A/N: So this has already been up on A03 since yesterday. For some reason if I add more than one chapter within 24 hours, it will add the chapter, but will not send out a new Chapter notification, nor will it change the time it was last updated. I'm already starting to wonder if no one is actually bothering to read this, so I figured I'd just wait until 24hrs had passed so at least it would send out the notification (Is anyone still reading, Bueller? Bueller?)
More Notes (regarding actual chapter) at end!
It was late when they finally emerged from the fields and into the main yard. Monroe cursed when he saw the wagon was still there. Obviously, Charlie had decided to assert her independence and not follow his instructions for her to get the kids home. There was only one light burning in the house, indicating the majority of its occupants had given up on waiting and gone to bed. Monroe was brought into the kitchen and tied up in one of the chairs at the table. Jenny Carter and Charlie had been seated, silently waiting for them to return.
Charlie jumped up when she saw Monroe was being held captive. She locked eyes with him. Monroe shook his head at her slightly. He could tell what she was thinking. He sent her a silent plea to do nothing. The last thing they needed was her trying to shoot their way out of there. He was simply going to have to talk his way out of this mess.
"Where are the kids?" He asked her. His disapproval at her having stayed was obvious.
"They're with Priscilla, asleep." She turned to Avery. "What do you think you're doing?"
Avery ignored her. He walked into the back of the house with Sarah hot on his heels. Jim remained in the kitchen for the time being, his gun still trained on Monroe. Avery came back a few minutes later, alone. He sat down at the table before he decided to answer her. "We're going to sit down and have a civilized chat while I decide what to do with the general here."
"Avery, I just saved her life. Do you have any idea what they would have done with her?" Monroe kept his voice low. There was no need to risk Jenny overhearing, or even worse Sarah waking up and overhearing too. "They would have taken her into Missouri and sold her to another clan or worse, to a brothel in St. Louis. If she wasn't dead in a year, she would have wished she was."
Avery indicated that Charlie should stop pacing the kitchen and sit down. Her restless movements were starting to make him nervous. As she sank into the chair she turned to Monroe. "Did you find out what they were doing here?"
"They were just drifters. Patriots flushed them out of the plains. It's going to happen a lot more if they keep trying to target the clans." He explained.
Avery listened with interest. "I still don't understand why they took my girl."
Monroe could not believe that Avery was really this naïve. "Because she was there and she didn't have enough protection. And because that's what warclans do. If they stumble across an opportunity, they take it. And a girl that young brings a really good price. They'd have been able to live off of the sale for a month."
Avery rubbed the back of his neck as he thought about what to do with him. "I appreciate what you done to help my girl, but I just can't let you go. Neighbor or not, Friend or not, you bombed Atlanta."
Monroe sighed in exasperation. He was getting really tired of that same old accusation. "I didn't bomb anything, Avery. Think about it. Launching ICBMs requires authorization codes, security clearance. Just because the government left the bombs behind doesn't mean that the programming changed. How would I get access to that?"
"People say you were military before the blackout. You coulda had access then," Avery argued.
Monroe rolled his eyes. "Really? I was a sergeant. I did a couple of tours in Iraq and got sent to Parris Island to train recruits after that. Kinda above my pay grade, don't you think?"
Avery thought about this. He had to admit that Monroe did have a good point. "Well, maybe you found the codes or something."
"You're giving me way too much credit. Launch codes to nukes aren't exactly something you'd leave lying around. Think about it for a second. The only people that could have launched those bombs were the ones that had access to them before the blackout." Monroe held his gaze steady on Avery while the man considered his words. He struggled to keep his breathing steady, confident. In reality his heart was pounding in his chest. If Avery was intent on turning him in, it would only be a matter of time before someone found out who Charlie was.
"Well, if you didn't do it, who did?" Avery finally asked. He was starting to fidget in his chair. It was a clear sign that he was starting to have doubts.
Monroe flicked his eyes to Charlie to gauge her reaction. He didn't know how much he should tell Avery. If the man sympathized with the Patriots telling the truth could only seal his fate. She only shrugged at him. So much for her input. "The Patriots are all former DOD. They'd have better access than I would."
His words hung there in the silence. Avery finally stood. "Miss, I think you'd better go on back to your room. It's late. Nobody's going anywhere in the dark." One of the farm hands led her back to the room she was to share with Priscilla and the twins. Once the door was closed, she heard the farmhand pull up a chair. It was clear that Avery intended to keep her locked up, just in case.
Monroe was led into the cellar to spend the night. As an extra precaution, he was tied up once more. Avery stood at the top of the stairs, looking almost apologetic. "It's just 'til I figure out what to do with you. I can't have you escaping in the meantime – I know what you're capable of."
As he watched Avery reach for the cellar door to lock him in, Monroe called out. "Avery, you've got to get rid of the bodies."
The farmer froze. He came down the stairs halfway. "What?"
"Get your men to burn the bodies. All of them. Burn any evidence that they were even here. People come across a dead warclan so close to your land, they'll start asking questions. It's attention you don't want. It doesn't matter what you do with me. If you care about your family, you'll do it," Monroe was insistent. Avery nodded in understanding and headed back up the stairs and shut the cellar door, locking Monroe in darkness for the night.
When the cellar door opened in the morning, Monroe was already awake. Actually, he hadn't really slept at all. He was stiff and sore from being bound for hours. Avery came down the stairs. If the circles under his eyes were of any indication, the rest of his night was about as sleepless as Monroe's had been.
This time, the farmer came down alone. He cut the ropes that bound Monroe and gestured for him to leave the cellar in front of him. After shooting him a wary look, Monroe complied. Reaching the open air, he looked to see Priscilla already in the back of the wagon holding one of the twins. "You're letting us go?"
"I guess it wouldn't do to turn on a man that saved my girl." Avery held out Monroe's sword belt and pistol. "We've been hearing stories about these Patriots lately, and not all of them are good. I don't know if they're as bad as you say they are, but I don't know if I trust them either. But what I do trust is a man that risked a hanging to help a neighbor and a friend." He held out his hand as a peace offering.
Monroe shook the offered hand. "Thank you." Charlie came out with Danny then. The freshly rinsed diaper in her hand suggested where they'd been. Her expression betrayed the mix of concern and anger she felt towards him at the moment.
He reached out and took his son from her long enough to climb up into the wagon. He took the fact that she'd chosen to ride in back with Priscilla as a bad sign. Handing the baby back, he walked to the front and climbed up. Jaw set, Monroe flicked the reins and got the horses moving towards home.
Charlie refused to speak to him for the rest of the day. To say that she was livid would be an understatement. Monroe had no idea how close he'd come to a second execution. Jenny had come to see her just before dawn. Avery had already told her he fully intended to send for the sheriff in the morning. He'd felt bad about it to be sure, but even if Monroe had been telling the truth about the bombs, everyone else sure believed it. If anyone found out that he had let Monroe go and concealed his knowledge of his presence, it could go very badly for his family – especially if the Patriots found out.
Jenny explained to Charlie how Monroe had almost been arrested when he'd come to town the first time and how Daniel Forrester had claimed him as his nephew. This had saved his life. Charlie had already heard an abbreviated version of this story already, but Monroe hadn't gone into detail. Avery had been one of the men helping Jacob Harris (Monroe's original accuser) restrain Monroe. Harris had apparently seen a sketch of Monroe on a wanted poster when he was on a trip to Franklin the previous year.
Julie damn well knew that Daniel didn't have a nephew. Her mother's people still lived in Somerset and she'd already heard about Ella's passing, but she hadn't wanted to be the one that led to a man's execution (even if that man was indeed Sebastian Monroe). She'd kept quiet out of respect for Daniel more than anything. "Daniel's good people. If it came out that he was harboring Monroe, he could have been arrested too," she'd explained.
Over time, the man going around as Michael Andrews seemed decent enough. And when he'd come back to town with his family, it cemented it for Jenny. "Kids have a way of changing a man. My Avery was as rotten as can be 'til our oldest, Maggie was born." And she could tell how much they'd helped Daniel on the farm. His place had always been successful, and Daniel was the type that could grow gold in a field of shit. His farm had kept her family from starving one winter when they'd lost their entire crop due to blight.
Charlie had told Jenny about the amnesia Monroe had suffered when he'd stayed with Daniel the previous fall and how he'd come for her when his memory had returned. "He's done a lot of bad things, Jenny. He'll probably fuck up again. But he's trying to be a better man, and he's a good father."
As far as Jenny was concerned, despite his dark past, Monroe had been a good neighbor. That meant something in their community. After the blackout, the communities that survived were the ones where people stuck together. Former dictator or not, Monroe had saved her daughter from a painful life and a violent ending. As a mother, that was not something she was willing to overlook as easily as her husband.
Besides, if Monroe was right about the possibility of more warclans coming east, there may be a time where they needed to defend their town. The man had raised an army from scratch and had held half the eastern seaboard for a decade. They couldn't ask for better help than that when and if the time came. Before Jenny left Charlie, she'd promised to do what she could to help them. Charlie still didn't know what Jenny had said to Avery, but whatever it was, it worked. He let Monroe go with a promise to keep his secret.
Now that they were safe, Charlie's temper boiled over. Had it not been for Jenny Carter, he would be rotting in a cell, waiting on his execution. And, if the Patriots had been involved, they could have come for her too. Who would have taken care of Danny and Angie then? It was even possible that the Patriots would have hurt them too. Babies or not, they were his blood. That may have been reason enough to hurt them. No, he shouldn't have gotten them involved. They were supposed to be hiding from the Patriots, not out slaughtering warclans and bringing attention to themselves.
Later that night she let him have it when he walked into their room to get ready to turn in. "Do you know the meaning of lying low?"
He sat down on the bed to take off is boots. "Do we have to do this now, Charlie? It's late and it's been a long couple of days." He was beyond exhausted and was not in the mood to have an argument.
Charlie leaned up against the wall opposite of where he sat, arms crossed over her chest. "Oh, we're doing this alright. Do you realize what could have happened?" She spat the question at him like a slap in the face.
He stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. "What I was I supposed to do, huh? You know what they'd have done to that girl. Christ, Charlie. She's just a kid."
"She wasn't much younger than those Patriot recruits you slaughtered last year; maybe only by a year or two." She knew she it was a low blow and regretted it the second it came out of her mouth.
Monroe felt like she'd just hit him in the gut. "It always comes back to shit like that, doesn't it? Well at least that explains a lot."
The bitterness in his voice took her by surprise. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
He laughed at her cynically. "Come on, Charlie. Why are you really pissed? Not like you were worried that something was gonna happen to me."
It was Charlie's turn to flinch now. "How can you say that?"
His own temper blazing, Monroe raised his voice. "Because I'm not an idiot. You keep me around, for god knows what reason, leading me on. You only let me get close enough to keep me waiting. You don't want me, you won't let me go. You're using me, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what for."
Charlie lashed out again. She hated feeling backed into a corner and that was exactly what he was doing. "Yeah, well maybe I don't like repeating past mistakes!"
Her remark hurt him more than he would ever be willing to admit, so he gave as good as he got. "What, did your mom teach a course or something? Vindictive Bitch 101?"
Charlie didn't quite get the reference, but then again she never got the pre-blackout lingo he always used. But what she did get was the fact that she'd just been called a bitch and compared to her mother. "God, you are such a fucking asshole!"
He started lacing his boots back up. So much for bedtime. "And I swear, you are like a carbon copy of Rachel. Everything is about what someone else has done, but you can never admit that you're not perfect too." He grabbed a pillow off the bed and stomped towards the door.
Charlie whipped around. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" She yelled. She couldn't believe he was walking away from her – again.
Monroe paused with his hand on the doorknob. "I'm going to the sleep in the stables. The horses are a lot less judgmental and they don't bitch either!"
"Fine!" Charlie screamed as she sat on the bed with her back to him.
He whipped open the door. Brodie scooted out from the corner where he was hiding from their fight and ran out of the room ahead of Monroe. "Fine!" He shot back as he slammed the door behind him. He passed Aaron on his way down the hall. "Not one word," he snapped as he brushed passed him. Monroe paused by the pantry long enough to grab a bottle of Daniel's bourbon before heading out the back door and stalking across the yard and into the stable.
There was a cot that Daniel kept in the stock room just in case there was a mare getting ready to foal. He tossed the pillow down and flopped onto it. The evening was hot, so he wouldn't need to bother with ruining his excellent exit to retrieve a blanket. Breaking the wax seal on the bottle, Monroe took a long pull as he leaned back on the pillow.
He'd tried to do the right thing, and she'd crucified him for it. One second she attacked him for trying to be decent, but in the every next breath she'd basically called him a monster. Brodie had followed him into the barn. The dog jumped up on the cot and lay down next to Monroe, resting his head on his master's stomach. Sensing Monroe's world was crashing down, he let out a whine.
Monroe scratched the dog behind the ears absently. "What the hell does she want from me, boy? I'm doing the best I can." Brodie whined again as if in response. Monroe lay there, drinking his sorrows away for quite some time until the whiskey worked its magic and pulled him under.
As soon as the door slammed, Charlie felt her anger immediately dissipate. She had tried to hold onto it, really. She knew she'd drawn first blood in this fight and already felt bad for it. She'd hit below the belt more than once. She'd just been so pissed when he'd accused her of using him –and maybe in some ways she was; that was what made her angrier.
She hadn't expected everything between them to be laid out there in the open tonight. She'd been pissed at herself for being scared for him just as much as she was pissed at him for blowing his cover. She was well aware that he might die in battle at some point. Eventually the Patriots would come, and when that happened, he'd fight to protect Danny and Angie (and her). She could accept that. But the idea of having to watch his second execution was too much for her.
So, she'd just needed to vent at him for a few minutes. But then he had to go there and point out the giant elephant in the room. The fact that he was right only pissed her off more. She was holding him at arm's length and they both knew it. But how could she explain the reasons? She'd been able to let it go the one night outside of Austin because she'd been out of her mind in grief. But every time he'd tried to get close to her since then (physically or otherwise), her stupid noisy mind got the better of her. She always started out complacent – okay happy to participate even, but then she'd picture the raid on the Patriot training camp, or the image of her brother's lifeless body, and she couldn't help it. She'd clam up and push him away. She knew he loved her – that's why he'd put up with this from her for all these months. Little did he know that all of those nights he'd thought she was sleeping when really she'd lain awake, waiting for him to puller her to him so she could fall asleep.
She knew that he'd never walk away from Danny and Angie, no matter what happened between the two of them. But, as much as she wasn't ready to give in to temptation and form an actual relationship with him, she wasn't ready to let him go either. The thought of him moving on left her feeling sick.
She ignored the soft knock at her door and blew out the lantern. She knew it was probably either Aaron or her grandfather coming to check on her. The whole household had to have heard their screaming match. As she stared at the empty half of the bed, she wondered briefly how they'd managed to not wake up the kids. It was almost dawn before her eyes grew heavy and she finally slept.
A/N: Sorry if their little argument (okay major argument) disappoints. And I admit I went a little over the top. But let's face it. Love makes people assholes and can make the best of us say really stupid things. And we all know that both halves of our favorite little ship have tempers... Oh, and in case you're wondering, if the future ideas for this story go according to plan, we will be seeing Avery again in the future. I picture him as a contemporary of Monroe who happened to grow up a little earlier in life...