Charlie had spent her whole life with this constant awareness of something else in the back of her head. At first she had thought that it was perfectly ordinary, but she had soon learned that other people did not feel that or experience what she did. It wasn't until she had heard the stories about soulmates that she finally began to understand what it meant.
Even then, she had been afraid of it. She was a little girl, she hadn't wanted to be marked to anyone.
She hadn't known how to feel about it. Some days she would daydream about meeting her perfect match. Other days she would try to wish it all away. Still, the only person she ever told about it was her brother and she had sworn him to secrecy about it beforehand.
For a long time the whole thing had been fairly benign. She'd feel some happiness, or sometimes anger or sadness, in the back of her mind that she knew wasn't hers. Those feelings belonged to whoever her soulmate was, but she had still been mostly able to ignore it.
Then, a few years before she had left Sylvania Estates, things had turned downhill. Suddenly the happiness was gone altogether from the person that she was connected to. There was a lingering loneliness left behind in its place and a sadness that sometimes seemed to become almost unbearable. And Charlie was left in her small village, not allowed to go anywhere, wondering how the hell she had ended up one of the few people with a soulmate, especially if she was never going to get the chance to leave and meet whoever it was.
She had thought that it was bad enough before leaving Sylvania Estates, but it had only been getting increasingly worse ever since.
For months it had been at an all-time worst. She had been living with almost constant overwhelming feelings of guilt and self-hatred that had crept out of the back of her mind and were strong enough that they were beginning to spread. She spent her days trying to escape the feeling, thinking that if she got further from Willoughby and her own life that somehow she would be able to escape those invading emotions as well.
Instead, she ended up spending her nights drinking alone or going home with men that she had just met, each of whom would soon be gone while the guilt always remained there. She didn't even know what the hell she was feeling second-hand guilt over and she was afraid to find out. She just wanted to find her damn soulmate somewhere already so that she would be able to get to the bottom of the guilt and make it stop before she went insane. At the same time, she was terrified to find out what this person could have done that was making them feel this way.
Now, she wished that she could go back to that time of complete confusion. Now, they were working with Monroe and his mood swings had become increasingly in sync with the shifts in mood that went on in the back of her head. It terrified her, but it couldn't be him, could it? Sure, he had a hell of a lot to feel guilty about, but she didn't believe for a second that he was actually capable of feeling that level of guilt.
Still, she watched him closer than she cared to admit now. She wasn't sure whether she was watching him in search of signs that it was or wasn't him. It would be a relief to discover that she was wrong and it wasn't, but she wasn't overly expecting that anymore. And even if it wasn't, it just meant more time stuck wondering who the hell it could possibly be. It didn't help that she was convinced that the feelings in her head had only grown stronger, since she had begun traveling with him, than she thought that they had ever been back in Sylvania Estates.
She wasn't ever going to voice her suspicions though, especially around Monroe himself. It was one things to admit it to herself, but it was another thing to confirm it with him.
Bass noticed that Charlie had been watching him more than could possibly be necessary and began to grow curious about it. When he started to notice her getting angry at the same time as the temper in the back of his head flared up, he began to consider the possibility that there was a good reason why she had started watching him so closely lately.
He would have dismissed that theory, if it weren't for the fact that this thing had shown up in his head around the same time that she would have been born. That only raised his suspicions further.
Just perfect. Of course he'd ended up with a Matheson as his soulmate. He couldn't have ended up attached to some young thing that he might not literally get murdered just for being connected to. No. It just had to be Charlie.
He realized then that some of the times that he had felt someone else's raw pain rip through him had been caused by him. If it really was her whose emotions he could feel, then he could pick out times that he thought must have been when she had lost Ben and Danny.
Shit, this was fucked up. He knew that he was screwed up—there was no question about that—but what the hell was she doing attached to him? It was like some kind of sick joke. A great big cosmic fuck you.
They were both content to go along with the only appropriate response there was—ignoring it and denying it to themselves—for quite a while. That is until Charlie finally decided that enough was enough.
Monroe was putting on a wide grin and his attitude was all egotistical as he and Miles argued about how he intended to get the republic back with Connor. Below that act though, Charlie could feel the twisted self-pity that was underlying it and had to let out a scoff.
Before she could think to compose herself, she warned, "You better not be expecting me to feel sorry for you too. I'm sick of it."
She'd done enough feeling sorry for her mystery mate before she had realized just who her soulmate actually was and just how bad the things that he had done were. It was one thing to be willing to work with him, it was a whole other to embrace the inevitability of falling for him after all that he had done.
She could tell by the look on Monroe's face that she had only confirmed things for him, although she was convinced that he had known for a while. Meanwhile, Miles and Connor's heads whipped around to stare at her in confusion as she remained glaring in her mate's direction.
"Right because it's just been a real picnic for me, having you in my head ever since you were born," Bass retorted. "Do you know what it's like living with a mood-swinging baby in your head, twenty-four hours a day, Charlotte?"
"Yes!" She shouted at him. She felt his own temper flare up in turn, which only further fueled hers.
Connor didn't spend nearly as much of his time hanging around Charlie after that. Apparently he must have decided that flirting with his father's soulmate wasn't an effective use of his time.
Charlie knew that it was perfectly reasonable. She probably shouldn't have led him on and slept with him in New Vegas in the first place. She had been desperate to convince herself that she didn't really belong with Monroe of all people. So when his son had shown up, easy on the eyes and interested, she had decided to give him a try.
He wasn't bad. She'd even thought that her plan might have worked, right up until Monroe had caught them and she had felt the undeniable surge of jealousy run through her. It had hit her like a ton of bricks and been an unwelcome sign that maybe there was something to this soulmate thing after all, at least on his side of things.
It was all very reasonable for Connor to distance himself a little after that, yet she was still irritated by it. That implied that she was now labelled as Sebastian Monroe's property and suddenly couldn't even be looked at by anyone else, which only drove her to be angry at the both of them.
The fact that she could feel Bass get jealous whenever Connor got too close to her, whether he was flirting or not, and pleased as soon as Connor walked away only irritated her even more.
Bass was less than pleased when his son ran off, and with that snake Tom Neville of all people. Sure, it meant that he wouldn't have to worry about him and Charlie making dewy eyes at each other anymore, but he would rather watch that than lose his son.
Besides, for someone who he could feel get annoyed whenever he witnessed her around Connor, she sure had gotten jealous back in New Vegas around Duncan. For a moment he had thought that he'd had a chance with her while they were away from his family, when she had turned into a little ball of rage and jealousy. That was until he had found her with his son later the same night.
Still, that trip had left him with a hint of satisfaction at knowing that just maybe he hadn't gone quite far enough to tear things apart enough that even his own soulmate couldn't stand the idea of being around him. She wanted him, whether she was willing to admit it or not, and he knew it. And he had decided that for the time that was good enough, especially after the others had found about his and Charlie's situation. Now, he just had to sit around and wait for her to come to him on her own. Either that, or else he was sure that if Miles didn't kill him, then Rachel would for sure.
Charlie had thought that she was done with the secondhand feelings of guilt and self-loathing until she had felt them come back in full-swing after Connor's departure. This time she knew that it was something that she couldn't blame Bass for that he was feeling guilty over. He had done the right thing, for once in his life, and his son had chosen self-preservation over that and left. Now, he was beating himself up over it and Charlie was left with the overflow of it, even though she herself didn't blame him.
This time, it was something that she could actually let herself try to fix without creating guilty feelings of her own, so she went to seek him out. She felt the remorse growing stronger as she walked, until she finally found him sitting outside by himself, with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.
As he watched her walk up, Bass could feel her worrying, but he wasn't sure what exactly it was she was concerned about. Was she worried about him or worried for herself? For something that invaded his privacy so much, their connection sure could be unclear sometimes. Or maybe that was just the cloudiness of his own head from how much he had already drank before she had shown up.
She came over and sat in his lap, facing him, and he was left more than confused than ever. He could tell that she was nervous as she sat, straddling him, and slowly moved one of her hands up to cup the side of his face.
He remained still, frozen like a damn deer about to get hit by a car, as he searched her face for answers.
He found none, but it was only a matter of time before she seemed to reach a decision herself and wrapped her body around him as her arms circled his broad shoulders. She moved her torso closer until he was nuzzled against her neck and breathing in her scent.
Charlie was shocked at the impact she had on him as she felt a hint of that nagging loneliness begin to dissipate into something else. It was a position that she had never imagined herself in, comforting the fearsome Sebastian Monroe, even in the brief times that she had let herself consider something between them. It was something that she had never even imagined herself capable of.
She realized then that what was between them was more than just a bond that she had been born with or a sexual tension that had been brewing between them. She wasn't sure how, but somewhere along the way she had began to care about him more than she had realized and it was clear that the feeling was not one-sided.
Charlie still wasn't entirely certain what she was going to do with this information, but she did know that she fit against him like he was a puzzle piece that she hadn't realized that she had been missing. She decided that, for just one more night, she would leave things unsolved as she ducked her head down to press her lips against his curls.
A/N: Please read and review! :)