A/N: Okay folks, I know that I promised you two chapters and an epilogue, but I was re-reading the next chapter and decided that I didn't like the flow and needed to make some changes. I'm not quite done with it (having problems getting the dialog just right), so I'm going to go ahead and publish this one now, and will follow up with the rest today or tomorrow. But, I thought that you'd all appreciate something a little more light-hearted…

February… Sunday…

After spending the bulk of the afternoon helping Chuck repair the back fence that separated his neighbors' yard from the one behind them, Monroe had been exhausted. That he also woke up with one of the worst hangovers he'd had in a while had made it all the worse. That he and Chuck had been the ones to break the fence in the first place while acting like drunken idiots the night before had just been the icing on the cake.

It had been three weeks since Charlie had shown up and then left again. Noticing that Monroe had been left feeling slightly depressed over the mess that is love life had become (if it could really even be called that), Chuck had dragged him over to dinner and some drinks. A few drinks had turned into a lot of drinks, and the next thing they knew they'd been goofing off and sparring. Shortly thereafter, Chuck had sent him flying into the fence and the rest was history.

Monday would bring an early faculty meeting and a full day of classes, so Monroe decided to go to bed early He had to be on campus by seven and it was a good hour walk to the university as it was. And so, after eating dinner and dragging the dog outside for a few minutes, he'd crawled into bed by nine and had been asleep in minutes.

Monroe woke up from a dead sleep by a sound of someone coughing loudly on the other side of the room. He bolted upright in bed, instantly alert. Lighting the lamp on the bedside table, he scowled in annoyance when he saw Miles casually leaning up against the wall.

"What the fuck?" he whined as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Stop doing that!"

"Hey, at least I used the front door this time," Miles said, holding is hands out to show that he was unarmed. "I can't believe I got this close without waking you up. I even tripped over that snoring carpet that you left by the front door. I've been standing here coughing for like ten minutes."

If he wasn't so annoyed, Monroe would have laughed at the image that flashed in his mind of Miles tripping over Lump. He yawned and stretched and contemplated whether to get up or just ignore his intruder. Maybe if he rolled back over and went to sleep, it would prove to be a bad dream and Miles would go away.

Miles watched him, and he swore he could almost hear Monroe's thought process. Even with all of the things that had happened, he could still read the man's mind. The last time they'd found themselves in this predicament, Monroe had at least been smart enough to reach for a weapon. This time he just flopped back on the pillow and stared daggers at him. "Don't you still sleep with a gun?" he asked, curious.

With a sigh, Monroe rolled out of bed. "Not usually, no." He caught the astounded look Miles sent his way. "We're on a fucking cul-de-sac and I don't own anything worth stealing? Why would I?"

Miles only chucked at him. "Got anything good to drink?" he asked as he followed Monroe out of the bedroom.

"Why are you here?" Monroe asked tiredly as he led the way into the kitchen, biting back a laugh when Miles tripped over Lump in the dark. At some point, the dog had crawled into the hallway, his own special and lazy way of checking on his master in the middle of a break-in.

He lit a few lamps in the kitchen and went to the pantry to grab a half empty bottle of whiskey while his late night visitor took a seat at the kitchen table. Miles frowned at it, instantly convinced that it wasn't enough. Monroe ignored the clear message and poured miles a drink. Brain still not working, he just took a pull out of the bottle.

"I just thought I'd pop by," Miles said with a sardonic grin as he raised the glass to his lips. He downed it and waited for Monroe to give him a refill.

"In the middle of the night? In my bedroom?"

"Why not?" Miles replied innocently.

"Because it's in the middle of the night, asshole." Monroe protested. At the moment, he would have almost preferred it if Miles had come to kill him instead. It would have been less confusing and annoying than this odd pestering he was being subjected to now.

"It's not that late. It's barely midnight," he said as he pulled out a pocket watch and held it up for Monroe to see. "And since when were you Mr. Early to Bed, Early to Rise?"

Unbelievable. "You know what? I'm going back to bed." With that he turned to leave Miles alone in his kitchen, hoping the man hadn't forgotten the way out and would use it by morning.

"If you're going to be such a Debbie Downer, mind leaving the whiskey?" Miles called after him. The laughter in his voice betrayed how much he was enjoying himself here.

Monroe was so tired, he hadn't even been aware that he was still holding the bottle. He turned back and set it down on the table. Without another word, he started to leave again. Thinking better of it, he sucker punched Miles, sending him flying off out of the chair and onto the floor. "Don't break in people's houses. It's rude."

Smiling to himself and feeling decidedly better for having gotten that out of his system, Monroe sauntered down the hallway and back to bed. He still had to get up early. He flopped back into bed and pulled the covers over his head to block out the sounds of Miles dickering around in his kitchen.

Any hopes that he may have had that his unexpected (and unwanted) guest would be gone in the morning were dashed away when he stumbled from his bedroom five hours later. "Aw, come on. What are you still doing here?" he whined when he went into the kitchen and found Miles standing in front of his stove, with his frying pan and cooking his bacon.

"Good morning to you too, sunshine!" Miles practically sang as he flipped the sizzling strips over.

Monroe practically pushed him out of the way to grab the coffee pot, intent on filling it from the pump on his sink. The only positive thing about the morning was that Miles had already made coffee—granted there was only a half a cup left, but it would at least give him a jump start while he waited for the water to boil.

"I repeat—why are you still here?" he growled in frustration as he slammed the now full coffee pot down on the stove next to the frying pan.

Miles shrugged. "I already told you: I just decided to pop by."

"You just what, rode sixty miles just to say 'Hi?'" he was searching for the coffee tin. Miles having moved it, it was no longer in its usual spot in the cabinet. Finding the tin on the counter, Monroe opened it up, only to find it empty. Miles had used the last of his coffee and then drank it. He tossed it down at the sink, now getting pissed.

Fuck this, Monroe pouted in his head. He stomped to the other side of the house to get ready for work. If he was lucky he might have time to snag something from the cafeteria between the faculty meeting and his first class. A short time later, he emerged and decided to just leave. Unfortunately, Miles beat him to the door. He was standing there smiling as if this was an everyday thing.

Monroe glared at him as he brushed past to leave. He didn't know what Miles' game was, but he was tired of it either way. He just wanted to get to work and very far away from him. He went out the door, closing it behind him, refusing to acknowledge that Miles had followed him outside.

He waived at Chuck as he headed down the street. "Hey man, where'd you get the new shadow?" his friend asked with a laugh.

Monroe turned to see that Miles was indeed standing not more than five feet behind him. "Go away!" he barked as he sped up.

Miles caught up with him and slapped something in his seething friend's hand. Monroe looked down at the bread cloth he now held. He opened it up and turned in confused irritation to look at Miles. "You made me a bacon sandwich?"

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," he quipped as he pulled another sandwich out of his pocket for himself.

Monroe stopped walking and turned around. "What are you doing?"

"I thought I'd tag along for the day," Miles said as he patted him on the shoulder in the most annoying way he could. "Now eat your sandwich, you ungrateful fuck."

Still at a complete loss and feeling like he'd woken up in Bizzaro World, Monroe took a bite and started walking again. "Needs mayo," he grumbled.

By the time they reached the campus, Monroe was ready to either rip his own hair out or shoot Miles. By the time he got to his office, he was ready to shoot himself. Thankfully, Miles hadn't tried to follow him into his meeting, electing instead to wait in Monroe's office.

"Why are you bothering me?" Monroe whined again when he saw Miles spinning idly in his chair when he went back to grab his things for his first class after the meeting.

"I just want to hang out with you," Miles insisted.

He grabbed the stack of graded papers he needed off the desk. "Since when do you and I just hang out?"

"Since we were like five," Miles answered as he stood up to follow him.

Monroe shook his head. "You've lost your fucking mind. That's the only explanation. Does Rachel know you've gone bat shit crazy?"

Miles almost doubled over with laughter. This was too easy and was the most entertainment he'd had in a long time. "Like you're one to talk," he said in between what Monroe could only describe as giggles.

"Are you high?" he cocked his head at the lunatic that stood before him.

"Only on life, buddy."

Miles followed Monroe to each of his classes, sitting in the back and pestering him with dumb questions. He did everything he could to disrupt his lectures and grate on him as only a brother could. By the time they got to his Blackout and Militia History class, his head was pounding and he was at his wit's end.

He passed back their quizzes from Friday and braced himself for another barrage of Miles' increasingly annoying antics. It was then that he had a wonderfully evil thought that was worthy of anyone named the Scourge of Scranton."

"Okay everyone, listen up. I told you at the start of the semester that there'd be a few guest lecturers here and there. I will not be doing today's lecture." He pointed to where Miles was slouched in the back of the room. "Today, your instructor will be none other than General Miles Matheson himself."

The sudden panic in Miles' eyes made his sudden victory that much sweeter. Before the man could even get out of the chair, let alone protest, Monroe bolted out of the room, shutting the door behind him. For good measure, he pulled a very large bench from the hallway over to block the door and sat down on it to increase the weight. There'd be no escaping the room now.

His actions earned him several very curious glances from both colleagues and students alike. When another professor asked him what he was doing, he just shrugged. "Teaching a very important lesson on cause and effect," he grinned.

When the clock tower sounded, indicating that it was now one o'clock, Monroe shoved the bench back into place and opened the door. "That wasn't funny," Miles griped as he joined him in the hallway.

If you can't take it, don't dish it, pal," Monroe replied with a saccharine sweet smile. Getting back at Miles had simply felt too good and was worth letting the class get a day behind. When the room was empty, he headed down the hallway back to his office.

"Hey, Professor Monroe!" A voice called from behind.

He turned around to address the student. It was the boy with the doodle from the first day of class. The kid had actually turned out to be one of the better students in the class, once he learned to pay attention. "Mr. Perkins," he acknowledged, waiting for the young man to catch up.

"Did you really try to sleep with your high school principal's daughter so you could steal the key to his office, or did General Matheson just make that up?"

Monroe whipped his head around to glare at Miles, who was standing there trying to keep a straight face. "I really fucking hate you," he said as he shoved him into the wall as hard as he could with one hand. He shook his head and walked away.

"Well, did you?" Johnny Perkins called after him.

With a sigh, Monroe turned back around. "Tried? Did—and I got the fucking key too, and the password to his computer."

"Right on," the young man smiled, his opinion of his instructor having gone up a thousand percent. With that, he took off down the hall to get to his next class.

"Can't take it, don't dish it, pal," Miles mocked as he walked past, rubbing his shoulder where it had hit the wall.

"Jesus Christ, Miles. What the hell did you teach them?" he asked.

"It was a history class, so I taught them history. I just happened to change give them the history of Bass Monroe."

"You're a dick," Monroe ground out as he yanked open the door to his office.

Miles just laughed at him. "And that's what friends are for."

He'd spent the entire hour telling them every embarrassing story and crazy antic from Monroe's youth that he could think of. They now knew about the time in their senior year that his friend had passed out naked in the middle of the football field after a group of them had all gotten shit faced and ran through the sprinklers buck ass naked on a dare. He'd also told them about the time that Monroe had picked the strip club in Tijuana, only to find out that hermafrodita was Spanish for hermaphrodite.

He hadn't planned on telling his class those things, but when he'd nervously asked them what they knew about their instructor they'd filled his ears with some of the horrible things he'd done, as well as heinous acts that even at his worst, Monroe would never have committed, and so things had just kind of gone from there. To be fair, he'd made sure to throw some embarrassing stories about himself for good measure. Then, he'd told them about some of the good things his friend had done.

They knew about how Monroe almost got expelled from school by starting a fight with a guy that was bullying a kid everyone knew was secretly gay. He also told them about the time that the older of his two sister's boyfriend had come down with mono just a week before her senior prom, so Monroe had rearranged his leave. Cancelling a planned trip to Key West with friends, Monroe had instead come home and taken his sister to prom.

Miles told them about how Gail Monroe had sent their professor a care package every month, like clockwork during his tours in Iraq. He'd always take whatever tin of cookies or candy she'd included and would pass them out to the local children, some of which were so poor that they would never receive such a treat at home. He'd even gone as far as emailing her some English translations of local recipes, asking her to try to make them. That had been the person he was, and Miles did a good job making sure they wouldn't forget that.

When one of the girls in the class had asked how he'd gone from that man to the general they'd all grown up to fear, he'd sworn them all to secrecy and then told them about the loss of his family and then the loss of his wife and child. More than anything, Miles had decided that someone needed to make him more human in their eyes.

And so, Miles had done him a favor by reaching out to his students—they were, after all the easies minds to change. They respected him because of his position demanded it, but they still saw him as this mythical monster and murderer. Now, there were thirty young minds that saw a man that had been driven by loss and desperation to do things he'd never known he was capable of. In that respect, he'd followed the subject matter of the class perfectly.

Miles was sure that Monroe would be livid when he found out, but he'd get over it. If he was so insistent on living a normal life, he had to let people see him as a normal person. A huge part of his isolation had always been because he'd set himself apart from everyone else. That was all well and good when you were trying to head an army, but was destructive when you were trying to move on with your life.

As Generals, they'd both had to make the men see them as commanding officers, not comrades in arms. His friend did not deal well with the loneliness, however. He'd lost too many people to take it, so when Miles had left Philly, there'd been no one to fulfill that role. When he'd refused to come to Nashville from the get go, Monroe had never had someone there.

Despite Charlie's insistence that he'd been fine before they'd shown up, Miles was still convinced otherwise. Sure, she and Shawn Harris may have helped Monroe keep his head above water for a while, but it had only been a matter of time. The fact that he and Rachel had been involved may have made things worse, but the deciding factor in Monroe's descent back into hell had been his son. That would have happened with or without their help.

Miles couldn't change the past, but he could make sure that Monroe didn't feel that helpless isolation again. He still felt guilty for helping Connor, regardless of the effect it may have had. Whether the man realized it not (or liked it or not), he needed people—the more the better. That way, when someone left, there would always be others around. It was the best apology he could make, even if the man didn't see it that way.

Monroe managed to successfully ditch Miles for the last class, but like a bad penny, he showed right back up to irritate him on the walk home. They were halfway there when Miles suddenly stopped walking. "Look at me, I was having so much fun bugging you, I lost track of time. Walk me to the train station?"

"Okay…" Monroe hissed under his breath. If it meant finally getting rid of him, he was all too happy to comply.

As they walked, Miles continued to babble about this and that. All the while Monroe did his best to ignore him, as he'd done all day. For a man that had spent almost fifty years silently brooding (he was convinced that Miles had been born with a frown), the man had certainly become a Chatty Cathy of late. This was something that Monroe couldn't stop himself form grumbling more than once as they walked.

They finally reached the train station, much to Monroe's vast relief. He was tired, downright grouchy and hungry besides. All he wanted was to get home, eat dinner and relax—in complete silence. He stopped at the main entryway to the station house and offered Miles a mock salute. "This is my stop. It's been… interesting," he said.

Immediately Miles went to stop him from escaping. "What's the rush, brother? I hear there's a good bar inside. Train won't be here for a while anyway."

Inwardly groaning, Monroe reluctantly agreed. A bar likely meant food, so that would take care of one of his immediate problems. On top of that, maybe a good buzz would make Miles seem less obnoxious. What the hell has gotten into him today? With gritted teeth, he followed the man into the main station in search of a very stiff drink.

The longer they sat in the bar, the weirder Miles started to act, if that was even possible. He was constantly checking his pocket watch and fidgeted nonstop. If he's in such a hurry, why did he want to come here in the first place?

He seemed desperate to keep up the small talk and kept ordering another round before their last was even half gone. Currently, Monroe sat with two backups to the glass he held. It was if Miles was terrified that he would get fed up and leave. Out of nowhere he jumped off his stool and slammed a few diamonds down on the bar and headed out to the platforms. "Come on, time to go!" he said, yanking Monroe up.

"Where are you going, dumbass?" Monroe asked as Miles stood in front of the train that had just pulled up. "The Eastbound platform is on the other side of the station. This train just came from there."

"Oh, I'm not getting on the train," he grinned.

"But you said-"

"I asked you to walk me to the train station. I didn't say I had a ticket." He led Monroe to where the passengers were exiting the train. "We aren't here so I can get on; we're here because someone's getting off."