“How do you think she is?” Kurt whispered, laying close beside me on the air mattress on the floor of Charlotte’s room during her first night at home.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, carefully glancing over to Charlotte as I responded to make sure that she wasn’t disturbed.
“How long do you think it’ll be before we get her back?”
“It depends on just how much she’s been through in the past month.”
Kurt shuffled closer underneath the sheets to link his fingers through mine and squeeze my hand.
“At least she’s here with us,” he said softly.
We laid there for ages, not wanting to sleep in case Charlotte was to wake up or have nightmares – we really weren’t sure as to how damaged or fragile she may be, so we weren’t taking any chances.
Our fears were realised when we heard her sheets moving rapidly. We looked over to see her kicking her legs forcefully, and throwing her arms about as if she was trying to fight someone off. She then woke up, startled, with tears streaming down her face. She sat up in her place and just cried as Kurt and I leapt up from the air mattress beside her bed and wrapped our arms around her in comfort.
“Shhh, honeybee, it’s okay. I’m here, Kurt’s here, you’re safe,” I said as soothingly as I could, rubbing her back in circles in and pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she kept repeating, holding her knees to her chest and staring distantly at the wall in front of her.
“Tell us what happened, Char,” I prodded, hoping that maybe a snippet of her nightmare could give us an indication of not only how to proceed, but of how bad the situation really was.
“No,” she said, in a voice so tiny and quiet that if you’d taken a breath at the wrong moment, you wouldn’t have been able to hear it.
“We’re here, Char,” Kurt chimed in, brushing Charlotte’s tear-sodden hair from her cheeks.
She just nodded, sniffed and held onto her legs, rocking herself back and forth in our arms. Her eyes were still misty, concentrating on the wallpaper on the far side of the room rather than on us. She was hurting, and we knew it, though we didn’t know how to help or how to get some answers from Charlotte at all.
“You can tell us anything,” I said soothingly, looking to Kurt in the hope that he may be able to help me proceed. Instead, he turned to Charlotte to talk to her too.
“I can always leave the room if you’d like, so you can talk to Blaine on your own?” he suggested, as friendly and as comfortingly as he could as he moved to leave the room.
“No, don’t leave me,” Charlotte whispered immediately. “You make Blaine happy. I like it when Blaine’s happy. And you’re nice. So stay with me, because I like you too.”
Kurt brushed a stray curl from Charlotte’s forehead once more and whispered an ‘okay’ before sitting back in his original position.
“Do you want to talk?” I asked, not wanting to pressure her therefore trying to ignore my own personal feelings on the matter in order to do what was best for her.
“...I don’t know. I’m so tired, I haven’t slept in ages.”
“You haven’t slept?”
Charlotte shook her head briefly. “Not properly, no. Naps only. Twenty minutes at a time.”
“Oh, honey. That’s not enough. How’d that happen?”
“If we wanted to sleep more than twenty minutes, we had to sleep in the cardboard box in the shed with all the rats and things.”
Kurt couldn’t help his little gasp of horror as it escaped from his lips – it was small and minute, yet audible.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Charlotte changed her tone completely. “It was what we deserved for being so appalling.”
I was bewildered by Charlotte’s sudden change in outlook. Her tone had moved to an almost robotic, automatic response. It was as if those very words had been drilled into her every second of the day until they were flowing out of her also.
“You’re not appalling, Char,” I said.
“Apparently, with the family I come from, I am very appalling.”
“How so?” Kurt asked.
“I have two gay brothers,” she replied simply. I could feel fury rising in my chest and I knew I had to keep my cool for Charlotte, but it was only with a few looks from Kurt and a tense of my muscles that I was able to sit back and think somewhat rationally.
“Who told you that?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“They did.”
“Who’s they?”
“Blaine, don’t push her.”
“I need to know.”
“Blaine, stop. Now.”
I looked at Kurt and saw the pleading look in his eyes. It was enough to melt my heart and make the anger inside me die down just enough to think clearly.
“I’m sorry, Char, I didn’t mean to bombard you with those questions.”
“It’s okay, B.”
I pressed another kiss to her forehead, and noticed how she lent into my touch as if it were a serious source of comfort. I decided to test this, and pulled her in closer so that I was enveloping her into a full bear hug. She responded enthusiastically, hugging me just as tightly as I was hugging her. In my peripheral vision, I saw her hand linked with Kurt’s. That sight, too, made my heart melt, though I still had to take control of myself in front of Charlotte. I released her from my tight grip and looked her straight in the eyes.
“Do you want to sleep now, honeybee?”
“Yeah, I really do, but I don’t know if I can. It’s too quiet here. It’s eerie.”
I smiled at her use of the word ‘eerie’, remembering the day she decided to pick up a dictionary and choose five words at random to learn. ‘Eerie’ was word number three.
“Well, what if Kurt and I sang to you?” I thought out loud, knowing that Kurt would be willing and also realising that if anything, Charlotte’s love of music would be a good way to settle her back into her normal, safe home life.
Charlotte looked at the both of us, back and forth, before smiling widely – the first honest smile we’d seen her smile since we’d had her back.
“Please do,” she said. “But nothing too sappy, save that for your wedding.”
We tucked her back into bed again, and Kurt crept into the kitchen to make her a quick hot chocolate to drink while we sang a few quiet songs (from our Michael Buble and Jack Johnson collections) and helped her fall asleep. We then took turns keeping an eye on her until we both fell asleep, back on the air mattress beside her bed.
Kurt and I were exhausted, there was no doubt about that. But it was a good kind of exhausted. Though we hadn’t accomplished much, the sense of accomplishment was still there. It felt good to have Charlotte back in our lives and hearts, no matter how damaged she was. And in seeing how good Kurt was with Charlotte, and how taken she was by him, I knew that I had to get planning for Kurt’s birthday. Something big and extravagant was in order. I just may need Charlotte’s help for this one, I thought.