From the instant that Charlie woke up, she could tell that something was definitely off. She just wasn't sure of what it was... At least not until she opened her eyes.
She ignored the pain from the burning migraine that was threatening to explode her head from the inside as she looked around, trying to figure out where she was. She was pretty sure that she knew, but she was still hoping that it was some kind of bad dream or hallucination. She needed for it to not be real. She couldn't really be back in Philadelphia, not again.
"Hello, Charlotte," came a voice from across the room.
Charlie attempted to get up, but only managed to get into a semi-sitting position before dizziness took over, black spots crossed her vision, and she had to stop moving.
As her vision cleared back up after a few seconds, she was dismayed to find that he was still there. Standing in the doorway of the over-the-top room she found herself in was none other than Sebastian Monroe, smirking over at her from within his militia uniform.
"No," she insisted, almost as a whisper before her tone became more urgent and she repeated, "No."
"I believe the words you're looking for are 'thank you'," he insisted with a gloating smile.
"For what?" She hissed.
She pulled back, pressing her back against the arm of the couch that she was sitting on so hard that it began to hurt, as he took a few slow and deliberate steps towards her.
"For saving your life," he insisted seriously.
Charlie let out a laugh at that. She couldn't believe how deluded he was if he thought that he was some kind of hero. There was no way that he had saved her life and, even if he had, she most definitely was not in his debt.
"I'm serious," he told her, holding her gaze with a stern glare that she was sure was intended to try to make her drop her gaze and submit. "You got hit by the blast badly. You never would have made it out of that fight if I hadn't been there... Even as it is, you were out for almost four days."
She held his gaze defiantly as she retorted sarcastically, "Right, lucky me... Now if you don't mind, I'm leaving."
She rose to her feet, not waiting or caring whether he minded or not. She made it a little over one step before the black spots returned and she found herself stopping and trying to refocus her sight.
The blurry image of him moving towards her as if he was under the impression that she was going to let him help her was the only thing that made her sit back down on the couch.
"Fine, I'm leaving as soon as I can stand up for more than thirty seconds," she informed him, refusing to back down.
"You're not leaving," he insisted. "Someone has to make sure that you don't get yourself killed. You're staying here, as my guest, indefinitely."
"Who made you responsible for me?" She spit at him angrily. "You don't give a damn about me. You only care about yourself and getting Miles back. Do you really think that he's going to be grateful and come running back to you when he finds out that you're keeping me prisoner? ...You're delusional."
"I'm keeping you safe," Monroe argued. "And that is not up for debate... But if you want anything, then all you have to do is ask, Charlotte."
She glared up at him. She felt bile rise up in her throat, but she wasn't entirely sure whether it was from his continued calling her Charlotte or if it was just because she was still far from a full recovery and had a pounding migraine.
"I want to leave," she tried, refusing to let the lack of hope that she had show in her features or tone.
"Not that," he told her sternly. "Anything else."
"Fine. Then I want you to leave."
To her surprise, he didn't argue. Instead, he just turned and walked out of the room, leaving her alone.
Still, she was sure that there were guards on the other side of the door with instructions to keep her there. Even if there weren't, she wasn't in any position to make an attempt at escaping. Getting halfway across the room before passing out wasn't exactly the heroic escape plan she had in mind.
A few days passed without another sign of Monroe. Charlie felt a small sense of triumph at that.
Maybe she was still trapped in Philly with him, even though she couldn't think of a place she wanted to be any less, but at least she had managed to make him stay away from her for the time being.
She let herself wonder for a moment about whether his avoiding her was a manifestation of his guilt at forcing her to stay there, but she quickly shook that thought off. After all, it was General Monroe she was thinking of. He didn't feel guilt. If he did, then he never would have taken her prisoner in the first place. He never would have taken Danny prisoner and he never would have had countless people killed over menial crimes.
Thinking about Danny made it hurt more as she wondered whether he'd ever spent time in the same room. She wondered about how scared he had been when he'd arrived here and about what his last thoughts had been as he'd looked down at his bullet-riddled chest before she forced herself to stop thinking all together. If she was going to be stuck there with Monroe, then she was going to have to shut that off, at least part of it. She understood now how Miles had needed to lock a part of himself away because now she found herself locking away the innocent doe-eyed girl that everyone seemed to think of her as. She needed to be tough because any sign of weakness with Monroe was a risk.
A guard that had come in with her dinner the night before, a fancy meal that was a rarity since the blackout and had made her feel more guilty than anything, had caught her pacing in her room when he had come in. He must have reported that to Monroe because now that same guard was standing in her room, staring over at her, as he insisted, "General Monroe wants to see you… Now that you're feeling better, you'll be eating with him regularly."
It felt like a bad joke to Charlie, but she knew better than to resist. If she had to go, then she was going to go with a little dignity instead of being dragged.
"Why aren't you eating, Charlotte?"
Charlie glared across the table at him wordlessly.
"The guards have told me that you've had no problem eating the meals that have been sent to your room," he pointed out.
"I didn't have to look at you when meals were being sent to my room," she retorted. "Your face makes me lose my appetite."
"Just eat," he growled out in frustration. "You're only hurting yourself with your stubbornness."
"Then why do you look so angry?" She mocked.
When he didn't do anything, Charlie smirked over at him from across the table. She knew she had leverage.
She had the tiniest bit of control. Maybe she couldn't leave, but she could still, to the best of her abilities, try to ensure that he was just as miserable as she was. After all, he still wanted Miles back. And to try to get Miles back, he needed to keep her alive and relatively well. That gave her power, even if it was only a tiny amount.
It was only meal two of the new arrangement and he already looked like he was ready to crack.
Sure, he put on the facade of casual indifference as he shrugged and simply told her that she was going to regret not eating when she was hungry later. But she could see it in his rigid shoulders, and the way that he held his lips pursed together as if he were struggling to avoid a sudden outburst, that she was grating on his nerves and eventually he would snap.
"You know, Charlotte, there are plenty of people in the republic who would give anything for a meal like that," Monroe pointed out as if he was under the impression that he was making small talk and not just nagging at her.
"There are also plenty of people starving in the republic," she shot back. "And yet you had a three course meal prepared, Sebastian."
She hissed his name out as if it was poison on her tongue. She would have called him General, but that just seemed like an assertion of his power. Instead, she chose Sebastian instead of Monroe with the hope of irking him the way that he irked her each and every time that he insisted on calling her by her full first name.
He went silent and glared over at her.
They remained in a cold silence as he ate the rest of his meal and she debated how distracted he would have to be for her to be able to steal his knife before he could react. Although it was an inconvenience, she also felt a hint of victory at the fact that she hadn't been given a knife to eat with. That meant she was considered a threat and that at least gave her a sense that she had accomplished something with her hostility.
Charlie hadn't eaten a single thing in three days, but her delight at Monroe's reaction was well worth the pangs of hunger that ripped through her stomach at the scent of the fresh-made breakfast on the table before her.
His fist slammed down hard against the table. She flinched back a little at the harsh sound of the plates and cutlery loudly bouncing up and then clattering back down onto the table.
She quickly composed herself again as he rumbled out, "Why can't you just eat?"
"Why? Are you afraid that Miles will show up and find me starved to death, then blame you?" She questioned as a defiant smirk tugged at her lips.
"Don't make me force-feed you," he threatened. "You do not want to test me, Charlotte."
"Doesn't the president of the republic have more important things to do than try and make me eat?" She taunted in an amused tone.
He opened his mouth to make a retort, but just as he was taking a breath to prepare himself to argue, Captain Baker walked into the room and Monroe's eyes immediately focused on him as a frown formed on his lips.
"Sir, you're going to want to hear about this."
The next morning, Charlie's breakfast was brought to her room once again. At first she refused to eat a single bite, but then the smell began to drive her insane and her survival instinct took over as she began to eat.
She thought that she still had won, since she had managed to force him to go back to their old routine where she could eat alone and be as content as was possible as his prisoner, while pretending that she was anywhere else.
When two more days of all her meals coming to her room had passed, Charlie was more than a little caught by surprise when a guard showed up to escort her to breakfast with the General once again.
Charlie hadn't eaten all of the meals during the past few days, but she had eaten enough of them that she felt more than confident in her ability to go on refusing to eat in order to torment Monroe.
As he entered the room, Charlie immediately noticed that his body language was different. He almost looked like a normal person without his regular rigid posture and air of superiority. She wasn't going to be fooled that easily though, she knew that he was still the same dictator underneath.
Her curiosity began to peak when he went through the whole meal without even really acknowledging her. He had made none of his usual attempts at small talk or forcing her to eat. He had seemed more than just indifferent to whether she was eating or not. He had been completely unnoticing of it.
In return, she had held back any witty remarks and purposeful taunts.
As Charlie lay in her room, during her time between meals, she stared up at the ceiling and wondered to herself whether his stopping their meals together temporarily had really been a victory or something completely unrelated to her. If she hadn't known better, she almost would have thought that he'd been upset.
She knew that he was capable of being angry upset, she'd seen that before. But she still had a hard time believing that there was something human enough within him that he was able to be upset like that. How could someone who was completely selfish ever truly feel the sadness of some kind of loss?
And yet that was the only thing that Charlie could connect with what she had seen that morning. What she didn't understand was what that sense of loss could possibly be a result of.
The only thing that she could think of that she knew Monroe cared about enough to suffer over was Miles, but that was an explanation that she couldn't even bear to consider, so she forced herself to push those thoughts down.
A/N: Please read and review! This is going to be either two or three parts and will hopefully have all the parts up by the end of the weekend.