AN: Phew! Sorry about the week-long hiatus, but here's an extra long update to make up for it!
Warnings: In this section begin many of the reasons this fic is rated "T": some bad language, hints of violence, even a bit of sensuality (gasp)! Please don't read if those things will bother you. Thanks. :-)
Disclaimer:"Revolution" and its characters don't belong to me, and I'm not making any money off of this fic, although it's sure providing me with a lot of entertainment.
"Metallic bonding accounts for many physical properties of metals, such as strength, malleability, [and] ductility…this type of bonding is collective in nature and a single "metallic bond" does not exist." - Wikipedia
Bonding
The day Miles and Charlie take down an entire Militia nest of five all by their lonesome, Nora grins and jabs Miles in the side.
"She fights just like her old man," she says, nodding her head toward Charlie.
Miles snorts as he rifles through a dead soldier's supplies, not looking at Nora. "Ben couldn't swing a sword to save his - " He falls abruptly silent, and his hands pause in their search of the soldier's rucksack. When he speaks next, his low voice has lost any trace of humor. "It's not like that, Nora. I'd be a piss-poor replacement for Ben."
Without turning around, he can hear the sad smile in Nora's voice. "Of all the things you're good at, Miles, knowing what 'it's like' really isn't one of them."
Charlie interrupts them as she jogs over with a bright smile, carrying three rifles and a backpack full of rations. Miles is still trying to push Nora's words out of his mind when he glances up at his niece; her lip is split and her jacket, torn just above her right elbow. He shoves back a surge of anxious what ifs and grumbles, "Told you not to stick your elbow out like a chicken wing when you fight."
Charlie looks at the rip in her jacket like she didn't see it before. "Well, you should see the other guy."
"It's not a joke, Charlie. Shape up or you'll stay in camp next time."
He can't tell if she's just high on endorphins from the fight or if she's irritated and trying to get under his skin, but she keeps pushing it:
"But we could be Miles Matheson and the dreaded One-Armed Bandit! The most fearsome-"
Miles whirls to his feet and grabs her jacket, holding it until she meets his eyes. "Charlie. This is not a comic book." The kid probably doesn't even know what a comic book is. "People die all the time in combat because they don't fix stupid bad habits like this one." He releases his hold on her jacket and jabs at her torn sleeve. "Fix it, or stay back."
"You can't just keep me from fighting." She steps back, pulling her sleeve away with an irritated jerk.
"Watch me."
"What are you gonna do? Tie me to a tree?"
Aaron's arrival provides a welcome interruption as he jogs into the clearing. "I heard shouting. What happened?"
Nora gestures at the fallen Militia soldiers. "Ambush. Miles and Charlie sorted it out."
Aaron raises an eyebrow at Charlie, who grins and actually blushes a little. God help them all, the kid's proud of herself.
Miles takes the momentary distraction to step forward, pulls the three rifles' straps off Charlie's shoulder, and slings them over his own. She glares at him, but remains blessedly silent.
Aaron looks around again at the dead soldiers. "Well, I'm glad we're not drawing attention to ourselves or anything," he mumbles, eyeing the scattered bodies and blood-soaked foliage.
Miles' sigh is pained. "Everyone's a critic." He scans the clearing once more for usable supplies, passes one of the rifles from his shoulder to Nora and the other to Aaron - who blinks slowly at it before hoisting it over one of his wide shoulders - and continues: "Aaron's right, though. We'd better keep moving. We weren't exactly quiet, and it won't take long before there's more Militia headed our way."
His troops - when had he begun to think of them that way? - nod at him and hustle out of the clearing, backtracking toward the river they've been following for the last three days.
That night, they make camp three miles from the river to, as Miles says, "stay off the Militia's radar." Then he has to explain to Charlie what radar is, and then explain that it's just a saying that means "stay where they can't find you easily," because of course the Militia doesn't actually have radar - unless Monroe has gotten his hands on Aaron's pendant, in which case the Militia could have a whole hell of a lot of things that Miles doesn't want to think about. Either way, they're far enough from the river to be off any radar, real or figurative.
They eat their stolen Militia field rations for dinner - home-canned green beans and peaches, and dried, salted strips of something Miles assumes (hopes) is venison. Everyone gets twice as much as they usually eat, and Miles justifies it by pointing out that they need to travel fast and light, which means ditching the heavy glass canning jars as fast as possible.
After dinner, Miles digs a shallow hole and he and Nora bury the empty jars and drag some dead branches over the spot to erase any trace of their presence from Militia tracking scouts. He's just smoothing dirt over the hole when Nora nudges him and nods at something behind his right shoulder. He tenses for a moment until he turns and catches sight of Charlie, practicing her swordplay. She's walking through the cuts, thrusts, and parries he taught her, and every so often, she stops, looks at her right elbow...and tucks it in.
A strange warmth spreads through Miles' chest - a surge of…pride? It's been so damn long since he's been proud of anything he's done that he has trouble recognizing the feeling. His vision goes a little blurry and he blinks it away, watching Charlie dispatch two imaginary opponents - with her elbow neatly tucked - before turning back to Nora.
Nora shoots him a gentle, steady smile. "That's what it's like, you idiot."
Miles swallows past an odd lump in his throat and rolls his eyes. "Shut up." But even his mild irritation at Nora can't dispel the warm feeling in his chest or the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth.
Miles says nothing when Charlie returns to camp that night, hair plastered with sweat, rubbing her obviously sore sword arm. He just picks up the rifle from next to the log he's been sitting on, walks over to Charlie, and hangs the strap over her shoulder. She looks up at him with wide eyes and then smiles like the sun.
He's already walking back to his seat when his niece whumps into him from behind, knocking the wind out of him and pinning his arms to his sides in a giant bear hug. Miles comes a hairsbreadth from doing her serious bodily harm before his mind shouts down his instincts. Instead, he settles for standing, tense and awkward, as Charlie tries to squeeze all the air out of his lungs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Nora and Aaron grinning like idiots.
"Okay, Charlie," he says after a minute. "I get it. You're happy." He disentangles himself from the hug, turns around, and puts his hands on Charlie's shoulders, which serves the dual purpose of allowing him to look at her and keeping her at arm's length. "Nora's gonna show you how to use that tomorrow. In the meantime, keep this safety on - " he gestures - "and don't blow anybody's head off." Charlie looks like she's about to hug him again, so he turns her forcibly around and pushes her back toward her own seat.
She turns that happy, hopeful stare on him again and it pulls the next words out of him despite himself: "You did all right today, kid." He didn't think it was possible for her grin to widen, but it does. Miles shakes his head, turns away, and grunts, "Yeah, well, don't let that go to your head."
He takes the first watch that night, and the others, with full bellies, drop off to sleep faster than usual. Charlie's sleeping with her new rifle next to her bedroll, and Miles checks three times to make sure she isn't going to shoot herself in her sleep.
Nora takes watch next, brushing by him a little closer than strictly necessary, and if he wasn't so damn tired, he'd think about why that is. As it is, when Miles finally falls into his own bedroll, he passes out almost immediately. His dreams are indistinct blurs of images and feelings - the dreams of an exhausted mind - but there are a few more familiar faces - Ben, Nora, Aaron, and Charlie - and for once, nobody dies.
He wakes, several hours later, and for a moment he doesn't know why. Then a warm body presses up against his under the blankets and he experiences a second of panicked confusion before he realizes it's Nora. It's pitch black, but scent and memory forge strong bonds and the familiar jasmine-and-gunpowder smell of Nora's dark hair is suddenly playing havoc with Miles' brain.
"Who's on watch?" he mumbles into her hair. That smell is bringing back all sorts of memories he really doesn't need right now. What the hell is she doing here? He breathes in again, a little deeper, and a surge of desire hitches his breath. Shit. Get it together, Matheson.
He thinks about just shoving her out. He sure as hell doesn't need this kind of complication right now. But he finds he can't directly question her presence there. She'd been free to come and go from his bed when he was General, and although she hasn't done so since their reunion, he's damned if he's going to be the one to break their old agreement. Especially not when she presses up against him, close enough that her breath warms his neck.
Well, hell. Apparently, Charlie's adopted him as her surrogate dad, so he's in way over his head there already. Why not with Nora, too? He snakes a hand around to the small of her back to pull her closer, and that's when he realizes she's wearing just a tank top. He pushes it up an inch, fingers spreading over her smooth, muscled back, feeling his heart rate jack up immediately. Shit. He is so screwed.
"Aaron and Charlie are both on watch," she's saying, her voice remarkably steady. "They like to keep each other awake. Your next turn isn't for another three hours."
He raises an eyebrow, though the effect is largely lost in the dark, and rolls until he's leaning over Nora, teeth grazing her ear as he whispers, "And you had to climb all the way in here to tell me that?" He's proud of the fact that he manages to sound like a smartass despite his heart beating hard enough that he can hardly hear the words.
She sighs against his cheek, and the whole side of his neck comes alive with fire. "I was wrong about you. On the Georgia border."
Miles' stomach drops. He remembers that night. It's burned into him even deeper than the jasmine-and-gunpowder smell of her hair. He can still see her, standing in his command tent three miles from the Georgia border, face streaked with rain and mud and blood, as he washed the blood of a dead 16-year-old rebel girl off his hands. A damn teenager. And Nora - brave, opinionated-to-a-fault Nora - had been the only one in the whole damn camp who'd seen anything wrong with it. She'd told him that he'd lost his soul to Monroe and his Militia, and he'd lashed out at her because, deep down, he'd known she was right.
She'd stuck around with the Militia for another month, but she'd never appeared in his bed again.
And now here she is. Saying she'd been wrong.
Had she?
Miles rolls flat on his back, heart still hammering, putting some distance between himself and Nora and staring up through the trees into the star-filled sky. A memory springs unbidden to his mind - him and Bass, sitting on the hood of his car an hour after the Blackout, waiting for the lights to come back on. Bass had marveled at the multitude of stars they could see without any light pollution and quipped, "I could get used to this."
Then, for the next fifteen years, they'd had to.
That uncomfortable lump is back in his throat. He's gotten used to a lot of strange things in fifteen years. He'd gotten used to goddamn pirate swords, crossbows, and candlelight, to a world where bread was baked in a brick oven with a fire underneath it, mail came by horseback (if at all), and steel was smelted by hand, and he'd gotten used to a lot of terrible things - murder and terror and torture methods straight out of the fucking Dark Ages - but somehow, now, he can't get used to the idea that he's worthy of having this family of people who trust and care about him.
"You weren't wrong," he finally says, his voice flat. "Not then." Wind rustles the treetops above and the stars wink in and out of existence as they're covered by shifting branches.
Suddenly, Nora's weight comes to rest fully on top of him, molding into every inch of his body. The silhouette of her face blocks out the stars. "Fine," she whispers. "Then I'm not wrong now, either."
She leans down slowly, and ghosts her lips across his in a kiss.
Miles leans into it, his fingers tangling in her hair almost automatically, and when Nora's lips part to let him in, the fire roars back up in his veins and he forgets about everything else and just prays that Nora's belief in him (that Charlie's, that Aaron's) is justified and that he really is the good man they all seem to think he is.
By the time Nora leaves his bedroll the next morning, Miles almost believes she's right.