Promise from the heart

Chapter 50

Agatha entered the spirit realm once more, and her heart shattered when she saw her tattered little boy stand there all alone, surrounded by countless entities and spirits on every side. He was still standing, but he was swaying on his feet. Around him was a shining white light and it kept them from getting too close, but the light was fading, and she knew that meant that so was the light within him.

"Char!" She called out, hoping he'd hear her. But he did not. His eyes could no longer see. His ears could no longer detect sound. He was focusing all his energy on keeping the beings away from him, but he was in their realm now, and the living didn't do well there.

Agatha could see that his life force was fading, and each of the creatures tried to drain him a little further. The fact that he could still stand, and still protect himself, was strange all on its own. The amount of power that would take...

She knew he couldn't hear her or see her, but she approached him all the same. Her light, stung the entities eyes, and she used that to move past them and place herself closer to Charlie. "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie..." she kept chanting, mostly to herself. She, too, was affected by the vile energy, and she needed to keep her mind focused so that they wouldn't overtake her either.

Finally she was by his side. Not just his body, but even his spiritual self was tattered. His eyes unseeing, his face much too thin and the circles under his eyes as if they'd been carved into his face. He looked drained in every way, and all she wanted to do was wrap him up in his arms and keep him safe from the world. He was her baby, and she would do whatever it took to keep him safe. Even if it mean joining their energy. She would do whatever it took to get rid of those beings trying to hurt him. Those things that had held him captive for all these months. She had been told not to interfere, but at this point, she no longer cared. She'd get her baby out safe from that place and that was that. Never come between a mama and her cub.

She approached Charlie and clasped his hand. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on joining their energies, of combining their strengths. As she did, she felt herself drifting closer to Charlie, until there was no more distance between the two.

She felt as if she was falling and when she opened her eyes, she was surrounded by white.

"Mum?"

She whipped around and saw her little boy as a child standing there. He was wearing tattered clothes much too big for his thin frame, and his skin was bruised. His eyes were the eyes of someone much older, yet he looked so, so fragile. It was his childhood self, the one no one could keep safe. The one she wasn't physically there to love. Her heart broke as her gaze wandered over each part of the small, wounded child in front of her. It was she who had chosen his father. She who had left him, albeit unwillingly, with that man. This was her doing.

"Char?" She bent down and gently opened her arms. The child ran into her arms and straight through her and disappeared within her.

The white space disappeared. She gasped when she saw the memories unveil in front of her, one after the other. All the things Charlie had held bottled up inside. Every hurt, every heartache, every thought he never got to express. Birthdays forgotten, birthdays celebrated on his own, with a candle put in his selfmade sandwich. His father ignoring him. Adults always lying, always  hurting him. His father walking away from him. His love walking away from him. The anger of it all. Why me? What did I do wrong? Am I the one that's wrong? Is this nothing more than I deserve? And then came the urge to love. The urge to protect. The urge to handle it all on his own.

By the time the memories lessened and the white space returned, Agatha was weeping and wailing and cursing the gods. Why had her child been put through all of this? Why had she not been allowed to be there to protect him, to love him? Why had he been deprived of the childhood he so deserved? And why had no one told him that he was not to blame?