Toy Soldiers
By: Isis_uf
Rated: T (language, vague canon het sex, canon implied slashy feelings, incredibly unhealthy relationships, wartime violence, abuse of parenthetical asides)
Pairings: Monroe/inferiority-complex (side pairings of internalized Miles/Monroe, inferred Rachel/Miles, very brief Miles/Emma and Monroe/Emma)
Summary: Bass has always coveted everything that Miles has, fought to be everything Miles is (there have always been casualties in their war)
Author's Note: What can I say? Miles and Monroe gave me feels and this demanded to be written. There are six or seven lines lifted directly from canon.
Gail Monroe's toes are the first victim (they're far from the last). Still tacky with fresh, bold red Friday Night Escape polish, the luxurious smell of fresh paint makes her feel momentarily young and carefree again and she navigates the old wood stairs of her two-story Indiana farmhouse with extra care. But she misses the little green plastic figures littering her foyer as she hits the landing and turns. One bayonet scrapes her big toe, another does battle with her arch, and she stumbles against her grandmother's old rug, marring its muted floral pinks and blues with bold swaths of stuttered red.
"BASS!" she shouts (But its in vain. The damage is done).
Her little boy pokes his head up from behind her sofa, a twin dark-haired head poking up right next to his dusty blonde one. Those boys. They'll be the death of her one day, she thinks (She's wrong, but they'll be the deaths of so, so many others).
"Well?" she huffs, gesturing widely toward the lurid red stain scarring her rug and waiting for an explanation, an apology, something.
"Friendly fire?" Miles asks, smirking with a kind of confidence that ought to be completely foreign to a six-year-old with no front teeth (Bass knocked them out last week. An accident, he swears. As always, Miles backs him up).
"Collateral damage," Bass shrugs back (Like it's nothing. Like she can just throw her grandmother's rug out and spend a few hundred dollars she doesn't actually have on one with just as much history and meaning. Like she hasn't just spent the only precious half hour she's likely to have to herself between Angela's bouts of colic painting the nails he's just carelessly ruined).
"What do you have to say for yourself?" She huffs, hands on her hips and frustrated tears in her eyes as she hears Angela start to wail upstairs.
"Don't worry, mom," Bass says haughtily. "I'll avenge you. Miles' army is going to pay."
She's so frustrated she could scream and she knows that she needs to nip this in the bud, but Angela is screaming like the world is ending and she's got her grandmother's rug to salvage and she needs to remove the remnants of her nail polish before she destroys something else and she's just so tired.
"We'll deal with this later, young man," she announces sternly, shaking her finger at him like punctuation (Bass doesn't take it seriously. He never does. All the time-outs and confiscated toys in the world never make a difference and she doesn't know what to do with this boy. She's sure that's her fault. She's only partly right).
"Clean this up," she orders, navigating her way past the plastic army and up the stairs toward her hysterical daughter.
"We will mom!" he shouts back as she tromps upstairs.
("As soon as the battle's won," he adds to Miles, when she's out of earshot).
There are other victims in between, but the first big one is Angela (It's an accident, he'll tell himself later. Unavoidable. Angela's fault even. She's the one that got herself into the situation. She should have known better).
It's summer and he's twelve and green plastic footmen have lost their appeal, but swordplay with sticks has never gotten old.
He refuses to admit that Miles is better than him (At this. At anything). He swings in wide, clumsy arcs that telegraph his moves and leave him wide open for attack (He'll get better eventually. It just takes practice and he'll have lots of that in a few years). Miles toys with him, little pokes and jabs that provoke him but little more. Angie... Angie just wants to be part of it all, she looks up to Bass so much (He only sees that Miles is better. He can't get past it, never will).
She's six, wide-eyed and eager to please. She hunts their yard in search of long, sharp, sturdy sticks for him to do battle with. She imagines herself a part of his team, a lieutenant in his war (He doesn't notice. She's six. And a girl. And this is between him and Miles).
She finds a good one between the old birch and the newer oak and she's so, so proud that she runs to her brother in triumph. He'll notice her now. She'll have proved her worth. She knows it. Bass swings wide again and Miles bats his makeshift sword away and the stick sails through the air smacking Angie straight in the face.
Bass stares, oddly fixated, and Miles turns a little white and it takes a second before the pain hits her. Then, Angela screams. She's got blood running down her face and she doesn't know exactly what happened but she's so, so scared.
"It was so stupid of you to stand there!" Bass yells at her as their mother comes running out of the house, four-year-old Cynthia fresh on her heels. "Don't you know any better?"
His mother is frantic and Angie and Cindi are crying and Bass is indignant (It's not his fault. Stupid little sisters).
He tells her it's not that bad. She's just being a baby.
(It turns out she needs twelve stitches, though, and the scar never totally fades. So, maybe she's not just being a baby, but he'll never admit that.
Besides. It's not his fault).
High school is kind to both Bass and Miles, has been from the start. They both make the hockey team as freshmen (but Miles is the one who scores the goal that gets them to the state championship when they're sophomores). They both get decent grades (but it never seems like Miles has to try at all). And girls... girls mostly look at them with interest (but Miles seems happier dating Emma, who is just a girl on the tennis team, than Bass has been working his way through the cheerleading squad all senior year and he doesn't get it. But he wants to. He wants to so badly).
Miles hangs out with Emma a lot and Bass hangs out with Miles a lot so Bass gets to know Emma fairly well. Better than he knows any of the cheerleaders, including the the pretty little blonde who let him screw her in the backseat of her father's borrowed Buick on their third date. She's more real than any of them. It's easy to convince himself he's in love with her (He's more in love with how she looks at Miles, but that's a distinction he'll never get).
Maybe it happens because she's angry with Miles for joining the Marines and she wants to hurt him (Bass joined too, of course. He'd follow Miles anywhere. To basic training. To the Middle East. To Philly). Maybe it happens because, even though he's never explicitly made a move on her, he's never hid his interest either. He never asks. But whatever her reasoning, he sleeps with her because she belongs to Miles.
It's awkward and kind of uncomfortable and Miles is just feet away, drunkenly passed out on the couch (It's fitting really. He's as much a part of this as either of them, even if he doesn't know it).
She never looks at him like she looks at Miles. There's meaning in the way she looks at him, certainly, but it's not the same (So it's not good enough for Bass. He wants what Miles has).
Later, she smiles through her own guilt when she takes Miles' ring and cries through it when she gives the modest band back three days before he ships out.
(Bass will never realize he wanted to break her away from Miles as much as he wanted to take her for himself. It was never about her. Not really. But he thinks it was, even as her blood stains his hands decades later).
The military isn't quite what Bass expected. It's somehow both more and less than what he'd thought it would be, when he'd taken the time to think about it (Which was entirely after he signed up because signing up had less to do with serving his country and more to do with being Miles' brother-in-arms). There's less glory, less heroics, less freedom. He's seen war movies, of course. Grand, sweeping tales of men who make a name for themselves against the odds. And maybe that sort of thing will come later, he thinks (And it will, but not how he means). But for now... this isn't that. This is training drills and memorizing procedure and protocol. It's repetitive and tasking and conforming. There's no way to stand out here, no way to prove he's better and earn the respect he craves.
If it didn't mean he was weak, a failure, he'd have left after the first week.
But Miles is in his element - a natural at seemingly everything - and if Miles can do this, then Bass needs to prove he can too. So he throws himself into it. He's going to beat Miles at something if it kills him (It doesn't, but not everyone around them is so lucky).
It takes months. Miles runs faster than him, shoots more precisely than him and shines his god-damned shoes brighter than him. It's all "Not terrible, Matheson" and "Move your ass, Monroe" from their drill sergeant and Bass gets more determined (and more bitter) every damn day.
It's a Tuesday when it finally happens, late morning but it might as well be pre-dawn for all the sun that's leaking through the clouds. Rain has been falling for days and the ground is saturated to the point where it can't absorb anything else. Obstacle courses have never been Bass' strongest point, but they aren't Miles' either; So, he pushes (and pushes and pushes) spilling over nets and splashing through pools of mud, throwing himself through the course as fast as he can, until he can taste the dank earthy tang of the forest along with the salty notes of his own sweat and the coppery hint of blood from where he busted his lip tripping over a god damned branch half-hidden in one of the muddy potholes made by someone's boots earlier in the week.
He slips his way across the finish line covered in mud and sweat and blood, the tolls of his exertion. It lacks finesse, but that isn't his aim anyhow. He doesn't care how he finishes so long as he finishes first. And he's been after it for so long, so very long, that it takes him a moment to realize that he has.
Miles isn't that far behind him, but he is behind him, and Bass feels victorious in a way that makes a huge muddy, toothy grin break out across his face and a shocked little laugh puff past his lips. But his quiet little moment of victory is just that - a moment.
Sergeant Collins, a beast of a man with no sense of humor and even less personality, is standing over his prone form, hands on his hips and stance wide.
"Don't be too thrilled with yourself, Monroe. My deaf grandmother could have heard you stomping through that course. Next time try not to be a little more subtle than a god damned bull in a china shop. Being first isn't everything," he tells Bass (And Bass' face tightens a little because - of course being first is everything).
Miles finishes the course a moment later, sweaty but without any blood on him and somehow having no mud above his knees.
"Well navigated, Matheson, but pick up the pace a bit next time? We both know you can finish this thing faster than your sidekick," Collins says, nodding his head toward Bass.
Miles snarks something back about not leaving Bass behind (They're brothers, Miles says. He will always stick with his brother, through this, through everything), but Bass doesn't hear it. All he hears is the ringing of his own frustration in his ears, a waterfall of jealousy and ambition deafening with its roar (He hears it for years, for decades, even after the lights die and the world goes oddly quiet).
Miles is to Ben as Bass is to Miles, so the whole Rachel thing is weird for Bass to watch. He doesn't get it. Ben is such a nerd and Miles is just... he's Miles. How Rachel can pick Ben, Bass doesn't get at all. And he doesn't get involved.
It's hard enough always coming in second to Miles, he doesn't need to be on the bottom of the totem pole with Ben Matheson at the top.
(Besides, Rachel doesn't look at Miles like Emma did. He's not sure he wants anyone to look at him the way Rachel looks at Miles.)
Miles would deal with this better. Of course he would. He's better at living; he'll probably be better at dying too. Bass wishes he were dead now, buried six feet down on the end of the row in front of him under a blanket of fast-wilting daisies and luridly bright carnations. He could make it a complete set, put all the Monroes in the ground. He might still. He hasn't really decided yet.
While he's not sure if he's going to kill himself or not, he sure as hell doesn't want to live with this sick, piercing feeling sitting in his chest, so he's resolved to drink until that feeling dulls to something manageable or worsens into something that kills him. It could go either way. He's not picky. He just knows this can't go on, he can't go on, not how he is now.
It hurts to think about them, so he tries not to, but he can't help it. There wasn't enough of them left for open-casket funerals and that makes it all feel a little less real but it also keeps the snapshots of them in his head firmly rooted in their lives. He can almost see the pride on his father's face when he left for his first tour of duty and the tears of relief in his mother's tired, blue eyes when he came back. He can picture perfectly the way that old scar on Angie's face pulled whenever she smirked - which was all the time - and the look of sheer disappointment on Cindi's face when she turned eleven and didn't get an owl from Hogwarts.
Fucking Harry Potter. He fucking hates that douche.
When Miles shows up, it surprises him but probably shouldn't (Bass isn't always the one who does the following. They're more even than that). Miles doesn't know what to do any more than Bass does, not with this. But whiskey makes Bass' tongue rueful and honest and dark in a way that demands to be addressed.
"I got nothing left," he pronounces. "I got... I got nothing... left."
"Well," Miles answers after a moment, "you've got me."
And, oh my god, it's so brutally ironic and so fucking sad that Bass can't help laughing. And it hurts. The laugh that boils out of him makes it feel like that sharp, piercing thing in him has splintered, slicing him through in so many places.
He's got Miles, yeah, except for how he totally doesn't. He's even further away from Miles now, in some ways. He doesn't have the things Miles has, isn't the things Miles is, and its more acute now than ever (He's not a brother anymore. Not a son, either. Will never be an uncle).
"I mean, what the hell would I be without you?" Miles continues. "We've been brothers our whole lives. Since we were kids."
It's so ridiculous that it hurts, but Bass wants that to be true more than anything. He wants Miles to need him like he needs Miles. He craves it (He joined the Marines for it, will walk to Chicago for it, will lay waste to New England for it).
"Bass, give me the gun before you do something stupid," Miles says.
He's not sure it would be. Stupid, that is. But he does anyhow. He's never been able to let Miles down and he's not about to start now. After all, Miles is all he has left.
The Milky Way stretches unbroken from one horizon to the other, a brilliant tapestry of light in a suddenly pitch-black world. He hasn't seen stars like that since they were stationed in the Middle East. New England probably hasn't seen stars like that since the birth of skyscrapers and the introduction of your average electric table lamp to department stores.
And it's quiet. So quiet. Too quiet. No car horns, no radios, no hustle and bustle of civilization. He wonders if it's like this everywhere. He hopes not. It's too still, leaves him with too much time for too many thoughts.
"This is the way it is now, Bass," Miles says, arms folded behind his head and watching the sky from the relative comfort of his own sleeping bag a few feet away. "I didn't have a choice. You know that right?"
Bass shrugs one shoulder in response, but realizes after a moment that it's too dark for Miles to see him.
"I'm not sure of anything right now," he replies and Miles lets out a little huff that might be agreement or might be frustration but is probably a little of both.
"They'd have just killed more people if I hadn't neutralized them," Miles reminds him. "Unarmed civilians, American citizens."
Bass silently notes that Miles is back to talking about 'neutralizing them' instead of 'killing them' and it makes their situation feel all the more like the war. Is that what this is now? Another war? Are there commanders they should be following? Orders they should be taking? Or is this just survival of the fittest? Kill or be killed?
"They would have," Bass agrees, because despite whatever else might be true, he knows Miles is right about that. Those men were killers, through and through. But he's not sure what that makes Miles (What that makes him).
"There's power in numbers," Miles says, though he sounds more like he's talking to himself than to Bass. "If this was going to happen, I'm glad I've got you to watch my back."
Bass's doubts crack and shatter. He's followed Miles through everything (This won't be any different).
"It sounds more patriotic, rolls off the tongue better," Miles explains, his words rounded and elongated by the sharp bite of cheap whiskey.
"Not the Matheson-Monroe Allied Territories?" Bass muses aloud. He likes the ring of it, their names with equal billing.
He doesn't know why he's questioning Miles' plan, though. (Having his own damn country pretty much means he wins at everything, doesn't it?)
Miles winces and tosses back more liquor, face screwing at the taste but resisting a shudder.
"I've earned enough of a name for myself," Miles answers finally, three beats past when anyone else would have responded.
But he has. It's true. Everywhere they go, people have heard of Miles Matheson. Sometimes they're afraid of him, sometimes they respect him, but they've always heard of him (Bass can't say the same. Not yet. Soon, but not yet). Miles is right. He's earned a reputation, more bad than good, and it really can't be his name on the flag. But he's sitting there handing Bass a god-damned country. He didn't win it; it was handed to him. And it doesn't mean as much if Miles doesn't want it too.
(Still... it means something and Bass will scrape and claw his way up to Miles' level, past Miles, every chance he gets.)
"Monroe Republic does have a nice ring to it," Bass says finally.
Miles claps him on the shoulder and salutes sloppily with his drink still in his hand, amber liquid sloshing over the side of the glass.
"At your service, then, Mister President," he says, sounding sarcastic and irreverent all at once.
(Bass hates and loves him for it in nearly equal measure)
Whatever Miles really thinks about his sister-in-law's capture, he doesn't say and Bass doesn't ask. The looks between them are long and loaded and Bass still doesn't get them at all (Which is funny because it's not all that different from him and Emma a lifetime ago, but he's never been great with self-awareness before and that's not about to change now).
So, like all those years ago, he stays out of it, doesn't even think about their relationship beyond recognizing the need to make Miles think she's dead. There's too much at stake for the layers in those long, brutal looks they trade.
(He's sure, now, that he doesn't want anyone to look at him the way that Rachel looks at Miles)
He hears the screaming in his sleep, even though he wasn't actually there to hear it in life (In death). Forty-two, this time. Forty-two traitors, killers, terrorists (Fathers, mothers, sisters; He had all of those once). He's committed them all to the ground. The death penalty has always been exacted for treason (And that's what this is. If he has to wear the mantle of President and Supreme Court all himself, then that's his responsibility to bear. It doesn't make his decision wrong).
"Can't sleep?" Miles' voice asks as he leans heavily against the doorframe to Bass' office, three fingers of whiskey in the glass dangling from his fingers. Bass doubts it's his first pour of the night.
"Hm," Bass half-mutters, half-grunts in agreement, pouring himself some scotch because Miles has the right idea.
"I keep smelling it," Miles winces, knocking back some of his drink as he ambles his way to the chair opposite Bass' and straddles it languidly. "The screaming was..."
Miles shudders again and Bass knows it isn't from the bite of his whiskey this time. It makes him seem less perfect, makes the pedestal Bass puts him on a bit wobbly. It's unsettling.
"But once the fire really spread in the bunker... I can't get the smell out of my nose," Miles confesses, his gaze settled miles away on a burnt-out building in western Pennsylvania.
Bass stares at him wordlessly for a beat. He knows Miles well enough to know his friend isn't done.
"What are we doin', Bass?" He questions, his stare coming home, focusing on Bass in the here and now with startling intensity.
Anyone else would face repercussions for that kind of question. But not Miles (Never Miles).
"What we have to," Bass tells him pointedly. "We're doing what we have to. You taught me that."
"These aren't... murderers beating people to death on the side of the road-"
"Aren't they?" Bass asks, standing up and rounding the desk, towering over Miles' lazy form in reality if not in ideology. "How many men have we lost to these rebels? How hard have we worked to build this country? From nothing, Miles. From the burned out ashes of a dead nation. How many people have we saved?"
"Dunno, but I've got a pretty good count of how many we've damned," Miles replies, mouth twitching into a self-deprecating smile that looks more like a wince (Because it is).
"You started this, Miles. You," Bass reminds him, pointing a finger at him for emphasis (As if that makes it true. As if this didn't start when they were six and claiming victims like painted toes and antique rugs). "We're defending our country. Like we did in Iraq. It's just harder when we're the ones calling the shots, but people die in wars, Miles. They took up arms; they knew that."
"They weren't soldiers, Bass. It's like those rebel's kids all over again," Miles protests, dropping his drink on Bass' desk and standing so they're on even keel in at least one respect. "It was a god damned medical facility and you knew that. We knew that."
"And how many rebels do you think those doctors have saved? What do you think those men did as soon as they were patched up? Run back home to till their fields and pay their taxes? They came right back here, to Philly, to our home to kill more of our men," Bass reminds him. "We made a statement. If you aid the rebels, you're a terrorist. You've declared war on the Monroe Republic. We will find you and we will hold you accountable."
"Not so sure I like the statements we're making these days," Miles says, his face tight with shades of guilt and echoes of doubt.
The silence echoes loudly.
"You need some sleep, Miles," Bass says finally, his tone shifting into something conciliatory and his hands settling on his friend's upper arms in something like solidarity. "It's been a long day. A little time and a lack of exhaustion will give you a fresh perspective."
"Yeah... maybe," Miles says, looking uncertain (But he is certain. He is. This was wrong. Bass is wrong. And he doesn't know how much longer he can keep doing this).
"Get some rest, brother," Bass tells him, clapping him soundly on the back. "Things will look better in the light of day."
Miles goes and Bass is left with his own muddied conscience and frustration at Miles' sudden stroke of doubt.
(He does this for Miles. He does this for both of them. They are kings, generals, brothers-in-arms. He won't let anyone take that away. Not even Miles).
It's been a long day in a longer month in an endless year. Their enemies are multiplying exponentially and everywhere Bass turns he sees threats, real and imagined. He hasn't quite started sleeping with one eye open. Not yet (But that's on the horizon, even if he doesn't know it).
So, when he wakes suddenly to the shuffle of feet nearby, he's alert in an instant. It's Miles though, so he scrubs his hand across his face, relaxes back to a state of ease. He is only ever at peace with Miles around (He's about to be very on-edge for a very long time).
There's something off with Miles, he notices suddenly through the cloudy fog of half-finished dreams. His brow is knit in the glow of dull, yellow candlelight. His eyes are hollow with tinges of self-loathing shading his gaze. Bass remembers feeling like that once, when he tried to drink away the pain while sitting six feet above his family.
There's something very wrong. He knows it. But he can't fathom what. Is it Nora? Has he had word about Ben? Did he find out about Rachel?
Bass is about to ask but the world shifts on its heel instead and he finds himself looking down the barrel of Miles' pistol.
"...Miles?" he questions because this doesn't make sense (It doesn't. It doesn't. They're brothers. He's done everything for Miles, would do anything for Miles. This doesn't fit).
The gun doesn't waver, but even in the firelight Bass can see tears welling in Miles' eyes (He'll tell Miles later that he never saw this moment coming, but Miles has known that from the start. Bass' eyes are all shock and betrayal).
"Miles... why?" Bass asks finally, more because the question is the only thing in his mind than because he expects an answer. "Why are you doing this? What did I do? I... what did I do to you, Miles? I'll fix it. Tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it."
He wants to know. He does, because he can't think of a thing, not one damn reason this could be happening.
"Fuck," Miles breaks, looking like he hates himself even more for failing to kill Bass than for trying to do it in the first place.
Bass doesn't get his answer. Not then (That will come eventually, though. Years away and a thousand miles from here and now). Miles shoots five guards in his escape from the building and eight more as he flees Philly. But this is war (People die in wars. They took up arms; They knew that).
They have become a civil war unto themselves (A house divided cannot stand). But they can neither kill each other, nor let each other alone.
Lots of people hate Bass. He knows it; It doesn't bother him (Though, honestly, it probably should). But everything he's done, he's done for Miles (And himself, but he's still not that self-aware). So, Miles wanting him dead? That eats away at him like acid. He devotes nearly as much time to trying to figure out why Miles would feel that way as he does questioning the motives of everyone around him.
It all catches up with them eventually, after a few near misses that put other bodies in the ground (Emma, Ben, Danny, hundreds or thousands of nameless, faceless others. They're collateral damage in their way). He's tied up in his own damn tent with Tom-fucking-Neville's taunts still ringing in his ears, as helpless as he was asleep in his own bed all those years ago with Miles standing over him holding a gun. Miles holds a knife this time. Bass thinks its fitting. If Miles is going to gut him, he might as well do it literally.
Part of him is glad that it's Miles. Neville isn't about to spare him and if he's got to die, he'd rather Miles be the one to do it. He tries not to think terribly hard about why (He's lived for Miles, seems fitting he should die for him, too).
When the knife slices his bindings instead of his skin, Bass is a little surprised. But only a little. Miles has always liked the appearance of playing fair and killing an unarmed man is probably slightly less bruising to his overblown sense of right-and-wrong than killing a restrained, unarmed man.
But the wound to his gut never comes (Not in the way he means, anyhow).
"You asked me why I tried to kill you," Miles repeats, as if it were a question Bass could forget (He's been asking it for years). "You're asking the wrong question, Bass. Ask me why I couldn't."
Things like hope and brotherhood and affection well up in Bass' middle even as tears sting his eyes. But he can't ask. He can't. He never has, not even of himself. It's too hard a question and he's not sure he could believe the answers he would have told himself.
"We're still brothers," Miles admits, his tense voice raw and filled with grit. "And as much as I hate that - and, let me tell you, I do - that's never gonna change."
The whole world narrows to this tent, to them. Everything outside can burn, for all Bass cares, as long as they are still standing here having this conversation (But then, he's always felt that way and maybe that's a big part of their problem).
This heartfelt admission from Miles is everything Bass has never dared to hope for. And, for a long moment, he wonders if he's actually hallucinating this whole thing. He wants to hear it again, to touch Miles' arm and make sure his hand doesn't pass straight through some kind of apparition. Miles' words are a validation, of sorts, one he never expected to get (Miles needs him, just as he needs Miles. They're more even than he thought). He's not sure what to do with that.
"Run, Bass," Miles says, his tone still hard.
"What?" Bass asks, finally finding his voice, broken and battered though it may sound.
"Monroe's escaping," Miles bellows and the outside world comes crashing in.
The skies might burn or the lights might flicker, but either way there is this - bodies of enemies and friends alike pave the path that's brought them here (Little green plastic men making war under their command; The battle still isn't won). And yet, they stand.
(In a lot of ways, this is just the beginning)