AN: Happy Valentine's Day! Sorry for the slow update - I wrote a chapter, then realized it needed another chapter before it, so then I wrote this chapter. Good news is, I'll update again tomorrow with the other chapter, since it just needs a few revisions. Anyway, in honor of Valentine's Day, here's some Bass/Rachel/Miles angst. Warnings for a bit more intense language than usual. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Revolution still isn't mine. Still not making money off it either.
Choke
The wagon ride is hell. Bass grits his teeth and mentally moves "road paving" just below "weapons" on his pendant uses list. He cracks his eyes open again to check his surroundings. Rachel is still sitting next to him in the back of the wagon, and he doesn't think she'd kill him in his sleep, but he's long since given up predicting the lengths to which that woman will go when she sees a threat.
She would've been good in the Marines. Just point her at a target and tell her they wanted to kill her kids: Target ended.
But when he'd brought Rachel into Philly, at Miles' suggestion, he'd never imagined she'd be the catalyst for so many disasters. That woman had done more to bring down the Monroe Republic - and Bass personally - than any other militia, rebel cell, or insurgent in the Republic's history.
Of course, if Bass is right, she'd also done more to bring down the entire world than anyone else in all of history. So by comparison, her having been the tipping point for Miles' departure is a minor infraction.
But Bass still hates her for it.
Nora calls Miles' name sharply, and Bass cracks an eye open again. The dimming twilight narrows his field of vision, but he can see Miles, riding beside the wagon, shake himself and sit up a little straighter, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He looks like shit - and this from the guy with the broken leg. Apparently Nora thinks so, too, because her next words are:
"You've slept two hours in the last thirty-six, Miles. Get in the wagon. I'm not picking you up when you fall off that horse."
A moment later, the wagon grinds to a halt and the wagon bed shifts as Miles puts both hands on the back and vaults up. His weight lands next to Bass a moment later, and by the sound of his breathing, he's out three seconds after he hits the rough boards. Miles has always been able to go superhuman amounts of time without sleep - once during the second Georgia border campaign, he'd stayed awake for six straight days out of pure necessity - but once he does hit the sack, he can sleep like a dead man anywhere. Bass envies that. He hasn't slept well in seventeen years.
Something bumps his shoulder - and there's Charlie Matheson's boot disappearing over the edge of the wagon as she hops out onto Miles' horse. That kid has balls. He would've almost been disappointed if Strausser had had to shoot her. Fuck only knew where she'd gotten them from, either - Ben had always been a coward, and Rachel isn't so much brave as homicidally protective.
But Charlie Matheson is brave, and that's dangerous. He'd seen it in her eyes when she'd jumped in front of Strausser's gun - the kid understands what it means to sacrifice for the greater good; she's just too young and naive to know what the greater good really is. And, like Miles, she's someone people will follow.
Which would make her the perfect poster child for the rebels.
Honestly, Bass'll be a little disappointed if he has to kill her.
Danny's mumbling something to his mother just outside the range of Bass's hearing.
"It's complicated," is Rachel's soft reply. Bass tunes in, straining to catch the details of the conversation, carefully regulating his breathing to appear unconscious.
"Well, Nora says it's going to be a long ride." Awesome. Bass's leg already feels like someone's hitting it repeatedly with an axe.
"Danny…" Rachel sighs. Bass can't risk opening his eyes, but he imagines her nervously tucking a few strands of her blond hair behind her ear. Whatever role she'd played in the Blackout, she's clearly guilty as hell about it, and there's no way she's going to tell her kid -
"Do you know what your Dad and I did for a living? Before the lights went out?"
Bass's heart stops.
And then Rachel keeps right on talking, unrolling the story he'd tried to get out of her for eight years: the story of how she and Ben created a machine that brought about the end of the world.
For an hour, the only sounds in the darkness are the rumble of the wagon wheels, the creaking of the horses' harness, and the soft modulation of Rachel's voice.
No one else speaks a word as she lays out the circumstances surrounding the creation of the machine - the early plans, the assembling of the team, their initial excitement at their groundbreaking discovery - followed by the series of events leading up to its misuse: her pregnancy with Danny, Danny's illness, and the subsequent offer of help from the Department of Defense.
Holy hell.
But Rachel isn't finished. "When Miles - when your uncle called me in, I thought… Well, he knew about the research we'd been doing, about my deal with the DoD, and I just…" Her already soft voice wavers and then disappears into the stillness.
Bass fights to keep his breathing steady. Miles had known. He'd fucking known - he'd known all along that Rachel and Ben, that they'd caused the fucking Blackout, and he'd let Bass wonder for years, wheedling information piece by tiny piece, chasing down whispers of rumors in the far corners of the Republic…and all along, he'd known exactly what they'd needed.
And he'd kept it from Bass.
...And suddenly, Bass is thrown back seventeen years to a scene that's still as clear as if he's actually living it.
He's sitting next to Rachel on a park bench in front of a carousel, watching three-year-old Charlie ride the carousel round and round and round while Rachel puts her head in her hands and cries.
Cries, because Miles hasn't spoken to her since Christmas - the Christmas he'd spent getting absolutely shit-faced with Bass after showing up back at base when he was supposed to be in Chicago - cries, because she needs Bass to get a message to Miles and maybe Bass can get through to him, because he always tells Bass everything…
And Bass is sitting there watching her blue eyes spill over with tears - and she's always had such beautiful eyes that he reaches out a hand almost unconsciously toward her face, to wipe the moisture from her cheek - when he realizes what she's saying. His hand stops mid-reach.
"Rachel." He clears his throat and almost can't force the words out, but he has to know. He has to be sure. "Did you sleep with Miles?"
And apparently, the question shocks her, because her head snaps up and she looks at him through red-rimmed eyes, startled. "...He didn't tell you?" Her voice comes out as a choked whisper.
Bass finds his feet before he realizes what he's doing, backing away from the bench and Rachel, running a hand compulsively through his hair. "Shit, Rachel. Shit. How long?" he says, only half aware that his voice is rising.
"We were together two years, but Bass, I broke it off at Christmas, and oh God, I thought he'd told you - "
"Well, he didn't," Bass snaps, not caring about the way Rachel's eyes immediately well with tears. And then an even worse thought occurs to him. He takes a breath, choking back a sick feeling. "And - " But he actually can't say the words, so he waves a hand helplessly at Rachel's pregnant belly.
"No," she says, quickly. "No; he's Ben's."
Bass is rapidly feeling sicker and sicker, the constant spinning of the carousel in the background mimicking the churning in his stomach. He rocks forward - Rachel needs his support, and he'd come all the way here and she's one of only two people in the world he'd do that for…
But if she'd really needed his support, then she shouldn't have fucked Miles. "I - I've gotta go." He barely hears himself mumble the words, his feet still backing away of their own accord.
Rachel raises tortured eyes - and they're still beautiful, and God, he's a fucking idiot because how could he not have seen. It'd been Miles who'd warned him away from Rachel in the first place, with some bullshit about Ben being his brother and not wanting Bass screwing up his niece's parents' marriage "just for another one-night fuck."
Miles had to have known it was different with Rachel - had to have known she wasn't like any of the other girls Bass had been with - and yet he'd sat right there and clapped Bass on the shoulder with a "Sorry, man - you've gotta let her go," when all the while he'd been screwing Rachel himself behind Bass's back.
"Bass?" Rachel's voice tugs at something in his chest, but he sets his jaw, turns, and walks away from her. As he goes, he catches just a glimpse of Charlie out of the corner of his eye, and she's grinning, still waving at them as she rides the carousel round and round and round and round.
The wagon hits a pothole, and the resulting jolt slams Bass back abruptly into the present. Pain - in every sense of the word - resonates through every part of him, and he can't hold back a groan of misery.
"Here, give him some of this." Aaron passes back a canteen of something from the front of the wagon. A hand - Danny's - holds it to Bass's lips. He takes a swallow. Whiskey. Probably something one of his soldiers confiscated and conveniently forgot to report to the supply depot.
He tips his head back and swallows again; it starts out smooth, soothing the sandpaper feeling on his tongue and the roof of his mouth, then burns like fire all the way down his throat. He's heard Nora compare Miles to whiskey before - although undoubtedly in a much different context - but the parallel is apt:
He'll always burn you in the end.
He'd forgiven Miles years ago for Rachel - they'd put it behind them; been stronger for it - and he'd offered him forgiveness again yesterday, for eight years of absence, eight years of leaving Bass to figure everything out on his own. He'd actually been ready to let him back into the fold, to pick up where they'd left off:
Brothers, for life.
But they'd never really been brothers - not then, and not now. Because whatever Bass wanted - whatever he needed, more than anything else in the world - Miles kept from him.
The whiskey burns in his veins and Bass clenches his teeth as the wagon hits another crack in the road. It may be a long ride, but he knows what he's going to do at the end of it.
He's going to run a sword through his best friend's heart.