FREAK SHOW

Chapter 27: Alice in Wonderland

SERIOUS WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER

~"For what I have done, and have failed to do, I am sorry." ~

It kept bleeding. No matter how much medical gauze and cold water Scarlett kept applying to his back, it kept bleeding. The cuts kept reopening and visibly stinging Charlie, his face contorted in pain more often than not. After the whipping, Scarlett made it her duty to take care of him. She helped him up in the mud, half-carried him even with a baby inside her stomach, she got him out of the rain and into her empty caravan. Charlie had to bite down on a belt to keep from shouting as the alcohol and disinfectant hissed against his open wounds. She washed him with a wet rag, making all the blood and dirt and grit melt away off his skin, revealing the ugly punctures underneath. The new and old scars.

Now a day later from Axel's horrible display of power, Scarlett was repeating the steps again. She decided to stich some of the gauges this time. Charlie lay on his stomach, biting into her pillow. Scarlett hushed him softly, pricking his skin with a needle and then threading it through the skin of his back. In and out, each time, more blood ran down his back, meaning more wet rags to use and more bandages to scrounge up. She had nearly run out of the bandages in the medical kit under her bed.

When it was all said and done, Scarlett let herself relax and kiss his shoulder blades softly. The shoulder blades were the part of his back struck the most with the tigers' whip. She was gentle with each kiss, skimming her lips across the tattered skin. "Thank you," Charlie mumbled, his face pressed into the pillow he was previously biting on.

Scarlett sat back, turning to look at his face. His eyes were closed; he wanted sleep. "What for?" she asked.

"You shouldn't have to take care of me right now," he tried to move onto his side so he could face her, his eyes now open, but she pushed him back down as to not tear his stitches. "You're pregnant."

"Being pregnant doesn't mean I can't do stuff."

"I know that, but you shouldn't have to do stuff...like this," he was exasperated, probably loathing himself for acting so pitiful.

Sighing, Scarlett murmured, "Just be careful not to open your stiches. I'll be mad."

"We wouldn't want that now would we?"

"No we wouldn't," she smiled. Casting her eyes to the sight of her bloody bedspread, "Though, my sheets are positively ruined now."

Charlie managed to chuckle at that, looking up at her with exhausted brown eyes. The sight of them made her chest ache. In that moment, he looked so young, so scared, so much like a wounded puppy that Scarlett felt the overwhelming need to weep. But she didn't, she swallowed and made eye contact, stroking her hand over his cheek.

"Sorry for giving you this scar," she mumbled, her thumb pressing on the marring of his lip from when she sliced it open with a kitchen knife. "And this one." She pressed her other thumb on the hand discarded at his side, from when the beast brought its jaws down around it.

"I love them."

Scarlett frowned, "Really? Even if we were fighting when I gave you the lip scar?"

"Yeah," he replied softly, "because I know it's from you, not my father." She gazed at his disfigured back; all slashed and scratched with thin sutures trying to pull it back together. His father caused those, its root from hatred not passion.