Lost in their Past

Chapter 59:- The Reason Why

"Jamie?" Charlus struggled to get up, blood was sprouting out of his mouth, "Jamsie!"

Ash struggled to put Charlus down, who kept yearning to get up.

It had been the dead of night when the guards brought Charlus back, he was broken, near-death, and spewing blood like he'd severed his carotid artery. There were blackened bruises all over his body.

They'd left his face untouched, mostly. There was a mere bruise over his eye.

The pain must've been blinding because Charlus was crying, rolling in the dust with the pain. There must've been internal bleeding because there was no blood on his body.

"I'm Ash," he tried to pin him down, "I'm Ash."

"Jamsie!" He kept on crying, "I'm sorry Jamsie... I'm
so sorry!"

"I'm..." he wanted to say his name again but something in him refrained him from correcting the crying man, "it's okay... Jamsie says it's okay."

A heave of relief took over Charlus as he looked at him with tears in his eyes. "How... how can it be easy when you're dead... and I'm old... I'm sorry Jamsie! I'm so sorry Jamsie!"

How can it be okay when you're dead and I'm alive... It took Ash some time to understand what his words meant, their magnitude, and weightage.

Jamsie... James... Charlus had mistaken Ash as his father, James Raider.

"It's all right," Ash felt his throat clog up, "I'm sorry too... sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" He cried, "it's you who's dead... I'm... I'm..." he burst into a heavy cry.

"It's... okay, Charlie," he didn't know what his father called him, Charlie was a long shot.

"I'm sorry..." he kept muttering, "I didn't want to... I didn't want to... I'm sorry... mate... I'm sorry jamsie..."

"There is no need to be..." he tried to shift Charlus's weight from his bad leg, "...mate, there is no need."

His words didn't mean anything to Ash, after all, he wasn't the right person to coddle him, the right person had died more than twenty years ago.

"How... how do you know..." a smile crept upon his face, "...you... you don't have your... glasses..."

"I... I had LASEK,"

Charlus smiled despite the pain. "You... bloody... hated those things..." he was starting to slip away.

"I did-didn't mean it."

There was an ominous silence for some time which was broken when Charlus said, "I... I didn't either... I never meant it when I said you were better off dead... I didn't want to kill you... let's go shoot that bloody musical... Jamsie."

Ash had banged the bars of the prison every chance he got, Charlus was barely breathing, his abdomen was tender... he was dying.

Was that the reason Charlus could never face Ash? Was he overpowered by the guilt of murdering his best friend and Ash's father? After all, he couldn't even bare to look him in the eye.

You can't die, he often told Charlus, not while you still owe me the truth.

They took Charlus again, Ash thought he might never see him again. Gary would've loved it and at some point, Ash would've too but he needed Charlus alive... to ask him what he'd meant.

He wasn't going to hate another person without a cause.

But Charlus came back, still unconscious but healthier than he'd been.