So, it's a new story. Someone on tumblr requested broke!Bass.
Beta'ed by ElDiabolito_SF over on AO3.
- o – o -
One More Kiss (One More Lie)
One
Bass sat in his office in Independence Hall, jacket unbuttoned and gun on the desk. He'd unloaded it half an hour ago, when he saw the first fires starting on the outskirts of the city. Not that it would help. The soldiers from Georgia would probably kill him anyways. The president of the former Monroe Republic—now a burned-out shell being divvied up between the Georgia Federation and the Plains Nations—sighed, took another drink from the flask in front of him, and wondered when it had all gone so very wrong.
When the doors slammed open, splintering and cracking, he didn't get up. What was the point? Bass slowly lifted his hands from the desk and, when the soldiers who'd seen him do so knew he was unarmed, laced his fingers behind his head.
"You might want to clean that up," he added, jerking his chin at the corpse on the floor as he was led out of his former office.
He heard one of the soldiers throwing up as he caught sight of Randall's cooling corpse.
Everyone left him anyways. Even Randall would have.
Eventually.
Two
The cell was dark and cramped. They'd taken his boots, socks, and the thick wool overshirt from his uniform before shoving him in. Bass was sure they were going to make him freeze to death before trying anything significant with him. He didn't mind. At least someone came every day—usually with a hunk of stale bread and a fresh canteen of water—so he wasn't going to go mad. They were better about keeping in touch.
Even if he just wished it was Miles, there to kill him. Finally.
Because, even as sentimental as Miles was, this wasn't going to be his lucky third chance. It never was.
By the end of the third week, Bass was sure they'd forgotten about him.
He was wrong.
Three
The small, dark cell would have been a blessing. At least then, Bass knew, he could pretend that Georgia didn't have power—they'd stolen it from him, he knew it. He wouldn't be tied to a chair, unable to move as someone who made Strausser look like his kindergarten teacher (who was a sweet old lady who'd brought everyone homemade cookies on Fridays; so it was obvious he was going insane now) worked him over.
Bass had tried counting as a way to keep track of things, mostly himself, but that didn't work anymore. He couldn't really concentrate when it felt like half of his face had just melted off, and the other half felt like someone had taken a meat tenderizer to it. Bass was just glad he'd never thought of using electrocution to torture the baby bratling. Of course, if he had, then the baby bratling's uncle would have killed him. That would have been nice.
He whimpered into his gag as the clips on his chest were readjusted and clenched his hands tighter around the armrests in preparation for the next jolt. It never really worked.
And it hurt.
So bad.
Four
Bass curled up in the furthest corner of the tiny room, hugging his knees. Everything hurt really bad, like the time Miles dared him to jump off the hill behind his house and he twisted his ankle instead. Except Miles hadn't found him yet. Miles hadn't opened the door and taken him home and snuck him candy when their parents weren't looking. And it just hurt.
He flinched as the door opened, trying to press himself closer to the wall—into it, if he could manage. A metal plate thumped down on the ground and the man who'd brought it in sneered. Bass buried his face in his knees.
"Dinner, Mr. President," the man sneered. "Four months and he stops talking." Bass didn't move, and finally the man left.
That was when he knew how long he'd been here. That was the only time he knew how long he'd been down here—when someone talked to him and tried to make him respond. Four months alone in the dark. Why couldn't they just shoot him and get it over with already?
Bass crawled over to the plate and picked the bread up with trembling fingers, breaking hard pieces off and chewing on them to soften them up. He swallowed and felt tears springing to his eyes.
"Miles…"
Five
Bass cries. It's the only thing he remembers how to do now. The man standing over him laughs, and Bass can't stop the tears leaking out between his squeezed-shut lids, no matter how much he wants them to. There's another lick of white-hot fire against his back, and Bass clings to the rope tied around his wrists because it's the only thing that's left.
The door opens, and the former president sobs, this time in relief. There's a cool hand, feminine, if the nails are anything to go by, tracing along his ribs. It scratches, and she laughs. Bass doesn't know who it is. If he opens his eyes, he'll have to admit he's in the cell being whipped—for what, he doesn't know—but for now, he's in the hospital because Miles was stupid and (somehow) blew the TV up. Again.
And that's the only thing keeping him sane right now. Miles, and his stupid bad luck with machines or anything more complicated than his car. Because machines keep blowing up around him, even when he's just handing Bass the tools to fix those machines with. Bass doesn't know how Miles does it, but he manages.
Stupid jerk.
He's dragged back to his cell, too weak to walk on his own. A guard throws a plate of…something, it might have been food, into the cell a few hours later.
Bass is unconscious when someone finally opens the door again.
Six
One of his interrogators—so called, but Bass can't remember any of them asking him questions—had a soft bed in his quarters. There were white sheets and feather-stuffed pillows. Bass remembers that, because he wanted to bury himself in the pillows and never come back up. Because coming back up hurt, all the time.
This was not that bed.
It was still comfortable, though. And he still had his clothes on.
Well, there was a bonus everywhere, he supposed. There was also a body next to him. He supposed, since he could feel the other person breathing against his neck, that they were still alive. Whoever it was, they were a lot colder than he was. Not unpleasant, but it felt like sleeping next to a corpse. Not that he'd mind that either. It would have been a welcome change from sleeping alone and naked in a cold cell that was starting to mold a bit around the edges.
He really doesn't want to wake up, and freezes as an arm drapes over his waist, holding him close. Bass squeezes his eyes shut and tries very hard not to let his panic show, because that hurts and it leads to him getting hurt again and he really doesn't want that. The person who's bed he's in snuffles sleepily and Bass tenses, despite his promise not to show he's awake or aware.
"Stop movin'," the person grumbles. "Sleepy." Bass recognizes the grumble, and the sleepy rasp in the man's voice. He starts trembling—he doesn't know if he's scared or if he's about to start crying, because it's Miles holding him. Miles, who abandoned him, and came back, only to crush him and leave and leaving Bass with no family again and that's what hurt the most and Miles will only leave again once he's got what he's wanted. Like always.
He starts crying again, face half-buried in one of the soft pillows. Miles is awake and holds him, so gently like Bass hasn't been held in a long time, and it just gets worse.
Miles holds him and rocks him gently until he falls back into an uneasy sleep, emotionally drained.
Seven
Baby bratling's older sister tries to shoot him with a crossbow the first time Miles lets her into his rooms.
Bass kind of expects that. He doesn't even flinch as the bolt whistles past his ear. Miles slaps his niece and drags her out of the room to growl at her. Bass stays in his chair near the window, watching clouds drift by. The sky is gray and the clouds are darker. He can't wait to see it rain—he hasn't seen the sky in months. And blue is boring to watch, after the first few days, even with bright buttery-yellow sunlight streaming into Miles' apartment.
Miles comes back in with a more contrite bratling (and he doesn't remember her name, but fakes it as best he can). She yanks the bolt out of the wall and sits down in one of the trio of chairs arranged around the table in front of the window. The girl proceeds to glower at her uncle and her uncle's guest, at least until Miles presses a drink into her hand and forces her to consume the entire thing. Bass thinks his old friend—if they're still friends, because Miles just might be using this as an opportunity to get close just so he can crush him under his boot again, like a bug—might have slipped the bratling drugs to calm her down. He doesn't mind the change. He does wish Miles would give him whiskey, though. But he's not stupid enough to open his mouth and complain, and drinks the orange juice Miles gives him instead. It's cold and tastes like a little slice of heaven.
Eventually, there's food. Bass keeps a close eye on Miles so he knows how fast to eat, even though all he wants to do is shovel food into his mouth as fast as possible. Miles' niece picks at her food, a look of disgust on her face. Bass contemplates chewing with his mouth open, but then remembers that a) she's not his sister, b) he's no longer eight years old, and c) he's a former fucking president and that's just not done. 'specially not around his best friend who would probably smash his face into the plate and call him stupid.
So Bass finishes his food, and sits quietly at the table as bratling leaves and Miles brings out his maps to work on something.
It's almost normal.
Almost.
Eight
The bratling hates him, but for Miles, Bass knows she'll tolerate him. He should probably stop calling her bratling, since she's Miles' niece and she has a name.
It would help if he could remember it.
It would help if he could remember a lot of things.
But during his interrogation in the cold rooms under the capital of the Georgia Federation—the new one, since Georgia and his and Miles' republic merged with each other and Philadelphia's kind of burned to the ground and that's a damn shame and all—he lost pieces. Some chunks, here and there. But there are little holes like swiss cheese in his memory that he can't get back. Little things, like if Danny—baby bratling—was sick at all, or if he was always a Norse god, those are missing. Bratling's name is gone too. He thinks it has something to do with South Carolina, but she doesn't look like a Parris. And that's stupid, because Paris is in France. (There's Parris Island, but he can't remember what was there, and it hits him like a cinderblock to the chest when he knows he should remember and Miles has to hold him through the tears and the fears he can't remember how to articulate because it hurts so much.)
He remembers Miles, at least. And that they spent their childhoods together. When maybe Bass hadn't been a disgusting bug that should be squashed, because he didn't deserve Miles. And that Miles had rescued him so many times. There was something he was supposed to remember. It was connected to being a squishy bug, and everyone leaving him. But it's not important. Not as much as it could be.
Because, even if he's a squishy bug that people—like bratling and the president of Georgia—want to flatten, he's Miles' squishy bug. And Miles won't let anyone else do that to him.
Bass wishes he could remember why the idea of Miles leaving him hurts him more than the interrogators.
If it were important, though, he'd remember.
Until then, he has Miles.
Nine
Bass knew it was too good to be true. Miles just wanted him to be happy, and to feel safe, right before ripping the proverbial rug out from under him and squashing him like a particularly disgusting bug. That's what Bass feels like. He's nothing. Just that disgusting little bug that crawled out of a hole, just begging to get stepped on.
He deserves it. Miles knew he did too, and that's why he was building trust back up between them.
The former president curls up in the far corner of the interrogation room, sobbing and hiccupping as the pain in his left leg gets to be too much. The pain washes over him in waves, bigger and heavier and more painful than surfing and getting knocked off the board by a rogue wave. Miles had laughed at him when he got back to shore. Except this wasn't surfing and Miles wasn't his friend. Miles had never been his friend, even when they were kids and he must have just been taking pity on poor, stupid, slow Bass whose mommy had to carry him to the classroom every day the first two weeks of kindergarten because he cried and refused to leave the car on his own. And Miles never cried, and he was just…
Bass sobbed into his forearm.
Pain made his vision go white, then black.
His arm was broken.
White. Black again.
He was tied to a chair now. His interrogator was talking softly, and Bass couldn't even summon the energy to sob or cry or even scream as his nails were pulled off with a plier, one by one, as he didn't—couldn't, because he didn't know where anyone was because they all abandoned him and he just didn't know—answer fast enough, or even coherently.
White-hot pain. Cool black nothing.
Rag on his face. Wet, soothing. Someone's mad. They're screaming at someone else. Bass coughs as the rag slips over his nose and mouth. Wet coughing. Spluttering as the rag is squeezed into his mouth. Cool moisture on his cracked, dry lips.
Blessed black nothing.
"I told her you weren't a threat."
Bass looks up at Miles with swollen, blackened eyes. He looks away.
He's just a disgusting bug to be squashed.
Ten
Trust is a fragile thing. Bass hides in a corner of Miles' apartment, and flinches every time someone slams a door or walks too heavily across the floor. Miles gives him his space, until it's time to sleep. He sleeps on the couch, after carrying Bass to the bed and tucking him in.
It's fragile. It'll shatter if Miles isn't careful. Bass curls protectively around his hands every time Miles comes close to him, staring up with wide, hurt blue eyes. He never says a word. There are so many things he wants to say. Why did you leave me? Why did you hurt me? Am I just a disgusting bug?
…
Did you love me?
The trust is fragile, but it's growing again. Slowly. Eventually, after what seems like years of careful, tender petting and looking-after, Bass gets the courage to hover behind Miles' chair as he looks over maps. There are lots of things wrong with the strategy Miles is trying to use. It's stupid. Miles was never this bad at strategy. Or maybe he had been, and Bass had ignored it all those years.
He waits until Miles leaves the room—for food, for a war meeting, to sleep in someone elses' rooms at night—before he fixes the maps and makes the strategy better. If he proves he's useful, Bass thinks, then he might not get squished. Little bug wants to stay alive and unsquished. He likes his bits where they are, and he prefers them whole and still on his body in the right places.
Bratling never stops by again, after that first awkward meal weeks and weeks ago, and Bass is grateful for that.
"You were right."
Bass smiles when Miles comes back from a campaign, smelling of smoke and death and gunpowder and horses, just to make that simple statement. Miles kisses his forehead, gently.
Of course he was right.
Eleven
Miles steals all the breath out of his lungs.
Bass doesn't mind and, for the first time in what he knows is years, laughs and laughs like it's the best thing in the world. Miles steals the air away from his lungs again, and joins in the laughter as they get soaked.
It rained, finally. The gray clouds that threatened for months and months and months finally broke, when Miles somehow finagled a day trip to the Georgian countryside for himself and Bass. Bass laughs and spins around in the rain, arms outstretched and face tilted up to the sky.
The sky is weeping, but there are only happy tears for him.
And Miles pulls him away to the shelter again, and steals the air away from his lungs.
Everything is going to be alright.
- o – o -
So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Are things going to get better, eventually? Drop a line and let me know!