Charlie Matheson shivered against the cold night air, cursing herself for setting off on yet another journey with the same flimsy, useless, spring-appropriate clothing that would do nothing to fortify her against the dangers of January in the wilderness. Ahead of her on the winding, hauntingly dark and otherwise abandoned path, Charlie watched Bass Monroe as he paused and waited for her to catch up. How had she ended up on yet another mission with the man who was unquestionably her most hated adversary? Alone with him this time, which was the worst possible scenario she could have conjured. Charlie chafed at having to swallow past her hatred for Monroe, the nauseating horror he'd visited on her family, just to get from point A to B in their latest gambit against the Patriots. But it had to be done.
This time, those US pricks were holding Miles prisoner, doubtless intending to make an example of Charlie's uncle in a public execution. If there was one thing Charlie had to admit she shared with Monroe, it was that neither of them would let that stand, not in a million years. They had to go and get Miles, and everyone else was busy - even Rachel, who'd tried to insist on going despite the fact that Grandpa was never gonna be able to hold the town together on his own.
Charlie had gritted her teeth through another of Rachel's futile lectures about teaming up with Monroe, how wrong it was, how dangerous it was to expose herself to that influence, that malevolent presence of his. The specter of evil who had taken Danny and Ben Matheson from this world. Charlie could see how the mere idea of Bass rendered Rachel an almost malfunctioning wreck who would become too consumed with righteous resentment to get the damn job done. So, anyway, Rachel had to stay, and Charlie had to go. What else was new?
Charlie frowned at the memory of her mother's implication that she would ever voluntarily spend time with Monroe, or that there was something in his ruthless, violent ways that could seduce her into becoming like him. Maybe Rachel didn't put much faith in her daughter's individuality, but to Charlie, that sense of herself was all she had left in the world. She wasn't going to go throwing that away for anyone, least of all Monroe.
"Don't do me any favors," she snarked at Bass when she reached his side, her breath coming in slow heaves that billowed white in front of her, but her expression perfectly composed to convey her usual dry, tough, implacable insistence on appreciating nothing he did for her. As always, Charlie managed to weave in that extra touch of sarcastic, insulting attitude towards Monroe that seemed to get his back up every time. Sociopath that he was, Charlie hadn't thought Monroe capable of being so demonstrably annoyed by her little mind-games. It was a relief to know there was something she could do to make his life a little harder, something so simple as continuous, often silent disrespect that could easily be worked into the timetable of a long and demanding journey with few stops allotted.
"Charlotte, we have to stick together, you know that," Monroe breathed, irritated as Charlie knew he would be. "We can't exactly rescue Miles if you show up a few days after I do." He looked at her in a cursory manner that suggested he didn't care about her at all, but contrasted that with his next words, "you're freezing."
"What do you care?" Charlie bit out predictably.
"What do I care?" Monroe laughed harshly. "I don't want to carry a Charlie-sicle all the way to this prison camp. So how about you drop the sullen, bratty twenty-something routine you do so well, and take this?"
Monroe removed the wool-lined brown leather jacket he wore and thrust it in her direction. Charlie had to admit that this threw her for a loop.
"What about you?" She asked, as against her will, her curiosity knocked her hatred unconscious and found a voice. She despised herself for this, but when Monroe showed himself capable of even a small act of selflessness, she stopped and wondered if there was another side to him, something else he could care about besides war and blood and power and greed. Of course not, she chided herself.
"I'm fine." Monroe's stunning blue eyes bored into her with a momentary lapse in his own typically dismissive, know-it-all stance. Instead, he examined her with an interest and what almost seemed like...concern? Charlie couldn't put her finger on it and didn't want to. There was this horrible, disgusting suspicion that constantly lingered on the edge of her subconscious, threatening at any moment to break through to her full understanding.
It was the idea that there was some kind of repressed, but real, attraction flashing in Monroe's eyes when he looked at her. She felt it in his body language, the way he instinctively shielded her in battle. The way he'd saved her from those lunatics in the bar who had drugged her. When he came back for her in the battle at the school.
The sound of his voice when he called her Charlotte. Low, husky, and almost, she realized with a shiver of fear, enticing.
As she shrugged the jacket onto her shoulders, Charlie grimaced, fighting the mere idea back down with all her might. Monroe was incapable of feeling anything for her. He didn't feel. He just took, took all he could from others to try and fill some insatiable void within his own pathetic soul. And even if he did harbor some twisted attraction for her that had become tangled with deeper emotions too, what did Charlie care? She'd never return the sentiment. But then, of course, the entire thing was utterly impossible.
In some uncomfortably self-conscious moments of deep thought, Charlie started to really analyze why she'd started a sexual relationship with Connor, and damn, she had to switch off that line of thought almost instantly. She had to keep reminding herself that Connor was an attractive little hobby, and Monroe's shocked reaction had been nothing more than a bonus amusement. She'd never do anything intentionally to make Monroe jealous. It was all. Impossible.
"We'll have to make camp for the night soon," Bass spoke up after they battled through another of the long, silent pauses, heavy with unspoken and suppressed meaning, that so often took up the space between the two of them.
"Why can't we just keep moving?" Charlie asked, pulling her long hair out of the collar of Monroe's coat and sending it spilling around her shoulders in a shining halo. She felt his eyes on her again without even looking up. Charlie marched onward, crunching through the snow. She tried to be impervious to the insane notions that popped into the mind of a weary traveler and fighter like herself, with little time left in this world, most likely, to waste on such silly and destructive thoughts.
"How do you feel about starvation, Charlotte? Fainting from exhaustion? Never getting anywhere near Miles because we both dropped dead standing here arguing? I don't think Miles'll be too grateful for that while he's being drawn and quartered or whatever, by those Patriot douches."
"Shut up," she sighed, "Fine, let's find a place to sleep." Charlie trudged alongside Monroe until they found a clearing by a frozen river, with some big trees overhead for decent cover in case it rained or snowed.
"Why don't you roll those sleeves up?" Monroe asked, batting at the excess material of his coat that flailed ridiculously past Charlie's fingertips. "You look like the world's poutiest double amputee."
"Don't touch me," Charlie snapped, stepping back from him and turning to unpack her sleeping bag, pathetic store of food, and some fire-building supplies.
"God, you are so over the top all the time," Bass complained. "Don't you ever just wanna take a break from all the whining melodrama?"
Charlie noticed that his thin, cotton shirt was clinging, damp with the sweat of hours worth of travel in the bitter cold, to his muscular frame. Surely, that shirt must feel frozen to his skin, but he'd given her his coat. Who cares? Charlie reminded herself, scowling at him wordlessly.
When they'd gotten the fire going, Charlie was relieved to sink once more into silence, knowing that there was nothing more to do but gnaw on their dinner and roll over to go to sleep. She picked up a tiny, rock-hard, ugly-looking apple and took a big bite, not caring that it hurt her jaw and tasted basically like ass.
"Oh my god," Bass laughed, gesturing with the knife he was using to peel an orange. "That's the saddest apple I have ever seen."
"Where'd you get that orange?" Charlie smirked. "I bet you stole it from some ten year old you left maimed on the side of the road back home."
"I bought it in the market a few days ago," Monroe retorted, wise-ass as ever. "You know, Charlotte, that's where you can get edible food. There's probably dried up corpses of frostbitten worms in that apple."
"Mmmm," she couldn't help responding sassily, even though she knew she shouldn't participate in anything resembling a joke with Monroe.
"I bet," Monroe said, smiling in a genuine way that established a lighter, warmer mood between them Charlie begrudgingly longed to surrender to. She was tired. She was lonely. As lonely as a human could truly ever be in this woe-streaked, cavernous remnant of a world. And there was something about Monroe that drew her in, despite all the reasons why that should never be the case.
"Here, just take this," Monroe added, gesturing at her with a sizable piece of fresh, sweet-smelling orange in his palm. As her fingers brushed his hand to pluck it up and pop the fruit in her mouth, some insane spark seemed to flare between them, one it took all of Charlie's might to try and drown. What was wrong with her?
"What's with the charity routine?" Charlie asked. "I'm sure you hate being out here with me almost as much as I hate being around you. This" she gestured back and forth between them, the burst of flavor from the orange lingering annoyingly on her tongue. "This is just a means to an end. I don't need or want any help. Least of all from your sorry ass."
"I get that, Charlotte, I really do," Monroe replied, withdrawing his eyes and staring instead into the meager fire. "But if that's true, why do you keep taking me up on my help? You took my jacket, you took my food-"
Charlie stood up and started to rip the jacket off of herself. "Screw you," she growled, fully intending to make him choke on his words, and possibly his coat as well.
"Charlotte!" Bass reprimanded, obnoxiously authoritarian in such moments, "Stop it. Cut it out." He stood up too and tried to place the coat back around her shoulders. Charlie flinched at the feeling of his cold, strong fingers on her collarbone as he attempted this.
"Get away!" she screeched, really mad now.
"No!" Bass yelled back, anger evident in his own steely look. "Wear the jacket, Charlotte. You'll freeze!"
They tussled together, pathetic in their mutual insistence on getting their way, almost comically faux-violent as they fought over the coat's destiny. Finally, Charlie yanked the garment out of Monroe's grip, but the force of her theft threw her backwards onto the ground, with momentum and surprise catapulting Bass down on top of her.
Motionless, suspended in the absurd, inappropriate closeness between them, they automatically locked gazes. Charlie forgot who she was and where she was and why she was for about one millisecond longer than she could afford to. By the time he'd leaned down and brushed his lips against her own, his beard scraping her skin and his hot mouth contrasting sharply with the cold all around them, Charlie was hypnotized by the unfair, nonsensical cruelty of one simple fact. There was something in this man that drew out her darkest, most irrevocable desires. What was she going to do about it?