Charlie had thought that she was prepared to go back to Sylvania Estates. She had known that it was going to be weird, but she wasn't expecting how hard it hit her when they walked through the gates and she found herself staring down the patch of dirt where her father had taken his last breath.

As Charlie stopped walking, Connor turned to her with the intent of making a sarcastic comment about the area. He changed his mind as soon as he saw the way that she was staring. He wasn't sure what exactly she was staring at, or even if it was something specific or just from being in the area, but it was clear that she was already overwhelmed by being back.

He moved to grab her hand. He wasn't sure how she'd react to that, but he figured at the very least that she would be able to take her mind off of things a little by snapping at him if she chose to pull her arm away.

She didn't pull away, but he didn't find himself feeling the usual level of satisfaction that he would get when she gave in on things like that. Instead, he found himself more concerned as she left her hand in his with virtually no reaction.

"Charlie." He tried.

She forced her eyes away from the ground before turning to look over at him. She felt like there were tears forming in her eyes, but she struggled to force them back.

He tightened his grip on her hand a little as she turned back to look around the cul-de-sac, taking in the appearance of the buildings until her eyes reached her old home and settled there.

She felt a strange pull to go inside. She wanted to check and see if there was anything there that she'd left behind, while she'd been expecting that she would be coming back with Danny, that she wanted now.

She began to walk forward without a word and Connor followed close beside her.


Her old home was very similar to how she remembered it being. There were a few things that had been moved around or changed, but for the most part it looked just how she had left it. It felt smaller to her than it had before. It was all that was really left of her old life.

She took her hand away from Connor's as she moved through the rooms to look around. He followed a few feet behind her, giving her some room.

"Who the hell are you?"

Charlie's hand moved away from the small cuts in the wood of the table that had come from her first knife and whipped her head around to see who had spoken.

A woman was standing in the doorway of the room, shotgun in hand, glaring over at the pair of them.

"What are you doing in my house?" The woman demanded as she waved the barrel of her gun at them.

Charlie moved to put her hands up in a sign of innocence and Connor, who had been debating going for his own weapon, decided to follow suit.

The sleeves of Charlie's jacket slid down and the woman's attention focused onto the mark on her wrist, but not the one that said Connor's name.

"You were militia?" The woman asked angrily as her finger moved to rest right over the trigger. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

Connor turned to look at Charlie in confusion as she just remained frozen. It scared him that she didn't seem to be trying to do anything to stop the woman.

Before he had the chance to try to speak for her, someone else appeared in the doorway on the side of the room.

The second woman looked between where Charlie and Connor were standing and the woman in the doorway before insisting, "Put the gun down, Hazel. This was her house long before you lived here... And trust me. Charlie Matheson has plenty of reasons to hate Monroe and his militia more than most around here. If she has a branding, then I'm sure there's a good explanation for it."

The first woman, Hazel, hesitantly lowered her weapon.

As the pair lowered their arms back down, Connor shot Charlie a confused look. More questions than he could count had popped into his head in the last couple of minutes and he thought that Charlie definitely had not given him enough information before bringing him there.

Charlie didn't notice though, since she was too busy looking over at the second woman.

"I thought I saw you come in here," the woman commented. "But I was sure I must have imagined it. Did it take having a boy's name appear on your wrist to finally come back and show that you're still alive?"

Charlie looked down at her arm, but her wrist was covered once again by her jacket. Lucille must have seen it when she'd had her arms up.

"I guess that makes you Connor," Lucille said with a smile as she looked over at him.

Charlie was suddenly very relieved that Connor had his mother's last name instead of Monroe's.

She knew that she was probably going to have a lot of explaining to do to him, but she didn't see why she had to be the one to tell him about everything. Shouldn't Monroe be responsible for catching his own son up?

She guessed that Monroe didn't want Connor knowing just how bad he had been and now Charlie was left there with him having no clue what was going on and she was responsible for having to figure out how to explain everything to him.


They had made it to Lucille's place a few minutes later when Charlie admitted, "I need your help. With the markings."

"Uh-uh," Lucille said with a shake of her head. "Not yet. First we have a lot of catching up to do. Did you find that uncle of yours?"

The last thing Charlie wanted to do was recap everything that had happened and waste time catching up. She just wanted answers and to leave, but she knew from experience how stubborn Lucille could be and she figured that if the roles were reversed she would want information too.

Connor leaned back in his chair as he decided that this was his best shot, at least at the moment, of actually finding out some of what was going on.

"Yeah, we found Miles," Charlie responded. "It took a little work, but we managed to convince him to help."

"What about your brother? Did you get him back from Monroe?"

That was the first Connor had heard of a brother and his interested only peaked further when he found out that his father had apparently taken him. He shot Charlie a desperate look, hoping to get some kind of answers out of her, but she just kept staring straight at Lucille. It was clear she was making a conscious effort not to look at him and it was making him more than a little annoyed.

"We got Danny back," she answered. "But it didn't matter anyways. We barely got him back before he got shot."

"What about your uncle and the other two?" Lucille asked. "Where are they?"

"Maggie didn't make it to Danny," Charlie told her. "But Miles is fine. Aaron too, last I saw him... Did he ever tell you about his wife before the blackout?"

"Priscilla?"

"Yeah. He found her," she responded as she forced a small smile onto her lips. "And we found my mom. It turns out she wasn't dead."

"Tell me you at least kicked Monroe's ass when you got Danny back," Lucille insisted. "He deserves it after everything he did to your family."

Charlie let out a small laugh at that. She was still being careful not to mention anything about working with Monroe now or Connor being his son. She knew that it would not bode well there.

"Something like that," she responded.

She might not have kicked his ass then, but Miles had. And Monroe had already gotten what was coming to him several times. She'd even kicked his ass a little after he'd escaped from Adam, the bounty hunter, but she decided not to bring any of that up there. She was just hoping to get the conversation done with as soon as possible. She didn't want to have to stay there for any longer than was absolutely necessary.

"What about that branding on your wrist?" Lucille questioned. "There's got to be a good story behind that one."

It was a story that Charlie didn't want to tell, especially when she could feel Connor's eyes burning holes into the side of her head.

She tried to keep it as vague as she could as she answered, "We ran into some kids on our way. One of theirs had gotten taken to a militia training camp. So I went in to get him out."

She shrugged as if it hadn't been a big deal, choosing to voluntarily sign up to become a member of the militia just in the hopes of saving one boy she didn't even know.


A/N: Please read and review! Another giant thanks goes out to Bubbly Girl13 for reviewing last chapter! :)