AN: I had a really difficult time with this chapter, so I've decided to split it into two parts (thus, sorry, but you'll have to wait for Miles' guitar-playing in the second part). I've waited this long for a Rachel POV chapter because I find her complicated and it's difficult to follow her shifting emotions. I hope I've done it justice.

Disclaimer: Revolution still doesn't belong to me, and neither do its characters (and in the case of Rachel Matheson, I'm actually thankful for that fact).

Radiator

It's strange, sitting in this opulent room in this opulent house, and knowing that she can leave at any time. Rachel Matheson runs a hand over the ornate bedspread, tracing its swirls of gold thread over the deep burgundy background. Danny and Charlie are next door, just one room over, and she can step over there and see her children whenever she likes.

And yet she's sitting here, staring at the logs in the burned-out fireplace, as her fingernails catch on the silk threads of the bedspread and the cold starts to seep through her shirt.

She hasn't left Philadelphia for eight years, and in an odd way, she feels…displaced. Her own children barely know her, Aaron looks at her like she's a ghost, and Miles - Miles seems to be avoiding looking at her at all.

Miles. His presence on this trip has to be Charlie's doing. How Charlie had located him, Rachel has no idea, but Charlie Matheson is irresistibly persuasive; once she'd found Miles, it would have been no large task for her to convince her guilt-ridden uncle to accompany her on her rescue mission. That Miles has stuck around this long after the rescue is the bigger surprise.

When Charlie had first mentioned "Uncle Miles," Rachel's heart had lurched and her stomach had twisted with dread. The Miles she'd known eight years ago had been as bad and sometimes even worse than Bass.

But this Miles - Charlie's Miles - had brought her daughter safely halfway across the country, straight to the place he'd least wanted to go in the world, and put his life on the line more than once to rescue her family.

And what really, truly frightens her is that this Miles, she could almost mistake for the Miles who'd lain next to her half a lifetime ago, warming her cold hands on his bare chest, chuckling in the darkness as she'd traced the swirling tattoos covering his upper arms -

Her fingers pause in their trace of the bedspread, and she stands, crossing the room to the window.

The lights on the wall outside flicker, casting shifting pools of illumination on the wall stones, and Rachel leans her head against the cool glass, slowing her breathing, trying to dispel the absurd surge of…what is this?

When she'd heard her name back in the power plant, in his voice, it had finally crashed down into her awareness that she'd actually been waiting for him to come back for her.

For eight years.

And then she'd turned, and there he was, and she'd been so suddenly angry that it had taken him this damn long to come back that she'd slapped him hard enough to leave a mark.

She's not sure if it's hours or minutes later - she's learned to let days wash over her this way, retreated inside the quiet of her own head - but suddenly, there's an interrupting knock at the door. Her stomach tenses and she waits for the door to open of its own accord. Then she remembers that she actually has to give permission.

She can't quite find her voice, so she leans back from the window pane, walks to the door, and opens it.

It's Miles.

He barely meets her eyes, his gaze brushing across hers too fast to get caught. Nevertheless, she catches the familiar blend of self-loathing and apology in his brown eyes as he mumbles, "Jeez, Rachel; it's freezing in here." He brushes past her, and eight more years of miles traveled and battle scars accrued have only served to make his frame leaner, his muscles harder. If anything, he actually looks younger…everywhere except his eyes.

He crouches to light the fire in the fireplace, turning his back to her and bending his head forward over the kindling as he pulls a flint from a slot cut in the fireplace bricks and strikes the first sparks. As he works, Rachel lets her eyes travel from Miles' close-cropped brown hair down the back of his neck to the collar of his jacket. It's not a Militia-issue jacket, but it's a close enough cut to call up a host of old memories. She takes a breath to quell them.

Miles, greeting her at the entrance to the Militia stable yard five miles outside Philly, looking so somber in response to her smile.

Miles, two weeks later, shouting at Bass while the door swings shut behind her as she's ushered out by two soldiers.

Miles, standing silhouetted against her doorway, guilt dripping from his slumped frame, telling her that they can't let her leave, that she knows too much, that the only way to protect Danny and Charlotte from Bass is for her to stay there…

The fire pops and roars to life, and Miles stands, pushing off his knees, and turns to face Rachel. The swords at his sides clink, and Rachel suddenly realizes he's wearing two sword belts - his and Bass's. Bass's black leather belt hangs crosswise over the surcingle buckle of Miles' wider belt, and the swords, apart from their sheathes, are nearly identical pairs.

Like their owners.

And as glad as she'd been to see him in the power plant, it's this, as always, that gives her pause: Miles has always been just a narrow half-step away from being Bass - it had happened once, and no matter how much he's changed over the last eight years, that potential is always there. Twenty years ago, she'd thought she could handle that - that she could play with that kind of bottled power and keep it under control.

Then her research had created a machine that she'd unintentionally unleashed on a helpless world. And the fallout from her affair with Miles had shaped the General who'd crushed that world beneath his boots.

Miles catches her looking at the belts and meets her eyes almost by accident. Rachel turns her gaze deliberately to the carpet. Then, she speaks, softly - she's learned to do this around dangerous men, to keep her voice low enough not to register as a threat, soft enough to seem comforting and helpful: "Why, Miles?"

Miles snorts, putting his hands on his hips and looking at the floor as he shakes his head. "Getting that question a lot lately."

Rachel feels her face morph into a frown, but she can't help it. "Seriously, Miles - why come back now? It's been eight years. Eight."

"Yeah, well…" He sighs, ruffling a hand through the back of his hair. "Ask your damn kid." He squares his shoulders a little and looks up, settling his eyes on hers for the first time. "I didn't come here to talk about that, Rachel. You told Bass something on that wagon ride. What did you say?"

And there it is: he sounds just like Bass again. They are just like each other, with their questions and their demands, not caring at all what kind of hell she's been through. She may be looking at Miles, but it's Bass she hears speaking: "You know something about the power, Rachel. What is it? What were you and Ben working on?"

She feels a now-familiar rush of anger - good to know that Miles' ability to make her instantly angry hasn't changed in the last twenty years - and it makes her snap back at him. "Go screw yourself, Miles." She turns her back -

- and feels his hand close around her wrist, hard. In one jerk, he spins her back around to face him, and he's suddenly standing so close that she can smell the horsehair and gunshot residue still clinging to his coat, and underneath that...

Against her own judgment, she breathes in. Wet wool and whiskey. Campfire and horse sweat and leather. Miles. A groan builds between her chest and throat, but she swallows it back, listening to her heartbeat hammer in her ears. He smells different than he had before the Blackout - or maybe he'd always smelled like this, under the aftershave, and if so, it's the first time she's appreciated the results of worldwide power suppression - but it still sends a jolt straight through to her stomach.

Then the tendons in her wrist throb and contract, sending a vicious spike of pain up Rachel's arm that gives her something to latch onto besides the dizzying smell of whiskey and fire smoke. Miles is staring at her through hard, glittering eyes, and her wrist is hurting badly enough that her own eyes well with tears, but she wills them away, along with any attached emotions. Too much has happened in twenty years. Instead, she looks, very slowly, at Miles' grip on her wrist, then up to his face.

"You have changed," she murmurs. She pauses, watching the hardness in his eyes falter for just a second.

His grip on her wrist loosens, and she knows - knows - that even now, twenty years late, if she says the right thing, if she plays this moment right, they'll end up on the bed behind her. And she wants that so badly that she can feel the overwhelming terror of it in her bones.

So she opens her mouth…and says the one thing she knows will send him running. "Now, you're exactly like him."

Miles recoils as if burned, dropping her wrist - glancing with a rush of guilt in his eyes at the red marks left by his fingers - and turns so fast to leave that his coat flares out behind him. He's out the door before Rachel moves from her spot.

And though the fire he'd built is still roaring, the room is colder when he goes.