The Truth We Build on Our Lies
by Sandrine Shaw
Charlie believes in telling the truth. She grew up in a world of lies and half-truths – about her parentage, about her mom, about the blackout, about everything. People shouldn't lie to anyone they care for, not about things that matter.
But sometimes, they have to.
In the brave new world that's just healing itself from years of civil war, there's no place for a former dictator with the blood of thousands on his hands. The name General Monroe is still spoken in hushed whispers, sometimes with fear swinging in the voices, sometimes a chilling kind of admiration, but more often than not anger and hatred. There's a bounty on his head that would make someone a very rich man – or woman – if they delivered Monroe to the right (wrong) kind of people.
"Bass Monroe needs to die," Miles states bluntly over the campfire, the night after they buried Rachel and Aaron and Connor, passing a bottle of moonshine back and forth between them and toasting to the dead.
"No." It's Charlie who disagrees grimly. That's the part she can never quite forgive herself for, later: that she was the one who created the lie. Like her mom before her, she sat down and calmly spun a tale of fiction with the intention to deceive everyone she would ever meet and come to care for. Perhaps she'd been a little too quick to pass judgement on Rachel. "We tried that before. Didn't work. If there's no real evidence, people will stay suspicious. Eventually, they'll figure it out. Monroe's name on a cross won't cut it."
So Sebastian Monroe takes off in the glow of the early dawn, riding down South, stricken by grief and eager to leave everything behind that brought him so much pain. It's the story they tell in the next village they take a rest. It's the story they keep telling on the road back to Wisconsin and when they arrive at Sylvania Estates. It's what Miles shares with Kelly when she asks him about his past, and what they tell Daniel when he grows up and wants to hear bedtime stories about the Blackout and the Monroe Republic and the Nanites.
Like every good story, it takes wings. People say they've seen Monroe in New Mexico, a lone rider with a mad look in his eyes. A man claims he gave Monroe a bloody nose in a bar brawl after he hit on his girl. There are tales of Monroe in South America, fighting against a war clan. The bounty hunters pick up his trail, flocking South, greedy to earn their gold. Some of them claim they found him but he'd built up an army too strong to take down, some say they heard he got shot years ago, some even claim they killed him and collected the bounty. Sebastian Monroe becomes a legend, a ghost story, an outlaw more terrifying and powerful and triumphant in myth than the real man ever was.
No one asks any questions about the bearded man with the close-cropped hair and the startling blue eyes who came into town with Charlie and Miles. They introduce him as Charlie's boyfriend, because it's easier that way. ("We can't well say he's my boyfriend," Miles quips, and Bass' grin is appropriately lewd when he says, "Well, people used to wonder about us, back in the Republic." Charlie chokes on her squirrel stew and Miles flips him off, and for a moment they's alright and the dead don't haunt them.) It doesn't matter, Charlie decides. It's not just about keeping Bass safe; everyone else would be in danger too if they knew that the man they know as Jake wasn't really a farmer from Kentucky who joined a war clan after the Blackout and worked as a mercenary in the fight against the Patriots.
Perhaps Kelly suspects – after all, Bass' and Miles' friendship is the stuff of legends: General Monroe and the Butcher of Baltimore; no matter how much they try to pass off Jake as a random travel companion, the bond between them is always plain to see for anyone who knows them well enough. But Kelly, too, understands the value of a lie necessary to protect those you love, and she never mentions anything.
There's an old, run-down farmhouse far out by the river, and Bass single-handedly transforms it into a quiet, cozy place to live. One day, he kisses Charlie during the harvest celebrations, in the middle of the town square for everyone to see. Perhaps he's just putting on a good show, giving more credit to their lie, but Charlie's a little drunk and it's exhausting to play house with Bass and pretend her stomach doesn't do somersaults each time he touches her. Her fingers clench in the soft, worn fabric of his shirt and she pulls him closer, her lips opening under his, and the kiss grows into something hot and desperate and far dirtier than anything that should be observed in public. When Bass breaks away, he looks flushed and a little stunned and there's a spark in his eyes that hasn't been there since he held Connor's lifeless body in his arms. It's a good look on him.
Some lies, Charlie finds out, take a life of their own and become the truth. She's not as surprised as she feels she should be. This thing between Bass and her, it's been brewing since Willoughby, since New Vegas, maybe even since Philly. It was only a matter of time, and the lies she's been telling have helped her made her peace with the man who's not really Sebastian Monroe anymore.
Miles can't openly disapprove - for all people know, nothing has changed and Jake has always been Charlie's man. So Miles spends a few weeks banging door and glaring at Bass and making a show of sharpening knives in front of him. Eventually, like most things, it blows over. Time's funny that way: it moves on, unbidden, on its own, unfailingly. Danny grows from a cute toddler into a lanky, sullen teenager, who rolls his eyes when his big sister tells him stories from the past.
They bury Miles on a sunny afternoon in spring.
For all his fighting against soldiers and war lords, Patriots and Nanites, it was his liver that got him in the end, the doctor says. During the funeral, Bass grips Charlie's hand so hard she's a little afraid he's going to break her bones, but the pain is oddly comforting.
"It's going to be okay," she whispers to him that night in the darkness of their bedroom, and it scares her that she can't tell truth from lie anymore.
End