Six Months after the Blackout
Gen sat on a dried log beside the fire that she had put together, her back was straight and her eyes blankly stared out into the dusky distance beyond the cluster of trees.
"What's wrong with her?" Jeremy Baker asked, combing his disheveled hair with his fingers, and motioning to Gen, while holding a damp cloth to his black eye.
Miles crouched beside him and wistfully threw his gaze at his little sister's profile. It wasn't the Blackout that corroded her soul. It wasn't what left her groping in a dark, muddy foxhole in the middle of a wasteland. He distantly recalled random images of watching her run around the yard of their family home barefooted in the prime of every girl's pigtail phase, trying to catch butterflies in her cupped hands. Years later where he had once seen a fresh second lieutenant standing, rested and ready to face the big bad world, there now sat a jaded young woman scarred by the cruelty of war.
Even when he had gone to pick her up at the airport after her long two-year tour he knew she had changed. Her short, slow strides down the waxed tiles of the airport halls were the heavy footfalls of a defeated idealist and the minute smile she plastered on her face told him that she had little to no innocence left to give to the world nor to keep for herself.
Three Years before the Blackout
"Would you relax?" Bass groaned in annoyance, elbowing his best friend's side. "She'll come when she comes. You don't have to be so damn jumpy."
"I'm not jumpy," Miles resentfully justified, his hands forming a tight fist in the front pockets of his jeans.
Two years, he thought. It had been two years since he had seen his little sister face to face.
She used to call occasionally when her squad would be in range of the telephone poles; her conversations were always brief and general.
How's Ben…Bass…?
The works.
As the months wore on, phone calls were shorter and came less frequently. There were more empty gaps and a shorter amount of time for Miles to think about filling them up. But when she had called Bass, and not him, a few weeks back with the news that she was heading home to the States, Miles thought it would be the right time to get the wheels back on the tracks of normalcy.
He saw her emerge from the parting crowd of hugs, kisses, and tears at the Hilton Head Airport. Gen's face showed more disillusionment than joy and, when she dragged her suitcase to a stop in front of them, she held out a hand, ignoring—or not noticing—the way her brother's arms were outstretched for a hug.
"Hey, Miles," was her simple greeting. "Bass." She nodded to the man standing beside him who was just as perplexed at her change of character.
At first, Miles figured it was shell-shock. It had happened to Bass after the two tours that left him ragged and suicidal. A part of him believed that what happened to his best friend would never happen to his sister. Miles genuinely believed that Gen would never decay and waste away. But Gen was so different to Bass that she was practically the same.
"He's dying!" She wailed from her room one afternoon in the months since she returned home.
Once he heard her cry, Miles who was relaxing in the front of the TV in the living room with cold beers and a collection of Denzel Washington movies, sprinted to see what had her near hysteria. When he flung the door open he saw Gen curled on the ground under the window, where the rays of sunlight danced, with her potted aloe vera. Its meaty stalks were no longer a healthy green but a sickly shade of pink. The stems that once had promising little flower buds were now dried and shriveled, standing aloofly between the groupings.
Her once spotlessly clean room was now trashed with empty bottles and clothing strewn everywhere except the closet.
"Elwood's dying." She repeated, her fingers shaking as she pulled the pot closer near her heaving chest, tears rolling off her high cheekbone like stinging pellets against the sensitive red skin and splattering on the hardwood floor.
It took every ounce of courage Miles could muster within himself to approach his baby sister. The post-traumatic stress was tearing her apart, taking large chunks at a time with no mercy.
"It's just a plant, Genny," He soothed, carefully sitting next to her and rubbing awkward circles on her shoulder for a few seconds before stopping in embarrassment.
"He's not just a plant, Miles," she hiccuped, her body loosening as she sprawled out on her stomach, craning her neck to stare up at his face. "He's not supposed to die. Why does everything I touch die?"
Miles took her balled up hand, opened her cold fingers and placed it on his stubble cheek.
"I'm not going to die, Gen." His heart hurt to see her like this. "I promise I will never leave you."
It was a promise that was easy for him to owe her. He found that it wasn't so much that'd he'd leave her but rather if she would be willing to come with him and damn herself to his purgatory.
Six Months after the Blackout
Miles wished he could have stopped her from taking that loaded Army carrier overseas. He wished that he could have tried a little harder to talk her out of it because she had PTSD written all over her face ever since.
And her eyes—Miles mentally braced himself as he remembered—her eyes told him stories that he wished she didn't see. He couldn't see what she had seen, but he could tell that she saw.
"Just don't touch her," He advised in a low voice to Baker, getting to his feet.
"Hey, look, man," Jeremy began nervously, trying to explain that he didn't have any intention of trying to mess around with her after what he saw Miles do to the man who had beat him up.
"I'm not the one you should be afraid of," Miles broke off, dragging his stare off his sister and looking down to the blond man. "She's the one you should look out for. I tried seeing if she was alright once. It wasn't pretty." he blew a decreasing whistle while twirling a finger into a downward spiral. "Ask Bass, she near went nuts."
"She near went nuts," Bass repeated unenthusiastically, equally concerned about Gen's sudden state. He could see pain radiating off of her aura because that had been him a few years ago.
He wouldn't be able to sleep and when he did manage to all he'd see behind closed eyes were blood-curdling nightmares and flashbacks.
Two Years before the Blackout
"Hey," Gen called out softly, shutting her car door and hiking up a small incline with long strides to where Sebastian sat in front of his family's gravestones. She squirmed comfortably on the loose dirt beside him and crossed her ankles, looking out over the field-patched farmland across the street from where they sat. "Visiting the folks, huh? I do that too sometimes." There was a long pause. "I'm racking my mind trying to think of sometime to say to you."
"You don't have to say anything," He assured, his words slightly slurred. "Just tell me that every thing's going to be okay."
Gen's forehead tensed, and her mouth spontaneously opened to thoughtlessly spew out the beautiful lie that he requested, but she caught herself before the innocent words could escape.
"Honey, I can't promise you that. If I did then shoot me now, I don't deserve to be any friend of yours. Bass," She placed a hand on his damp cheek to look at his face. "you don't need anything I can offer you. All I ask is that you let me in and let me love you 'cause…" Gen's words faltered and she bit the inside of her bottom lip to keep herself from sputtering and coughing like an engine until she died out altogether. "'cause Miles needs you alive. I need you. Now I know sleepless nights and—and that feeling of being one step behind the world. Just let me help you." She pleaded, tugging at her dry lips with her teeth and dropping her hand down to the grass between them.
Through her heartfelt monologue, Bass studied her every move. His eyes ran down her tired posture then back up to her face. There was no subliminal intent or idle fillers that lingered to sugar coat anything. She was a woman with clear substance. The subject of her truth was never what a person wanted to hear but rather what she knew they had to know about themselves.
"Here," she handed him a bottle of whiskey that she had brought with her. "something stronger to run ourselves into the ground with." Genevieve leaned her jaw against her knuckles, painfully watching as he took a long swig. "You know, some people take medication."
"Do you, Gen?" He questioned, putting the bottle on his lap. "'Cause Iraq didn't leave you squeaky clean either."
"Whiskey's my poison of choice," She admitted inaudibly, taking the cold bottle that she had bought less than ten minutes ago from a local liquor store, allowing the chilled liquid to flow down her throat.
"You said 'ourselves.'" Bass looked over at her in surprise. "As in the both of us running it to the ground."
"Personally, I wouldn't mind it. Both of us, I mean." Gen replied with a half-hearted shrug, unaware of the fact that he was looking at her like she had just given him the entire world without a second thought. "Bass, give me the gun."
"I wasn't-I wasn't going to use it."
"That's exactly what I said to Miles two weeks ago." Gen shifted on her knees to sit directly in front of him, blocking his eyes from the sight of the headstones with the names of his parents and sisters. "But you and I both know that's a lie."
Gen always fell fast, fast and hard, because the first time he made her smile, something went off inside her heart that she wasn't ready for at all. She wasn't supposed to care about her brother's friends and suddenly she did. She always tried to find ways to make him happier than she wasn't. She'd be the first person he'd see through a hangover the morning after a big, blacked-out party. She'd be sitting in the kitchen reading her old copy of Huck Finn with a steaming cup of hot coffee waiting for him when he would finally stumble in beside her, his bed-head making him look more and more attractive then she let him down for. In the end, it was an exhilarating free fall and a hard landing, and terrifying, but when she thought about Bass, she found no room inside to be afraid.
Sebastian falls so slowly that he doesn't realize he's falling at all. He loved women. All kinds of women. They didn't have to be anything but good-looking for him to instantly make a move at them. But he never gave enough of a damn for all those women to love them in a legitimate way. All through high school one eye would be on the cheerleaders and the other would be on Gen. It wasn't for any particular reason. She was his best friend's sister. He felt an obligation to push her out of the way of horny douche-bags who would say and do anything to get her in bed with them. As they grew up, he found himself going out of his way to make her smile, because every time she did, his heart felt like it might explode. He may have slept around more times than he could count but she never seemed to realize it even if she did know better than anyone what he did. There was always that distance of unspoken, mutual fears between them, something only they could understand together. And when they finally found a way to be together in the back seat of her car that night, he realized how far in love he already was. For Bass, the fall was slow. The landing was soft, and warm, and felt a lot like Gen wrapped in his arms.
Six Months after the Blackout
"Did she get dropped on her head one too many times as a kid?" Jeremy smirked harmlessly but was stared down by a glare from Bass and an unamused scowl from Miles. "I'll stop."
"What'd you do, Blondie?" Gen suddenly turned, laughing warmly, unaware of her long silence which held her brother on edge. "I haven't seen Miles look like that since I told him I lost my virginity in a public bathroom."
The look on Miles' face was a clear sign that he obviously didn't find her pining funny. But Bass stood behind them trying to suppress the pulsating excitement that sparked his memories.
"I'm joking," Gen cracked a wide grin. "it was in a cemetery."
"Well," Jeremy looked between the two siblings, putting his lips together and nodding in overly exaggerated approval. "that escalated quickly."
"Let's head out," Miles grimly shouldered his pack and kicked a pile of dirt onto the fire pit with the side of his boot. "If you're feeling as good as your mouth suggests you are," He stuck a threatening finger at Jeremy. "then get your stuff and keep up. We don't sympathize with stragglers."
"Whoa, Mr. Chuckles is coming too?" Gen exclaimed, casting an incredulous look first at Bass then at Miles.
"Yeah, so?" Her brother coolly dismissed, not seeing the big deal. "Power by numbers."
"I think you mean 'murder by numbers,' Miles. This guy is going to make me go stark-raving mad."
"Too late for that," Miles muttered under his breath, heading back on the empty road to Chicago.
Six Years after the Blackout
Gen adjusted her potted plant in front of the large window that overlooked the rooftops of Philadelphia. It had been three months since the night of the failed assassination and she knew that the best thing for her to do was to stay low and under the radar so no one would have a reason to pin anything on her. There was a knock on her door followed by the latch opening and a pair of boots stepping into the stone tiled bedroom.
"Miss Matheson," A soft voice inquired.
Gen turned to see one of Bass's top-ranking officers standing in the middle of her room, nervously fidgeting with the bill of his hat in his hands.
"What?" She snapped, not enjoying being interrupted by anyone other than Sebastian Monroe himself.
"Ma'am, I—"
"What's your name, Major?" Gen cut in rudely. She knew the guy by face but never cared enough to look down at the name tag that rested over his chest.
"I'm—I'm Major Fredrick Plummely, ma'am."
"Well, what do you want, Major Plummely?"
"As I was saying, ma'am," He came several steps closer to her, his voice lowered to a whisper. "we know that your brother was behind the attempt to assassinate General Monroe."
"Yeah, what else?" She rolled her eyes. "Did you also come here to tell me that wood comes from trees and music from a unicorn's ass?"
"What's a unicorn, ma'am?" He stammered but quickly went on when she glared. "To be entirely direct, I wanted to finish the job your brother started. Miles Matheson was my inspiration to stand up to the dictatorship that Monroe is leading."
"What are you going to do about it?" Gen put stressed emphasis on the 'you' with boredom.
"Not me alone, ma'am. Since you are close to Monroe all I ask is that you aid me." He stood up straighter, gaining more confidence as he went on and noticed her body language loosen up.
"How does this benefit me in any way, Major?" She questioned causally gliding toward the head of her bed, watching him stutter and search for a logically answer. "What would I gain from helping you kill him?"
"Well, nothing, ma'am." He finally admitted hesitantly. "But-"
"Do you have any idea what Sebastian Monroe will do to the both of us if he finds out that we've been conspiring against him?" Gen asked, her eyes showing more interest. She smoothly slid her hand under her pillow, wrapping her fingers around the loaded gun.
"He wouldn't do anything to you," Plummely sneered without the timid mask he wore, drawing his pistol out and aiming it at her. "Now I can tell Monroe that he can't trust anyone in this place. Not even his whore."
Gen stared at him, concentrating on following any movement that would lead to him emptying a round into her body. "That wasn't very nice."
She pulled the trigger on her own gun, the sound was silenced through the pillow and the bullet ripped through the fabric as Plummely started firing off rounds in her direction. Gen ducked to the floor, and crawled under the bed frame to shoot at his ankles.
With a loud thump, Plummely was holding his wounds on the floorboards, cursing and shooting random bullets into the historic walls, shattering pictures and fracturing plaster. Gen slid out when she heard the clicking of the empty hammer. She kicked the pistol out of his hand, and shot the main arteries in his legs before taking out his arms.
"That was your ticket to a long trip down to hell." She spat above his head, blood splattering across her face as she used her last bullet to break through his skull.
***Revolution***
Sebastian leaned comfortably back in his chair, a finger tracing the outline of his amused smirk. He watched her lash out, her eyes bright with pent up anger and her body rigid as she braced herself against his well-polished desk, leaning forward to lock eyes with him. Even after decades of growing accustomed to her rage, Sebastian still found himself pleasantly aroused at her display of unfiltered emotion.
"That prick almost started a firefight in my room and blew a bullet hole through my only copy of Huck Finn! What are you going to do about it?" Gen demanded, leaving a dull mark in the wood polish with her oval fingernail.
"Hmm?" He raised his eyebrows, wordlessly implying that he hadn't paid attention and that she should repeat what she had said.
"Please, don't listen to a word I say," She threw her hands up sardonically, unabashedly walking back to the door. "All these screams sound the same to you."
"Darling," Bass stood, chuckling. "Darling, come back."
Gen stopped, her entire body was tense with frustration. With a huff, she gathered all her self-respect and dignity to brace her for the sight she'd see when she turned around. Bass stood beside his desk, one hand in his pocket and his tall, muscular figure blocking out the bright sunlight that streamed in from the window behind him.
"This better be good," She stood close enough to have to look up to meet his gaze.
"I'll get you another copy of Huck Finn." His breath caressed the lock of hair against her forehead that had come loose.
"Thank you," Gen's voice curved upward, expecting him to say more.
"What else do you want?" He inquired, knowing quite well that anything she wanted would be hers the moment the request left her mouth.
She pursed her lips, deep in thought, inhaling through her nose before relaxing again, leaning against his chest and whispering,
"I can't think of anything off the top of my head."
"How about I give you an inch and take you a mile?" He suggested, pressing his palm against the small of her back, bringing her close.
"Ah," Gen stopped him from continuing, holding a finger to his lips. "You know I was born in Germany. That 'American thighs' line still won't work."
"German women are hot too." He put in, noticing a brief fire light in her eyes then fade away as fast as it came.
""Why'd Plummely feed me that story about trying to kill you anyway?"
"I wanted to see if you'd kill him for it or not."
"Why Plummely?"
"I didn't trust Plummely," He riled with disgust. "He was...unsettling. So I sent him to you, telling him to get you to buy to see where your loyalties lie."
"Well, now you know. And next time you need me to kill someone give me a head's up, alright, Bass? I don't like surprises. I especially don't like little mice knocking on my door in the middle of the day and blowing the holy hell out of poor Huck."
"I'll get right on that, Gen," He took a step back to focus more clearly on her face. "But you have to do something for me first."
Gen scoffed. Nowadays with Bass the tables would always turn back around on her, and because she pretended to bend to his every whim and fancy to get an upper hand, she nodded and said, "I like a challenge."
"We've got new recruits coming in from the ships off the port down in Baltimore. You wanna welcome them with all your womanly charm?"
"Does this mean I get to shoot one of them?" Her mischievous smile reached her eyes. Sebastian lowered his face close to hers, briefly closing the space between them with a short kiss.
"If that's what you want to do, then yes." He whispered in a low, raspy voice.
***Revolution***
"Let me guess," Jeremy Baker started with a smirk when Gen found him leaning against the brick wall as the new recruits stood at attention in the loading dock as soon as they came out of the ships.
"Give me your gun, Baker," She ordered abruptly, frowning when he mocked a pout obviously trying to ruffle her feathers. When Gen unrelentingly stood firm in front of him. Baker cast a hesitant glance at Monroe who was watching the entire exchange from where he stood a few feet away and nodded slightly in approval.
"Fine," The blond-haired man groaned sarcastically while begrudgingly snapping the button on his holster open and putting his gun in her outstretched hand. "You know, you could have let me guess."
Gen snatched the .44 Magnum from his hand and slowly walked down the ranks while other uniformed officers and non-coms watched her in silent anticipation.
"Hey," She stopped to grab a young boy, not even nineteen years old, by his shirt front. "you don't look at me! You look ahead, soldier. Eyeball me again and I'll rip your spine out through your mouth."
She walked backwards until she could see the entire line of young men in clean uniforms. "You want to hate me?" Her voice rose so that every single person standing around her could hear. "Good. Now you and the guy next to you have something in common." She started pacing, keeping her eyes glued to the ranks. "Take a good look, boys, 'cause they're all you got after this. Wipe mama's milk off your mouth and buck up. I know you don't give a damn about me, that's why I wouldn't go against the rebels with you. But when your buddy goes down on the field because you didn't have his back I assure you that it will weigh on your conscience. Take it from someone who's been across that bridge.
"I bet you're thinking 'This bitch's gotta plug herself for a week every month. What the hell does she know about loss?' What I know is that you don't know shit about loss. Because loss isn't losing. Loss is the guilt of not being strong enough to save someone. And true loss can only occur when you love someone more than you love yourself. So don't fight 'cause I'm telling you to. Fight because you have to keep the man next to you alive."
Gen wasn't on the same terms with the words she spoke.
She was losing the game.
She lost her parents, Ben, Miles, and everyday she could see the humanity in Sebastian Monroe's eyes get dimmer and dimmer.
And the only way for her to suppress that loss was to drown in her own poisons.
That night as she curled up in the faded wing chair beside a fat candle with the dog-eared copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that she had found on the foot of her bed tied in a red ribbon with a note from Monroe, Gen heard her door open followed by a single pair of footsteps approach where she sat.
"I never understood why you liked this book so much," Sebastian's voice got closer when he leaned against the back rest of the chair, looking down over her shoulder.
Gen didn't bother looking up at him. "Same reason you've kept me around for so long, Bass,"
"And why is that?" He inquired smoothly, resting his chin against the fabric lining.
"I don't know, why have you?" She questioned with equal curiosity adding a hint of exasperation.
Bass came around to standing in front of her with heavy footfalls. His eyes were so intently piercing through her body that Gen forgot what it felt like to breath for a moment. "Why have I kept you around, Gen? 'Cause I don't trust anyone else."
She pushed her body out of the chair with the leg she had folded underneath her and took his hand, entwining her fingers through his, never breaking eye contact. "I hope you mean that. What Miles did-"
"Shhh," Bass brought his free hand around her throat, his fingers gliding up to brush against her lips, his eyes still intensely concentrated on what he sensed. "We buried that hatchet."
First, there is desire!
Then...passion!
Then suspicion!
Jealousy, Angry, Betrayal!
When love is for the higher bidder, there is no trust.
Without trust, there is no love!*
Her breath hitched, feeling the sexual intensity mount to a new high in such little time. Sebastian pried himself away from her and, with a knowing, devilish grin, walked out of the room and down the hallway, leaving her feeling her fingertips in wordless fury.
*El Tango de Roxanne-Moulin Rouge