Damned If You Do,
Soap rinsed out of Charle’s hair and ran down his back.
He tilted his head, running his hands through his hair to make sure everything washed out. Charle still remembered everything about cutting his hair. He remembered how he felt that he needed to do it, how mechanical it was. He ran half his hand over where his hair was sort of growing in on the side, slowly but surely. He normally wore it tied back, even back then, but he missed at least the option to wear his hair down. Hair charms were a possibility, but with the chunks that were pulled from his scalp, it would never grow in like before. Just another thing unlike before.
He clenched his teeth as he moved on to his chest. Showers took too long in Charle’s opinion. He’d get dirt under his nails by early tomorrow anyway, and the entire process was painstaking. He’d wash his hair and think about the missing chunks; move to his chest and feel his scars, thick and numerous; move onto his feet, feel his ankle click back and forth.
In the shower, in his most vulnerable state, he couldn’t help but think of Charlie Monett, and he hated it.
He closed his eyes and let out a breath, dropped his arms and just let them hang, and let the water pour over him. He needed to find a way to take Charlie out, while keeping his best friend alive. So far, Charle wasn’t very good at keeping people alive. His friend and girlfriend were dead, and this was after he had acquired information that could have prevented any harm to them. It was fear that kept him from speaking, logic’s worst enemy.
Logically, if Charle was quick and just told the entirety of the Velox Rebellum what Charlie had done, they could do something about it and detain him before he had the chance to hurt Lara. However, they couldn’t just attack a boy because Charle said he could be trouble, and so they would simply keep an eye on him. Charlie would likely notice this, and if that was combined with the fact that he kept tabs on Charle and would know if something changed in him, which meant that Lara would die.
He shut off the water but remained standing in the shower, thinking. He knew you had to think like your enemy, but there was no way Charle could hold that much malice inside him. If he really thought like Charlie, he would hurt him in the most painful way imaginable. He grabbed a towel and frowned. To do that, he’d have to kill him in a muggle way. Killing seemed the only way to incapacitate that monster, and obviously Charlie was much more advanced in magic, especially the dark kind. That, and to Charlie Monett, that would be the dirtiest way to die. The only question was whether Charle could bring himself to damn himself like that.He looked up, and met his eyes in the mirror. He almost couldn’t believe that he was thinking about this. Almost.
He pushed his hair back with his hands and ran his finger over his favourite scar. It was old, from when his cousin hit him in the head with a toy train. It was deep enough for him to need stitches, and it scarred. He did whatever he could to hide it under his hair for years, and now it made him almost nostalgic of the days where that was the worst pain he’d ever felt. Thinking about that almost took him back to how he was back then. Almost took him back to when he’d never dare to dream about hurting anyone seriously, nevermind killing someone.
Almost.
