A/N Thank you guys for all the encouraging words, this Fandom remains my favourite. Enjoy!
Charlie takes to Philly like a fish takes to water. She's a bright child, much like her genius parents, though far less scientific. She's hardly a social butterfly, but she isn't shy either, which helps her make her way into groups of friends that are a decade old.
Still, she chooses to spend most of her time either alone or with her uncle, and by association, with Bass. The men share a suite, one sitting room and two bedrooms, mostly for security purposes, but also because they don't know any better. It's a reassurance to know that they have the other near, to know that at least somebody from Before is still around alive and safe.
Charlie spends her nights on the pull-out couch, a nifty invention that's actually present for no reason at all. They've never had visitors in their rooms, Independence Hall largely unused and therefor always guest rooms aplenty. She seems to enjoy it, and hasn't complained once. It's the easiest parenting Miles will ever be privy to.
It's strange to have a child around. Charlie is not difficult at all, and often roams the city without any regard for Miles' increasing stress-levels. She sneaks out, armed with her crossbow, exploring for hours. Nobody knows who she is exactly, and Philly is relatively safe, especially compared to the woods behind the several towns she's lived.
Her uncle sets her one rule, and that is a curfew. He threatens to send every soldier in the city after her if she isn't home in time, and he is surprised that Charlie hasn't even tried to break it in the week she's been with him. His niece seems half-surprised that he cares enough to want her home, but still mostly respects and trust her enough to leave her unsupervised.
Miles is not a parent, he has no patience or skill with children, and never has. Charlie loves him so much that it makes him sick to his stomach, convinced that he doesn't deserve the bright smile she throws him.
Bass, who raised his two baby sisters while his parents were at work, who used to hold babies confidently (before he lost his own), and who prefers talking to the children of high-ranked officers over said officers during mandatory parties, can't seem to win Charlie over at all.
Miles' niece snorts and smirks, glares and scowls and mocks the president, but doesn't seem to be in any hurry to start liking him. So Bass throws his usual charms out of the window and gives back as good as he can. It's an endless source of amusement for his best friend, who watches from his chair with a bottle of whiskey and a grin almost permanently etched on his features.
Charlie meets every challenge head-on. In her first days she's shot arrows at every suggested target, and practices if she doesn't do so perfectly. She climbs the fences meant to keep her in, attends training exercises with soldiers twice her height and trice her weight, eavesdrops on meetings and tries to snoop her way through reports and files that she has no business seeing.
Miles is content to let her do it, doesn't exactly see the problem. Or he simply knows that punishing her isn't going to help. Bass hasn't learned that particular lesson yet, and spends his free hours thinking up suitable chores for a twelve-year-old Matheson.
His attempts are less than successful. Endurance training was his first choice, and resulted in Charlie waking him and Miles every day at five thirty to attend even when she only had to go once. Helping in the Archery was a good one, until he learned from her minder that she'd enjoyed learning how to make arrows and would be coming back every Tuesday after training. Breakfast and Dinner Duty were a disaster. Whomever had left the girl in charge of the meals had overestimated her ability to cook. A good eighteen people had gone to the infirmary with food poisoning.
Charlie had caused quite a wreckage in only a week, and Bass shudders when he thinks of her upcoming teenage years, though he holds a faint hope that growing up will decrease the amount of stunts. Optimism isn't really his strong suit. He remembers all too well what he and Miles had gotten up to at that age, and they'd wasted hours of marauding behind the television and their computers.
"Miles!" they both hear from the sitting room, Charlie storming into the suite just after her voice reaches them, skidding to a halt in front of her uncle, entirely ignoring Bass as she usually does. "Guess what," she grins, jumping up on the arm rest and planting her feet in her uncle's lap, resting against his side, his arm keeping her balanced on her perch.
"What?" Miles grunts, his brow raised and putting his glass down on the side table before the expensive liquid spills. They aren't in the best of moods; a War Clan near the western border has intercepted a shipment from California, and of the fifty soldiers they started with, half hasn't made it home, though they did retrieve the stolen goods and wiped out the perpetrators.
"I finished the barbed wire obstacle first," she tells him proudly, glancing at Bass to make sure he got the message as well before she continues. It's not all that surprising, Charlie can crawl beneath the wire where the others have to keep their chest on the ground or get stuck. Still, the feat is not entirely achieved without skill.
"Apparently," Bass interrupts before Miles can respond, "We need to up standard training again," he says with a significant look at Miles, who is unofficially in charge of the Military on goings of the Monroe Republic.
"On it," Miles says, nudging Charlie to stop her from staring at Bass, unsure if he just complimented her or insulted his troops. When it comes to verbal sparring, a lot still goes over her head.
"Speaking off," Bass goes on with a nod of acknowledgement at his best friend, "We have two schools in walking distance," never mind that Charlie walks from one side of Philly to the other almost daily, and has access to four times that amount of schools at least, "Have you given it any thought?"
The question is aimed at both of them, Bass familiar enough with Mathesons to know that Charlie will do the opposite of what they say if they don't take her choice into account. "No," the girl says adamantly, ready for this argument. They shouldn't have given her the time to think up a defence.
They haven't heard a word from Rachel or Ben, who disappeared from the town with Danny and seemingly left Charlie alone in the woods to find her way back to an empty home. Bass seems resigned to the lost opportunity, and the search for his brother continues, but Miles doubts they will ever find him or Rachel again. Charlie hasn't asked for them yet.
For now, it seems like she will be staying for quite some time, and therefore, school. Bass, the straight A student and Valedictorian of their graduation class is convinced she needs to go. Miles is less certain, knows she has been home-schooled by Rachel for years and has read more books than her peers combined.
Her writing is passable, he has seen it, and her math is advanced enough that he doesn't see any reason to put adventurous Charlie in a chair for hours at the time and bore her to death because the educational system has only worsened with the Blackout.
She's better of spending a month reading Sun Tzu's Art of War, the well-read copy within reach even now. All she has to know are the things she can only learn in the streets and woods; survival training, war strategy, close combat and long distance shooting. Charlie is a fighter and a leader, Miles doesn't doubt that. It will be easy to convince Bass of that.
He grabs the book on war strategies, his and Bass' favourite, and hands it to his niece. "One month," he says as strictly as he can, the general shining through in his voice. Charlie hugs him and tears out of the room before either man can change his mind.