That day,
Part Seven
Aaron knows how to give a party. He has told her many times about many parties where he would enjoy food, friends, family and champagne before the blackout. Charlie smiles at the music that already reaches her when the bar in the heart of Willoughby is laying before her . And looking and listening at the party buzz before her, she realizes Aaron still knows how to give a party. People are drinking, talking and laughing.
She is actually looking forward to meeting some of his friends and she has promised Aaron she would stop by. She hopes to meet Bass at the party a bit later, because he is still stuck in some meeting with Blanchard. He had been in one hell of a mood this morning when he had left her bed. She had listened to the sound of heavy pissed of boots going through her apartment. But before he had left, Bass had walked his ass back into the bedroom as he had found the warm hollow of her neck with his mouth. Gently sucking on the skin as he had placed a soft kiss in her neck, his warm breath connecting with the sensitive skin of that one spot he is always able to find.
When she walks into the bar, she notices that Miles is there. She walks through the crowd towards him and when their eyes connect, she nods. She can see the tension running through his eyes as she notices how uncomfortable Miles still is, even though they had talked that next morning after he had found Bass in her apartment and both men and herself had found out exactly how deep her feelings ran for him.
She had been speaking the truth when she had told Miles she wanted him to go home that night. But she had also meant it, when she had said he could come back and talk. He had. They did. And thing were still awkward, and things between Bass and Miles were still filled with friction from years gone by but somehow they were finding a way through. Behind all that friction and hurt, there were still enough ties that kept both brothers in a place where they could not walk away from the other.
Charlie makes her way through the sea of people who are enjoying their night. A luxury after the war and people are eagerly trying to reconnect with more lightness and a drink with good stories and friends. She greets Connor with a grin, who is standing at the other side of the bar and is busy impressing a girl with some of his best stories. He greets her with a warm smile before he focusses on the girl in front of him again with a charming grin on his face. Of course she finds her uncle at the bar of the bar.
'Miles...hey.' Her voice is not unfriendly as her leather jacket brushes his shirt and they are standing close together at the bar.
Miles looks up while his eyes light up as he sees his niece. 'Hey kid...decided to join the party?'
'Well, I am a Matheson.' She smirks at Miles.
Miles grins at her response. 'Well then... let me buy you a drink.'
'Miles?'
'Yeah kid?'
'It's a party, you do know those drinks are free, right?' Charlie smirks as she meets Miles' eyes and she feels the old familiar warmth in his eyes that always manages to reach her.
'Still getting you that drink, kid.' Miles winks at her.
Charlie laughs out loud, a sound that crashes all the way into Miles' chest. They have more than that one drink as they do not talk much but both of them enjoy spending some time with the other.
After their second drink she sees Aaron waving to her to come over and meet someone. Before Charlie walks to Aaron she grabs her drink and places her hand on Miles' arm. There is just one small nod in her eyes and his, but is enough for the both of them.
She walks over to Aaron and another guy in his mid forties. She knows Aaron is trying to build a life in town just as everyone else and she is making an effort to get to know his friends. After all, he has always done the same.
'Charlie ,' she shakes the hand of the man standing next to Aaron as a first greeting.
'Tim, a friend of Aaron's. Nice to meet you ma'm.' He nods with respect to Charlie. She is a valued part of the team that keeps his town safe and the people in town respect her strength and fighting spirit and skills.
Aaron snorts as he hears that last part of Tim's line and the small smirk flowing around Charlie's mouth and eyes. As far he is concerned, Charlie is that girl in pigtails who is not afraid of anyone.
Aaron hands her a glass of cool cider while Charlie listens with a polite smile to Tim's stories about his store in the centre of Willoughby and his family and children. She is on her way to being a bit buzzed and with enough food around, she is willing to give him a couple of more minutes of her time.
'Yeah those little ones...they can be a handful but my wife and I would not have it any other way.' Tim grins with pride, taking another gulp from his drink. 'So, enough about me... how about you? Do you have a family on your own? Brothers, sisters?'
Aaron's face drops. He knows Tim is just making small talk and that the booze is making him chatty. But he feels every weight of the impossible pain in friends words reflected in Charlie's eyes and whole face.
Miles is not standing that far away from them . He looks only at Charlie as he has heard the question and felt the pain raging through him with a desire to punch the asshole in the face for his stupid as hell question. His eyes go hollow and yet more darker at the same time at everything Tim put into that question without even knowing it.
Charlie feels how her mouth feels like she didn't have a single drop of water for days. She feels how her heart beats faster, how the back of her throat feels numb. How she cannot feel her body.
'If you'll excuse me, I think I need some more cider.' It is the best excuse her mind can come up with now. Her face is pale and there is the start of a apologetic fake smile on her face. She hears Aaron mumble something to Tim who looks shocked but she cannot be here anymore. She only knows she has to go. Now.
'Oh hell...' Miles curses as he follows her through the crowd as he shoves people out of his way. 'Charlie...' Miles tries, feeling sick to his damn stomach for the pain on Charlie's face. He feels powerless when she is storming out of the bar with tears he can already see in her eyes. He tries to stop her. He raises his voice as it booms over the crowd in the bar. 'Charlie, wait.'
'Not now Miles.' Charlie almost yells and yet her voice is flat but filled with so much pain as she pushes him out with her words. And all Miles can do is stand outside a damn bar and watch her walk away from him as she slowly disappears in the distance.
Charlie sees the half empty bottle of booze through her tears. It is dark. And late. She went to her apartment but could not bear to spend one more second between those four walls. So she grabbed a bottle that Miles and Bass left on her table and she had walked out her door.
And even though she keeps on drinking from the bottle in her hands, the pain wont lessen. It is a hollow and yet all consuming pain all at once. Her knife pressing against her thigh. A silent companion. She leans into the tall wall of bricks behind her, as it is supporting her with their could rough surfaces as she sits down against it.
There are some stars, but she cannot see them now her tears turn everything into a blur. And all she can think about is everyone who is not there. The family she will never get to see and be a part of.
People she has known all of her life. People that are not there anymore. And even if they are there, her mom, Miles, she hardly recognises them anymore as they have been changed because of one project her mom and dad had been involved in so many years ago.
Her mom had told her about it once, on a long painful night where they had shared a porch and a rare honest conversation. It had put everything in a new perspective. Her old life. Her dad. Her mom. Their work. What they had tried to do. What they had caused instead. Those days when Chicago had turned into a city with desolated streets. Miles. Bass. The Republic. The men they became through time. That night had made everything easier and yet so much complex and harder to understand at the same time.
She drinks, she stares. Staring in the dark with pale stars high above her head. She misses them. She misses them so. So much she can't move. So she sits. And drinks. And let's the hollow take over.
Bass had a long fucking day. He just wants to get some sleep and wrap Charlie in his arms and forget this whole day. Blanchard had been a giant ass in a long as hell meeting that made his fingers crave for a drink even before lunch.
He does not know how the hell they ended up here. Charlie. Charlotte. Him walking to her place, wanting to take in her scent and feel her thighs around his middle. Her place is his. His place is hers. They fuck, they drink. Laugh. Talk. They don't talk. They fight. Make up. Fight some more. She lets him in. She pushes him out. Comes back. He lets her in. He pushes her out. But he always comes back for her.
He knows Staypuft is throwing some kind of party. But he needs her and only her. Screw the rest. He is on his way to her place when he sees Miles, Connor and Staypuft standing before the bar. One look at Miles' face and his kid's eyes and he knows there is trouble ahead. He quickens his pace. When staypuft looks at him from behind his glasses with sad puppy eyes and he hears her name, his heart starts to beat wildly in his damn chest.
'What..' he scrapes his throat, ' what the hell is going on?'
He listens to both Connor and Staypuf as they both tell him what happened one hour ago.
'And you let her go?' Bass voice is rough as he turns to Miles, his hands craving to grab Miles by his jacket.
'Hey dad...' Connor intervenes, ' calm down.'
'We wanted to give her some room, but...' Aaron nods and swallows as he feels Charlie's hurt over and over again. '...when we went to her place ...she was not there. '
'Excuse me?' Bass barks, looking from Miles to Staypuft.
He locks eyes with Miles as they both know without a fucking doubt their girl could be in a lot of fucking trouble. He watches Miles' despair and guilt he has known for so long. They both know that hollow place where she could be headed too. Fuck, they both have lived this day once before and he knows where it had ended for him that day. Alone, on a fucking graveyard in Jasper, with a bottle of whiskey and a gun in his hands, thinking about ending it all and to leave every piece of guilt and grieve behind.
'Miles...' there is rough worry in Bass' voice. 'We have to find her, now.'
They split up as Bass, Miles, Connor and Aaron all walk into a different direction with the same worry and woman on their mind.
Bass is feeling desperate rage running through his fingers, a dark sensation that clouds all his thoughts. He is worried out of his damn mind when all he fucking needs right now is her where he can feel her, and touch her and see her, making sure she is all right. Images of him and her from the past few years rage through his mind.
And there, between wild heartbeats Bass somehow knows where she is. He turns around and heads north, towards the town wall and gate. He suddenly sees her again, on that day he had looked at her as she stood there when sunrise had brushed her face. It had been him and her on the road for weeks when they had finally reached Willoughby all the way from the hell that had been Vegas and where she had found him.
He had been sitting down on a log, unable to keep his eyes of her while he was cleaning his gun. Her stance strong and her eyes fixed on the small town in the distance. The dilapidated viaduct in the distance.
His boots hit the sand of the roads with a quick desperate eager to get to her pace.
He finds her crouched down, against the brick wall of one of the pillars of the flyover without use in this blackout word, high above her. She is hidden in the shadows, as there is just enough moonlight falling on her face to find her. Almost invisible, something that is so unlike Charlie.
A sigh of relieve escapes from his chest. That is until he sees the moonlight reflecting in the glass of the bottle in her hand and her knife close, too close, to her other hand.
Panic fills his thoughts as he tells himself to calm the hell down. She does not even look up even when he is so damn sure she must have heard him. He slowly crouches down before her and flinches at the amount of hollow broken Charlie that is sitting in front of him. The low release of his breath is audible between them when his eyes move over her pale face.
'Charlie...' He swallows at the sound of his own voice. 'Hey...' He feels almost unable to move or talk, as so much of her pain is filling his damn chest as well. He swallow as he hears his own heartbeat like a steady and fast drum in his ears.
But then something happens, as he looks at her and sees her, all of her, right before him. Her hollow misery. Her strength. Her loyalty. Her brokenness she shares with him and Miles without even knowing it herself. Her smirk, her beauty, her raw edges, her sarcasm and the fighter within her. All those pieces of her make him feel like someone he has not been to anyone for a very long time. And panic slowly moves out of his thoughts as he realizes what kind of man he can be for her. Here. Tonight.
'Baby, I am here...' his voice sounds hoarse but with a gentleness in it that reminds him of home. 'I'm here...' He moves closer to her, as he sits next to her, telling her he is here with his words.
Charlie hears the rough hoarseness in Bass' voice. His strength. His gentle blue eyes she can feel piercing through her grey place of misery. His amount of care. And her fingers relax just a little bit around the bottle in her hand.
'I don't understand, ' Her voice is broken and trembling, her bottom lip too. Endless tears are flowing over her cheeks as an absolute broken sadness fills her face and voice.
She had once felt the start of this wave so close on that day the war had ended almost two years ago. She had not been ready. And somehow today her mind and soul had decided that there was no going around this anymore.
'What are you talking about, Charlie?' He feels his heart break for her, as he just wants to rip her pain out and carry it for her.
She can feel his strength breaking through her loneliness, guilt and grieve. 'I don't understand why it's me. Why I am still here.'
Bass is not sure he can breathe anymore. Because these are his words. He is back home, back at the cemetery where it had been him and a bottle of whiskey and a damn gun in his hand. There, where Miles had found him when he had thought about ending it all sitting in front of four fresh graves. Hell, he knows. He knows how she feels. The guilt of being the one that still gets to wake up to see another day. But without them. He knows. About the pain. The loss. The abandonment.
And right the hell now, he also knows how Miles must have felt, when he sat down next to him that day. That night.
'They all left me, And I don't understand...' Charlie's voice is raspy. Tears are making it impossible to finish what she wants to say. She swallows as she tastes the salt of her own tears in the back of her throat. 'I don't understand why I am still here and they...'
Bass cannot control himself as his jaws lock with an almost impossible pressure as he yanks her in his arms. And there, with Charlotte right in his fucking arms he gives in to who he can be. He feels her pain, every single piece of it.
It is a part of him buried inside her pain. Inside her grief. He holds her, her body rocking in his arms.
'I know...' He is crying silently as he fucking hopes she does not notice as Charlie grabs his shirt under his leather jacket to find something to hold on to. 'I know baby...'
He is back at the point where he wished he had died with his mom and dad, and his beautiful little sisters. He knows. Fuck. He really does. He remembers that day, with Miles. And he knows, he knows so god damn well, that whatever he say will to her now will stay with her for the rest of her damn life.
'I am so sorry, Charlotte. I am so sorry for everything. For every fucking day Miles and I were not there. I know it is unfair baby...but you can't leave us...Miles...staypuft, Connor...we...hell, ...we need you. We cannot do this without you. '
Charlie sobs diminish with the hoarse warmth in his voice. Bass feels tension running through his muscles as he cannot hold back anymore. 'I need you.' He swallows. 'You mean so much to me, Charlie.'
It is the raw honesty in his words that touch the edge of her heart. She slowly looks up at him as her tear filled eyes find his. She looks up and for the very first time, it is Bass, and all of him, right before her. All of him. Open, raw, before her. Charlie looks at him, as she is unable to do anything else .
'You make me feel like no one else can, Bass.'
She watches how he has to look away from her as his deep blue eyes overflow with tears. But then, finally, after what feels like forever he looks at her. And he knows. He feels every piece of love in her words.
He readjusts her in his arms so she can lean against him as she feels what she has to feel as he completely covers her with his arms. He leans against the wall behind them and keeps her close in the dark.
Charlie moves closer into the warmth and certainty of his embrace. Her head moves into the hollow inviting warmth of his neck as his strong jaw line rests against her temple and she can hear Bass breathe.
Bass holds her, and with his right hand he slowly moves the bottle and the knife away from her. She does not need them anymore. He is here now.
They sit like that until the sun comes up. And with the first light of dawn he kisses her gently with his warm lips on hers, a long slow kiss that is filled with a promise. His arms are encircling her. The palm of her hand is warm against his chest, tucked under his jacket as the other one is wrapped around his arm.
Bass slowly kisses her temple as his nose brushes her hair. His heart swells with her close as he feels how Charlie takes in his scent as her nose is buried in his neck.
'I am taking you home.' His voice is hoarse. The light of the sunrise meets her eyes and he looks at her while her eyes tell him she wants to go home. He, he is home. They slowly get up and walk back to Willoughby. His arm is never far, strongly around her shoulders as she feels the leather of his jacket touching hers. Charlie feels a slow almost peaceful exhaustion fall over her as her legs feel they are going to give out even on the short walk back.
Bass feels her stumble and puts a strong arm behind her back. His other arm moves under her knees as he takes her in his arms and moves her against his chest.
Maybe on any other day she would have grumbled something insulting. Maybe on another day he would have snarled something back about her stubbornness. But not today. Today he just pulls her close. She does not protest as her eyes tell him a story about gratitude for the man that caries her home. For the man that will always carry her home.
He carries her home. And he remembers that day, where he had carried her away from those assholes in that bar who had dared to touch her. She had been like this, against his chest. Her eyes closed and his mind filled with worry as rain had started to fall with thunder in the distance at the start of a long night.
But today, today that night had moved into new pale light of a new day. And her eyes are open, looking for his as she slowly breathes and feels the steady wide strength and warmth of his chest as she lets her head fall against his shoulder with trust in her eyes. Trust and care and so much more for him.
He will carry her home.
And Connor will be there, right before his house, waiting in front of his porch. His son, his kid. His blood. And they will share a look between father and son. A look of understanding, a look filled by how much they care about her, about Charlie. A look filled with understanding how much she is his and belongs to him.
And Miles will be there, his eyes filled with gratitude for a brother for bringing their girl back as he will stand not far from Connor with his hand on the hilt of his sword as he will lock eyes with Bass with tears in his eyes. He will walk to the both of them. He will caress Charlie's face with long gentle fingers in Bass' arms. And they will share a look filled with their bond, their love. A look between brothers. A look filled with understanding of how much they care about her and that there is absolutely nothing they won't do for her. They would go to hell and back for this woman.
And Aaron will be there too. When Bass is close to the porch steps, Aaron will wrap a blanket around Charlie. And they will share a look of understanding and respect. A look filled with a starting friendship. A look filled with knowing they were once on the other side within the same one story, but that friendships can grow and that they will keep her safe and loved.
And Charlie, she will fall asleep against Bass' chest and his scent close on the couch of his living room. She will fall asleep with him muttering comfort in her ear with his low voice. She will fall asleep to the sounds of their soft voices, knowing they are all there. Miles, Connor, Aaron. Her men. Her family. Her home.
She will fall asleep, knowing she is not alone. Knowing she felt raging despair and grieve. Knowing she made it through. Knowing she belongs somewhere. And she will think of that one woman in that one bar, Vicky. She will think about how she gave her that final push to return to all of them and fight for her own choices. She will make it. Because of all of them. And they all will be there, all the people that walked her road with her. Her dad, Maggie. Danny. Nora. She will keep them close and learn to live with them so close as impossible pain will turn into loving strong memories. She will make it with all of them.
She will make it. Because of the man that holds her and will hold her while she sleeps. She knows he knows. He feels it, that aching start of love in his bones. And she knows he will never leave her. She will fall asleep, knowing they will all be there when she wakes up. He will be there when she wakes up. Bass.
She will wake up later that day to low gentle manly voices, on a soft couch in his living room when the late afternoon light brushes her face. And they will share one look. Her and Bass. A look of knowing they have started something new. A look filled with knowing they have been many things. But now, they are together. One look. Them.
But first, Bass will carry her home with the scent of the first morning sun in her hair as Charlie feels the certain pace of his boots under her as he carries her. He carries her home, as the first bright light of a new sunrise touches her face.
The End
Author's Note This last scene was that scene where the whole story was flowing towards. This story was a very personal to write. A story about how life cannot be easy on some very long days, but there are always people and truths that can help you through, even on those darkest days. I loved writing Aaron, Miles and Connor, Charlie and Bass in this story, I have spend many hours behind my laptop with coffee writing this one and I enjoyed it, so very much. A thank you, to all of you, for all your support and inspiration. I l love knowing you are all here. Wishing you Love, Love from Love
