Charlie and Bass had been sitting alone in silence for several dragged out minutes. He had been sitting trapped in his thoughts while she bit down on her bottom lip and glanced over at him every minute or two until finally she could no longer keep the question weighing on her mind from escaping her lips. "So what was it like in your dream world?"
He glanced up at her, half-glaring in her direction, as he asked, "What exactly are you looking for with that question, Charlotte?"
She glared back at him, refusing to let him intimidate her into dropping the subject. Obviously he wasn't as annoyed with her as he liked to pretend if he had dreamed that they were living together, even if it was just because she was the least repulsive option around.
"I want to know what you thought happened," she insisted.
"It's not like it was just a few days to me," he told her gruffly. "It's like a whole alternate set of memories that I'm not going to sit around and describe to you."
"Fine. Then tell me about one day," she persisted. "Tell me what happened the last day before you woke up and I'll stop asking you."
He considered for a moment and Charlie had become convinced that he wasn't going to tell her anything by the time that he finally opened his mouth, with his gaze studying the bark on a nearby tree rather than looking over at her, as he told her, "It was my birthday and I woke up to the smell of your failed attempt at breakfast trying to burn the whole building down while you were completely oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong. You were too busy dancing around, picking out clothes, and you wondered why I was getting up to go try to prevent a fire."
Curiosity took over then and Charlie already felt the need to interrupt as she asked, "Did I dress different?"
Her bets were that in an electrical world in his mind she probably wore something different, but she wasn't certain she wanted to know what his fantasy world had her dressed in. Still, she had to ask.
"Not really. Mostly your clothes were just a hell of a lot cleaner," he responded. He explained their breakfast situation, mostly skimming over the parts that she already knew about, before he told her, "And we're just going to skip straight to showing up at the completely obvious surprise party-"
"Why?" She interrupted, suddenly intrigued by what he might be trying to leave out. If he was already explaining that much, then what could he possibly be trying to dodge telling her about?
He looked up to find that she was wearing one of her most stubborn expressions, so he looked her dead in the eyes and responded, "Because I'm not explaining how shower sex works to you."
He had to give her credit. She didn't even flinch at that, at least not that he could notice.
Charlie was surprised when she found out about all of the people who were alive and well in his dream and her heart wrenched at the mention of Danny and her father and Nora, who Bass insisted he had always liked better with Miles anyways. She also couldn't help but notice the mention that Emma was alive in the world and so was Duncan, who had apparently attended his imaginary birthday party, despite his comment the day before about how it being her that he was in the dream with meant nothing and that it probably would have been Duncan he was with if they'd been in New Vegas when he had been taken over.
"...And Connor somehow psychically figured out that you were pregnant, even though you hadn't told anyone."
"Hold on a second. I was pregnant?" For someone who had been doing such a good job at not reacting or letting her surprise show, that sure got to her.
"Is it really that hard to believe that, in a world where raising a kid or even giving birth to one isn't a huge risk, I'd want another one?" He muttered out defensively.
"I guess not," she responded, although her words didn't come out sounding overly convincing.
He moved to brush some dirt off of the knees of his jeans, as if that section somehow bothered him more than any of the other dirt on him, then commented, "And that was basically it other than my sister bugging me some more about proposing while you were off with Danny. And then I woke up."
He rose to his feet, as if getting up would somehow end the conversation and erase it from having happened, but she remained seated on her over-sized rock and after a long silence finally commented, "I probably wouldn't have wanted to wake up either."
He glanced over at her, but her features were guarded as she too rose to her feet to go back to the wagon before he had the chance to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean.
Did she just want a world without a blackout or one with rest of her family back? Had she meant that she would want to live in a dream world that the nanites had constructed for her specifically? Or just maybe did she mean that she wouldn't have minded living in his?
A/N: Please read and review! Another gigantic thanks goes out to IceonFire7, banneg, and ceryssiltren for reviewing last chapter! :D
