind. Just off to the right of center was the definite shape of a fetus, only ten weeks grown. They’d gone to get the ultrasound done a week before the fight, and anyone could tell that they were happy to be having a baby, even if it was unexpected. And then the fight came. The fight that ended it all. It started just like any other argument, with her huffing at him and whining about something stupid, and him brushing it off like it wasn’t a big deal. Except this time there were added stressors and hormones and he shouldn’t have brushed it off. He should have agreed. At three thirty-six in the morning, the alarm clock was pulled out of the wall and aimed for his head. He’d managed to duck it, but the clock had suffered a crack across the top of it, knocking the snooze button loose. Charlie lifted his gaze from the picture to the blinking blue lights again, looking at the crack at the top of the alarm clock.
He should have seen it there. That he was in the wrong. But he’d continued yelling, and she stormed out. It hadn’t been the first time, and he knew she would be back when she was calm again, only she didn’t come back.
His phone rang at 4:07 in the morning. It was the hospital she’d been taken to after she had wrapped her car around a tree. Thankfully, she was still alive and no one else was involved. But that wasn’t Scar’s concern at the time. His only thought was of the ten week old baby and whether or not it had survived. By the time he got to the hospital, it was 4:34 and he hadn’t heard the debilitating news yet. Everything was okay. Everything and everyone was fine. It happened three days later, when Meg was finally set to be released from the hospital to come home and stay on bedrest for another month to ensure the health of the baby. Charlie had gone to get them breakfast. What he came back to was his future wife sobbing in the bed, and he knew what had happened before she even said anything. The breakfast lay forgotten on the other bed in the room, and he had his arms around her in seconds.
The stinging at the back of his eyes and the lack of oxygen from the lump in his throat pulled Charlie from his memories and he sat down on the edge of the bed once again, the ultrasound still clutched in his hand, the useless wedding band on his finger. When he finally got his breath back, it came with a sob. He had been doing so well, keeping it all at bay. But he’d yet to properly mourn his losses, even after four years. He thought he was safe, far past the problems of the past, that he could look at the dark photo and cold metal and just move on. His body collapsed in on itself on the bed and he closed his eyes against it all.
