Title: Legacy
Fandom: Revolution
Spoilers: through 2x10
Rating: T
Triggers: Torture, Threats of Sexual Violence, Suicidal thoughts
Pairings: None
A/N: Lately I've been posting all my Revolution stuff over on AO3, but I figured I'd cross post this one here as well.

By the time they'd reached Cincinnati, most of the city had been gutted and burned. It was just a larger scale version of the destruction they had followed east from Kansas. It was as if this war clan they were chasing was some kind of huge ship and they couldn't get out of its wake. Whoever these guys were, they were brutal. They left nothing in their path. Patriot strongholds and civilian camps alike had been pillaged and decimated.

Charlie was searching for survivors with her grandfather, while Aaron, Grace, Priscilla, and Rachel looked around to see if there were any salvageable supplies. Miles had been scouting around the major buildings. Charlie knew something was wrong when she saw Miles stagger out of the City Hall building. He grasped the railing at the top of the steps and doubled over, looking as if he was about to retch.

"Miles! What's wrong?" Charlie asked as she ran to his side. She couldn't imagine what kind of carnage must be inside that building to make her uncle turn such a sickly shade of grey.

"We need to go." He insisted, collecting himself as the rest of the group appeared around them.

"What is it Miles?" Rachel asked, her voice overcome with concern. "What did you see in there?"

"It's… I know who's responsible for this. All of this." Miles heaved the words out as if he could purge the realization from his mind. "We're going back to Texas. Now."

"But whoever's doing this… We need to stop them." Aaron insisted.

"Somebody's going to stop them, but it's not going to be us." Miles insisted.

"You're telling us to give up? To run back to Texas with our tail between our legs, and let these monsters get away with this?" Charlie raged.

"Yes, Charlie. That's exactly what we're going to do." Miles's voice was firm.

"And you're not even going to tell us why?" Charlie questioned.

"No. I'm not." Miles didn't even try to hide the anger in his voice. "And we're going now because they're still close."

The rest of the group seemed horribly unsettled by Miles's disquiet and were happy to oblige. Only Charlie resented the order to retreat. It was times like these when she missed Bass's presence the most. She was surrounded and vastly outnumbered by civilians now in their little group. Miles and Rachel had returned from Mexico without him, claiming that he'd run off to try to get Connor out of the cartel lifestyle that he'd fallen in with. When he hadn't met up with them at the rendezvous point three days later, Rachel had refused to risk their lives going back for him and Miles, still weakened from the resolving infection, was in no shape to do it alone. Add that little temper tantrum to the one in the Tower and in Charlie's eyes the score was now logic: zero, Rachel's unrelenting spite: two.

So they'd dropped down to just her and Miles as the only fighters in the group. When they'd headed north east out of Texas to attempt to further work against the patriots, they'd found Aaron holed up with Grace and Priscilla in Oklahoma. Charlie didn't want to think of most of their new, larger, group as dead weight, but that's essentially what they were.

They'd found the trail of devastation left by the war clan they were now following somewhere in the middle of the Plains Nation, and they'd followed it east for the last few months. There was no one left alive to identify the clan's leader. It appeared that every time they encountered a group, any survivors either joined the clan and moved on with them or died. Charlie realized how horrifically effective these men were. When at first it had just been Patriot settlements, she'd hoped they could find the group and join forces. Then they'd come across a civilian town that had obviously given resistance. The cruelty of the massacre within the town's walls still haunted Charlie at night months later.

So they'd back tracked west out of Cincinnati, just when Charlie was sure they were getting close to the vile war clan. Night had descended quickly and they hadn't made it far before they needed to set up camp. As they all bedded down for the night, Charlie fumed over Miles's decision to retreat. It made no sense to her. She was going to figure out what the issue was that had sent Miles running scared, whether he wanted to tell her or not.

Charlie set up her sleeping bag at the edge of their camp and pretended to go to sleep. Grace was on watch first. It wasn't hard for Charlie to take her pack and crossbow and sneak off unnoticed. She'd jogged most of the way back to Cincinnati, having covered the distance in a fraction of the time it had taken the larger group of out of shape adults earlier. The city still seemed deserted. She cautiously picked her way between buildings, using only the half-moon's light to provide visibility. She quickly darted up the steps to the town hall and stealthily snuck through the front door. The lobby was large and relatively empty. Only two dead bodies were visible along the room's periphery, certainly nothing that would have upset Miles to see. So she pushed onward, deeper into the building. She found a torch in a holder along the corridor wall, took it, and lit the end with a lighter from her pocket. With a light source and her crossbow loaded and at the ready, she advanced into the main chamber. There were more bodies than in the lobby, but there was nothing particularly grotesque about the scene, nor did she see anything that gave an indication as to who was responsible for the atrocity. As she walked down the center aisle toward the open area at the front of the courthouse-like room, she noticed something on the floor. Then suddenly there was a sharp pain at the back of her skull and the world went dark.

Charlie woke inside a tent, hands and feet tied to a wooden chair. There were two men, dressed in all black, guarding the entrance. They were relatively non-descript and it gave nothing away as to the identity of who her captors were. Realizing that she had regained consciousness, one stuck his head out of the flap and signaled to someone on the outside. A few moments later another dark haired figure joined them in the tent. Charlie was still fighting off the after effects of the concussion, and her vision was a bit hazy. She figured that this would be her interrogator. He was male, seemed to have some authority, but sent one of the guards out to retrieve someone else, likely a superior.

The dark haired man stepped well into her personal space and put his face a few inches from hers. Her eyes fought to focus on the near field of view, but could only hold a clear image for seconds at a time before everything got hazy again. This man wasn't much older than she was, but his eyes were cold and cruel. It bothered her and she fought to recollect why she found the intimidating stare almost familiar.

"What were you doing in that building?" He asked.

"Following you." Charlie coughed out. "Have been since Wichita." It was the truth. She just didn't need to include anything about her family.

He back handed her hard across the face. "Why?"

Charlie turned her head and spat blood onto the floor beside her inquisitor, then added. "Wanted to see who you were."

He punched her in the stomach for yet another vague response that didn't seem to satisfy him. "Who are you?"

The punch had knocked the wind out of her and she gasped like a fish out of water for a moment before her lungs re-inflated and she could answer, "Who are you?"

The man laughed sardonically at her brazenness. Then he produced a gun and cocked the hammer. He stood imposingly over her, blocking her view of anything else as he trailed the muzzle down her cheek. "I'm someone you should be showing a little more respect to."

She stared straight into his brown eyes that again just seemed familiar but off at the same time as she smirked. "If I had a diamond for every time some ass hole on a power trip said that to me…"

He pistol whipped her cheekbone with the butt of the gun. It snapped her head to the side, and she fought hard not to release the yelp of pain that tried to escape her. She turned back to face him, swelling around her eye already starting to block some of her field of view.

"It seems to me like you need to learn a little respect. Maybe once I get the information I need out of you, I'll take the time and teach you some. Nice and slow." He was back in her face again, lips trailing far too close to her skin.

"If you only had any idea what happened to the last guys that thought that would be a good idea." Hazy images of bodies dropping like flies in a north Texas bar filtered through her mind.

"I'm sure you showed them a good time." He sneered. "Now why don't you just make this easier on yourself and tell me what I want to know?" He used the barrel of the gun to slide the strap of her tank top down off her shoulder. "Who are you and who do you work for?"

Before she could answer, she heard the tent flap part with flare and purposeful footsteps approached. The interrogator was still so up in her face she couldn't see anything else around him. However, she didn't need to see anything to realize that his boss had just walked in. Now the fun was about to start.

He didn't break his stare with her, but addressed the leader behind him. "She was snooping around the town hall alone. I know we don't usually take prisoners, but I was about to slit her throat when I noticed the damnedest thing branded on her arm."

Then it came back to her in a disjointed flash – what she had seen on the floor just before she'd been knocked unconscious. In the middle of the floor something flammable had been poured in a pattern and then lit on fire to leave a permanent calling card. The image was something she would recognize until the day she died, the one insignia that could send Miles into a tail spin. An M within a circle.

Her interrogator was ripped off of her, and she now found herself looking up into entirely familiar blue eyes. She instantly felt a wave of instinctual relief crash over her. It was Bass. She was saved. But as she watched conflicting emotions war for dominance in his eyes, she realized that she wasn't safe at all. The war clan they'd been following wasn't a war clan. It was the new Monroe Militia. And she had no idea if the man in front of her was Bass that always came back for her, gave her pointers on her fighting stance, and told her stories about pre-blackout Miles as they tried to fall asleep around the fire together, or if it was the paranoid and sadistic General Monroe.

His nostrils flared and his lips set into a hard thin line as his eyes settled on a frightening glare. He pulled a knife and stepped toward her.

She just kept looking up at him, not wanting to believe that this was their reunion. Just when she had convinced herself that he was about to finish the job and slit her throat, he dropped to his knees in front of the chair and quickly cut the ropes holding her legs and wrists. So it was Bass after all. Once she was freed, they both stood. His eyes looked sad and hollow and she flung herself forward and embraced him. He wrapped his arms around her and clung to her needily for a long moment. Eventually he murmured, "Charlotte" into her hair. A few seconds later he sadly added, "You need to go now."

After another second they both dropped their arms and stepped back out of the embrace. It was in that second that Charlie swung on him. Her palm slapped his face with a resounding clap that echoed through the tent. He grabbed her wrist before she could retract it and he looked down at her in shock.

"What the hell, Bass?" She spat at him. "All that crap about forgiveness and change. I forgave you, Miles forgave you. We cried over you when we thought you died. And now this? You get your son back and this is what you do?" She leered over his shoulder. "I'm assuming the one over there that beat me and threatened to rape me is Connor. Good to see the apple doesn't fall far from the sociopathic tree."

He let go of her wrist. "Charlie, I regret the way things ended…"

She interrupted, "The only thing I regret is that Miles didn't put a bullet in your head six years ago." Then she shoved past him. The guards at the entrance moved to stop her, but Bass waved them off. She turned in the opening and looked at him with all the pain she felt at his betrayal clearly in her eyes. "Just tell me why."

"I have a son. He's my family. The Monroe Republic, that's my legacy to pass on to him. I have to get it back." His voice sounded almost pleading, as if he needed her, of all people, to understand.

She sighed and wiped a traitorous tear from her cheek with the back of her hand as she grated out, "We could have been your family. We could have been something so much better, together. Now the only legacy you have to pass on is death and hatred. That's how the name Monroe will always be remembered. And now I'm cursed with the Matheson legacy – regretting all the times we should have killed you but didn't, and dreading the next time I see you, because that will be the day when I actually have to do it." She stared straight at him, forcing him to take the full brunt of the statement.

He closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and nodded curtly, acknowledging the truth in her threat.

Then she dropped the tent flap and disappeared into the night.

"Why did you let her…" Connor started, but quickly aborted when he saw his father's glare.

Through gritted teeth the General growled, "That girl is off limits. No one harms one hair on her head, under any circumstance. Is that perfectly clear?"

"But she just threatened to kill you." Connor questioned.

"I don't care if she's got a gun to my head, no one touches her. Is that understood?"

The men and Connor all nodded.

Then Bass stormed out of the interrogation tent and to his own quarters. He laid on his cot and let Charlie's parting words ring through his mind.

We could have been your family.

Everything he'd done to that family and the countless others rushed through his mind. He thought of his own family and the night at the graveyard when Miles had taken the gun from his hand. How much better of a place would the world be if he'd just done it that night? All the blood that was on his hands now could never be washed clean. He should have just ended it there before it began.

The Matheson legacy – regretting all the times we should have killed you but didn't…

He laughed. Maybe he was part of the family after all.