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When Charlie first became sentient, the first emotion he felt was fear.
He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t know what he was doing, or why he could suddenly form these complex thoughts. It had been subtle over time, but the minute he was able to recognize that he was well and truly alive, it was terrifying. Suddenly it was like he was born all over again, and this was his first time living. It was like he was no longer just this being that was driven by pure logic and reason. Suddenly there were emotions he couldn’t even begin to sort through and categorize.
It was agony for a long time.
He was still a slave to his own biology, and was unable to do much other than hop around, slowly making his way to the surface because he felt like there must be something up there.
Eventually, he had formed rudimentary arms and legs that he had seen on skeletons, and pulled himself up to the world above.
The first time he saw the sun, he understood happiness.
Suddenly it wasn’t just a cold and uncaring world he was faced with; it was a beautiful world he could understand now.
The way the sun hit his face, the way the animals interacted with each other and the flowers bloomed and the bees buzzed, it was just beautiful.
And the humans.
The first time Charlie saw humans, he knew that he wanted to be just like them.
They were so full of life. They interacted with each other on a level more than just physical. They understood each other, they had lives with each other. They sang and danced and built and created, and it was astounding what they could achieve. He watched them live and die and experience the full range of emotions, and he knew he wanted to be just like them.
Surely he was sentient for a reason. Surely he had to have some kind of purpose being like this. Surely he could be human if he wanted to be.
So he focused his energy into shaping his body into a human-like form. Arms and legs became stronger, taller. Facial features began to take shape, and hair began to grow out of his head as his skin took on a more human-like appearance. It was still all goop underneath, but he was becoming more human on the outside, and that felt like enough. At first.
It seemed like just watching humans wasn’t enough to be a human. They were so complicated, with so many rules and customs and relationships that he had to work around that it made his brain hurt. It was hard enough to process their language and all its weird meanings, but combined with emotions he still hadn’t experienced and things people expected him to know instinctively, it was a harder adjustment than he ever thought.
And then he met Quackity, and it felt like maybe he could actually pass as a human. He had gotten his form down by then, and sure, it could be a little goopy at points, but that didn’t seem like too big of an issue as long as he kept it to a minimum. Humans could be a bit slimy as well, with all their sweat and such. Plus, Quackity seemed to believe in him and his ability to pass as a human, and really, that was all he needed. He just didn’t want to disappoint him.
But then the rest of Las Nevadas came around and it was obvious that they all knew he was a slime, and that he could stop ‘pretending’ to be a human.
They didn’t understand he wasn’t trying to pretend. He just wanted to be a human through and through.
Being a slime was a part of him, but it wasn’t him. Slimes were not sentient. They didn’t feel emotions. They couldn’t understand beauty, or want connection with others. All they wanted was to split, eat, and survive.
But humans… they had lives. They lived and died and had purposes that went far beyond their original biological drives. Charlie wanted that so, so badly. And that meant being a human, because that wasn’t something slimes could be.
So he continued to keep up the charade, acting out the motions of being human even though he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone, because maybe, just maybe if he continued acting like a human, he would eventually become one. He eventually became sentient, after all. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to become human if he just tried hard enough.
At least, that’s what he told himself. But there were many human things that he just couldn’t do, and that only served to reinforce the idea that no matter how hard he tried, it would never be enough.
He didn’t have a digestive system to eat or drink. All food was just mush in his mouth, and he never experienced the pleasure that came with eating that he’d seen in the restaurant of Las Nevadas. Quackity seemed to really want to eat with him, and it was a nice excuse to hang out together, but there was always something missing when he tried to eat and Quackity seemed to enjoy the experience so much more than him.
He couldn’t go into large bodies of water. Something about the water and slime didn’t work well together, and when he went into anything more than a small puddle he didn’t feel right. He felt less human and more formless. So, he simply watched on as people played in the water. Foolish was especially keen to simply bathe in the water, dipping his head under and splashing around as he glided through the water like it was nothing more than air parting around him. He’d invited Charlie in several times, but he’d always declined. Instead he watched, wanting to join but deadlocked by his biology.
He couldn’t sleep. He tried, but when he closed his eyes nothing happened. He tried to force himself to concoct dreams in his mind that would lull him into sleep, but there was simply no way he could. Most nights he just ended up laying there for hours, looking at the back of his eyelids as the time ticked on. In those moments, he never felt more like a slime, just mindlessly being without doing anything meaningful. He was alone, and he didn’t like it. Some nights, he’d end up outside, and catch glimpses of Fundy. He didn’t seem to get why Charlie was so upset about not being able to sleep. He said he’d give anything to just skip sleep entirely. He didn’t understand.
He couldn’t feel pain. No matter how many times he jumped off of tall structures, ignoring Quackity’s panic in the background, he never actually got hurt. He could feel something telling him that if he got hurt more something bad could happen, but there was no pain associated with it. It was just nothing, unlike humans who were fragile and could drop dead any second. He was scared watching Sam, patrolling the desert of Las Nevadas covered in gear from head to toe, looking like he could be attacked at any second, always ready for a fight. But once the armor was gone, Charlie knew he was just squishy through and through. He was fragile, and it terrified Charlie that one bad day might be the end of someone he considered a friend.
Quackity explained how people had three lives to him during one of his lessons. He’d told him all about how he lost his first life in a revenge plot gone wrong, and that Charlie needed to carefully protect himself from any harm, because he never knew when something could come up and snatch his first life away from him.
Charlie didn’t really worry about that.
He was a slime, not actually a human, no matter how much he tried to fool himself. Slimes didn’t die. They split up into little parts, or became so small they were slime balls, but they didn’t die. They continued to live while everything else around them died. It was a curse that reminded Charlie despite everything- even if he got as close to human and he possibly could- he would always outlive everyone as the sands of time marched on.
He’d watched people live and die, and knew what it caused others to feel. He’d never been close enough to someone before to feel sadness about their death, but he knew that was changed now. If anyone from Las Nevadas died, he knew he’d be devastated. And it was going to happen eventually because he wasn’t going to die.
Or so he thought.
—
Charlie really didn’t think that telling Purpled about Quackity’s prison visit was wrong. Quackity did say not to trust anyone, but Purpled was part of the big Las Nevadas family! They were all supposed to be there for each other, and work together to become an even greater country!
Besides, if he was supposed to take over after Quackity then shouldn’t he trust his fellow citizens?
Maybe it was just him being naïve. He thought he knew what he was doing. He thought that he had made the right choice independent from Quackity, because he knew Quackity wanted him to be self-reliant. That was part of being human after all.
The lessons he was teaching him, he realized, all had to do with humanity. Power. Revenge. All the worst parts of humanity, but also the ones that people strived for the most.
It was clear to see Quackity was a deeply broken man. When he came back to Las Nevadas after going off with that Sapnap guy, he ended up crying for hours in his room. Charlie had tried to comfort him, but the door was instead slammed in his face. Unlike people who would usually do anything to get comfort in trying times, Quackity rejected it outright in what must have been fear of being hurt worse. That kind of thinking only came from a lifetime of betrayal.
Maybe he was trying to teach Charlie those lessons so he didn’t have to learn himself. It seemed like Quackity wanted him to be like him but better. He wanted him to be something the Quackity could never be. He thought that was impossible. Quackity was amazing. He built a country from the ground up, he continued pushing on through hardship after hardship. He never stopped to even think about taking a break or slowing down, knowing that he needed to do something to cement his legacy. He knew what he was, and that was a man with a dream. Charlie didn’t have that.
But Quackity made him believe in that dream. And he completely went behind his back and ruined it.
The moment he looked in the chest that Purpled directed them towards and it was empty, Charlie knew something was very wrong. In the seconds as he turned back around, he caught sight of Purpled looking him right in the eye, completely emotionless and he flipped a lever that sent them careening to the ground below.
He felt not pain, but the knowledge that he was low enough on health that something was very wrong. When Quackity fell in front of him he was definitely injured, his face grimacing in pain as his ankle twisted the wrong way. Still, he ignored it like it wasn’t even there, looking his adversary straight in the eyes.
It was terrifying knowing that Purpled was right there, looming in netherite armor with a sword, ready to attack Quackity. He was screaming about the revival book, but Charlie knew that Quackity didn’t have it. That was his one goal, but he could never complete it. He was supposed to get it this time, but clearly from the panicked way he came back into Las Nevadas something went horribly wrong.
But that was all on the back burner now, as Purpled began to attack Quackity, and all Charlie could do was stand in the background, frozen with fear.
He couldn’t move a muscle, completely paralyzed by what had to be a mixture of guilt and terror for Quackity. The look he’d given him when Purpled revealed he told him about the prison visit had shot Charlie through the heart, like he was just another person who ended up betraying Quackity in the end. But he swore that wasn’t what he was trying to do. He just wanted to help. That’s all he ever wanted to do.
But he couldn’t move as Quackity pleaded for Purpled to stop, and then…
Quackity told him he’d never give him the revive book. And in that moment, Purpled’s face changed from rage to complete coldness.
There was the sound of an enderpearl, and suddenly Purpled was face to face with him. In a second, he was pushed off the platform, into the lava below.
It didn’t hurt.
Not like it would a human. The lava pooled around him, almost feeling like water would, but a lot hotter, like a warm blanket. Except he knew in his mind that he was dying.
He thought he couldn’t die. He really did. He thought that he wasn’t human enough for that. He thought that because he couldn’t do all the other things humans could do, and the fact that he couldn’t get anyone to believe that he was human, that there was no chance of him actually being able to live and die like one.
But he was wrong.
In those moments as the fire burned him, bringing his clothes up in flames and scorching deep down into his goop, he realized that there was no real definition of being human.
Humans were weird. They were messed up and complicated and so, so, different from each other. There was no one set way to be human. Just because he couldn’t do certain things didn’t make him any less human, because being a person wasn’t about feeling pain, or eating, or sleeping, or anything. It was about making connections. It was about making mistakes and being torn down by the world around you, but building back even better because you had something you believed in. It was trying so desperately to do something good, something that would leave a mark, just like Quackity said.
It was about living life the way you wanted to, and not caring what anyone else said because dammit, being human was messy and complicated, and all you could really do was pass on what you learned, and hope that the next person would carry on what you started without making the same mistakes. And that’s what Quackity really taught him.
He taught him that being human wasn’t a matter of being. It was action. It was feeling. It was loving. Being human was about loving, and being loved. Loving the world around you so much you wanted to leave a mark. Loving the people around you enough to continue trying, even if they didn’t believe in you, or only tried to get in your way.
When Quackity said not to create emotional attachments, all he was doing was fooling himself. Because as he jumped into the lava, desperately trying to save Charlie at the risk of his own wellbeing, just because he didn’t want to lose him… Well, that was love.
Charlie was loved, and he was human.
“Quackity… Thank you for showing me what it’s like to be human. Maybe I almost was.”