"There is a body burning in the city. Anything you know about that?" Monroe asks, leaning against the door of the secret passageway, his stance relaxed and his stare cold as he looks at the girl.
Charlie is still curled around herself, her tears drying on her cheeks. Her eyes are red while her face is pale white. She is unarmed, vulnerable, and Monroe knows exactly what she just did. The danger presents itself loud and clear, so her survival instinct kicks in.
She straightens her back, ignores the state of her face and hair and clothes, and faces him head on, shoulders back and head held high. He is the reason she did this, she reminds herself. Monroe is the reason she had to shoot an unarmed and bound man in the back.
She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to forgive him for the actions she had to take in his place. "I know enough," she says, a challenging tone daring him to judge her.
"His name?" Monroe asks, the meaning hidden to any other but oh so clear to her. Her suspicions are proven right again, and she wonders if there is any part of Bass left in Monroe that can come back to the surface. If there is, it is no longer her job to reach him. Charlie's done enough, given the sacrifice, and she will not hand any other part of her over to him when he himself doesn't seem to want to change or revert back to how he used to be. Back to that glimpse of a man she saw beneath the power and the uniform and the insanity.
"No," she says simply, the anger and the fight gone from her. The actions she took today have taken it out of her, the realisation that there is not a thing else she can do, that it might have been for nothing, is not something she knows how to deal with.
She has never felt this helpless.
Charlie brushes past Bass back into the tunnel heading for the city. She'll need to get her crossbow and a bag with provisions before she can get out. The girl is old enough now to survive by herself, knows the right skills to get herself into adulthood until she can actually get a well-paying job. She could probably pass for eighteen in a few months, maybe sooner depending on the employers.
She doesn't need much. Hunting and gathering will get her food, she has enough clothes to last the year, and can trade in meat for new ones. A roof is optional and company is overrated.
She feels Monroe's fingers wrap around her upper arm, holding her back. He and Miles will keep a close eye on her for a while, probably try to prevent her from leaving, but they don't stand a chance. Jeremy will keep it up even longer, but they only have to look away for a minute, and she'll slip into the forest and easily disappear into the chaos of the various cities until they lose her trail.
"Charlotte," he chastises. He frowns when he sees the defeated look on her face. The fire that burned so bright, the passion, the temper, the fury, they're gone. For the first time since they found her by the river, he sees her show her weakness.
When he found her crying just now, she'd recovered admirably quickly and stood up for a fight. Suddenly, it seems like she couldn't care less.
Charlie, beneath the bright fire that is her personality, is an old soul carrying an unnamed burden with nobody to share it with. She has always powered through, but now she no longer seems to have any desire to. The infamous Matheson stubbornness has given up on her, and the sight is unnatural.
Bass suddenly realises that he did something wrong. She was just fine at the start of their four-sentence conversation, but a realisation had tripped her up. Something about him had done that.
He feels guilt without conscious knowledge of where it comes from.
The man lets go of her arm like the touch burns, and watches her walk away.