That evening they were lucky enough to find an abandoned house on the outskirts of a small town; it was too cold for sleeping outside. Aaron and Danny built a fire in the dusty fireplace, while Miles did belabored pushups in the corner. Charlie watched him, blowing on her hands to warm them up. Rachel was outside gathering more wood. Jason sat in the kitchen, making a scraping sound that sounded ominously like he was sharpening his knife.
Miles' face was red, and he was puffing. Charlie had lost count of how many pushups he'd done. Finally, he got up and stretched toward the ceiling.
Charlie questioned him with her eyes, and he came over and sat by her on the couch in front of the fire that was slowly smoking to life.
"Gotta get back in shape, Charlie," he said as a way of answering.
She glanced down at his legs. "Does it hurt?"
Miles was touched and surprised by this young woman. She was a bottomless pit of compassion. He'd never known anyone like her.
"I'll be ok."
"We can slow down - "
"I'll be ok, Charlie," he cut her off briskly but not cruelly. "We have to reach Philly by the end of this week. I need to find out what the resistance is planning, where Monroe is."
"What are we going to do about that? Shouldn't we join forces with the rebels? We have before."
Miles sighed. "Yeah, and look where that got us. You almost died," his voice cracked on the final word. "I'm not sure, Charlie…there's no way the rebels can beat both the Monroe Militia and the Georgians. There will be anarchy…What do you think?"
Charlie widened her eyes in surprise. Aaron and Danny exchanged glances. "You've never asked for my input before," Charlie responded.
"Well I am now. I'm telling you, I don't know what to do."
"Nora…" Charlie began.
"Nora's made up her mind," Miles said tersely.
Rachel had come back inside, her arms laden with white birch braches. "Can we stop the Georgians from coming?" she asked.
Charlie nodded, "And then use the resistance's help to take down Monroe without the outside threat."
Miles thought on this. At the very least, they needed to get the Georgians out of the picture. "Jason," Miles said suddenly.
Jason walked slowly into the room.
Miles said to him, "You have to warn Monroe about the Georgians. There's your in with the militia. You have life-saving intelligence. Tell them you were off…pursuing Charlie and while with her, you got the information. It's the truth, really. Just leave out the part about the pendant this time," he added, glaring.
Charlie objected, "No! It's too dangerous. You said they'd shoot him on sight."
Miles shrugged. "I don't know that."
Jason nodded after a spell. "I'll do it."
Charlie was flooded with inner turmoil. The space of a moment had taken her from pride in her uncle's confidence to emotional devastation at the potential loss of Jason. And this was her life since leaving the village, she thought. The life of adventure she had once so longed for.
The sun had set on their conversation. Miles suggested that they all bed down for the night, until he realized that Rachel was no longer among the party. Perhaps she had gone for more wood. He went out looking for her but didn't have to venture far. She was standing alone in the dark, staring at the trees, her shoulders burdened with some invisible weight.
Miles didn't approach too closely. Something about her demeanor troubled him. "What's wrong, Rachel?" he asked.
Rachel glanced back with tears in her eyes, but she didn't answer.
"Come inside and get some sleep," Miles urged.
"Can't sleep," her voice quavered. And then she almost laughed at herself, at her own dramatic breakdown now beheld by an unwelcome audience.
Miles came closer and put his hand on her shoulder.
"I just can't stop feeling him - Strausser," she almost whispered to him.
Miles let his hand drop to his side. He had suspected that Strausser had raped her, but this confirmation unleashed a tidal wave of bile that almost strangled him. He turned away from her to have a moment, knowing his own wrath was not going to help calm her down.
Finally he said in a low, rumbling voice, "I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance. We confronted him outside of Philly right before we came to get you." He was thinking about the moment when he had helped Mia escape and abandoned the chance to remain behind and clash with Strausser. If he could have stopped that psychopath from hurting Rachel, he'd have risked anything.
Rachel looked into Miles' eyes and saw intense pain and fury. "It was already too late by then, Miles."
"I know, I just…it would have felt good to tear him apart with my own hands!" Miles' dark eyes flashed.
"It did feel good," Rachel said hollowly.
"I guess you deserved to be the one to do it," Miles acceded.
"Miles…How do you live with something like this?" Rachel said, barely moving her lips.
The question startled Miles.
"What?"
"How do you live with it?" she asked pointedly, confirming his fear that she was referring to his own biography.
Miles had never spoken to anyone about the specifics of what he'd endured as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan, outside of confessing he'd shit himself when trying to distract Aaron. He didn't like the idea that people had been guessing. But he supposed that he had alluded to the content of the torture back on that impossibly cold day in Chicago to Rachel, when she had been so desperate to help. God damn, if they weren't bonded to each other now by the sick things humans had done to their bodies. Just a body, he had told himself, but what to tell Rachel to heal her brokenness? There was no remedy for the pain, only time.
Miles stared off silently for a long time, and Rachel feared she had pushed him too far, gotten too personal.
Finally he said, "I haven't slept one night since then without dreaming some version of those four months…except for on some of the nights I spent with Nora."
"So you're telling me sleeping with someone with erase the memory?" Rachel wiped her nose with a frozen hand.
"No, I'm telling you that being with someone I loved helped me to sleep some nights some of the time."
"Loved. Do you still…love her?"
The question seared Miles. Yes, he did love Nora. He couldn't explain this strange development in his life - loving two women at once, well, being cognizant of loving two women at once. One seemed so similar to him that she was almost an extension of his body, and the other standing before him remained so much a mystery, although he had known her far longer. In the marine corps, he thought the mystique that had surrounded women when he was a teenager had fallen away. He'd trained with woman, fought with them. They had done all the things he had had to: eat on command, crap on command, part with friends, dig body parts out of rubble. But this woman, this scientist, he'd never cracked.
Miles decided to answer: "Nora will always have a piece of me. But the life I had with her, I blew. And now she's off…" he shuddered. "I thought I got a second chance, but it was more like a ghost of the past. We've moved in different directions. I can't support the resistance. I can't be involved with the rise of a new power. I can't be involved with any power anymore. It's not safe. For anyone. I have to help take down Monroe, and then I have to leave."
Rachel cocked her head slightly at him. "Or a general like you is exactly what we need, just with a civilian power to dominate the military. Such is democracy. Bass as your government…was that the real problem?"
Miles shook his head. "Stop."
"I'm serious, Miles. You're not like him. You're not like Ben either. Leading comes as naturally as breathing to you. I believe that you tried to do what was best. I believe that now. I wasn't sure before."
"Why are you sure now?" Miles asked miserably. I'm not even sure, he added to himself.
Rachel walked over and tucked herself into his arms. Miles allowed himself to embrace her in his utter bewilderment at her unexpected approach.
"I don't know. Seeing Charlie trust you…despite everything she knows. I trust Charlie, and so I trust you," Rachel explained.
Miles shook his head. "She should lead then," he mumbled into Rachel's hair. Once he'd said it, he realized that he believed it. He kissed the crown of Rachel's head. After all this time, he simply couldn't help himself.