Chapter 22: All the Time in the World

Author's Note: Thank you all for reading and reviewing.

Thank you also to xyber116 for beta'ing this chapter.

Partly set during Enemies of the State.

Trigger warnings: POV Stockholm syndrome/PTSD

I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit.

Eleven years after The Blackout

I was angry with my friend:/ I told my wrath, my wrath did end…

Rachel was sitting on her cot, absentmindedly twisting her wedding ring and plotting another escape attempt. Bass had given up on cordiality and swaying Rachel to his side via creature comforts. She was locked in a long narrow cell, maybe 3 feet by 8 feet, in a basement somewhere important and high traffic. Rachel could hear many feet clomp above her during the day and almost none at night. The floor was cement – no digging her way out. The solid wooden door was locked on the outside – no lock-picking or breaking. The hinges were on the outside too.

…I was angry with my foe:/ I told it not, my wrath did grow…

Rachel had already tried the fake sickness trick to lure one guard in to beat or kill him, but he had dealt with her handily, even surprised as he was. None of her guards ever came in with weapons she could use against them. She didn't have any poison or a sleeping drug to slip the guards. The one prison escape trope she hadn't tried was the feminine wiles bit. The idea nauseated her. She had little enough of her self left to want to use her own body as a tool in that manner.

…And I watered it in fears,/ Night and morning with my tears…

Rachel heard some slamming and rattling of locks. Was it Miles? Had he miraculously determined she was still alive? Had a guard told him? Was he coming for her? Rachel creeped over to the door just as the peep window to her cell opened. She was partly blinded by the torchlight. Her pupils contracted to protect her sensitive photoreceptors. After several seconds she could see again – it was a stern-faced, dark-skinned man, not Miles. She returned to her cot. Whoever he was, he wasn't Miles. In her desolation, she hardly noted the scuffle outside as the stern man was attacked and dragged off. He wasn't Miles.

…And I sunned it with smiles,/ And with soft deceitful wiles…

Rachel shook herself and went back to attempting to come up with another escape plan. Each failed attempt brought draconian punitive measures, but Rachel had to do something! Sitting in the dark dwelling on all of her missed escape attempts back when Miles was her keeper, and she was his, wouldn't do her any good. Nor would merely attempting to keep her mind sharp and stave off boredom with literary analysis. Rachel had resumed her lapsed fitness regiment, working on building upper-body strength, but that only took a very small portion of her day. The rest was spent planning escapes and hating Bass.

…And it grew both day and night/ Till it bore an apple bright…

A few days after the unexpected and short-lived visit of the stern man, Rachel was sitting on her cot, absentmindedly twisting her wedding ring and plotting another escape attempt, and the door was thrown open. Rachel restrained herself from flinching, Bass had stopped by for an unexpected chat. Instead of his normal preamble, some sick attempt at civil conversation, he launched directly into accusations.

Bass spat out, "What did you do to Miles?!"

Rachel was genuinely confused and said, "What are you talking about? I haven't seen Miles in over a year."

Bass continued, rage unabated, "Don't play coy with me, you bitch. You warped Miles; you turned him against me. At first it was just him eatin' dinner with you, blaming me for every single fucking nightmare you had."

Bass paused, and Rachel turned her fine mind to trying to figure out how to deflect Bass' rage. She would be happy if he wanted to kill her and get this hell over with, but she didn't think she could endure an early session with Corporal Strausser, her back hadn't healed yet from his last session. Or Bass might try water-boarding again – a possibility that only heightened her cat-like distaste of water.

…And my foe beheld it shine,/ And he knew that it was mine…

Bass raged on, "Then he started spending even more time with you, almost to the point of neglecting the Republic. But I was fine with that. He's always had a thing for you; whatever, our relationship got better."

Rachel's heart became tachycardic, her mind picking apart Bass' statement; Miles had always had a thing for her? On one level she had always known it, but she had tried to suppress that knowledge. Now that both brothers were lost to her, she could acknowledge her feelings for the both of them.

Bass shouted, "But even your fucking corpse drove him away from me! Spending all his time in the bottom of a bottle with Nora. I told myself he'd get over you. He's gotten over better before."

Rachel refocused her mind on the here and now, trying to determine the best method to keep her hide intact – or at least not more damaged. Rachel's mind lit upon the perfect plan, one that would play into Bass' misogynistic tendencies perfectly.

…And into my garden stole/ When the night had veiled the pole…

Bass calmed down, became almost melancholy, "Things had almost returned to normal, when he turns up, out of the blue, at my bedside, in the middle of the night, and put a gun to my head. Miles wanted to shoot me, but be couldn't do it. He has always been a sap."

Bass, with his typical mercurial temperament, raged, "But what did you do to him!?"

Rachel, still seated on her cot, raised her hands in surrender, and softly replied, "Bass, I didn't do anything to Miles. Yes, I enjoyed talking to Ben's brother over dinner – when he was Ben's brother and not 'The General.' But I didn't do anything except rebuff his advances; you know he has always felt more for me, than I felt for him."

"I may have led him on very slightly," Rachel said, holding her index finger and thumb close together, and then threw her hands out helplessly, purposefully heaving her chest slightly, "I may have implied that I was unwilling to start a physical relationship because… but what else would you expect of a poor woman alone, with limited means?"

Bass studied her minutely, suspicious.

Rachel continued with the innocent act and asked, "Have you talked to Nora?"

Bass' face turned into a scowl, "The bounty hunter fled with Miles."

Rachel quirked her eyebrow meaningfully, she couldn't outright say: then maybe that's whom you should blame, but she could certainly imply it.

Bass inferred her meaning and after the typical exchange of questions about what Ben was working on, he left, and Rachel remained physically sound. And certain in her belief that Miles was never coming to save her.

…In the morning glad I see/ My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Fifteen years after The Blackout

Miles stood, rubbing his scruff, watching his motley crew sleeping around him. Two days ago, near Lubbock, Texas they had run into another group of orphans. Their parents had taken the brief return of electricity as a sign of the impending Rapture, and had committed mass suicide without properly taking care of their children. Charlie argued that it was their fault and they had to do something for the kids. It had taken all of Miles and Rachel's will to persuade Charlie that they just couldn't do anything for them. It had been odd working together with Rachel's force of will, not against it, and eventually they swayed Charlie.

Charlie had been annoyed that they had teamed up on her, but luckily she didn't hold grudges like her mother. For the most part the three of them – four, if you included Aaron – were doing well. He had kept with the women's training, and Rachel seemed to experience more of the full range of human emotion each day. Seemed less calculating and poker-faced. Also, he caught her silently reciting something as they walked less frequently.

Miles wondered what Ben was thinking about this course of events. Miles, the delinquent brother, taking care of his widow and daughter on an epic journey to fix Ben's mistakes. On an epic journey to fix his own mistakes. Ben would have scoffed at this Christian sentimentality, but Miles felt it kept him honest, imaging Ben looking down on his actions, or up. Miles didn't know if he wanted Ben to pay for what he had done to the world, or if he'd rather Ben was safe in Heaven. Anyways, he was probably in Purgatory.

Miles was still pretty sure Rachel's reluctance to start a relationship was due to scars from her time with Bass, so he let her be. If she kept him in 'the friend zone' he knew it was to wall herself off from those emotions, those experiences. Those things she wasn't ready to face yet. She still hadn't told him if Bass or another one of the militiamen had raped her, but Miles was pretty damn sure that had happened. At least once…

Over the relatively uneventful course of the trip, Rachel had slowly revealed more of what had happened to her. The flaying, the sleep deprivation and starvation, stress positions nude in a drafty room in winter, and her least favorite – though she successfully hid that from Bass – water-boarding. Each time she revealed another layer of her torment, she acted as if she was revealing another layer of her inner self. As if what she had gone through was her. As if that was the only part of her that was left; that and revenge. On one level, Miles knew that it took a lot of courage for Rachel to reveal what had happened to her, it should help her heal, but on the other hand, it wasn't right for her to think that was all she was. She was so much more.

Miles still wasn't sure if she was telling the full truth, about what had happened, or if she was hiding even more. He wasn't even sure if Rachel knew whether she was playing him again or not. He knew even if he was given fifty more years, he still wouldn't get to know everything about Rachel. About her mind, her psyche, her past. He knew he owed her a debt that could never be repaid, and harbored dark and guilt-tainted love for her. He hoped someday she'd be able to pull herself together enough to admit that she loved him back, but he wasn't going to wait around for that. In the meantime he was going to try to be better man for Charlie, for Rachel, for Nora.

He would keep his promise to Rachel of keeping Charlie safe, try to help her be a better mother, try to give her self-confidence and self-defense skills, but that is all he would do. She didn't want a crutch; then he wouldn't be a crutch. Would let her move beyond a 'blueberry scone' on her own. But fuck was it hard. He wanted to cradle her and protect her, but he knew that what he loved about her was her spunk, her fire, and she need to get that back on her own, to own it. Otherwise her fire would be as uncontrolled and dangerous as a wild-fire not a useful, warm, hearth-fire.

Author's Note: I know this wasn't the ending you were looking for, and it wasn't the ending I had imagined when I started writing this either, but frankly I'm not sure even with the relatively mild captivity I wrote, there are enough pieces of Rachel left to stitch together to make a healthy individual. Nor am I sure that a Miles-Rachel relationship based on the bones of said captivity will ever be healthy. Anyways, the early timeline wrapped up like I wanted it to, and I'll just leave Rachel and Miles here with All the Time in the World to work their way to whatever smutty, fluffy ending you were imagining.

If you are interested in what happens with the Texan hacker and the other events that happened along the way, tune in to my #ClaytonLives story.

As always, reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Or in other words, "Can I haz reviews please?"