A/N: This chapter is a transition between part 2 and part 3 of this story. For better or worse, here it is. This is the first of two chapters I'm posting back to back today…

The Last Day of June…

As soon as Charlie and her family crossed the border, they were immediately taken by the Rangers. Frank Blanchard had put a warrant out for both Miles and Charlie. He wanted answers and so they were escorted to Austin.

Blanchard's political enemies were using the mess back east against him. After all, there was an election the following year. There were quite a few members of Congress that were unhappy with the fact that he'd regained leadership after Carver's death. He'd ruffled just a few too many feathers in his retirement and they wanted their own man in charge after Carver's death, only to find the cantankerous old pervert as their boss once more.

Charlie and Miles did their best to explain Connor's treachery. Out of respect for what she and Monroe once shared, Charlie did everything she could for him. Despite the hurt he'd caused her, she still wasn't capable of completely turning her back on him. Bonnie Webster was brought in and it didn't take very long for them to realize that Connor had orchestrated the article's publication from afar.

It took even less time for Blanchard to uncover that the ringleaders of his own political troubles had reached out to Monroe's son in the months leading up to his escape. The treaty between Texas and the Republic had not been popular among a small and yet rather vocal faction within Congress. When their votes hadn't been enough to prevent it from going through, they'd decided to take matters in their own hands. Discrediting Monroe had gone a long way towards their goal of discrediting Blanchard himself—although not far enough.

Those that had been involved were eventually ousted for what was considered the post-blackout equivalent of Watergate. In the end, all they'd managed to do was increase the odds that Texas would never see a single coin or diamond from Monroe. Blanchard did what he could in light of the facts to try and stall Congress on his behalf, but they were unwilling to reconsider calling in on the Republic's debt.

Now that the damage had been done, the cause of the instability that threatened their eastern neighbor didn't matter. What mattered was that the debt was large and Texas needed those funds. They were willing to settle on getting what they could in the months to come rather than ever seeing any at all if and when the Republic collapsed.

Having done what they could for him, Miles and Charlie were released to return home. As the months passed, Charlie settled slowly back into her grandfather's house in Willoughby once more. In the end, she'd had no choice but to accept her new life and move on. She was too stubborn and hurt to write to Monroe and he in turn never contacted her.

Much to Rachel's irritation, Miles and Charlie both became obsessed with following what was going on across the border. They collected newspaper articles and tried to piece it all together. On occasion, Harris was able to smuggle a letter through to Charlie, which helped to fill in the gaps.

None of the news coming from Nashville was good. For weeks, the Militia stood at the brink of warfare in the Great Lakes Territories. It only deescalated when Monroe finally gave the rebel factions what they wanted.

Harris had written to tell them of it. He decided to belay orders to engage that he'd just sent out, and instead pulled the militia out of Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan completely. He disbanded the garrisons there, reassigning some to lock down the borders and discharging the rest from their duties completely.

At first, Charlie took this as Monroe finally having cut his losses. Miles knew better. "This is more cruel than fighting them. Don't you see what he's doing? He's locked the border completely and cut off all aid and trade. Fall's on the way. The people living there will starve and since it's common knowledge now that the militia no longer protects that region, their ripe for the picking."

The Rangers had been slowly taking over land in the plains. Unwilling to take on the Texas Rangers, the war clans were fleeing. If the Republic and its militia no longer protected the territories in the north, they would head there and take over.

Harris confirmed in a second letter that this was exactly Monroe's intention. He eventually had released Illinois from the Republic, removing the last barrier that had kept the clans from sweeping in. It was only a matter of time before the raids started.

"When I asked him why, he told me that if they wanted their freedom so badly, they could have it. There were hundreds that fled to the borders in order to immigrate south and stay citizens of the Republic, but he's shut it down completely.

He told me that this was their punishment for harboring the rebels for so long. Charlie, I've never seen this side of him. It's like something inside of him died after the execution, and now there's nothing left. He's formal to the point of madness, obsessed with protocol and so on. I never met him in Philly, but from what I've heard, that's the man he's become."

Harris' words only confirmed that he wasn't Bass any longer. He was the General of old once more. Any chance at the redemption he'd long since sought had been destroyed and any credibility he'd held with Texas had gone right along with it.

As the fall progressed, news reached Texas that Miles' predictions had come true. The clans from the plains had swooped in and were attacking at will, at times wiping out entire towns. The refugee camps along the border were rumored to have grown exponentially. The only thing Monroe did to restore Charlie's faith in him was that he ordered border garrisons to protect the camps from clan raids.

He was still firmly against letting them inside the Republic, but they'd heard that he'd sent aid in the form of food and blankets as the weather turned and that the clans had been warned that refugees were not fair game. A few skirmishes erupted between the militia and clans because of this, and soon they were largely left alone.

Otherwise, no other hopeful news came out of the east. By year's end, Monroe had paid Texas back with every last diamond and gold coin he had. It hadn't even made a dent, but the economy collapsed all the same.

What was left of the eastern seaboard started to rebel, followed quickly by several territories in the south. He couldn't pay the militia, and while they were not disbanded, they were derelict in their duties to the public. By February, there was talk of war in Austin to reclaim every last asset the Republic may have.

And then, it all came to a standstill. Monroe was rumored to have vanished completely and before anyone knew what was happening, Texas suddenly became the proud owner of all lands east of the Mississippi. Monroe had eventually admitted defeat. The Republic was officially dissolved and in exchange for relief from the debt (to which Congress decided he was personally responsible) and his freedom, Monroe had given them everything.

Nashville, The night of Monroe's disappearance…

As he watched his Republic slowly crumble under its own weight, Monroe slowly crumbled with it. He hadn't been able to witness the execution the previous summer and although he was very well aware of the fact that Connor was buried next to Emma in Jasper, he hadn't been able to bring himself to go home to lay him to rest either. That town held too many painful memories—both the good ones from before the blackout and the horrific one's he'd created fifteen years later were too much for him.

Had he let anyone near him, they'd have at least given him credit—he'd tried. He'd done what he could to keep both the Republic and himself together, but it had been too much. He knew now that very few if any of the people around him had been involved in Connor's plot, but the entire affair now gave him pause when it came to trusting anyone. The only one that saw him at all was Harris, and Monroe held him at a distance now—the young man's presence reminded him too much of better and happier days.

He'd been right when he'd predicted that his private life would cause problems with the Tribunal and more than once his judgment had been called into question. Had he not eventually given them more power, it would not have been an issue. Once that ship had sailed, however there'd been no going back.

He knew the gossip that swirled around Nashville, and a lot of it was correct. He was becoming unhinged. His orders were increasingly erratic and he had no fuse to speak of. He'd tried to fight it, but after he'd lost Charlie and then Connor's death, it had been like something inside him just snapped.

It wasn't the same as before. In Philly the thought of crushing his enemies had a twisted and almost pleasant effect on him—bordering on a mania that he didn't have this time around. It was more of a desperate and pressing need to prove them all wrong.

He needed the Republic to stabilize because it would show all of those douchebags in Texas that he didn't need their money and he didn't need their approval. It would show the Tribunal that he hadn't lost it; show Miles that he did learn from his mistakes and could change; show Charlie that he wasn't such a monster after all.

And so, that's what he worked towards day in and day out until he was so exhausted he could barely function, let alone do anything productive. Harris had stayed by his side the entire time, despite threats, tantrums and orders that didn't even make sense to the man giving them half the time. His ever fluctuating and uncontrollable emotions had replaced his brain when it came to decision making. That those emotions only seemed to bounce back and forth between utter rage and total depression did not make for wise decisions.

As New Year's came closer, he found himself sitting in Charlie's quarters more often. Usually when this happened, he didn't even remember going there. The door was kept locked, and he had the only key. Sally had only gotten in there for one thorough cleaning after he'd sent Charlie home and he'd been furious, threatening to have her discharged if she'd entered again.

He knew that Harris had figured out this peculiar habit of going downstairs, sitting on her bed and drinking himself stupid. Sometimes he'd reread the letter she'd left him. Those last words written in sorrow and anger…

Bass,

By the time Shawn gives this to you, I'll be well on my way to Willoughby. I don't know what happened to you, but I can't live like this. I know that in a lot of ways, it's my fault. I should have told them where I was—if I had, maybe Miles could have helped stop Connor before he got that close.

Even so, there's nothing I could have done to deserve your accusations. I've made mistakes, just as you have, but I have never been anything but loyal to you. I can take a lot, but the way you treated me today is too much.

The fact that you could even for a moment think that the parts of myself I shared with you was all an act; that it was all a ruse to destroy you, it makes me sick and hurts more than I thought possible. How can those moments hold so little value to you? I've had sex for a lot of different reasons, but I've never used it as a weapon, and it cheapens everything we've done when you've accused me of having done so.

I'm sorry I couldn't help you. It breaks my heart to see you this way. Right now, you are not the man I saw when I came to Nashville. You aren't even the man that saved my life in that bar in Pottsboro. I don't know who you are, but it is more the man that held a gun to my head in Philadelphia than the man I've woken up next to—and that man I hate with everything I have.

I hope that one day you come to your senses, and for your sake I hope that it's before you've lost everything. If this is the man you want to become, I won't stay and watch it—I can't bear to.

Charlie

Sadly, those times that he just drank and read and re-read that letter were his saner evenings. Reading how much he'd hurt her and how she'd hated what she'd seen before her helped to remind him who he wanted to be, even if he couldn't quite get there. It was then that the old Bass was able to peek through enough to belay orders that should never have been given and keep him from falling completely into the abyss that constantly beckoned.

After one such night he'd stumbled from the room and tracked down a courier to send word to Adams to protect the refugees on the border before the War Clans slaughtered them all. It was after another that he'd stayed the executions of several new rebel factions in the south.

On this night, Monroe sat up against her headboard, a bottle in hand and uniform in a crumpled pile on the floor. He never wore it in her bed—it represented the things about him she hated. Just because she no longer lived in Nashville didn't mean that it wasn't her room, after all.

He was already drunk and had been doing it for two days. He had no idea what was going on in the Republic around him. He'd simply grabbed several bottles of whiskey, a loaf of bread and told Harris that he needed to deal with it all—he'd had enough and was taking a few days off. He hadn't left the room since and didn't have any plans on doing so for the foreseeable future.

It was only a matter of time before the Rangers showed up to take any and every asset the Republic had. They'd probably start with the trains—they were irreplaceable. In all actuality, it was possible that the seven working trains the Republic had were valued higher than the amount of the debt. Even so, he wasn't able to part with them. Without the rails, he had no way of moving goods from one side of the Republic to the other (not that there were any goods to move now).

After the trains, they'd probably take their own whack at Ft. Knox. Monroe actually hoped he was still around for that one. If they could actually break in, well more power to them. They could have every bar in it—they'd have earned it just by doing the impossible on that one.

From there, who knew? Probably the coal mines and so on. They'd strip his crumbling nation of every resource it had and then would walk away, leaving both him and the people that he'd promised to help and lead empty handed and starving. A fitting end for him to be sure, but he hated that he couldn't save his people from a punishment that belonged on his shoulders alone.

As he took another drink, Monroe began to wonder what it'd be like to just disappear. Would anyone even notice he'd gone? And for that matter, would they even care? He was almost tempted to do just that, when his thoughts shifted to Harris. "Then he'd be stuck with this mess. Hardly fair to him, is it?" he said aloud.

Then it hit him. What if he could disappear, but instead of just leaving the Republic and everyone within it to their own fates, what if he just replaced himself? But who could he get to do it? "They'd be better off with Blanchard than any of these idiots I've surrounded myself with," he practically whined. Blanchard… He started to laugh then. It had been staring him right in the face this entire time and he'd missed it. He rolled out of the bed and went to find his pants, yanking them on.

Leaving the rest of his clothes behind, he stumbled into the stairwell. He'd dismissed his detail when he'd gone into hiding, so no one was there to watch him practically climb up the stairs on his hands and knees, so dizzy did his sudden movements make him.

Twenty minutes later, he was sneaking out of his own compound, dressed in the one set of clothes he'd brought from Texas. They fit looser on him now—he'd lost a bit of weight with all the strain of the past months. The cold air sobered him a little as he crept in the shadows and did his best to leave undetected. Just like old times. He made his way to the train station and did something he'd always wanted to do (and had almost succeeded once)… Monroe kidnapped one of his own men in the rail yard and stole a train.

Late April…

Charlie opened the door to reveal Shawn Harris. "Shawn! What are you doing here?" she asked, clearly excited to see him.

She gave him a big hug and let him in. "You told me I was welcome in Willoughby, so I thought I'd pop by," he said with a laugh as he was ushered inside. After he'd offered a stiff greeting to Rachel and Miles, Charlie went about introducing him to the rest of her family, including a member that he'd been more than shocked to meet.

Miles and Charlie were desperate to find out what exactly had happened. They barely gave Harris a chance to sit down before they began to grill him for news. Over the next several hours they discussed the ending of the Republic and what had become of Monroe afterwards. "Texas didn't want to go to war any more than Bass did, so they found a mutually acceptable solution. The whole thing was falling apart anyway, so Bass just let them have it."

"Where is he now?" Miles asked.

Harris shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. He wasn't even in Nashville when it all went down. One day he was gone and two weeks later, Blanchard was on our doorstep with treaty in hand."

"How was he? I mean, towards the end?" Charlie was terrified of the answer, but she needed to ask it all the same.

"How do you think? Lonely, stressed out, over worked, depressed, paranoid. And those were on good days…" Harris trailed off and an uncomfortable silence permeated the room. They could figure out the rest. Monroe had been off the reservation and pretty much the entire continent was quite aware of it.

"So what are you going to do?" Rachel asked him in her cold and stilted manner. She didn't like the idea of Monroe's old helper sniffing around her family, but was doing her best to be polite for Charlie's sake. "I heard the militia is being spun off into an offshoot of the Rangers. Will you stay on?"

"I'm working for Blanchard now. Apparently it was one of the provisions Bass insisted on. I'm pretty much doing for him what I used to do in Nashville."

"Security?" Rachel asked, confused. That's the only position she'd ever seen him work in.

"God no. I'll never do that again as long as I live," Harris laughed. "I'm just a common clerical lackey now."

"So what brings you here?" Charlie asked.

"I was headed to Austin. I've been tossed back and forth between there and Nashville since this whole thing went down while the transition is made. I had a few extra days, so I figured I'd stop by. Glad I did," he said to Charlie, meaningfully.

Charlie and Harris talked long after everyone else had gone to bed. They'd offered to put him up for the night before he continued on his way. "You know you have to tell him right?" he said as she got up to head to bed.

"I don't even know where he is—neither do you," Charlie reminded him.

He rolled his eyes at her deliberate attempt at density. "Come on, Charlie. You know as well as I do that he's going to pop up eventually. He deserves the truth."

She shook her head. "No, Shawn. It's better this way. He was quite clear that he wants nothing to do with me, or Miles." She retreated, no longer comfortable with the topic of conversation. As far as she was concerned, the members of her household were her business. She headed down the hallway to the room she shared with the final topic of their conversation. With a sigh, she turned to greet her new partner in crime and shut the door.

The next morning, Charlie walked Harris to the door as he was preparing to leave. "Think about what I said, Charlie."

"I've had months to think this over. Promise me that if you ever see Bass again, that you won't tell him." She knew she was putting him in a bad position, but she was desperate.

Shawn sighed sadly. "You know I can't do that. You're my friend, but so is he. You know how much it would hurt him." He finished saying goodbye and left for the train station.

A/N: Yeah, you've probably got a few guesses about the topic of Charlie and Harris' final conversation and if I know Charloe fans, a huge chunk of you will be spot on. I tried to be vague but it was a bit hard without not mentioning it at all.