Archive of Our Own

Miles runs his sword through flesh, and the blade bounces off of bone. He shoves harder, and the bone, likely a rib, snaps with a satisfying CRACK. The man drops, eyes peeled wide, mouth gaping like a fish. Miles jerks the sword back out, and blood slings back with it, skittering his dark jeans with maroon droplets.

He feels wind tickle the back of his neck and drops. Something cuts the air above him, a blade intended for his spine. He sweeps his leg out and spins, catching an ankle and knocking his attacker’s feet off the dust. The man collides with the ground, shoulder first, and Miles climbs to his feet, swift and sure, and draws the sword down, past skin and ribcage and deeper, into heart.

A bird cackles somewhere. Stillness meets him, an old friend and a tempestuous one. He knows it won’t stay long. It never does.

Miles doesn’t put much stock in friends anymore, anyway.

He moves alone. He always has, after what happened with Monroe. He wishes he always did, before Monroe. The road to hell is paved with the best intentions, and he bulldozed his way more than halfway there with his own men.

He deserves the looks he gets. Even the murderous ones, hell, those are the ones he deserves most. If there was even an inkling of justice in the universe, people would be tightening a noose into his Adam’s apple, not just hitting him with fearful, angry glares. But then, when’s the universe ever been just?

Charlie pisses him off. She gives him that look, that I thought you were better because you’re my father’s brother look. The one that speaks novels without a damn word being said. He knows them all, has suffered them all. And it pisses him off because he can’t rightly be angry about it.

He deserves it.

Hell, he carved out his own little drunken niche back in the city, tending bar and serving alcohol to patrons needing a swig of liquid courage just to get through the day. He’d taken to the bottle because it didn’t make him forget, but it took the edge off. Every day memories poke insistently at the edges of his brain, and it makes him want to drink that much more because he probably wouldn’t do anything differently if given the chance.

So when Charlie judges him, he finds himself snapping. The thin rubber band on his control, the same one wound around his trigger finger, recoils and he goes off like a gun backfiring.

“Dammit, Charlie, shut up!” The words explode like a shot, and the silence that kicks back is deafening. “Let it go! I don’t owe you an explanation, I owe you nothing.”

He ignores the look on her face, even though it’s what he wants. She goes quiet, but he can practically see her bite her tongue to do it.

“All right? You want your brother back? Drop it. Or I swear to you, I’m outta here, you can find him yourself.”

He walks on, and this time, more than ever, he deserves the glares he gets. He has no right to go off on her. She’s young, she’s naive. She doesn’t understand and maybe neither does he. That if he could do anything differently, he probably wouldn’t. Not just out of necessity, but because blood is a vice, almost as sweet as alcohol.

He’s a killer, and that’s why people look at him the way they do. The fact that, until a few days ago, Charlie didn’t look at him like that was almost a relief. A reprieve. A sort of second chance sent by God as a belated offer of forgiveness. Only to be snatched away when Jeremy opened his mouth and spoke Miles’ secrets like they were sweet to taste.

The looks from others he can bear. To see it in her eyes, the same color as his brother’s, judging him the way they do—

And he deserves it. But that makes it no easier.

He moves alone. He always has, and he decides that this can’t change, that he needs to leave. Nora is smart. She can keep the kid safe, get her where she needs to go, and maybe even give the kid a chance of getting back alive. With the whole militia gunning for him, they’re better off without him staying and painting a big target on their backs.

He tells Nora so she can keep Charlie from pitching after him fast and reckless like a damned hero. Charlie spends too much time chasing him when she should be off running towards her brother, anyway.

Charlie hears him say that he’s leaving, though, and don’t that beat all. Another punch in the gut from a universe that won’t even let him slip away unnoticed. If he stays, he’ll bring the whole militia down on them, but really he’s been searching for an out since the kid hunted him down and roped him in like a noose with speeches about his brother and family.

She's annoyingly sweet and forgiving one minute and bitching at him the next and he's just about had enough of it when Maggie dies.

And then things change.

He doesn't walk away. He doesn't leave. He watches her beg and plead with Maggie not to leave until he just can’t anymore.

He pulls Charlie away from Maggie's corpse and into his arms, and Charlie grabs onto him, digs in her fingers and holds on so hard it hurts. She’s lost a part of herself, a whole human being, and he knows what that’s like. How his brother was a phantom limb after the blackout, and Monroe a lightheaded void, as if Miles had left half of his body behind.

He doesn’t have words to comfort her. Even if he did, they wouldn’t fix anything. But he makes a promise, voice low and raw.

I'm not going anywhere. Okay? I'm not gonna leave.

He kisses the top of her head, and Charlie holds onto him for a very long time.

They drag Maggie from the building and bury the body. Miles knows their time is better spent catching up to Danny, but one look at Charlie's face tells him it’s a battle he won't win. He bears it while Aaron and Charlie dig a grave deep enough and stick Maggie in it, waits impatiently so they can mark the grave and say their goodbyes.

When he gets up, he tells Charlie what he should’ve hours ago. Time to get moving, to go after the living. Better to honor the dead that way.

“Miles, stop it.” Her voice is unusually soft as she walks over. The sound brushes against him, disarms him like a trap, and for a second he doesn’t know what to say.

“We just buried Maggie,” she whispers. “So please just let us say goodbye.”

“Good bye? To who?” He points to the grave, decorated with a cross Charlie put together even though he’s never heard her mention God or whether she believes Maggie went to a better place. Probably not. “It’s just a body in the ground, Charlie.”

He speaks too bluntly, and she steels her expression against him, guarding the wound he just prodded. It's like looking in a mirror. And it isn't right, because Charlie isn't like him. She's frustrating and too trusting and tracking in circles trying to help every damned person that stumbles across their path. He shouldn’t be seeing himself in her, but here she is, burying her pain, asking for a few minutes more to mourn and he can’t let her have it.

He bolsters his pack on his shoulder and heads off, turning away from Charlie’s expression because it might just make him change his mind.

“Let’s move.”

They need to keep moving. It’s the only thing that’s going to hold Charlie together in the end. Not the people around her, because everyone, everything, can be picked off and reduced to dirt. But the journey, well, that’s no one else’s choice but hers.

Her journey is his now, and that’s the only choice he has.

Miles forgets sometimes. He forgets what it was like before the power went out. He forgets what Monroe was like before that desperate, dark look crept into his eyes, the one that spoke of nights sleeping with one eye cracked open, watching his back while maneuvering forward to conquer every square inch of land without someone’s name spat on it in blood. He forgets Ben’s soft smile, can’t quite conjure it up sometimes.

He forgets who he was, what he used to fight for, if he used to win.

Charlie says, “I remember you.”

And Charlie makes him remember.

He starts to see it, feel it. There are moments when he acts like the man he was before the blackout. Who he used to be bleeds into who he is now, old molecules greeting new ones and he feels like he’s being welcomed home.

Charlie reminds him. She does it effortlessly, in small glances and quick smiles, the occasional brush of her hand on his arm. He hesitates at crossroads, hovers on uncertain paths and she reroutes him, like a compass.

They come within inches of saving Danny, and at just the right moment everything goes to hell. Miles jumps off a moving train carrying Danny, their holy grail, because he can’t leave Charlie behind.

There’s no journey without her.

He jars his shoulder but he’s dealt with worse. Charlie stands, eyes wet and lips trembling, watching the train carry her brother away, and Miles wants to eliminate the space between them, pull her into his arms and let her ride out the worst of it. She might punch him, and he can handle that. But she might undo him, and he won’t be able take it if she does.

They regroup, and they’re a sad ragtag bunch of misfits. It’s been a while since Miles was the underdog. Charlie’s played at one her whole life, and he can see it’s made her strong, stronger than him in some ways and a damned idealist in others.

Charlie gathers herself, picking up stray pieces far away from the group, and Miles knows exactly what she’s doing, can recite the regrets word for word. He knows what it’s like to lose by a few inches, fall short by a few seconds.

Nora pushes Miles towards Charlie with a look, one that plainly says She’s your niece, you asshole--comfort her. She’s right, but Charlie is raw right now, and so is he. Too many words are sitting uncomfortably in his throat and they might just find a way out if he starts talking.

He goes to her anyway, forces himself to squat in front of her and she watches him, broken and bandaged badly at the seams, and he wants to tell her he’s damned proud of her so much it scares him.

“That uncle you knew when you were little,” he says. Stops. Regroups. “He’s not dead. I just...I can’t be him right now.”

Charlie pieces herself back together while he watches; it’s an effort and it takes her a good, long moment before she answers him.

“I get it Miles,” she says, a steel note in her words. “But honestly, I don’t want to hear it.”

Charlie gets to her feet, pulling her rucksack over her shoulder and demanding that they move, put the dead to rest and march on like soldiers. He looks up at her, outline burned dark against the sun.

He shouldn’t stay; he’s bringing something dark down on Charlie and it’s his fault, it always happens. The shadows are slipping in. He ruins everything that touches him, by accident or by rote, and Charlie won’t be the exception unless he leaves.

But he made a promise, and it’s about more than that now. Some part of him feels drawn to his niece’s side, making him inevitably trail after her, following her footsteps even as she’s treading dangerously in his.

So when she walks on, he follows. And if her tracks start to look a little too much like his, well, at least he won’t be surprised.

They travel for a little while, then stop for a cooked meal at a tavern sitting on a crossroads. It’s a risk and they all know it; anyone could recognize Miles, but Miles can tell Aaron’s feet are blistering by the way the poor bastard is limping. Nora is haggard, wincing with each step, rust-brown blotching the bandages tied around her waist. Charlie is quiet, and he isn’t sure what he thinks about that.

The food is hot and they eat without a word spoken between them. Charlie sits to Miles’ left and he orders a drink, knocks back half of it, then slides the rest over to Charlie.

She looks up from her food, blinking at him like she’s fighting to keep her eyes open. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and nods at the drink.

Charlie stares at the glass a second, then wraps her hand around it, her fingers sliding warm between his, and he lets go. She lifts the glass, pauses with an uncertain glance to him, and swallows the drink.

She coughs a little, and he moves instinctively, patting her back as she catches her breath. His hand skims upwards, rests on the nape of her neck and he rubs a little, kneading muscles he knows are going to be sore for days.

He lets his hand drop after a few seconds. Her warmth clings to his skin.

He orders another drink.

After their bowls are clean and Miles downs his third glass, a dark-haired woman slides a hand onto Miles’ shoulder. She’s lean and sexy in a rugged sort of way, and the second she tells him her name and asks for his, Charlie tenses up beside him like an abused bowstring.

The woman, Clarissa, flirts with him shamelessly and he’s just drunk enough to fall into the relaxed rhythm of it. He lowers his voice, lets his eyes linger on hers and graze over her lips. She takes the seat on Miles’ right, orders herself a shot, and asks him mundane questions, easy conversation to fill the quiet.

His answers are pure bullshit and he knows she can tell because of the way she smiles. She touches his arm while they talk, soft presses of warmth through cloth, light innuendos tossed around covering deeper implications, and when Clarissa leans into him, Charlie gets up without a word, grabs her bag from under her chair, and walks out.

Aaron watches her go with concern, opening his mouth on a word but probably wisely saying nothing. Nora sends Miles a hell of a glare, one that tells him exactly what she thinks of his newfound acquaintance.

He doesn’t like the idea of Charlie out of his sight. She can take care of herself, but that doesn’t mean shit doesn’t happen where Charlie is concerned. He asks the barkeep for the whole bottle, shelling out the few coins he’s got left as he gets up.

“Sorry,” he says to Clarissa, grabbing the bottle from the counter. “Family business.”

He finds Charlie sitting on a chipped boulder under a heavy, old oak, staring up at the sky. The night rings cold and clear, stars burning overhead, and the silence after the ruckus in the tavern feels comfortable.

She doesn’t look up when he reaches her side, and for a long, drawn moment neither of them say anything. He can feel Charlie buzzing beside him, full of too much everything and he knows what that’s like, to be carrying a lot more on the inside than bones should be able to handle.

When Charlie finally breaks the quiet, her voice is soft.

“The song you sang, the one you played on the tape deck.”

He sneaks a glance at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Yeah?”

“What was it?”

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “I don’t remember, Charlie.”

“You sure?”

“It’s been fifteen years, Charlie. Yeah, I’m sure.”

She goes quiet, and Miles just can’t leave it alone.

“Why?” he asks, his voice a little rough and on the razor edge of sarcasm. “Wanna reminisce about old times and cry about it?”

She looks at him finally, and levels his gaze. It’s a look he’s used to from her, the one that calls him on his bullshit. You’re better than this, it says. I know you’re better.

Except he isn’t, he’s still disappointing her and that’s not going to change, not in any future he can figure.

“What happened to you, Miles?” she asks, and the words in him fire off like a shot.

“Don’t make me out to be your dad, kid.” The words are poisonous, and he immediately feels like shit for saying them. “Kid” tastes foreign on his tongue, bitter compared to her name, he’s so used to saying it now, and he shakes his head. “I’m not like your old man, never will be.”

The truth of that statement goes deeper than it implies, but he doesn't tell her. Their aunts and uncles often teased they had to be adopted siblings, because Ben had their mother's blue eyes and the soft brown of her hair, and Miles was dark—dark haired, dark eyed, and dark humored, more like their father. They were complements of each other, a solid unit, but different enough that people guessed the truth without realizing it. They were adopted, both of them, and they had no more blood in common between the two of them than with their adoptive parents.

He tries not to think about it because he’s Charlie’s uncle, regardless. Ben was his brother, in every sense of the word, and being adopted didn’t change that. Blood would only make it official.

Family is more than blood, and he knows this better than most.

Charlie jumps down off the rock. A leaf clings to her shirt and Miles has to stop himself from brushing it off of her. She glances at the bottle in his hand and the moonlight catches her face, silver and brilliant.

She looks beautiful.

“I know you’re not, Miles,” she says, and she means it. He almost can’t look at her but he forces himself, because if he can charge headlong into battle day after day at her side then dammit he can look into her eyes.

He finds no judgment there. She looks tired and worn, but not angry. The fire that drove her to snap at him earlier has simmered to a haggard determination, and he knows that look. She won’t give up until she finds Danny, and he knows, from the burning in his blood, that he’ll probably follow her to his death and that’s all right with him.

The realization is founded in silence, and it stuns him.

“I thought you were going to spend the night,” she says. The look she gives him is significant. She’s searching for something and he isn’t sure what.

He furrows his brow. “Why’d you think that?”

She nods back at the tavern. “Her.”

He thinks back, then actually chuckles. Charlie raises an eyebrow, her expression hovering between expectant and a little annoyed. He smirks at her. “Charlie, I’m too busy helping you to get laid.”

She huffs, a soft, short sound, and he reaches out with his free hand without thinking, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek. The heat of her skin sears his and he suddenly, fiercely wants to kiss her.

The thought stops him. He lets his hand drop, and Charlie’s gaze lingers on his a moment too long, whole unspoken conversations taking place in the pause, before she gives him a small smile and picks up her bag.

She walks past him and he follows, turning like the axis of his world pivots on her.

“C’mon,” she says, and places a hand on his arm briefly. “Let’s go get the others.”

Nora gets worse, fast.

Her teeth chatter uncontrollably even when she clenches her jaw, and her body shivers while her tank top soaks with sweat. The wound enflames, and when Aaron takes her temperature with his hand and says she’s burning up, Miles knows they don’t have a lot of time before she slips under and never comes out of it.

He only knows one person who has penicillin. It’s a serious gamble and it isn’t just a bad idea, it’s the mother of all bad ideas, but if he tries to find some other way and there isn’t, she’ll die.

So before he can question his judgment, he steals a horse-drawn cart off of a few unsuspecting militia soldiers, helps Aaron and Charlie load Nora in the back, then travels the roads by heart because he knows exactly where to go.

Drexel greets Miles with a gun to his temple. Drexel always was certifiable, riding that ragged line between war criminal and psychopath, and Miles can almost forget the unwitting Russian roulette because Drexel agrees to offer the penicillin to cure Nora.

Then Drexel holds Nora hostage and demands payment in blood, shed by Charlie’s hands and not his, and Miles realizes he really shouldn’t have come.

Miles squares off against Drexel and Charlie stands between the two of them, stock still, her face carved from stone except for small twitches, tics in time with Drexel’s rising voice. Every muscle pulls taut in Miles’s body, ready to snap if he reaches that breaking point, and he’ll fight his way out, carve a bloody path of broken bones and bodies if he has to, because he won’t let Charlie pay that price for his mistake.

She takes the bullet for them, a perfect headshot. She agrees to kill a man she doesn’t know, to save Nora, to save Aaron, to save Miles, when she shouldn’t have had to save any of them in the first place.

Her hands were clean, and now, because of Miles, she’s somebody’s weapon and the blowback is going to paint her red.

Charlie stands silent in front of a mirror, wrapped in a green skintight dress that bares her shoulder and most of her legs. Miles’s eyes skim down her body, linger on her pale skin where the fabric cuts off, and he stares a little longer than he should. He likes his women a little rugged and rough around the edges, but the dress is meant to arouse, and with the way it clings to Charlie's every curve, that's what it does.

Miles says something, expresses concern as best he can without showing how fucking terrified and angry he is. The crazy son of a bitch is throwing his niece into a bloodbath, cracking her apart and breaking her bones into the mold of a killer Miles never wanted her to be. He would snap Drexel’s neck in the drum of a heartbeat if he got the chance, and he wouldn't regret. He regrets a lot more lately, and that all has to do with Charlie. And that pisses him off even more.

Aaron argues with her. For once, Miles agrees with every word the man says. But Charlie’s already distancing herself, shutting down. He can see it in her eyes; she’ll kill for him and all of them. And if he wants to save Nora then he has to step aside and let her.

“You’re the one always telling me to toughen up,” she snaps at him, words like ice, cold and brittle, and he wishes he had alcohol, drugs, anything to kill the realization that everything he did before made him lead Charlie to this. “And you’re right. The world’s not a bunch of pretty postcards.”

Except she's his niece. Blood or not, this is Ben's daughter, and he is losing her in this moment, even as she blusters and bullshits how she can do this, kill an innocent man to save the rest of them. She might do it, she might not, he can't tell with her anymore. And what do you know, she's more like him than he wants to admit. He knows the road, he's walked it a shitload of times. He doesn't want her seeing the bodies he left rotting along the way. He doesn't want her adding some of her own.

Then the bastard smashes his fucking paw into her face, and dammit, he should have seen it coming, the scumbag was hinting at it the whole time. His head is so wrapped up in what she's about to do and what he's going to have to let her do that by the time he hears the resounding thud of knuckles slamming sickeningly against cheekbone and sees her stagger, it's too late.

His hand is at Drexel’s throat before he realizes. He wants to choke the air out of his lungs, watch as the life dulls by watts in his eyes. He needs it like air and he craves it so bad, like a match to a cigarette, that he almost doesn't feel the barrel of the gun cutting cool into his pulse.

His fingers twitch against soft flesh. Drexel really let himself go; he's soft now, burning himself out in women and drugs and mafia type guards. Miles bets he could break every joint in Drexel’s body, crack every rib until they float away from his spine like little islands, and leave him there to drown in his own blood and vomit, if he could just get him alone.

He doesn't move. The cold metal warms to Miles’s skin by the time Drexel jerks his hand away from his throat.

Charlie gets to her feet. Angry red darkens her cheek where Drexel hit her, and Miles’s gut roils. She meets his eyes once, a long, quiet gaze. Then she walks out. It takes everything in him not go with her.

He knows Charlie is strong enough to do this. She risks her life to save people she barely knows, and she’ll break herself in half trying to protect the people she loves.

And Miles wishes to hell she wouldn’t.

It's Aaron, believe it or not, damned Aaron with his words like Charlie's and his ability to self-sacrifice, that spurs Miles into the action he should have taken from the start. He risks Aaron and more importantly he risks Nora, and it's all pittance compared to Charlie. The choices are impossible, but there's only one he can really live with.

He stops her just in time, grabbing her clasped hands before they drive a knife into the man's chest. She would have done it if he hadn't stopped her; she would have gone through with it and Miles thanks God or whoever the fuck is listening that he got there in time to stop her.

She looks up at him, cheeks wet, her tear-stained eyes open wounds, and the sight shatters something inside him, lets something unfamiliar and uncomfortable escape from some dark place and flood into his veins, emptying out into him in seconds.

We're leaving, Charlie, he says, and the words are end all be all.

He can't express his relief when Nora and Aaron meet up with them, alive and somehow okay despite the odds. He can't offer comfort to Nora, even though she clearly needs it. He can't hold up Charlie, take her face in his hands and kiss her forehead, her nose, her mouth, all while telling her she'll be all right, she'll learn to live with it. He's broken inside, something has fallen out of place and he can't function until he shoves it back where it needs to be, filtering out the pain and the guilt and the need to scrape it all off until there's nothing left to him but bone shavings.

“So, everything turned out okay,” he says, and walks on, leaves them all behind him, because he can't hold them up, can't make a show of even keeping himself upright. All he can do is move forward, because it's clear. It's only a matter of time now.

Everything behind him is going to catch up to him eventually.

It takes a day and a night for Miles to put a name to the emotion flooding through his veins. It's been so long since he's tasted the bitter burn, it's a wonder he recognized it at all.

Shame.

He feels ashamed of what he's done. That he worked with men like Drexel, helped shape an army to cut down people and raise the strong, rather than protect the weak. He feels ashamed that he killed so many people without caring if they were like Aaron, selfless, or Charlie, bright and beautiful and annoyingly new to a ruthless world.

Nora looks at him funny, and he suspects she knows. Charlie moves about in a haze, quiet once more, and he can't make himself care. He risked everything for her, and he doesn't want to think about that, about what the means, because his world is shifting and rearranging around her and it’s changing him.

Miles feels like he’s being swept along in a tidal, like Charlie’s a riptide and he’s getting dragged under whether he’s kicking or not. She’s drawing the air out of him in angry words and frustrated arguments and it’s all foreplay. She gets under his skin like nobody else and it’s driving him crazy.

He goes for days without a drink. It gets longer between bottles and the thoughts get louder, crowding in more doubts than he has room in his head. He hums a few songs under his breath to staunch the silence, hears the drumbeat of “Lost Highway” in their collective footsteps.

The alcohol isn’t what he misses. It’s the blurred edges. Everything is growing too clear and sharp-edged and it pisses him off.

He argues with Charlie because he can. He snaps at her over the smallest things, lays into her when she screws up because it’s distraction, plain and simple, and she doesn’t get it. She turns those baby blues onto him and he knows he’s hitting her too hard, not giving her enough time to breathe between, but he can’t stop. He can’t or he’s going to head off in the other direction until he finds a bottle and a darkly-lit tavern where he can start a fight just to taste the blood in his teeth, break someone’s jaw and watch maroon paint the walls. He yells at her over the stupidest things and at some point she starts yelling back, the two of them colliding over a ridge of pointlessly different opinions, and he wants to stop before he crosses a line that makes her turn her back on him but it’s too good, building up to a pitch that makes his blood sing and the thoughts in his head get swept away in a rush of anger and adrenaline.

The unspoken words and bristling air between them is heavy with fodder, and it doesn’t matter that she’ll scrape tooth and nail to hold her own, Miles is a fighter, he’ll break a few things going down. If they fight, regardless who wins, they’ll both lose, and what they lose in the melee, they may never recover.

It goes on nonstop for a week. They crack each other into little pieces until Aaron finally cuts in, upset as hell, and tells them that if they don’t shut the hell up, he’s going to shoot the both of them just so he won’t have a monumental migraine anymore.

Charlie goes on a hunt and Miles follows, tracking footprints until they blur together because the chase burns like alcohol and takes the edge off. Charlie brings back a turkey. Miles almost takes down a buck, but they’re upwind and the animal takes off before he can shoot. They don’t speak to each other, and when they reach camp, Charlie starts plucking the turkey without a word.

The next few days Charlie makes a habit of leaving dead rabbits for Miles to skin when he wakes up. It reminds him of a cat he and Ben had back in the day, Whisker. Whisker had the misfortune of sticking his face too close to a lit stovetop, and so was renamed from 'Whiskers' to 'Whisker.' Whisker also had a habit of killing mice and leaving the little corpses in either Miles's or Ben's rooms as loving trophies.

Nora and Aaron head off to scout ahead and Charlie gets a fire pit going, keeping the flames small because it'd be a damned easy way to get spotted and killed. He's beginning to suspect that Nora and Aaron left them alone on purpose. The silence between him and Charlie is strained to the point of snapping, and he owes her an apology but no matter how hard he tries he keeps swallowing it back like bile. They should patch things up and move on, but this is Charlie he's talking about and she gets under his skin like nobody else, heats up his blood faster than alcohol and he feels like he's pitching recklessly from one addiction to another.

“When’s the last time you caught a deer?” he asks her, as he cuts away the skin from the rabbits.

She shrugs, doesn’t say anything.

“Never been a big fan of rabbit,” he says. “Nothing beats venison. This?” He holds up the limp rabbit. “This tastes like chicken.”

Charlie glances back at him, eyebrow raised.

“I never liked chicken,” he says. “Neither did your old man. Then again, he probably would've been a vegetarian if given the choice. Didn't like the idea of killing something to eat it.”

“No, he didn't,” she says, finally cracking open her end of the quiet, and he's almost relieved. She hasn't spoken a damned word to him for days on end except for I'm going hunting, or We should make camp. He can handle the silence, likes it even, but it doesn't sound right coming from her. It's like a badly spoken language, jilted and ugly, and it's not Charlie.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Why?” she replies, word short.

He looks at her, and eventually she meets his eyes, just for a second, a sliding glance that doesn't hold. She turns her attention back to the fire.

“Because you're being quiet,” he says finally. “Usually I have to beg for you to do that.”

“You're funny, Miles,” she snaps back, sharpening a stick for the pit.

He rolls his eyes. “All right. What is it?”

“I thought you weren't big on the talking,” Charlie says.

“I'm not.” He gets up, slowly cause the bruises still twinge. “But you usually are. So what's bothering you?”

She purses her lips and says nothing.

He lets out an exasperated breath. “What do you want from me, Charlie?” he asks, almost desperately. “If you're gonna bitch at me, then bitch at me.”

“You tell me to shut up and lay off you, and when I finally do, you don't like it?” she asks, and her words are sharper at the edges, catching across his skin like shrapnel and she hurls them for all she's worth. She snaps her gaze to his, full of anger, and he meets her ire for ire, digs in and holes up because this is what his heart beats for, this kind of storm, the turbulent emotional break. “Guess what, Miles, you can't have it both ways!”

“Right. Funny you say that, since you want me to be the ruthless Miles Matheson who can get Danny back, and then you want cuddly Uncle Miles who took you for a ride in his car.”

She stares at him, chest heaving with emotion, and Miles feels as though his world is tipping, tilting off axis slowly towards Charlie and nothing can stop it.

“Don't you get it?” she forces out, like she's trying to rip the answer out of him. “You're both, Miles. You're both of those people. You can't just keep one and tear the other out.”

“Is that what you're pissed about?” Miles asks, voice rough, and she looks so vulnerable here, shifting into focus as the new center of his universe. He isn't sure she can take it, the truth of who he was/is, the emotion of it, because she’s telling him he's still that killer, mixed up in the man who stepped out of a dead Challenger the moment the world got shot to hell, and she doesn't know what she's saying. She has no idea what he's taken from her and the why's never matter, they never did.

“Why did you come?” she asks him, and the answer to that question threatens to blow him apart, a proverbial tripwire.

He doesn't respond.

“Why, Miles?” she demands again. “When I showed up, nothing could uproot you from your bar, not even the threat of the whole militia coming for you. But you changed your mind after the fight and you came with us. You didn't just wander off somewhere, you came to help. Why?”

Why? He doesn't know why. Maybe it was because the kid spun a pretty tale about the mission to save her brother, raised a hell of a dedicated banner blazing for humanity and family. Maybe it was just because she batted her baby blues at him and he was fucked from the moment she did.

“What changed your mind, Miles?” she presses. “Why did you decide to come with us?”

“I don't know why, Charlie!” he snaps. “But dammit, I shouldn't have!”

The words have the exact effect he intends. She stares at him, eyes wet and softness fading around the edges, and snaps her mouth shut. He's just words from breaking the bridge between them, the shadows creeping in at the corners, and there's nothing he knows better, nothing he's more practiced at doing.

He's at home in this moment, familiar. And the realization fucking terrifies him.

If he breaks from Charlie, he'll have his freedom. He'll be as separate from the world as he's ever been, the way he passed day after day until they blurred together in a burning haze of alcohol.

And then she walked into his bar and sent him flying apart with something so simple as a plea and a sad, ferocious glance.

Charlie stares at him, angrier than before, simmering with a biting certainty that makes Miles strangely, fiercely proud.

“Then go, Miles,” she says, and her voice almost doesn't waver. She means it, he can tell by her voice, the set of her shoulders. “You don't have to stay out of pity. I can find Danny on my own.”

“No, you can't,” he says, calling her on her bullshit, cause she'll get herself killed without him, hesitating too long to help some random stranger or getting involved in someone else's problems because her heart's just too damn big.

“I mean it, Miles.” She stares at him, challenging him, daring him to go. “If you don't want to be here, then leave.”

And dammit if it doesn't make him want to leave, to spite her, to get the hell away from every feeling that Charlie forces to the surface effortlessly and so violently that he can't sleep without the nightmares crushing the air from his lungs.

They stand there for heartbeats, gazes locked and neither backing down. He can break the bridge now. Let the shadows come between them and be done with it.

“How many days to Allentown?” he asks finally, cracking open the silence. He glances at the path leading behind her, then back, and she blinks but recovers quickly. She's tougher than she looks. He keeps forgetting.

“One and a half,” she replies, voice careful.

“Then we better get going,” he says. “We're just wasting daylight standing here, arguing.”

She looks at him closely for a moment, judging whether he's in for the long haul, or just toeing the line.

He sighs. “I told you once. I'm not going anywhere.”

Another second and she nods. “All right,” she says, slowly. “But breakfast first.”

He picks up the limp, skinned rabbits.

“Thought you'd never ask,” he says.

Miles decides Charlie isn’t a riptide. She’s more powerful than that, more overwhelming. She cleans the blood and dust off of everything she touches, and once she walked into his bar, he never had a chance.

They find the orphans, the kid missing his brother and trying to act so damned grown up and find him, just like Charlie. Miles dreams about the parents. They’re all faceless, but the kids aren’t. And that makes it worse, somehow.

Charlie insists they get the kid’s brother back, holding it up like the Holy Grail, and he realizes she doesn’t think she’s ever going to find Danny. She’s millions of years older in her eyes and he’s never felt so damned conflicted before. Because she’s talking to him like an equal, and in that moment, she is. There’s a sharp pride because she makes him do the right thing, and he goes along with it. He does it, because it’s right.

It’s like unfurling a muscle that’s been in a cast for years.

They get by, just barely, and the kid gets his brother back. Peter. Miles watches as Charlie looks on their reunion with a happiness so sad he has to look away.

Another few nights pass before the unspoken words start crowding out everything else in his head, taking up space in his nightmares, dragging him through bloodied dreams where Charlie dies and he's the one who put the gun to her head. Sometimes he pulls the trigger, sometimes it's someone else, but they're all faces of old comrades, militia, people he trained, men he worked with and fought beside. So, in the end, it's only ever really Miles pulling the trigger, and when he wakes, panting and clammy with cold sweat, it's to the sound of a gunshot, and the light burning out in Charlie's eyes.

He catches Charlie looking at him, and he sees it in her gaze, a sort of puzzlement and, even worse, a dark understanding. It takes a certain mindset to kill, the ability to rearrange your insides so they either stop up the guilt or piss it out. Otherwise, it gets into your blood, eats everything from the inside out, leaves a hollow thing stapled together around weary bones and organs.

Miles can feel again. And he wishes he couldn't because he can't remember how, not without it hurting him, without it hollowing him out.

He's about to give up, give in, wander off through the woods somewhere in search of alcohol to dull the razor sharp guilt, or maybe find a fight that's finally too much for him.

And that's the night that Charlie smiles at him, the expression something ridiculously bright and just for him. Her smile warms him like a thick shot, not a physical sensation but one a hell of a lot stronger. His mouth tugs at the corners, curves into the ghost of a smile, and Jesus Christ he remembers what it's like to be happy for a fleeting second. It's blinding and brief and overwhelming, and Miles wants to fall to his knees and just breathe around it because he hasn’t felt anything this devastatingly strong in years.

It might be worth it, this brief feeling of peace she brings him without even trying. He pays for it with pain sharper than he’s felt in years, in the past mistakes she makes him face. He pays for it in the way his chest aches when he sees the ‘M’ burned into her skin, when he watches the kids gather without their parents.

And then Charlie looks at him like that, like she’s proud of him, like the only man that matters to her is the one standing before her now, helping her help everyone else.

It's a trade off, uneven as hell, but maybe that’s how it should be. And it’s a relief all the same.

Miles uses Charlie’s name like punctuation, the pause and period to every sentence. Charlie calls him “Miles,” says his name like bookends to their conversations, and words are starting to gather there, in the beats between. Long-held glances and furtive smiles fill in the gaps, and it’s like they’re talking even when they’re quiet.

They sit around the fire and discuss old times, before the blackout. They talk about Charlie’s dad and her mom and what she remembers of them. Miles tells her about the army, how he used to use up his brother’s hot water taking a “Hollywood shower” whenever he came home after being on the base for months at a stretch. Charlie asks him about old friends and girlfriends, whether he used to come to Thanksgiving dinner alone or if he brought somebody.

Miles doesn’t tell her he brought Monroe, that Monroe didn’t have family to go home to, and it showed, the way his friend would bask in the familiarity, in Rachel’s embrace and Ben’s warm handshake. The look on Bass’s face was worth it when they would gather around the table and take the piss out of each other, his best friend at ease and genuinely relaxed for a few moments in his life.

“I wish I had more memories of back then,” she says, and pulls him sharply out of his head. She smiles at him, the right side of her mouth tugging sharply upwards and he rolls his eyes for show. “The one with you singing in the car, that’s one of the best memories I have.”

“I was usually too busy helping your dad not burn the pot roast to take you for rides,” Miles says, and she seems amused at his smartass tone.

“Did they always make pot roast?”

“Your mom insisted on making a special meal whenever I came over,” he says. “Seemed to think I was important to Ben for some reason.”

Charlie snorts. “Well, it still makes me smile. The way you were yelling the words to the song. You had the music blasting and you were still louder.”

He can remember it, the ride in his red ’79 Challenger before it died a half a year later, the way she was giggling in the passenger seat like he was the funniest thing in the world. It makes him proud, that he was part of a good memory for her. She has far too many shit ones now.

“Do you remember which song it was?” she asks him, and this time the question isn’t a landmine. It’s soft, reverent.

“Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “Don’t remember it.”

She sits quietly for a moment, the fire crackling and popping to fill in the silence. He watches her, the way she presses her lips together as she contemplates, and he has the sudden urge to cross the distance between them and kneel in front of her, audience be damned. He wants to take her face in his hands and kiss her, explore her mouth in long, languid pulses until it bleeds into their bodies and she wraps her legs around his waist.

Her lips part and she says, “I remember one word, because you sang it really rough and loud. I think it was ‘back’?”

He thinks, and he doesn’t have to think far back because he used to sing his favorites in The Grand, mumble them under his breath when he was sober and bumping too close and too fast to thoughts that the alcohol usually burned away. His voice would fill the empty spaces between heavy wood walls and he would spend after hours over a bottle, crooning the anthems of Bon Jovi and Bob Dylan.

“Back in the Saddle,” he says, then proceeds to sing the chorus, with extra emphasis on “I’m back!” and Charlie laughs, the sound rich and warm, familiar.

“That’s it,” she confirms, and she looks so pleased that he can’t help but grin.

“Aerosmith,” he says. “That was one album I always had in my car. Rocks. Too bad you can’t listen to it, you might appreciate it now. That’s the stuff me and your dad grew up on. Though your dad liked bluegrass better.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“You don’t want to,” Miles says, and smirks. “It was crap. Your dad had terrible taste in music.”

She smiles at him again and he almost goes to her, to share his warmth with her against the chill night air, let her lean into him.

But he wants it too damned badly. The distance between them stays, and he won’t break it.

He’s playing with matches near a reservoir of gunpowder, and he’s fondling the trigger of a gun that can’t handle the force of firing. She’s nothing like him, and this is why he wanted to go, get as far away as he could. He’ll just block the bridges between lights so the shadows can creep in. No one turns bad in a split second. A million small choices add up to a mountain and by the time that last resounding gunshot sets off an avalanche, it’s too late.

“Before we go in to find Danny, I want you to know,” she says, and there are too many ways that sentence can end.

“Yeah?” he asks quietly.

“I’m glad you came. Not just because we probably would have been dead a million times over without you.” He chuckles softly and she smiles. “I thought I didn’t have anyone left. Thank you for proving me wrong.”

It’s everything he can’t stand to hear and doesn’t deserve and yet none of those things. He wants to run his hands through her hair and kiss her mouth. He wants to mark trails over her skin with his teeth, gently at first, then sharper until she moans and he can feel the sound vibrating through her skin.

He clears his throat. “Yeah, well. You, too.”

She gives him a look, one that says I knew you were better because you’re my father’s brother. He’s meeting her expectations and changing, shifting, rearranging the pieces inside of him. So when she looks at him, no longer I thought you were better but I knew you were, he finds he no longer minds.

It happens a lot sooner than he expects.

It was only a matter of time with him standing so close to her. Red seeps into her skin, staining her fingers. The body of his nephew lays on the ground, turning the wet dirt an angry maroon.

She’s whispering at Danny, this nephew he only remembers as a little kid, begging him to stay with her, to stay alive, to keep fighting. I’m here now, Danny, please, I’m here, I’ve come to take you home, and the words are prayers, broken litanies wasted on a corpse.

Strausser left him here, for Miles and Charlie to find, on the road heading into Philly. Miles can tell that it was Strausser because of the cuts. The scumbag left Danny as a ruined sign in the dirt, baiting them.

He puts a hand on Charlie’s arm. It’s cold.

“Hey, hey,” he says, and the words are soft, not at all like him, because he needs to be careful around her, hold in her humanity before it leaks out like so much red. Blood and shadow are darkening her eyes as he watches, and he has to lead her away from this, away from the inevitable landslide that’s going to bury her no matter what, because they can’t afford to let it happen here. It’s only a matter of time now.

It was only ever a matter of time.

He was a damned fool, thinking this wouldn’t happen. He moved too close, his body and spirit a craving traitor. He broke the bridges between lights, and he let the shadows in.

He coaxes her to her feet with soft words and murmurs. The lies come up from his throat like vomit and he regurgitates. They need to get out of here, away from this. He whispers promises in her ear and if it’s truth, lies, pure utter bullshit, it doesn’t matter cause she eats it up like a fish on bait, the hook cutting in where it’s vulnerable.

“C’mon,” he says.

Charlie holds against him. Then Aaron moves. Aaron, whose face is shining wet with tears. He covers the body with a threadbare blanket, and Charlie gives against Miles, like a building collapsing.

Miles feels the wet heat of her tears through his shirt as she lets him lead her away.

Charlie is goddamn strong. Miles knows this because she's still alive, she keeps on moving.

For a while Miles doesn't know what's next. Danny is dead, there's no more holy grail to salvage.

Charlie cleans up her brother as best she can. Red ridges split his face and shine with blood, but she patiently, carefully wipes it away. Miles looks to where she sits on the ground, worry drawn to the silence. He sees small sobs wrack her shoulders now and again, but she stays quiet, a lionheart mourning the fallen, combing her fingers through Danny's hair as her tears spill onto his skin.

Miles sets up a pyre, the way he used to when he honored the dead as general of the militia. Aaron helps Charlie wrap Danny in one of her old blankets, and Aaron pauses over the body, like he's saying a prayer. The two heave the body onto the pyre, reverent and careful despite the weight.

Miles hands Charlie the torch because she should do this, they both know it and they share a long, heavy glance.

She takes the torch and sets flame to her brother, watches with wet eyes as he burns. The scorching heat licks their faces and Miles pulls her into his side, presses his dry lips to her temple and she whispers, My fault.

“No, it's not,” he murmurs.

They watch together as Danny's corpse dances in the flame.

A week passes. Then another. Miles doesn’t know where they’re going because the roads Charlie picks are random and chosen without any thought. Aaron looks lost, waiting on Charlie. Nora watches, fingers antsy, scouting ahead when she can because she needs something to fight for, always has, and Miles figures that’s become the case for all of them.

Truth is, they’re all waiting on Charlie. She’s charging ahead without a destination, moving forward just to keep from standing still, and right now she’s moving too fast to let what happened catch up to her.

She can’t outrun it much longer. Danny’s death will hit her eventually, but Miles can’t blame her for trying.

“Hey,” he says when he catches up to her. She walks ahead of them now, towing the three of them behind her like a gravitational force, and Miles knows if he doesn’t dig in his heels she’ll go on until she collapses. “You should slow down. Take a break.”

“Why?” she asks. She doesn’t look at him.

“Because Aaron’s blisters are opening again. I can tell by the faces he’s making. And you haven’t stopped walking except to sleep.” He takes a breath. Braces himself. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“About what?” she asks, and her voice wavers.

“About Danny.”

She shakes her head. “I appreciate it, Miles, I really do, but I can’t.”

He should push, get her to open up, but he never was good at this sort of thing. Ben was always the talker. Even Bass knew how to unhinge a man’s jaw without breaking it.

He looks at her and her jaw is clenched, her lips pursed and her eyes red-rimmed. She’s lost her brother and she blames herself; the guilt’s written in every inch of her face.

Miles doesn’t need her to say what she’s feeling. He already knows.

“Okay,” he says. He sees her shoulders relax, just a little bit, and she glances gratefully at him. “I’m here. If you need to.”

“I know,” she says, and gives him a very small smile. “Thank you.”

They don’t say anything more. Charlie slows down a bit, and Miles keeps pace at her side, chancing small glances at her to make sure she’s making it through.

She is.

They follow an open path for days, quiet except for questions about which turns to take and where to get more powder for explosives. Aaron keeps watching Charlie like he isn’t sure how she’s still moving. Miles and Nora argue over which town they should head to next, but they all know it doesn’t matter. They’re just walking to keep ahead of the militia.

The sun beats down after two whole days of rain and Miles hears the sharp cracks of gunshots.

Charlie darts ahead in split-second time and Miles takes off at her heels.

There’s a fight up the road, bloody chaos and noise, a smaller group being decimated by a larger one. Militia soldiers against armed civilians, and judging by the knives flashing, the civilians just ran out of bullets.

Charlie reaches for her crossbow and Miles catches her wrist, stops her mid-motion.

“Don’t you even think about it.”

“Miles.” She says his name quietly, and it’s a plea and a push all at once. “We have to help them.”

She looks at him and he can see it, the need for her to throw herself into the fray to save others because that’s what she does, it’s how she copes with Ben’s death and Danny’s death and losing to militia leaders bigger and badder than she is; it’s ingrained in her being the way she’s ingrained in his, imprinted so deep even losing most of her family can’t shake it, and he can’t deny her that. He won’t hold her back from a battle that’s hers.

He takes a breath, lets it out between his teeth. Nods.

She almost smiles at him, sliding her wrist in his hand until they’re palm to palm, the contact brief and warm. They hold each other’s gaze, trading an unspoken be careful and don’t get yourself killed. And then they let go.

He draws his sword.

They charge in, evening the odds. The smaller group already has two men down and wounded, but even with Miles and the others, they’re still outnumbered. Miles cuts down two soldiers, severs their spines like stalks of wheat, and their screams are lost in the cries and sounds of weapons impacting flesh.

The noise is deafening, the high buzz of adrenaline familiar, and Miles loses himself in it, in the blood and the dirt and the sharp edge of his blade slamming through flesh because he’s good at this, always has been.

Soldiers rush him and he ducks, lets men impale themselves on his sword with their own momentum. He elbows a man in the ribs, feels bone give way and snap. Someone grabs him from behind, no weapon except fingernails digging through cloth, fighting to find flesh, and Miles backwards-headbutts him, spins and kicks the bastard’s knee hard enough to crack it backwards.

The man drops with a guttural yell. Miles presses the edge of his sword to his throat, then stops.

The man is militia, or at least he was. Open, infected wounds fester through tears in his uniform. He’s missing some teeth, going bald in patches, and his eyes are bloodshot, crazed, pupils blown almost to the size of his irises.

The man yells, the roar bubbling up through blood, and lunges. Miles swings his sword, blade catching on vertebrae where it cracks through bone. The man’s head jerks sideways, hanging by thick threads of flesh and sinew. The body topples and Miles finds himself facing an angular man of average height, a medium-length ragged blade gripped tight in his hand.

They assess each other, and Miles barely registers that he isn’t a threat before the man shouts, “Behind you!”

Miles turns in time to see a woman hurtling towards him, mouth ripped open wide in a gurgling scream. She collides with him, hands digging into his ribs, fingernails burning as they tear through cloth. He clenches his teeth and throws his elbow, bone snapping against bone, and the woman staggers back.

There’s a loud CRACK, and the woman drops to her knees. One more bone-shattering SNAP and she twists sideways, shuddering into the ground. Aaron blinks at Miles inches from where the body lays, his walking stick raised like a bat. Miles nods at him, breathless. Aaron jerks a tense nod back, then rushes off to help Nora.

He screwed up. They shouldn’t have stepped into this. There are too many soldiers and something’s incredibly, deeply wrong with them. They’re unarmed and uncoordinated, driven by rage and adrenaline, attacking without reserve and fear with no purpose except to kill.

“Who the hell are you?”

Miles’s snaps his attention back to the man with the ragged blade.

“Miles,” he answers. “Who the hell are you?”

“Manuel,” the man says. “And you picked a bad day to travel.”

They move until they’re back to back. Miles watches Charlie swing her crossbow in a rough uppercut across a soldier’s infected jaw. Pus and blood sling through the air. Aaron and Nora are fighting to keep a woman from being overwhelmed by a group of five or six militia soldiers. Miles can tell they’re not going to make it in time. The woman’s as good as dead.

“Sorry we don’t have time for chitchat,” Manuel says, voice hard-edged. “You ready for a fight?”

“Doesn’t really look like I have a choice,” Miles replies.

“Not really,” Manuel says, body tense next to his. “Cause you’re going to get one.”

A jagged scream breaks through the sounds of battle. The woman from Manuel’s group falls, swamped under a horde of soldiers. Blood and thick shreds of flesh fly as they pummel and tear at her with their bare hands.

“Christ,” Manuel hisses at the sight. “We need to get out of here. There’s a station up ahead, but we need to go now. There’s more of—”

“Miles!” Charlie shouts.

He turns to see more soldiers heading full tilt up the road toward them. There’s a troupe of four others flanking them from the right. They’re about to be swamped. Charlie steps in against Miles’s side, raising her crossbow.

“I’m guessing we’re seriously outnumbered?” Nora asks, and Aaron swears.

“Save your arrows,” Miles says. He grabs Charlie’s arm and redirects her, shoving her up the road ahead of him. “C’mon, move!”

They take off, following Manuel and the few of his group who are still able to run. The soldiers give chase, gaining ground by the moment even as Aaron starts to lag behind, and Miles knows they’re going to have to stop, take a stand if they can’t reach this station soon.

“There!” Manuel shouts as they come around a bend. A white, one-story building looms ahead, utilitarian and dilapidated behind iron gates and barbed wire.

Miles catches sight of white stars and red stripes, faded with age and hanging ripped behind the gate. Rebels. Guns level at them from the other side of the iron fence as they approach, and Manuel stops short. He turns to Miles, gaze dark and suspicious

“Uh, why are we stopping?” Aaron asks, voice pitched up in panic.

Miles glances back over his shoulder. The soldiers are less than two hundred yards and closing.

“Who are you people?” Manuel asks, voice hard.

Miles snaps his head around. “You really wanna do introductions now?”

“No,” Manuel says, and Miles hears several guns cock behind the gate. “But I do what I have to. So I’ll ask you one more time. Who are you?”

Nora pulls up her shirt and flashes her red white and blue tattoo of long-dead patriotism, and what do you know, the old-fashioned stubborn notion is good for something. Manuel assesses her for a short moment.

“How long?” he asks her.

“After the Trenton Campaign,” she answers.

Manuel nods, then signals to the men behind the gate. The iron bars open and at least a dozen pairs of suspicious eyes hit them when they rush in. Miles feels his hackles rise. He's faced worse odds, but they're outnumbered by armed strangers who probably wouldn’t mind putting a bullet in them on the spot just to be on the safe side.

"What the hell are those things?" Miles asks, voice hoarse, when the gates shut behind them.

"People," Manuel says. “Infected.”

He motions for them to follow, leading them through the yard in the direction of the building. They pass at least fifteen rebels, all equipped with guns and knives, and Manuel heads into the station but Miles hesitates, glances around at the mistrusting faces watching them. Charlie stops and looks back to him, a question in her eyes.

He takes one last look around, because he’s uneasy as hell and the feeling’s more pronounced than it should be, hitting deeper in his gut, but he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He gives Charlie a small nod. They step inside, and Miles counts as seven more faces turn their way. Only two of the rebels have guns. The rest have an assortment of blades, ranging from poorly-maintained swords to rusted hunting knives.

"There's a virus, highly contagious,” Manuel continues, pulling his gun out of his waistband and expertly discharging the empty cartridge before setting both down on a table. “It shuts down the organs and eats the brain. Causes dementia, violent behavior. Sometimes even cannibalism."

"What kind of virus does that?" Charlie asks.

"A zombie virus?" Aaron suggests sharply, out of breath and doubled over with his hands on his knees.

Manuel doesn't answer. He asks them where they're from, why they were traveling through, what their intentions are, and Miles makes up some bullshit story about running from the militia to a brother that lives holed-up in Texas.

"Thank you for helping out back there," Manuel says. "You're lucky to be alive."

"Yeah," Miles replies. "Lucky."

"How did this start?" Nora asks Manuel.

"We're not sure," Manuel says. "This was a militia outpost. We came looking for food and found those people out there. We were caught by surprise, so we took cover in here. There was food, supplies, some medicine. But there were drugs, too, lab equipment in some of the rooms, cells downstairs in the basement."

"You think they were conducting experiments?" Nora asks him.

“That’s what it seems like.”

"Why would they do that?" Charlie asks.

“Uh, biological warfare?” Aaron replies. “Between the walkers out there and the labs and cells in here, that’s definitely what it looks like.”

A heavy silence lingers as that realization sinks in.

“If they’re tinkering with this stuff, then Monroe must really be desperate,” Nora says, glancing to Miles.

"Maybe," Manuel says. "But it must not have worked out for the soldiers that manned this station, cause they're gone now."

"And the people outside?" Miles asks. “Not all of them were soldiers. Some of those people were civilians.”

Manuel hesitates. Miles catches something in his eyes, a glint of something uncomfortably familiar, and when he glances around the room, he sees the same expression reflected back on almost every face.

"Some of them are ours," Manuel says. "If you get bitten, scratched, it gets into your blood and you'll more than likely turn into what they are."

"Wait, 'more than likely'?" Aaron echoes. "Does that mean some people survive?"

"We've had some come out unscathed. Had a natural immunity, I guess. But that's one out of five. Not good odds."

“How many people got infected?” Charlie asks him.

Manuel slides his gaze onto her, dark and not at all friendly. “Enough.”

Miles takes in the low-lit room, cluttered with white tables and steel cabinets. Some syringes lay in the garbage, mixed in with heaps of bloodied cloth. The other rebels are eyeing him, watching him take in the room with their muscles poised like they’re ready to snap, and his instincts won’t shut up. His gut keeps telling him that something is off, that these people are acting strange and it’s not the typical cutthroat mistrust they’re hitting him with. He just can’t figure what the hell is wrong and it’s setting his teeth on edge.

“All right,” Miles cuts in, glaring at Manuel as warning to back the hell off of Charlie. “How long till the walking dead out there walk away?”

Manuel turns to answer and then stops, goes stock still. His eyes drop to Miles’s side and Miles follows his gaze down, landing on the bloodstained tear in his shirt, sticking out from under his coat.

“Miles,” Charlie whispers, reaching out, and her hand presses against his ribs, under his coat, soft and feather-light, but it makes his lungs hitch with pain.

“Where did you get that wound?” Manuel asks quietly, voice dangerous.

Adrenaline lances, abrupt and blazing, through Miles’s blood. Eyes turn onto them from all over the room, tensions rising at the edge in Manuel’s voice. Miles doesn’t answer. And then the guns come up.

“Whoa!” Aaron yelps, raising his hands. “What are you guys doing?”

“It’s just a scratch,” Miles says, voice low, his body like a livewire because they’re about to shoot him if he even breathes wrong, he can see it in their eyes.

“A scratch is all it takes.”

“Everybody calm down,” Nora says, keeping her voice steady. “Look, we’ll leave. Just give us a way out of here and—”

“I can’t let you leave,” Manuel says.

“We won’t bother you,” Nora tells him, more forcefully now. “Just let us out and we’ll—”

“We have to see what happens,” Manuel says, dark gaze catching on Miles. “In a few hours you won’t remember. I’m sorry. You helped us before, but it has to be done. We need all the knowledge we can get.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie demands.

Something glints in the rebels’ eyes, and Miles recognizes it now, the same manic look Monroe got when he started stepping too far, pushing boundaries for the sake of pushing just so he could pick up the pieces and examine them when they broke, see the fissures web out from where they shattered on impact.

The pieces slide quietly into place, and he knows now why his instincts were telling him to get the hell out.

“You did it,” Miles says, and he sounds surprisingly calm even to his own ears. “You infected those soldiers out there.”

Manuel doesn’t respond.

Nora and Aaron look stunned. Charlie touches Miles’s arm and he barely notices.

“Why?” Miles asks him.

Charlie tightens her grip in warning, but he ignores it. Manuel still doesn’t answer. Something shattered and sharp-edged sparks in those eyes, and Miles can’t stop the words from shoving their way out.

“The others?” He shouldn’t, but the heat of Charlie’s hand is searing up his arm, catching in his veins and lighting like fire in adrenaline. “The ones you said were your own? Were they infected by those soldiers out there? Or did they just speak out against what you were doing?”

Manuel’s breath catches and Miles knows, he just knows.

“Thought so,” Miles says, and his voice cracks.

“The militia would have used it on us,” Manuel breathes, the words low and ferocious. “And they did. My wife—she was the first. So we took this station. And we gave them their own medicine. You have to understand. We can cripple their armies with this.”

“You can’t control it,” Miles says, voice rough. “It’s a goddamn virus. It’ll spread to everyone—not just soldiers!”

Manuel starts to say something and stops. His eyes are red and he closes them, takes a breath, then looks to Miles again.

“It’s too late,” Manuel murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

“Miles!” Nora yells.

In the flash of a second, Miles sees Nora move, her expression divided, and then white cracks in his skull.

Miles hears someone calling him.

His head hurts. His muscles ache, and he’s damned exhausted. His body is dog-tired, the way it was when he spent the night in the woods running from Monroe’s men after he pulled the gun on him, aimed the barrel at his best friend and couldn’t pull the trigger. The weariness is a weight, and he can’t gather the strength to fight through it, can’t find the energy to care.

Someone keeps calling his name from a distance. Saying his name over and over again like a mantra, the unspoken shadow of an emotion between the sound and the meaning.

He remembers fighting, living without the alcohol to numb everything. He could use a drink right about now, a whole bottle or even a few of them. But there’s a reason he stopped living life out of a bottle, a reason he found to fight, to keep on moving.

The reason comes to him.

Charlie.

He can hear her voice, calling for him, telling him to wake up, open his eyes. She sounds terrified, and he won’t leave her when she’s scared. He can’t.

So he fights. He concentrates on her words, on her voice saying Wake the hell up, Miles, and she sounds so damned pushy it makes him want to smile. He struggles, and the darkness lifts slowly, little by little, until he can hear her voice sharp and clear and trembling at the edges.

He forces his eyes open.

“Miles,” Charlie breathes, sounding relieved.

She’s leaning over him, face flushed and eyes wet with unshed tears. Her hands are cradling his face, fingers hot and denting his jaw, and his head hurts like a bitch.

It takes him a moment to find his voice and force the words out.

“Hey, kid,” he rasps. And she smiles, lighting up like the damned sun.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He turns his head, slowly, and takes in the grimy walls and the bars locking them in. Then his eyes land on Charlie, linger on the maroon staining her arms and shirt, and his chest tightens.

“How’s your head?” she asks him.

“Better than if it’d been hit with a bullet,” he answers. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, then groans. “Or not.” He looks around again, more carefully this time. “Where’s Nora? And Aaron?”

Charlie shakes her head. “I don’t know. When they took me down here, Nora was trying to calm things down and talk to Manuel.”

“So why’d they throw you in here?” he asks her.

“I fought,” she says, looking him straight in the eye. “When they knocked you out.”

That would explain the blood on her shirt and arms. Jesus. She fought for him, spilled blood to protect him.

“Why didn’t you run, you idiot?”

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to, and Miles would argue more but his head is hurting too much.

He sighs, shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. We gotta find a way out of here.”

“How?”

“Not sure. Gimme a minute, I just had my head bashed in.”

There’s a red scrape on her jaw. Probably where one of the rebel bastards hit her when she was fighting to protect him, and that spikes such a strong burning rush of anger that it winds him. He could cut down every rebel son of a bitch in this goddamn station, but the one that laid his hands on her, the one that hurt her, wouldn’t be so lucky; Miles would make sure of it.

He reaches out, gently cradles her jaw and brushes over the red mark with his thumb. His skin warms to hers and he slides his hand up, palm to her cheekbone, and she leans into it. Her hand covers his, warm and soft. He drags his thumb over her skin.

“Jesus, Charlie,” he breathes, and then his ribs twinge.

He pulls away and pushes himself up, wincing at the flare of pain biting down his side when he sits.

Charlie’s eyes travel from his face to the rip in his shirt. She reaches over, takes hold of his coat and eases it gently off his shoulders, leaning in so close her hair tickles his cheek.

Everything hurts. It’s a wonder he even felt the damned scratches, but everything is fucking small compared to those wounds, because of what they could do to him.

Because of what they might make him do to Charlie.

She gets the coat off of him and he feels vulnerable, open and raw like she’s stripped him down to just nerves. He should’ve listened to his instincts, should’ve kept them out of the fight, but he’s walked them all into a death trap and if he has to he can pay the price then he’ll grin and bear it, he’s not afraid of dying anymore, but Charlie...

He licks his lips. Looks down at the scratches. They’re red, swollen slightly. They itch, and his breathing hitches when the wounds prickle sharply. He knows the signs of an infected wound, but he has no clue if that means the cuts are infected or he is.

He lifts his eyes to Charlie’s face. She watches him, concerned and waiting on him, lips parted as she breathes too fast.

“C’mon,” he says. “We gotta figure a way out.”

He starts to get up but Charlie stops him, hands on his shoulders. “Whoa. You’re not getting up. You need to rest.”

“Charlie, we’re gonna have to fight our way out of here and then run like hell. Either way I’m not getting a lot of R&R.”

“Just,” she says, “stay put. I’ll check the bars.”

He sighs. “Fine. Check the hinges, see if there’s any rust or if one of the bars looks weaker than the others.”

She nods and gets up, rushing to do as he says. He watches as he looks over every square inch of the bars, checking the edges of the door and reaching around to the keyhole on the other side.

“Maybe we can pick the lock?” she asks, glancing back to him.

He shifts to ease the pain in his shoulders and winces. “Yeah, maybe. Did they check you for weapons before they threw you in here?”

She nods. “Yeah. You, too. They took everything. Manuel didn’t want you getting out if you were infected—”

The last word comes out short, and she stumbles over it.

“Right,” he says, pretending for her sake that he didn’t hear that last part. “You got anything to pick that lock?”

“Not on me. Maybe we could find a nail?”

“Not likely,” he says. “We’re in a basement with stone floors.”

He watches her go back to searching, her movements too jerky and desperate. The bars are thick, not a spot of rust on them. Monroe didn’t spare any expenses. Charlie kicks the door, and the bars hum but don’t move.

“There has to be another way out.”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to tell her she’s wrong.

She sinks down to the floor, her back against the bars.

“Can we trick them into opening up the door?”

“They think I’m turning into a zombie, Charlie. They’re not just gonna come down here cause they hear somebody yelling.”

His ribs burn, and he takes a breath, forces himself to look at her.

“Charlie,” he says. Takes a moment to say the words, force them out because dammit, he shouldn’t have to ask her to do this. “That virus is gonna make me go into a rage.” He tries but he can’t hold her gaze as he says it, and he glances away, breaks eye contact because he can’t take her expression, so concerned and wide open it hurts. “You need to kill me before that happens.”

She stares at him. “No,” she says, voice low, like he’s knocked the wind out of her. “No. I am not doing that.”

“You don't have a choice, Charlie. When I change, you'll have to kill me anyway. It'll be you, or me. And you can't run. You're gonna be boxed in.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“Dammit, Charlie!”

“No, Miles!” she cuts in sharply. “The answer is no. I am not going to kill you on a whim that you're sick. You're strong, stronger than anyone I've ever known, and you're going to pull through this.”

“Pull your head out of your ass, Charlie! I'm infected and I'm gonna try to kill you! You have to take me out before I get that chance!”

“I'm not doing it, Miles!” she snaps back at him. Her voice softens after a beat. “You're all I have left. Danny is dead... I'm not losing you, too.”

This isn’t about Danny, never has been, he didn’t know the kid except for when he was a baby. This is about Charlie; it’s only ever been about Charlie.

He needs her to stay alive.

He locks eyes with her, and she’s hurting for him so badly it nearly cracks his heart in his chest.

“You’re my niece,” he says, words hoarse, like that explains all of it.

“You’re my uncle. We’re family, Miles,” she says, and her voice shakes but it’s absolutely certain.

Miles scrunches up his face, rubs his forehead.

Charlie stares at him, eyes red and shining in the dim, low light.

“I'm still here, Charlie,” he says softly, “and I wouldn't change that. Not for one second.” His voice grows hard, because he needs her to not fight him on this. “So don't make me do this for nothing.”

She doesn't speak for a while, nursing the silence like a drink. He grits his teeth and glares at her, dares her to disobey. And she does. She’s going to fight him until her last literal breath if she has to, he can see it in her eyes when she lifts them from the grimy floor, hard and resolute.

“I can't do what you do, Miles," she says quietly. "I can't just put my emotions aside.”

She moves closer to him on her hands and knees, her face wet from quiet tears and her eyes so painfully open it hurts Miles to see.

“I love you, Miles,” she whispers. “You're all in the world that's left for me.”

The words are raw, damned beautiful, and it's worse because she means them. He can hear the truth in her words, and he can’t bear it. He looks away from her, turns his head like it's a physical blow.

“So I tell you what we're going to do,” she says, placing a hand on his cheek and turning his face gently but firmly back to hers. “You're going to get better.” She locks her eyes on his, earnest and hopeful and terrified. He swallows, licks his lips because they're dry again, and he can't tear his eyes off her. “You're going to heal, and we're going to get out of here, the both of us. You're going to live." She scuffles forward on her knees, and suddenly they're hovering too close to each other, Charlie’s face tilted up to his, eyes shining with unshed tears.

Her eyes dart downwards, to his mouth, and his heart pounds violently, trying to shatter through his ribs. She's breaking the bridges between them, but it's different this time; the spaces are lighting up between them and the air is evaporating from his lungs.

"Do it for me, okay?"

Charlie’s pupils are blown, her breath burning his skin in soft, short pants, and dammit he can't breathe.

"Do it for me,” she whispers, and her eyes fall to his mouth.

Miles snaps the last bridge between them.

The kiss is rough, desperate. Her fingers cradle his jaw, her other hand fisting in his shirt, shaking, and a groan vibrates in his chest. He kisses her until her lips part wide under his, soft and pliant, and she moans. His teeth close over her upper lip and a short, surprised gasp staggers out of her mouth.

He scoops her into his arms, pulling her into his lap, his fingers sliding around the back of her neck and through her hair. Her hands are on his sides, skating his ribs, shaking and burning everywhere at once. Her fingers track an uncertain path over his chest, and she presses her palm there, over his heart, dark heat flush against cloth and his heartbeat gallops to her hand. She might crack it out of his chest without even trying.

They pull away after a moment, his head light and dizzy, and he waits, feeling her tremble under his fingertips, adrenaline buzzing like its war and he doesn't know if he's broken an irreversible line, crossed it and completely misread the signs pointing a different route.

Then she's leaning into him again, soft and warm and his, and all doubts are gone. He tightens his arms around her, one hand tracing a path to her cheek. He tilts her head back more, kisses her and groans into her mouth, and she swallows the sound in soft pants.

She reaches down between them, fingers undoing his zipper. His hand jerks on impulse, catches her hand and holds it still, his brain muddling through molasses to catch on a thought.

The words finally break through, hoarse, raw.

“Wait, wait,” he forces out. “We can't, Charlie. You could get infected.”

Her fingers ghost his cheek, and he almost closes his eyes, leans into it. “Miles, if this is the last night I spend with you—“

“No.” He licks his lips, shakes his head. “No. I'm not taking that chance. Not with you.”

The heat of her hand bleeds through his jeans. He closes his eyes, revels in the feel of her cupping him. Right now, his blood is roaring. He wants to grab her by the hips and pull her against him, bite trails down her throat until she pants with need. He imagines what she would taste like under his tongue, the sharp, earthy tang of her sweat, how she would moan if he skimmed his teeth over the curve of her shoulder and marked her. He envisions tugging her pants down her legs, parting her thighs, and tasting the deepest parts of her. He wants to feel her tremble and convulse for him, to have her ragged pants and desperate moans for his ears and his alone. He wants to claim her for his own so everyone can see, so he can break apart any person who tries to take her from him, bodily or otherwise, and have them know in their last breaths exactly why. Why he protects her so fiercely.

He exhales, his breath ragged, and leans forward, hand buried in her hair and his forehead resting against hers.

“I want to,” he breathes, voice rough. “Trust me, I wanna take you and...” He stops and the words hover, hot, on the tip of his tongue. He licks his lips and pulls back. Shakes his head. “But I can't.”

She opens her mouth to argue. “Miles—”

“I'm not gonna risk hurting the one thing in this world I give a shit about, Charlie. All right? You gotta live for me. Please.”

After a long, tense moment, she gives a jerky nod, her lips tight and chin trembling.

He pulls her into a fierce hug. Charlie trembles against him, her arms too tight around his ribs. Miles’s eyes are hot, and he rests his chin on the top of her head so she won’t see.

They settle together after a while, exhausted and tense down to their bones. Miles rests his back against the cold concrete wall and Charlie presses into every curve of his side. Her head nestles into the crook of his neck, and he falls asleep to the warmth of her breath puffing softly against his skin.

Miles wakes up, and the first thing he sees is Nora, arms folded, staring intently at him through the bars.

He takes stock. He feels Charlie, warm against him, head tucked under his chin, and he's still breathing. That's something, at least.

“Here to break us out?” His voice comes out rougher than expected, like he's gone days without using it.

“Don't need to,” she says, and then he gets it, because now that he knows he's alive and he's paying attention, he sees the maroon stains skittering across her yellow tank top and the keys in her hands.

“Could've done that last night,” he says, shifting, and Charlie stirs.

Nora unlocks the door and swings it open. “Couldn't,” she answers. And that's that for conversation.

Charlie opens her eyes. Miles looks down at her, and she takes him in, then smiles, sleep-addled and triumphant. He has to stop himself from kissing her.

“C’mon.” Nora’s voice cuts through the quiet. She jerks her head at the exit.

They get to their feet, slowly because everything aches. When Miles steps out of the cell, Nora hands him his sword.

“Where’s Aaron?” Charlie asks Nora, glancing around.

“Burning the research,” Nora answers simply.

None of them say anything about what happened as they walk away from the now-silent station. Even Charlie wisely doesn't bring it up, but maybe that's because she's catching Miles's eye and sending sideways grins at him when the others aren't looking.

He wants to press her back against a tree and taste her under his mouth, trace her lips with his tongue, twine their bodies hot together so he gets lost in her.

Charlie looks like she knows. She bumps their arms together, a searing line of contact through his coat sleeve, and brushes her knuckles against his, accidentally on purpose. He gives her a smirk, eyebrow raised, calling her on it. She raises her own eyebrow, quirks her lips, and it's a challenge.

"You might wanna dial it back a notch, Charlie," he says.

She glances at him, puzzled. "Dial what back?"

"Someone might look at you and think you're in love with me."

He sounds ridiculously pleased with himself, and Charlie's jaw drops a little before she shakes her head and laughs softly.

"Wow, Miles. I had no idea you were so full of yourself."

He winks at her. "It's part of the charm."

They've never flirted with each other before, not like this, out in the open and just ten feet away from Aaron and Nora. He never thought he could, not without Charlie looking at him differently or breaking the bridges between them because she's his niece and she couldn't want him, not knowing who he is, what he's done.

She looks at him now, and it's different but it’s the same, as warm and familiar as a homecoming.

"Well, then you might want to dial that charm down a notch," she says pointedly. “Someone might think you’re trying to seduce me.”

“You're a pain in the ass, Charlie,” he tells her fondly, and she doesn't miss a beat.

“Right back at you, Miles.”

She casually bumps into him, knocking against his shoulder, and he bumps back.

They make camp that night without much said between the four of them. Aaron tends the fire and Charlie hunts. Miles sharpens his sword, the movements honed in rhythm and instinct, and when Charlie returns with a few squirrels and a rabbit, Miles skins them without a word. They all eat in exhausted silence, then smother the fire and go to sleep.

Sometime later, Miles hears Nora's voice pulling him awake, and when he opens his eyes, he sees Nora's fist hurtling towards his face. White cracks behind his eyelids and he pitches back into dark.

When he wakes up, it’s light out and he's tied to a tree. He tests the bonds instinctively, tugging and twisting, and finds he's damn secure. Nora stands about ten paces away, arms folded, watching him carefully. Her expression is shuttered, like always, but her body holds tense, sculpted into a barrier.

“What the hell, Nora?” he asks, then groans because his head feels like it collided with a rock. She always could pack a punch.

She doesn't answer him right away, and that's when he realizes. Why else would she knock him out and tie him to a tree?

He waits, because there's not a damn thing he can say that'll sound all right.

“What's going on with you and Charlie?” she asks finally.

He looks away from her because he can't. He can't explain this.

“She's your niece.”

“I know.” His voice is hoarse. Even if they don't share blood, he's her uncle, her only family now that Ben and Danny are both gone. And just thinking about Ben gives him even more of a headache.

Her words are steel-edged, sharper than a knife. “If you're taking advantage of her, Miles, I swear to god--”

“No,” he cuts in. “No, it's not like that. I haven't touched her.”

Nora's look is as practiced a bullshit buster as he's ever come across.

“I mean...I have,” he says. “I just.” Jesus, there’s nothing he can say that won’t sound wrong, and he knows it. He closes his mouth, clenches his teeth.

“How far has this gone?”

“We kissed.” She glares at him, but he meets her eyes, blazing, because he's telling the truth, and that's more than she usually gets out of him. “When she thought I was infected.”

“So, what, you thought you'd just hop along any tail you had available before you quit for good?”

“What? No! Fuck, Nora.” He shakes his head, and then wishes he didn't, because the pounding that results isn't just from the punch. It sounds so ugly when she says it, and maybe that's what it is. “We're not blood-related.”

She cuts him to the quick with her gaze, and it makes him damned uncomfortable.

“How?”

“Ben and I were adopted. Separate kids, no family between us.”

Her words break in like buckshot. “You think that makes it okay?”

“No! Dammit, Nora!” His head is swimming, overrun with panic, and he needs the throbbing to stop so he can think straight.

He lets out a heavy breath, closes his eyes against the headache drumming a frantic tattoo in his skull.

“She's young.”

“I know that,” he snaps, voice guttural. “I travel with her, I get to deal with it every day.”

“Just shut up and listen.”

He bites his tongue.

“She's young, Miles, but she's old, too. She's gone through a lot. And you, you're almost double her age and still an emotional adolescent.”

He glances up at her.

“I know how Charlie is,” Nora says. “I travel with her, too. She's stubborn. Smart, except for when she's dumb. She's a lot like you.”

He snorts.

“What I'm saying is she's an adult. So are you. You make your own decisions.”

It takes a minute for Miles to take in her words, translate them past the emotional beating she just gave him. He raises his eyes to hers.

“I don't approve, Miles,” she says, “but it's none of my damn business.”

He shrugs against the bonds. “So why’d you do this?”

“I needed to get you away from Charlie, see your reactions. And fuck all if you aren't just as confused as she is.”

She walks around and unties him while his mind chews over her words. His shoulders give a sharp twinge when they come loose from the rope. He gets to his feet, and Nora steps in front of him, blocking his path, the edge of her knife counting his pulse.

“If you abuse her,” she says, “I'll take you down so fast you won't know what hit you.”

He holds her gaze, so she can see. “I'll keep her safe.”

“Good.”

And that's that.

When the two of them get back to camp, Charlie notices.

“Are you all right?” she asks him, and she looks so ridiculously concerned for his well-being that he can’t help but chuckle. “You look terrible.”

He shrugs it off like nothing unusual at all happened. “Did some sparring with Nora.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Besides, I thought you liked the rugged look.”

She shakes her head, her mouth twitching at the corner like she’s trying not to smile.

“C’mon,” he says, jerking his head in the direction of the path. “Let’s get moving. We’re burning daylight.”

“Where are you in a rush to get to?” Charlie asks.

“Anywhere you wanna go, Charlie. I’m just enjoying the view.”

The look she gives him when she gets his innuendo is so indignant that he bursts out laughing.

Nora stops them on the outskirts of the next town they pass, claiming they need more clay and powder for explosives because, as she puts it, “We don't want to get caught with our pants down.”

“Actually,” Aaron rushes in, and Miles can tell he's been gathering the words to speak the whole walk there, “there's someone I wanted to talk to.”

Miles and Charlie look at each other before Miles finally says, “Who?”

“A scientist. He can help us figure out something.” Aaron hesitates. “At least, I think he can.”

“Figure out what?” Miles asks.

Aaron winces, like he's lit a powder keg. And that tips Miles off pretty quick.

“No,” he says, voice flat. “No way. We are not flashing that thing around.”

“This 'thing' could change the entire world,” Aaron says, stiff as a statue as he meets Miles’s gaze. “And you want us to just walk around with this with our thumbs up our butts?”

“No,” Miles answers, an edge to his voice. “I wanna destroy it.”

“You can't just destroy something this important!” Aaron argues. “We have to find out what it can do!”

“And do what with it?” Miles asks, words pitching fast and rough. “Turn the power back on? Because I sure as hell don't see a way of doing that that won't give Monroe and every other militia leader in this country exactly what they want.”

Aaron goes silent, shoulders rigid.

“Yeah, it'll change the world, Aaron,” Miles says harshly. “It'll give every power hungry bastard a reason to go to war.”

Aaron glares at him from behind his glasses for a long time. He's not going to back down from a fight easily. Aaron is tougher than he looks, like Charlie, and Miles underestimated him once. Miles had thought Aaron was an open book, that Miles could crack him open and read if he had to, but he'd been wrong. Aaron had been carrying a secret bigger than all of them for months and never once slipped, not until the pendant switched on the power in the lighthouse and made itself impossible to ignore.

“Ben wanted me to protect this,” Aaron says, and his words are even, quiet. “I don't know what he wanted to do with it, or when....but your brother handed me the key to a future where we choose our leaders, where people like us don’t have to fight every day just to survive. Your brother made this. He kept it all this time, and he died for it when Monroe sent the militia after him. And you want to destroy it?”

“What do you want me to tell you, Aaron?” Miles asks him. “The world is the way it is, and it’s not gonna change for the better without a shitload of casualties on both sides.”

“But Ben said—“ Aaron starts, and Miles cracks into the sentence with so much force he’s yelling.

“Ben is dead! Because of that damn necklace! Who’s next? You? Charlie?” The thought makes his stomach clench. “You go showing that thing around and there’ll be people lining up to slit our throats.”

“Miles,” Charlie says softly from behind him, and he can’t stop, can’t listen to her because he knows what she’s going to say, she’s woven that deep in his blood. She’s going to give some rousing speech about how they need to do the right thing, raise that flag and that Holy Grail, because it’s who she is, it’s what makes her Charlie.

If they lose that pendant, Miles knows what will happen. People will die by the boatload. People like Charlie. So he can’t afford to listen to pretty speeches. Not if he wants to keep them all safe.

“The world won’t fix itself,” Nora says. She’s been quiet this whole time, just listening. “Nothing will change if someone doesn’t step up and try.”

“Right, great idea,” Miles says. “Start a revolution. That always ends well, especially when one side has swords and the other has guns.”

“Ben gave this to me,” Aaron says. “So... I’m going in whether you want me to or not.”

“You can try.”

“Whoa, easy,” Charlie says. She steps beside Miles so he can see her out of the corner of his eye. “Aaron, do you have a plan?”

“The guy I need to see is in the middle of town. His name’s Jim. He worked for Google for a few years. He’s pretty quiet, keeps to himself, but he helps people for a small fee. Creative fixes to problems. I just need to get his opinion on this thing, see if there’s a way to turn it on at will instead of randomly.”

“There's a problem with that,” Nora says.

Miles rolls his eyes, because of course there's a problem. There always is. “And what's the problem?”

“This town is a rebel hot zone,” Nora says, before Aaron can answer. “Militia's stationed all throughout. There are going to be a lot of soldiers walking around.”

“So they might recognize us,” Aaron says slowly.

“They might recognize Miles,” Nora corrects.

“Great,” Miles says. “So your plan is to go in alone and walk past militia with that thing in your pocket, and talk to a guy you knew fifteen years ago who may or may not have loyalties with Monroe? You’re right, what the hell could possibly go wrong?”

“He won’t go in alone. I'll go with him,” Nora says.

“No,” Miles says and shakes his head.

“Miles,” Charlie starts, but he cuts her off.

“No, Charlie. We lose that thing to the militia and guess what, it's not just your brother or your father that's gonna be dead before all this is over. It's gonna be sons, daughters, children, wives—”

Charlie puts her hand on his arm.

“Miles.”

He can't look at her. He grits his teeth and takes a breath.

“You're right,” she says. “There's a lot at stake. But I trust Aaron, and I trust Nora.”

He slides his eyes back to hers.

“We'll stick around,” she says. “Stay close by in case anything happens.”

He glances away, licks his lips.

Her fingers tighten gently on his forearm. “It's the right thing to do, Miles.”

The right thing.

Doing the right thing made him level a gun at his best friend, the man who was his brother since they were both six, before Miles realized he couldn’t pull the damn trigger. Doing the right thing forced him to stay states away from his family for fifteen years, in the hopes that Ben and Rachel and their kids would stay out of Monroe’s reach. Miles doesn’t know if he can survive doing the right thing again. He’s broken so many bridges he isn’t sure there are any left. He kept a distance between him and other people since the world fell, since Miles went along with Monroe, because he was already a killer so why not for his best friend, to try and break the bones of the world and reshape them into some kind of order?

The distance from his brother didn’t keep Ben safe. Ben died bloody, and he sent his daughter to Miles, to save Ben’s son. Maybe all the bridges broke then, the moment Charlie set foot on a dirt path to find him in Chicago.

Maybe a revolution has already started and Miles just doesn’t know it yet.

And him and Charlie...there is no space between them anymore. Whatever Miles promised he would or wouldn’t do means little now. They’re caught in each other’s gravity and where she goes, he follows. He’s better for knowing her and she’s tougher for knowing him, for traveling this path to find Danny. He wishes he could have kept Charlie’s hands clean, but he knows that was impossible. She wears it well, the shadows and the weight from her decisions, and he’s damned proud of her, of her rising to the challenge and still having the heart to show for it despite it all.

They might all die. Hell, they probably will, but it’s nothing Miles hasn’t faced before. At least now, if he does the right thing, he’ll be fighting next to Charlie, trying to change the world at her side because she’s naive enough and brave enough to think they can.

Charlie waits. Keeps her hand on his arm.

Miles shakes his head, lets out a sharp, irritated breath from between his teeth. The words don't want to come out so he forces them, rough and short, from his throat.

“All right.” And he looks at her.

Charlie smiles at him. He hears Aaron breathe a haggard sigh of relief.

“There's a tavern about a mile down the road,” Nora says. “You two can wait for us there.”

They walk down the road in silence, and Charlie keeps smiling at him. The expression shines in her eyes like she’s won some sort of medal, and Miles can’t figure out why because he’s a piss poor thing to win and walk away with. But she keeps throwing those ridiculously bright smiles his way, and he might not deserve them but he sure as hell doesn’t mind them.

The tavern they find has beds for cheap and a small band playing old songs like a live jukebox. An acoustic version of Bob Dylan resonates from wall to wall and Miles feels like he’s been transported home, to before the blackout, when he used to hit the bar with Monroe on a night off and sing along loudly to Def Leppard.

He stops and takes it in, this piece of nostalgia he hasn’t touched since the world came to an end. It’s like stepping into the past, the low murmur of easy conversations and classic rock and the clink of glasses and bottles, except his swords are digging into his hip and Charlie is at his side.

“Miles?” he hears her ask. “Are you all right?”

He blinks, pulls himself out of the memory. Charlie’s watching him, looking at him curiously.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just...haven’t heard this song in a while.”

“How old were you when you last heard it?”

“A hell of a lot younger than I am now.”

He remembers driving in the Challenger, Monroe sitting in the passenger seat while they argued over who got to pick the next song and the cars suddenly dying all along the highway, headlights fading by pairs as people stepped out of their vehicles, craning their necks to watch planes collapse from the sky like stars.

“Do you know who sang this?” he asks her, and he’s curious if she actually knows. He wonders exactly how much his brother told her about the world before.

“I don’t know. That guy over there?” She nods to the singer on the platform, and she’s messing with him, he can see it in the tilt of her mouth.

“Bob Dylan.” He rolls his eyes for her benefit. “Seriously, your dad didn’t teach you about music?”

“Who’s Bob Dylan?”

“Jesus, kid. See, this is what happens when your dad likes bluegrass.”

Charlie laughs and he shakes his head.

They order a meal and Miles gets a bottle of whiskey. They take the smallest table in the darkest corner of the room and sit across from each other, Miles’s back to the wall so he can keep an eye on the people coming and going. Miles nurses his drink and watches while Charlie wolfs down her bread and uses it to wipe the stew out of her bowl, sucking her fingers clean when she’s done.

“You want some of mine?” he asks, and Charlie glances up, surprised.

“You’re not hungry?” she asks, sliding her pointer finger out of her mouth.

He holds up the whiskey. “I’m good.”

She gives him a head shake and a small, soft smile, and it’s almost better than being drunk. The table is too small and their knees are knocking together, her leg pressing against his, warm through his jeans, and he could stand to stay like this for a while.

“Shouldn’t you take it easy with that?” she asks him. “In case we have to save Aaron and Nora?”

“I don’t pass up a chance to have a drink, Charlie. Besides, I’m pretty sure Nora can handle it.”

“You didn’t think that before. What changed your mind?”

“Well, right now I’ve got a bottle of whiskey and a beautiful woman talking my ear off.”

The smile she gives him for that is furiously bright, and he groans.

“Turn it down a few watts, will you?”

“‘Beautiful’?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “When you’re not being a pain in my ass.”

She slugs him lightly in the arm and he chuckles.

“I wanted to ask you,” she says. “What happened to your car? The one with the tape deck?”

“Died,” he says. “Engine conked out, about two years before the blackout. Hell, I’m lucky it held together as long as it did. The passenger seat was mostly duct tape and the engine would overheat if I wasn’t careful. Me and Bass were on the highway when the damn bumper fell off.”

And there it is. He’s just spoken Bass’s name in a conversation with Charlie, and it isn’t about the man Bass became. It’s about the man Bass was, who they both were before the world ended, what they did for one another and how hard they pushed each other to weather the storm.

They’d crossed line after line and Miles hadn’t realized how many until it was too late. But Bass had realized. He’d known and justified every line they’d crossed, started stepping boldly over new ones because he could, and he’d begged Miles to follow him. And Miles had wanted to follow him, had willingly crossed those lines because Bass was his brother. He would have followed Bass into hell, earned them a place with blood spilt trying to do the right thing, because they were family.

And that was why Miles had tried to kill him.

He figures that’s the end of the conversation. But after a minute Charlie breaks the quiet and says, “What did you do.”

“We got out, picked it up, then drove back to base with the bumper in the backseat.”

She actually looks amused. “That’s quite a story.”

That should be it. There’s no reason to keep going.

He licks his lips. Says, “Monroe wasn’t always this way, you know.”

Charlie goes a little stiff.

“He was different. Way back when.”

“Before the lights went out?”

“Even after.”

This was a bad idea, drinking with Charlie so close to him. The words are sitting heavy in his throat again and he wants to tell her, share the memories like old stories because he knows she wants to hear them and he hasn’t spoken them aloud to anyone in a long time.

“He saved my life more times than I could count. No matter what I did, or how many times I screwed up, he always had my back. Even if someone was ready to put a bullet in it.”

Charlie stays quiet. He’s itching to get up, leave, go somewhere else and drink until the memories slur and he can’t recall them well enough to want to tell her about them.

“He meant a lot to you,” she says quietly. It’s not a question.

“He was my family, Charlie,” he says.

He doesn’t like the way it sounds, like he’s laid himself bare. He’s letting her see where the scars originate, the missing chunk of his flesh and just how big it is. The way it feels like an amputation since he left his friend’s side. He’s laid himself open and she can see the lack, he knows she can because he can feel it. And he doesn’t care much for how it feels, either.

Charlie is curious, he can tell, but she doesn’t push. He doesn’t say anymore about it, and she doesn’t ask, and he’s damned grateful.

They pick at the bowl of stew, their spoons clinking together when they scoop up potatoes and carrots and broth at the same time. Charlie rips the last chunk of bread in two and hands a half to him, insisting he use it to sop up the stew and not the alcohol.

The music changes and Miles can hear the acoustic rhythm of I Saw Her Standing There. He’s never been crazy about The Beatles, but the song is upbeat and he decides it’s as good as any. He plunks down the whisky bottle and gets up, shedding his coat as he does.

He moves around the small table and holds out his hand to Charlie.

She blinks up at him like a deer in headlights. He lets a small smile curl his lips.

“C’mon,” he says, voice low.

She hesitates a second, then her hand is warm in his and she looks excited and nervous at the same time. This is a first for her, he can tell. She’s going to remember this for the rest of her life, and Miles is proud of that, that he’s going to be part of another good memory for her.

He pulls her from the chair and leads her carefully onto the floor, just to the edge of the crowd. He turns back to her, and she watches him, the corners of her mouth twitching up. He rolls his eyes and starts dancing, and she laughs and smiles so bright that he can’t help but grin.

He hasn’t done this in a very long time.

She follows his example, moving to the rhythm with her hips and her shoulders. He takes her hand and spins her out, then in, and as soon as she falls into him, he slips an arm around her waist and leads her in swift circles on the floor, twirling her out every now and then so her hair flies out around her face. She doesn’t let him lead for very long, barely gives him a moment where she isn’t fighting him a little, redirecting in the direction she wants to go, and it doesn’t surprise him at all.

She shakes her head, grinning at him, and she looks so happy all he can do is chuckle.

The song is short, but he knows the next one. The Clash. Hell, he probably knows them all.

Charlie throws the band a skeptical look because they’re singing about how they fought the law and the law won, and of course she would take issue with that.

“Happy song,” she says, and he’s glad to see his sarcasm is rubbing off on her.

“That’s generally what happens when you fight the law, Charlie.”

She accidentally steps on his foot.

“You gonna let me lead?” he asks, but he’s smiling.

“Nope.”

He twirls her one way, then another to make a point, and she’s breathless, giggling like a little kid.

“All the songs sound the same,” she says over the noise.

For the first time in an era of dusty roads and surviving person after person, he feels younger, like the man who drove that red challenger with Bass in the front seat, singing along to Bon Jovi.

A fierce smile pulls at his lips. “This is oldies night, kid.”

“I guess you fit in, then.”

He rolls his eyes, utters “C’mere,” and spins her out in a tight circle before yanking her back in and she laughs, steadying herself against him. His nose brushes her hair and she smells like trampled grass and stones slept on and tracks half-smudged by rain. She smells like the journey, beginning, middle, and end. He could drown in that smell if he let himself; it’s overpowering.

The song ends and the slow, sultry tones of “Night Time is the Right Time” vibrate through the room.

Miles steps into the space between them and takes Charlie’s left hand, shows her where to put it on his arm, and then takes her other hand in his. He slides his hand around her back and pulls her in so they’re lined chest to knees and she takes in a sharp breath.

He leads her slowly, swaying in small circles. She gets the rhythm of it soon enough and relaxes, watching him as they sway in time with the music, the expression on her face brilliant and happy. The warmth of her hand bleeds through his shirt, and he smiles down at her.

“Are you going to tell me who sings this song?” she asks him.

“CCR.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Who?”

“Creedence Clearwater Revival.”

“What’s with the weird names?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. What’s with having a boy’s nickname?”

She grins and runs her hands up his arms, hooking them around his neck, and it’s as effective a noose as he’s ever seen.

He slides his other hand down to her hip, and Charlie lays her head against his chest, her body relaxing into his. He rests his chin on top of her head and they stay that way a while, moving slowly to music he hasn’t heard in over a decade.

When the song ends, Charlie tugs him down, leaning up on tiptoe, and pecks at his lips. Then the kiss deepens, soft and slow, and Miles slides a hand to the nape of her neck, guides her mouth against his in a hungry dance until his heartbeat is ringing in time with her heavy breaths.

“We should get a room,” she says softly.

“No argument here,” Miles answers.

They make it up the stairs and to the room without touching each other, and Miles would say that’s a first for him. Charlie keeps glancing back at him, almost as if she half expects him to disappear between the bottom of the stairs and the walk to the room, and he gestures impatiently for her to move cause she’s taking too long and he’s burning to press her up against the wall, taste her stuttered moans as he claims her mouth and twines them hot together.

The room isn’t too cramped, mostly bare with a beaten lounge chair, a dresser and a sparse bed. Charlie dumps her bag on the floor. Miles shuts the door and sets his own bag down.

“Looks like we’ll be sleeping on a real bed tonight,” Charlie remarks. “I haven’t done that in months. Not sure if I’ll be comfortable without the rocks jutting into my back.”

“Look. Charlie,” he says.

She takes a breath before meeting his eyes. “Yeah?”

“I just wanna be sure. This is a different kind of dance. You know that.”

She nods, the movement jerky and short. “Yeah, I know.”

“Have you,” he starts. Stops. He feels like an idiot, because he really doesn’t know, he isn’t sure if Charlie’s ever been with anybody else. “You ever been with somebody before?”

“No,” she answers immediately, the word open and unguarded. She shrugs. “Not this way. Is that a problem?”

“No. Just something for me to keep in mind.” He sees the tension in her shoulders, the way she’s eyeing him warily like he might bolt, and he adds softly, “Don’t worry, kid, I’m not going anywhere.”

She relaxes an inch or so.

“Well,” she says after a moment. She lifts her gaze to his, soft and strong and a million different facets that make her Charlie. “I’m glad it’s you.”

“You remember what I said about dialing it back a notch?”

She shakes her head and laughs. “It’s okay,” she says. “I know you’re not big on the heart-to-hearts.”

He huffs a laugh, because if only she knew. He’s thinking that in the beginning he figured she was the one chasing him, pitching after him like some damn hero, but really, it’s been the opposite. He’s followed her towards Danny, towards Monroe, into Philly and back into what’s left of himself.

The answer was never at the bottom of a bottle. Hell, he probably would have taken care of Monroe’s problem for him; just a few more years and he would have wasted away to a slow, pathetic ending behind the curtains of The Grand, filled to the brim with booze to muffle the thoughts and the faces.

And then there was Charlie, showing up like the sun peeking pushily through the windows of his bar. She’d overwhelmed him and he’d resented her for it, but she was exactly what he’d needed, a kick in the ass from a universe that wouldn’t let him slip away quietly.

He doesn’t deserve Charlie. But he’s damned lucky to have her.

Charlie bridges the gap between them, a playful smirk on her face. The kid loves danger, runs toward it when she sees it, so why would this be any different?

She reaches around his hips without preamble and unclips his sword belt. He raises his arms, both to move them out of the way and in mock surrender. She catches his gaze and lingers, eyebrow raised, before setting the swords gently on the dresser.

Miles takes her face in his hands and kisses her, licks his way into her mouth and angles her head back with a thumb under her jaw, nips softly at her lips with his teeth so she’s panting against him.

She pulls away, and he’s thrown until he sees her backing up to the bed, a playful smile on her kiss-swollen lips. He smirks and follows her, mirroring each of her steps backward with a step forward until the back of her knees hit the bed and she stands there, shoulders set and chin lifted, a challenge sparking in her eyes. He keeps moving until they’re only a foot away from each other, and he gives her a very obvious and appreciative once-over. Her skin flushes darker when he does it, but she doesn’t back down, still staring him down with that smile.

“Did you dance a lot before the lights went out?” she asks him, and her voice almost doesn’t waver.

“There was a lot of crap music that died out as soon as the blackout hit. Can’t really replicate it without autotune and a thumping baseline. Didn’t really care for it.”

“You know, saying stuff like that really dates you.”

“Right, cause I’m that old.”

“You’re my dad’s age.”

“A few years younger, actually.”

She grins and shrugs, mischief in her eyes. “I would’ve guessed the other way around.”

He gives her a look that speaks of little amusement, then pushes her backwards. She topples onto the bed with a high-pitched yelp and he follows, climbing so his knees frame hers and his hands sink into the thin mattress on either side of her head. He curves over her, looking down, body tense over hers. Her hair spills around her head, sands rippled by water, and she stares up at him, lips parted. She looks beautiful like this, strong and vulnerable and nothing at all like the shadows that ride him.

She takes a breath, sharp and quick, and scrambles to sit up on her elbows so her face hovers near his. Miles watches her, his heart a frantic prisoner in its cage, his blood rending his breaths short and tearing adrenaline through his veins like it’s a battleground.

Miles watches as her wide blue gaze slips from his eyes to his lips. He licks them instinctively, a quick flick of his tongue, and she follows the movement. She’s trembling beneath him, or maybe he’s trembling above her, he can’t tell, it’s a cosmic quake threatening to overwhelm them and he doesn’t know what to do because she’s his niece and even if there’s no blood between them, she’s still Charlie and she’s too good for this. For him.

Charlie inhales, and it’s like the sound casts a hook and draws him down, pulls her up. His mouth grazes hers and the door splinters inward at the hinges, blowing them apart like a gunshot.

Militia soldiers rush in, raising their muskets to shoot. Miles pushes off of the bed and grabs Charlie, yanks her unceremoniously off the bed and they both hit the floor as the shots go off.

There’s a pause as the soldier’s hurry to reload their muskets. Miles darts out from behind the bed, swipes his sword off the dresser and rushes to bottleneck them at the door. He cuts through the first soldier, blade slinging blood onto the wall. The next one he strikes in the face with the butt of his sword, cheekbone shattering under the blow, and the man topples backwards into more soldiers waiting in the hall.

Jesus, they sent the whole damn militia.

Blood pools around Miles’s boots as he kicks the body out of the way and slams the door shut on the other soldiers, grabbing the lounge chair and wedging it under the knob. He hears the sound of flintlocks cocking back, barely has time to throw himself aside before gunshots blast from the hall and bullet holes pepper the door, fragments of wood spraying inwards as round after round goes off.

Miles presses his back flat against the wall, sees Charlie on her feet trying to force open the window by the bed. She’s got it halfway open, slamming her palm up against the frame to jimmy the lower pane loose.

More shots explode from outside, tearing through the wall, and Charlie sends him a panicked look from across the room.

When the guns go silent, Miles moves. There isn’t much else in the way of furniture, but he grabs the small dresser, dragging it to block the door along with the lounge chair as best he can.

The window scrapes open with a loud thump and Charlie nods to him, signaling him over. Miles throws on his coat, grabs their bags and his sword belt, then takes a breath and rushes across the room.

The door shudders, the chair and dresser stuttering across the floor as it cracks open. Miles helps Charlie get up onto the window ledge, tells her, “Bend your knees and roll,” and watches as she drops. The bags and sword belt he tosses down, making sure not to hit Charlie, and then he climbs up onto the ledge.

Wood screams on wood as the door pushes open. One of the soldiers shoulders his way in and looks to the window, and Miles lets himself fall.

He lands hard in the bushes. Charlie’s already pushing to her feet, snagging her bag from the ground, grabbing him by the shoulder, and tugging him up. He grabs his own bag and they run and keep on running.

They don’t stop for breath for at least a mile, and by then Miles figures they’ve run far enough into the woods to lose any militia scouts. He slows down, stops, and Charlie gratefully follows his lead.

Charlie leans over, hands on her knees, concentrating on heaving in air like it’s a course and she’ll be quizzed on it later. She looks to him after a minute and pants, “Well, that didn’t work out.”

The words catch him so much by surprise that he laughs.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Noticed. You all right?”

She nods, still winded. “Yeah.”

She looks exhilarated, her eyes bright and skin flushed by the chase, and Miles finds that incredibly amusing and arousing as hell.

He crosses the distance between them and takes Charlie’s face in his hands, tips her head back and kisses her. He claims her mouth and lips, tastes her in every sweep and flick of his tongue, and she relaxes into him, her hands gripping the lapels of his coat.

They kiss each other hungrily in the silence, and Charlie huffs softly against his lips, breath hitching when Miles slips his hand around her back and pulls her in closer.

They break apart, and she buries her face under his chin. He kisses her forehead and cards his fingers through her hair, feeling her close and warm. They’re still breathing hard, but it’s not just from running.

Crickets thrum loudly, and he pulls away, turning to get his bag from where he dropped it. He hears Charlie let out a long, shaky breath behind him.

They set up their sleeping rolls right next to each other. Miles drops his and Charlie carefully evens hers out so they overlap, and he finds that comforting, a small taste of home despite the changing scenery.

They lay down and Miles pulls her in against him, thumb stroking soft lines on her hip. Her breath puffs warm against his throat, and he murmurs, “We’ll find Aaron and Nora tomorrow.”

“Are we going to go to sleep?”

He raises an eyebrow, even though she can’t see.

“It’s not a good time for us to get caught with our pants down, Charlie,” he says, and he feels her smirk against his throat.

“All right,” she says softly. “I feel pretty awake, though.”

“I can tell you about your dad’s school days. Put you right to sleep.”

She laughs. “What about your school days?”

“Those are a lot more interesting.”

“I’m sure,” she says, but it’s not an insult, and he relaxes, muscles easing for the first time since the soldiers broke through their door.

“I’ll make you a promise,” he says, voice low. “Next time we’re not being chased by Monroe’s men or lying on slugs, I am gonna fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk straight for a week.”

Her lips part against his throat and he feels the moist warmth of her breath. He licks his lips.

“Sound good?” he asks her.

There’s a pause, and then she nods, the top of her head bumping his chin.

“All right,” he says. “Get some sleep.”

She falls asleep in his arms a few minutes later, her breaths soft and slow against his skin. He kisses the top of her head and closes his eyes.

When he wakes the next morning, it’s to Charlie sleeping peacefully, warm in his arms, and it's a hell of a good morning.

She opens her eyes after a minute, slow from sleep, and smiles at him. “Hey,” she murmurs.

“Hey,” he rumbles back.

She stretches and curls in closer. He brings a hand to her face, strokes her cheek. She smiles, and he traces the curve of her lips with his thumb.

“You picked a good spot for camp,” she says. “We could just sleep all day.”

“We could,” he says. “If you wanna get ambushed by militia.”

They don't have anywhere to be, no one to chase. It's a relief to have everything he needs right here in front of him, and it's selfish because his nephew is dead, but if given the choice, he'll always pick Charlie. And it hits him in the gut, because he hasn't needed anything more than he could carry in a sack for so long. If he loses food, supplies, weapons, those can all be replaced, somehow. He can scour and steal and intimidate the locals if necessary.

He can't replace Charlie. If he loses her, she’s gone. He’s pin-wheeling around her, fighting off foes and keeping her safe from herself because she’s a comet falling towards the center of earth, burning away at the atmosphere.

“So how are we going to get to Aaron and Nora?” she asks, running her hand down his chest, towards his stomach, and her touch is distracting as hell.

“Nora knows where to meet up if we get separated. She’ll find out about the commotion from the tavern owner and realize we had to run for it. She’ll head to Georgia.”

“Georgia?”

“There’s a crossroads there, just before Monroe’s territory ends. It’s mostly neglected, so it’s a good place to meet up if any of us are being chased. It’s probably a week, two week’s walk from here.”

He glances down at her hand, which is now splayed over his stomach, fingers spread like catches, thumb dragging warm and slow over his shirt.

He raises an eyebrow. “You staking claim?”

“Didn’t think I had to,” she says, and gives him that damned beautiful smile.

“No,” he admits with a smirk. “But I wouldn’t mind doing some claiming.”

“What happened to not getting caught with our pants down?”

“It’s morning,” he says, shrugging. “If they didn’t find us by now, we should be all right.”

In one quick movement, he pushes her onto her back and straddles her, and she stares up at him, her breath cutting out of her short and fast. She swallows, excitement and anticipation gleaming in her wide blue eyes, and he leans down slowly, grazes his lips over hers, teases her with soft sucks and quick swipes of his tongue.

She gasps under him, and dammit if it doesn’t blaze through him like a fire, lighting on every nerve ending and pooling low in his stomach. He’s half-hard already, his muscles tensing, and he nips down her chin, marks a trail down her throat with his teeth. Her chest stutters as he runs a hand over her ribs, brushes her stomach and she squeals, jolting beneath him.

“Miles!” she yelps, laughing.

He chuckles throatily. “Didn’t know you were ticklish.”

“I swear, if you keep it up, I’ll kick you.”

“Sit up.”

“Why?” she asks.

“So I can see you naked,” he says, and the stunned, hungry look on her face is worth it.

She scrabbles up as best she can with him straddling her hips, her arms bracing her up, and he slides off her coat and yanks off her shirt in two swift tugs. Her skin’s radiating heat and he leans down into her, picking up where he left off. He kisses his way from her throat to her collarbone, trailing his mouth and tongue to the part of her breast not covered by her bra. Charlie’s breathing hitches and she trembles, arms shaking as they support her.

He pulls her against him, closer, one hand kneading the nape of her neck as the other works at the clasp on the back of her bra. She arches her body into him and it nearly undoes him, the warmth of her bare skin bleeding through his shirt. He nuzzles where shoulder meets neck, scrapes his teeth lightly over her jaw, and claims her skin with rough kisses and nips. He unhooks her bra, slides the straps down her arms as he nuzzles her shoulder, and slowly presses her back down with his body.

He pulls back, taking her in, and she’s flushed and breathless, eyes burning bright as she watches him drink in the sight of her.

“Jesus, Charlie,” he groans.

He leans down, laps her nipple with his tongue, then sucks the bud into his mouth and Charlie gasps, body bowing against his. Miles nips gently, teases with teeth and tongue until her nipple perks and he sucks harder, suckles until Charlie moans, the sound deep and shaky. His fingertips drag and catch over her ribs, skimming her stomach and when he reaches the fringe of her jeans, Charlie’s breath stutters out in a rush.

He lifts his head, sees her panting with her hair messed and her lips parted, and the sight knocks him breathless because she’s Charlie and she’s fucking beautiful.

She leans up, brushes her tongue over his lips and he parts them to let her in. She surges against him like a tidal, kisses him with a focused determination, and he thinks she might be trying to unravel him, drawing him closer and he groans, delves into her mouth with his tongue and flicks her upper lip. He traps her lower lip between his teeth, tugs just hard enough to make her buck desperately beneath him.

Charlie’s hands find their way underneath his coat and his shirt and her fingers are burning his back, heating up his blood and he can’t get enough air to his lungs. She’s overwhelming him, burning bright as a torch, and he can’t give into it, not yet. Not until he gives her the best he’s got and she comes shuddering apart beneath him.

Charlie tugs at his coat, impatient, and he pulls back a bit, lets her shove his coat down his shoulders and yank his shirt over his head and chuck it. Then her hands are greedy, roaming over every inch of his exposed skin, fingertips dragging over his ribs and skating his stomach. She traces trails over his shoulders and back, mapping muscle and bone, her touch almost reverent, and she looks as overwhelmed as he feels.

Her hand settles briefly on the back of his neck. She lingers there, and he realizes she’s touching his necklace.

She has to feel the way he tenses. The way his body goes still.

“Was it from Monroe?” she asks, very quietly.

He licks his lips. Nods.

She nods back, just once. And that’s that.

She kisses him again, bites playfully at his lips, and he presses her down, claims her mouth and swallows her every gasp and moan before pulling back.

Her breath is a damp, rapid tattoo against his chin. He strokes his fingers over her bellybutton, skims the waistband of her jeans, and she shudders. He catches her gaze, asks her with his eyes, because he has to be sure. She looks at him with an almost wild need, nods desperately, and he slips his hand underneath the fabric, pressing his fingers firmly against the warm flesh there.

She sucks in a breath and cants her hips up, and he circles his fingers, rubbing slowly so she can mimic the rhythm he’s setting. Her body trembles finely under his hand, she moans. The air explodes from his lungs hoarse and shaking, and he ruts in time with her thrusts. She keeps her eyes on his, letting him see the break down, the way her lips part on each breath she drags in that gets punched on each answering thrust of their bodies rolling together. He leans in, grazes her jaw with his teeth and he can taste her pulse, ringing with his ragged breaths.

The fabric is rough against his fingers and he slips his hand out, reaches for the button on her jeans.

“Miles,” Charlie forces out. “Now, please.”

And her voice is so pushy that Miles smiles.

He snaps the button open. He attempts to undo her zipper, one handed and clumsy, until he finally gives up and balances back on his knees, yanking off her jeans in a few tugs. He leans down again, manages his own zipper with one hand, and then slowly, carefully, guides himself into her, stopping short when her breath catches a little.

“You all right?” he asks her, and it’s a question he asks all the time but it’s more intimate now, soft.

She takes a breath, nods.

He watches her closely. “You ready to do this?”

“Are you?”

“Charlie.”

“I’m okay,” she says.

“Just say the word and I’ll stop.”

“It’s all right.” He needs her to say it, because he needs to be sure. “Keep going. Please.”

He slides a hand up her thigh, feels the smooth heat of her skin beneath his calluses, and moves his hips, a small push. He leans down and catches her mouth, kisses her as he fills her.

Then he starts to move in earnest, slow, easy thrusts, pulses of his hips so she can adjust to the sensation. She moans, breath hot, and curls into him, her fingers digging in his shoulders.

He moves over her, and each thrust of his hips rips a small groan from his throat, a searing burn of pleasure that ricochets through his body and tightens his stomach with need.

“Charlie,” he breathes, and this time it’s not a question, it’s a damned proclamation. He kisses her, groans caught between the two of them, and he wants to claim every inch of her skin with his touch, map her ribs with his fingertips and feel her pulse beat under his lips, stake his claim on them. Because she's Charlie, she's his, and isn't that a damned paradox, something so good and so pure becoming somehow mixed up in him.

Miles, she mouths, a prayer carved against his stubble, and the word gets lost between them, swallowed up when he traps her lower lip between his teeth.

He brushes his open mouth over her lips, nips at her jaw, trails lower and sucks softly on the skin there. She arches into him when he draws harder, marking her, and her hands scrabble desperate and needy over his back for a hold. He grazes his teeth across her shoulder, pushes against her and into her, then groans when she wraps her legs around his hips and thrusts for all she’s worth, meeting him with a fervor because she gives just as much of herself to this as she does everything else. The heat trapped between them is raw and fucking beautiful, and Miles captures her mouth again when she gasps his name, tastes the word on his tongue because it’s clean when she says it, something untainted and new and whole, and he returns the favor, hisses out Jesus, Charlie when she rolls her hips and tangles her hands in his hair, pulling him down for another desperate kiss.

She’s getting closer with each breath between them, her body tightening around him, muscles shaking beneath him, and he wants to hear her cry out when she comes, feel her fall apart at his fingertips. She’s gasping sharply at every thrust, kissing him sloppily and each broken breath sounds like his name, sliding from her lips to his, crushed between kisses. She can’t hold on much longer like this, and neither can he.

He murmurs her name, rough and thick, and she tightens around him, hands grasping at his shoulders, crying out as she comes. Miles’s orgasm hits him like a freight train, tearing a surprised grunt from his throat and he keeps thrusting, coaxes Charlie through her orgasm before he lets himself give out, burying his face into her shoulder.

He’s shaking, and for a few seconds Miles can’t draw breath faster than it’s being burned up. Charlie pants quietly underneath him, her fingers carding gently through his hair.

“Well, you lived up to your promise. No slugs, no militia, and I don’t think I’ll be able walk for a while.”

He chuckles against her throat.

“Yeah, me, either,” he says, and slowly pulls himself up. She follows his movements, looking relaxed and smug.

“I guess we weren’t ready for it, huh?”

“Not really,” he replies. “But what the hell, huh?”

The next few nights Miles has nightmares. Monroe gets a hold of Charlie, or Strausser does. Blood flows in his dreams and it’s always Charlie’s, always his fault, and each time Monroe’s desperate eyes and bitter smile taunt him.

The nights only get worse, and Charlie can tell something’s wrong. She gives him concerned looks, touches his arm and he can’t tell her, won’t because it’s his burden to carry.

Miles can tell they’re approaching the state line when militia garrison in navy blue patrol the streets, eyeing them with open suspicion. One soldier gives Charlie a hungry, appraising look, and Miles utters, “Stay close.” She takes it to heart, keeping at his side so their hands brush and their arms bump.

They’re walking along the Georgia border when he realizes what he’s known all along.

Charlie is his light between bridges, because the bridges are broken and he’s still holding the shadows at bay. He’s not the man that stepped out of that dead Challenger fifteen years ago, and he isn’t the man that left The Grand. He’s Miles Matheson, former general of the militia, brother to Ben, uncle to Charlie Matheson, and he’ll protect her till his dying breath.

He knows what he has to do.

There’s just one more bridge left to break.

They’re waiting for Aaron and Nora at the crossroads, Charlie sitting cross-legged on the ground and rummaging through her sack, when Miles says it.

“I’m going after Monroe.”

She stops and looks up at him, surprised. He can’t quite meet her eye, but he sees push her bag aside and get to her feet. She steps up to him a moment later, the question unspoken.

“You can wait for Nora and Aaron here,” he says, ignoring the way she’s looking at him. “There’s a small settlement down that road, mostly a ghost town, but you can get some food and a bed. Just stay off the streets during the day and you should be fine.”

“Miles,” she says, and there’s volumes in that one word.

She doesn’t ask him why. She wouldn’t. She already knows.

“This is my fight, Charlie,” he says. “I made Monroe what he is. Without me, half this shit wouldn’t have happened.”

“If it’s your fight, then it’s my fight, too, Miles,” Charlie says.

He takes a breath to argue, but she cuts him off.

“We’re in this together,” she says. “Always have been.”

What she doesn’t say is, You can't stop me. And she's right, he can't. Trying to change Charlie's mind is more impossible than changing the tide, and if he tries to she'll tag along, dog his footsteps until he gives in and they both walk side by side, knocking against each other and keeping one another on their feet when it's hard, off on another long journey because neither of them would have it any other way.

They both have a long trip ahead of them.

And truth be told, he's glad for the company.