Charlie Elvis Everhart

Toni can’t look him in the eyes right now, not when she’s scared like this. What he’s asked is too much and she doesn’t know how else to explain it to him. She’s not just a vampire, she’s an original, the magic that made her is a different beast. It could do something terrible to him. The idea alone is crushing. “The alternative that you may live a long life…it doesn’t sound so bad. We don’t know…jesus Charlie it could do terrible things to you. Why can’t you understand that… Of course I don’t want to live without you, but I also don’t want to be the cause of something horrific happening to you.”

“Test it…you turn or you don’t. It’s not an experiment.” Pulling her hand away from him, she laces her fingers tightly together. “I’m not going to do it. It could do worse than simply kill you. Please don’t ask this of me.” She tries and fails to keep the panic from her voice. 

He tries to understand, he does -but the week has fried his soul, he’s been stuck in the bottom of a bottle for days with the crushing weight of time, and here she is, a beacon of something that could remove that and it feels cruel of her not to want to try. 

She wants to say yes. It seems cruel not to. And she loves him, more than she’s ever loved anyone. The answer should be so incredibly easy. But she can only shake her head no at first. “I-I don’t…think so. Charlie…given the nature of your magic…” She’d thought about it a thousand times. What could possibly happen. How it could well and truly destroy him. If he aged and died and old man she could handle that, but if he died at her hands she would not survive. “There’s no telling at all what could happen.” Toni explains gently. “I’m sorry.”

He’s not sure what answer he was really looking for, but he doesn’t think he was fully prepared either way, for her to deny him for his magic of all things. It’s more than a decent enough reason, she’s powerful and so is he, there’s no telling what that combo might reap. He could end up rejecting it completely. He might gain powers that were too much to handle.

-but Charlie’s worst trait has always been his inability to quit a subject.

“That’ll certainly do it.” Leaning over she kisses his temple gently. She can’t entirely relate. Even those she’s cared for who died young…well she can’t help but be the oldest at all times given what she is. And she knows for him it’s different, so entirely different that all she can do is be here for him as much as he’ll let her. “I’m sorry, love.”

“Oh.” That was not what she’d been expecting at all. His mortality was something that had plagued her but she never spoke of it. Never thought to question how he felt about it. It seemed like something that should have come up eventually considering the nature of their relationship…but she’d carefully avoided it for many reasons. “Did something happen to you, are you alright?”

“Okay.” Toni accepts, reaching over to run her fingers lightly through his hair, working through small tangles with ease. “Would you like something else?” She points to the plate. “If something else would be better I could whip that up, bring it to you in bed if you need to rest.”

Charlie leans into her touch, it’s cool and exactly what his half feverish skin needs. “No..I’m...I’m not really in the mood to eat. I just wanted enough to coat my stomach.” He whispers, shutting his eyes. He doesn’t want to sleep, doesn’t want to fight the nightmares. He’d much rather crawl into another dark hole, drink again and linger in his self-made hell. All he can think about it death, the way it clutches at his hands. How many times has he avoided it? How many times has he spat in it’s face? Even he knows he can’t do it forever.

“Don’t be sorry.” It would be impossible for her to ever stop worrying, she loves him and he comes with a lot to worry about. But she’s never minded it. Never will. “I’d just like a little more…explanation…not right this second but when you’re less…hungover.”

“Mhmm.” She plates up the leftover mac’n’cheese and nuggets. Sure, she’d made it all homemade, but feeding children was a maddening thing. At least it seemed a good choice for a hangover. Handing it over, Toni sits beside him. “You got lost for a little while there, I was worried about you.” Worried was an understatement.

Eternity has left her with more patience than most. Especially where Charlie is concerned. She could wait out whatever this was. Pushing down the part of her that was prepared to tear this house down brick by brick to find him. Though she couldn’t deny if he’d taken much longer to come stumbling out she may have done just that. He looks horrible and she doesn’t try for a moment to hide her concern as she comes to his side and puts his arm around her shoulders in an effort to steady him.

Without a word she leads him to the kitchen, assuming that’s where he’d need to go now. She’s unsure if he’s eaten at all in these days…considering he smells like a distillery she certainly has her doubts. 

“Sit,” Toni says while leading him to a stool and going to the fridge to pull out leftovers of what she’d made the kids last night. It wasn’t exactly a sophisticated meal. But most hangover meals never really were. “Are you going to tell me now or am I expected to wait until your headache is gone.” She questions softly while heating up the food.

Charlie goes as Toni directs, but it’s with a heavy sense of guilt. He knows he’s a hot mess, and she deserves better than to clean him up. 

“It’s...” He wants to say nothing, he wants desperately to be enough of a weak cad to lie to her, but she’s a vampire and before that, a clever woman. She wouldn’t have asked if she didn’t want a real answer. “Just got lost in my head. About family stuff.” 

There is a certain level of skill Charlie has, when it comes to blocking out the passage of time; he’s spent so much time, too much, on nothing, on misery that it’s always been difficult knowing just when it all began. After this? After that? Before or after he sequestered himself away in his manor? Things are better of course, with Toni. With the kids.

-but he’s still in his home more than not, his friends are exclusively immortals or ghosts. No one ever looks younger than the day they turned. Charlie himself, knows his own genetics have held up better than most. Magic always has, but it never was on his mind until he’s looking at the date and realizes that it’s his parent’s wedding anniversary -hardly a great date, neither of them were overly attach to celebrating things like that, but it hits all the same and suddenly it also hits that he’s older than his father ever was. 

-and then spirals a little. Thinking about how he was always the middle child. Of six, that he had three three older siblings, two younger ones; and yet here and now, he is the last and oldest by a decade. 

He does not handle the realization with grace as it were. 

Instead, he drinks himself into a stupor for three days and nights, locked away in some dank little room on the far side of the manor, the part mostly forgotten. The contains rooms still unbreeched by time and squirrels away from his children and wife. It’s not a reaction, a terrible one, but he can’t stand for them to see him like this. A mess over something he is all but the Master of for anyone else. 

-but the thought is overwhelming, if he dies....then what? He’d leave Toni behind for the rest of eternity? His sons, still so in the dark of their own family history, of the powers they have yet to even tap into. They are by no means defenseless...but there are so few Everharts in the world for a reason, and it’s not because it’s kind to them. 

Things get easier with age, that’s the sad thing Charlie has realized far too late in life. Sometimes, in the silence of the night, he regrets not being able to reach his past self. Tell him to hurry and mourn those lost, because there are people he has yet to have, and to stop digging his grave. That’s all he was doing back then, bleeding his life out, one heavy dig at a time. For his family, for Talullah, for himself...

-but not it’s different. It’s hard to feel that same sense of guilt and loss when he’s got Toni by his side, and his sons filling the mansion with laughter. With the horde of dogs at their feet and the wolves that seem to take refuge in his home too. It should be too much, it should annoy him that it’s all loud and bustling, but really, he’s just happy.