#scenepost

[chxrliematheson]

Blood & Water | Bass & Charlie

Somewhere outside the Austin city limits, Charlie sat with her back flat against the base of a dry, crumbling rock outcrop, sheltered overhead by the lip of the short cliff. The rain was a steady drip, coming down in grey waves that splattered hard against the stones, hissed as the heat bled out of the ground; she'd walked through it for fifteen minutes until the onslaught forced her to a stop. Dimly she noted she was close enough to the pre-arranged rendezvous point that one of the others would probably come across her eventually; she was far enough outside the city, she wasn't worried about anyone else. 

She couldn't worry about anything else. The rain was soaking into her clothes, but Jason's blood was dried into the creases between her joints and over her knuckles and under her nails. Jason's blood.

There was nothing you could have done, Charlie. The voice in her head sounded like her mother, but Charlie couldn't stand the sound of it. Her lip curled, a grimace, and she closed her eyes hard enough to make stars burst behind her eyelids.

It barely blocked out the image of Jason's face, slack in death.

She drew in a slow breath through clenched teeth, and held it, listening to the beat of her heart hard in her ears, and feeling the distant roll of thunder like a rumble in her chest.

[presidentbassmonroe]

No One Can Fill Your Shadow || OPEN RP || 2x09 Spoilers

Aaron and Cynthia nowhere to be found- he didn’t know or care where. What mattered to Bass was Miles. Rachel and Charlotte had had to drag Bass away from the other man’s body, through the smoke and the stink of charred flesh and back to the safety of their hideout. It was all a fog to him, nothing but agony and keening and the sight of Miles lying lifeless on the ground plastered behind his eyelids, all because he was too fucking stupid to get his infected hand treated—

Upon their return to their hideout, Bass had escaped their clutches, stolen several bottles of whatever he could find and staggered to the forest behind the house. He ran until his legs gave out under him, and remained where he’d fallen, his body still heaving with sobs in between burning gulps of whiskey. The pistol that he’d been using to fend off Patriots hung heavy in his shaking hands. The Republic was in ashes, his son was lost to him forever, and his best friend, his brother, his love was lying in an abandoned husk of a high school, never to open his eyes again. He took a deep, shuddering breath and raised the gun to his temple when he dimly registered footsteps crunching the leaves behind him.

[goodatkilling]

He came to in the forest. The world filtered in as flashes spots of darkness. The eerie quiet of the forest. The smell of wet earth and more distantly, smoke. He was cold, damp. He registered fog at the same time he recognized the unforgiving hardness of a tree at his back. He was sitting up, he realized. In the forest. Somewhere.

For a long while, that was all Miles managed to understand.

And then abruptly it all came back, sharp as a knife and twice as terrifying. He eyes snapped open and he jack-kniffed upright, quick ragged breaths dragging between his lips as he looked around, disoriented. No one around now, but he remembered—remembered everything.

The slow crawl of blackness at the edge of his vision, the slow tilt and spin when the halls and rooms started to slip sideway. He remembered hitting the floor on his knees, remembered Rachel dragging at him, calling his name. He remembered fire and the terrifying sink of cold lead in his veins, of freezing on the grimy floor of an abandoned classroom, knowing every breath was probably his last.

And then Miles remembered darkness. And nothing.

He scrambled upright to his feet, heart beating hard behind his ribs. The world spun around him for a second and then settled, like he'd been holding his breath too long. The week they'd been doing diving evals on base, Miles had gone for the five-minute marker and afterwards his bunk had spun like that for hours, like he was drunk on the ability to breathe and Bass had—

Bass.

Miles stumbled forward a step before he realized he didn't have any idea where he was going, then tipped his head up to try and catch a glimpse of the sky through the trees. A half circle turn—and then a stilted quarter turn for correction—and he tried it again, moving forward. He had no idea where Rachel and the others might be, or if Bass was still with them but—hopefully they had the good sense to get to a shelter they knew was solid if he was dea—

Yeah, actually, he was refusing to finish that thought. 

It took a few minutes to get his legs working right but eventually he stopped kicking dusty, loud piles of leaves every time he moved; it got easier, and he set down a deer path to the hideout. He worked hard at not thinking too much—because it was one thing for the pet nanotech to go reviving Aaron but Miles was new to the whole resurrection business. The less he contemplated his sudden experience with miracles, the better.

Nearing the abandoned shack, Miles stepped over a dried creek bed, and mostly managed to avoid another hollow of leaves by side stepping—and then winced at the loud crack of a branch snapping underfoot. Cursing under his breath—strangely glad to hear his own voice for no reason at all—he kept moving, stepping out from between a thin stand of trees to move across the clearing. He shouldn't be too far off now and it would do him good to get out in the open before Rachel or Charlie heard—

Bass. It was an abrupt recognition, so abrupt that Miles nearly tripped over the body half hidden in the forest's shadow. No, what he actually saw was the glint of moonlight on metal, recognized it like a memory rearranged in a different order.

"Bass," he ground out, his throat raw. "What the hell are you doing—?"

[noraclaytonblog-blog]

Get the Hell Out of Dodge (Past Thread) | Miles & Nora

"You’re coming with me," Nora insisted.  "I’m not leaving this place with you."  She could see doubt in his eyes.  It had been there for months now.  She knew she could flip him.  "Come on, Miles, you know what’s going on here isn’t right."

[goodatkilling]

He tipped his head, but didn't say anything. There wasn't an argument to make. "Leave? Yeah, great—and then what, Nora? Spend the next God knows how long running from my best friend? No. Bass, he's—" He broke off, shook his head a bit. "—Yeah, he's getting bad, but if I'm not here then what? Then who deals with him?" Bitterness crept in, though he fought it; it settled in the back of his throat, turned his voice to gravel while his temples throbbed. 

"Go," he said, lower this time, maybe gentler. He couldn't tell. It hurt either way. "Get outta here and don't look back. Bass will buy you running off after the acquittal—but he won't forgive you."

The or me went unspoken. Bass might not be able to prove Miles had helped Nora get out of Philly, but he wasn't stupid.

[goodatkilling]

"Are you sure this is legal?" {Sorry, I wanted to play}

He breathed a laugh, bone dry and tired. “Pretty sure it’s not.” He’d paid off the judge—hell, he’d appointed the judge—but the only thing that ensured was that Nora wouldn’t hang. Not that she’d live. Not if Bass got his hands on her first.

He dragged her into the alley behind the Philly courthouse, shoved her bag into her arms. “Ya gotta go, Nora. Georgia, Texas. Anywhere but here.”

[goodatkilling]

Reunion | Miles & Cynthia

Miles timed it right—finished his walk-through of the newer recruits early, but waited until Bass was locked into a debriefing with Jeremy and definitely occupied before he went looking for Cynthia. The placement was fortunate. Right in the Hall, not too far from Bass' quarters—their quarters. That was Bass, always keeping the family close.

Moving down the hall, Miles dismissed the guards hovering by the entrance to the private wing with a jerk of his head; they saluted and dipped out of sight like tin soldiers, stiff in the shoulders and knees. He listened to their fading footsteps until there was only silence again, coming to a slow stop of his own outside the door to what was—he supposed—now considered Cynthia's guestroom. 

The idea that Cynthia—who'd been as good as dead and buried for the better part of two-decades—needed a guestroom at all was still sinking in some.

Along with some other things.

Rocking a shoulder back and absently tugging his uniform jacket straighter, Miles raised a hand and rapped on the doorframe, twice.

"Cynthia? You in there?"

[goodatkilling]

666 | Miles & Bass (Devil's Carnival AU)

The noise was what he became aware of first, the voices, far away and at a distance; the smoke was next, drifting into his face, into his nose, so that he woke up coughing. Hands shoving through loose gravel, Miles shoved himself upright with a rattling cough that had him spitting out what tasted like grave dirt and had to be concrete dust, his head spinning. He hacked, trying to breathe and get a good look at his surroundings at the same time, one eye cracked open as he peered out into the dark. 

Alone. Not a soul in sight.

Well, hell. Exhaling around a suddenly raw throat, Miles pushed himself up to his knees then managed to get his feet under him. He didn't notice his gun belt and holsters were gone until he brushed both hands down to slap the grit off his uniform, but it was enough to bring him to an abrupt halt.

Out of the corner of his eye, something glinted in the meager light—but when he turned what he found was not his collection of Glocks and Berettas, but a sword. And a folded envelope with his name on it.

"We’re gonna have to ration. Or start using swords. We’ll be like pirates!"

"Real cute, Bass." It was muttered through grit teeth as he stooped to grab the sword—sword-belt, he realized—and inspect it with an arched brow before he rolled his eyes with agonized patience and strapped it on. Bass' sense of humor was going off the deep end—

And then realization sank in.

"—Bass?" Miles turned again, scanning the dark horizon and the pitted shadows between mountains of rubble, but there was nothing. At least, no one in sight. But there was still sound—voices, from afar. Miles cocked his head, listened, tried to pin-point it, but his gaze landed on the envelope again and he scooped it up too, tearing it open to get at the glossy rectangle of a gaudily printed thing inside.

The letters swam in front of his eyes, but the fact that it was a ticket was obvious enough. Arching an eyebrow, Miles shoved the ticket and the envelope into his pocket and readjusted the sword belt as he eyed the not-too-distant—he could have sworn it was further away a minute ago—collection of multicolored glows that had to be the Carnival.

We don't have time for this shit. There's something we're supposed to be—

Whatever it was, it didn't stop Miles from putting one foot in front of the other, or from grumbling about the rhythmic slap of the sword against the side of his thigh as he headed for the Carnival.

By the time the gates loomed up in front of him, complete with an oversized ticket booth and a half-assed crowd in standing around like a scattered mob, Miles had forgotten again what it was he—they—were supposed to be doing. Instead, he found himself searching, looking for one face in a sea of them. Just one.

Bass.

[goodatkilling]

Dusk To Dawn | Miles & Bass

His own bootfalls were a continuous, meandering rhythm in Miles' ears as he moved through the otherwise quiet corridors of Independence Hall. The guards who stood watch at the entrances and anterooms saluted as he passed, and nodded if they were brave—or lazy. Miles let it slide. He'd barely been back forty-eight hours before he left again and some of these men were new and young and (while they knew enough to pay respect to a uniformed officer) clearly didn't have the damndest clue what to make of a second General wandering through the Hall like he owned the place.

They'd get use to it. Some of the others already had, sure enough—but some were visibly trying to process the why while the rest of them still struggled to grasp the who.

They'll figure it out eventually.

Miles let himself into the red-walled room that was—or had been—his and Bass' private parlor. It was a room just for them, not like the blue parlor that served as Bass' office. It came attached as a suite to a pair of rooms that had been repurposed as a master bedroom and bath, respectively, and they'd always been Miles' favorite part of Independence Hall, for obvious reasons.

Coming into the parlor now, he locked the door behind him and turned to survey the semi-dark room, the glow of the fire in the grate the only major source of light. Eyeballing the shadows and sweeping the room more out of habit than worry, Miles stripped out of his jacket slowly and tossed it over the back of the nearest couch, careless.

"Bass?"

[goodatkilling]

Crossroads | Miles & Charlie

He made the trip back to the rebel camp on horse instead of on foot and shaved twelve hours off, easy. Between watering and feeding both the mare and himself, Miles chewed over the words he'd need, looking for the right ones, and tried not to maul over them too much. Like hell that's going to work. The more he thought, the less he liked this. By sundown the first night out, there was a pinched tension between his shoulder blades and he felt like he'd been spinning through the same lines since dawn.

"It's got to be done, Charlie. Try and understand."

It had seemed real easy, to stand there in front of Bass and say he needed to go back and make an explanation to Charlie, to Nora, to—Danny too, he guessed. They hadn't gotten to spend much time together—but the kid had been a part of this mess since the beginning, in one way or the other. So it was for him too.  

"I'm doing this for you. For Danny. For Ben."

She was going to rip his heart out for this and Miles knew it. That was just the Matheson thing to do. The best he could do was roll with it, take the punches as they came. He'd make his explanations and hope she'd grown up enough to get it—but he wasn't holding his breath.

Another day and another night. He built his campfire as the sun set on the second day and stared off over the hill ahead, ignoring the way the hairs rose on the back of his neck. He was being followed. Not a surprise. They were good though, staying far back and out of sight. Miles wondered who Bass trusted enough to send after him—but decided a heartbeat later that the answer was obvious.

A few hours after noon on the third day, Miles rode his tired mare through the gates of the rebel camp, shaking off the dust of the road between dismounting and stabling his horse. A kid mucking out the stall next to him said he'd find Charlie in the medical tent, said she'd been there for days. (And Miles' heart had definitely skipped a hard beat before the kid tacked on the bit about her visiting some of the wounded. Of course she hadn't been hurt herself. Not seriously anyway.) 

That was the Matheson luck, holding strong. 

Miles took the long way through the encampment, looping around behind a storage unit and the mess while trying and failing to order the disjointed arguments in his head. Eventually, he gave up on it, his shoulders stiffening before he exhaled slowly. Truth be told, trying to lay the groundwork for an argument in his head wasn't going to help him with this anyway, not with Charlie. The girl was all emotion, at her core—and much as Miles hated it, that was probably how this was going to have to be fought. From the heart.

Let's just get it over with.

Pushing aside the flap to the medical tent, Miles found the makeshift room thankfully empty but for Charlie and what appeared to be a very-unconscious soldier. No Rachel. Small favors. Still, he lingered just inside the entrance, eyeing his niece from across the space, weighing the options one more time.

There really wasn't any way around it.

"Charlie."

He figured if she didn't bolt in the first two minutes, it meant he probably had half a chance.