AN: I promise I won't abandon this story, no matter how long it takes between updates. Unfinished fic is one of the great tragedies of fanfiction, and I wouldn't do that to all of you! :-) I'm sorry it's taken so long – RL has been sort of all-consuming the last few months – but here's another chapter with a little bit of everyone in it. :-D Also, if you're over on A03, I'm co-writing a pirate AU Revolution fic there (yes, PIRATES) with the absolutely brilliant buttercups3, entitled "M is for Pirates." Check it out if you want some lunacy – er, comedy – to balance the seriousness of this fic.

And some shout-outs, where they're due: To Shelby, for saying you missed my writing and wanted to find out what happened to everyone – thank you. I finally started this chapter when I read your review; it was a lovely bit of encouragement right when I needed it! And to Thinktink2, who's been so faithful to poke me every month or so and remind me that there are people waiting on my next chapter. You're awesome, and I do owe you several chapters at this point, but I figured you'd all want to have this one "hot off the presses," as it were. And finally, to winteriscoming3, for using the word "derptastic" to describe Aaron and Monroe's adventures. They're in this chapter because of you.

Crash

Teaching a fat guy to swordfight is about as funny as it sounds. Aaron had taken to calling Bass "Professor Xavier" after the third time Bass lamented not being able to just get up and whip his ass into shape with the flat of his blade (and again, Miles would have made innuendo hell out of that one). But despite (okay, maybe because of) his dork-tastic protégé's lack of coordination and constant litany of X-Men references, Bass had managed to teach the overweight bastard a passable amount of almost-sort of-passable footwork.

And, what the hell, he might actually have had a little bit of fun doing it.

Aaron's gasping like a landed fish on the other bed, and Bass can't resist needling him: "When was the last time you did that much exercise all in one go? Climbing the stairs to your private jet?"

For a second, Aaron doesn't answer, and Bass actually jerks his head in the other guy's direction in alarm. If the ex-Google-genius has a heart attack and dies down here right now, Bass's escape plan is shot to hell.

Aaron opens one eye and side-eyes him, hard. "I'll have you know," he manages, then has to stop to take several deep breaths, "I may look out of shape, but I've walked halfway across this goddamn country, and I definitely have a plus ten to stamina."

"A line that'll get any girl in bed with you," Bass observes dryly.

Aaron actually chuckles at that, and looks like he's about to respond when there's a rap at the door. Bass is about to signal him to shut up and wait for their visitors to identify themselves when Aaron says, "Yeah?"and forces himself off the bed, probably not realizing he's still gripping the sword. Fanfuckingtastic. Aaron Pittman, his barely-trained, overweight bodyguard.

"Aaron?" It's Harold. Bass sighs and does the only thing he can that might give him any sort of advantage – he closes his eyes and pretends to be unconscious. There's a soft creak as the bookcase door slides open, and then Harold says, "He still out?"

There's a pause, during which Bass can imagine Aaron looking over at him in badly-concealed surprise and then nodding, unconvincingly. "Um, yep."

Harold sighs. "The patrol moved on faster than I would've thought. Couldn't gather much, but they were hell bent on catching Matheson tonight." His footsteps move a bit further into the room, and Bass breathes slower, because paranoia has been his constant companion lately, and Harold's tone is a little too familiar.

"So they're gone?" Aaron's relief is as obvious as it is idiotic.

Harold stops moving – Bass can no longer hear the soft tap of his shoes against the floor – and continues as if he hasn't heard Aaron: "They're riding with Major Tom Neville – rabid lapdog to President Monroe himself. You know what kind of shit you guys are in?"

Another pause. Aaron's probably shaking his head or just standing there looking dumb…and fuck. There it is. That tingle Bass only feels right before –

"Well, I do," Harold says, and there's the sound of a 9mm cocking, and Bass throws himself off the bed.

...

Miles had spent nearly five minutes talking them through the river swim – an eternity of words for him, especially in his current condition, and an indication of just how worried he was about this plan. Rachel had quietly ignored Nora's piercing stare, Charlie's widened eyes, and Jason's snort (though the young man had managed to expressively combine both his awe of Miles and his utter disbelief that they'd all make it out of this alive). Danny had merely looked from Miles to Rachel and silently dismounted his horse to check his tack. Jason had done the same after a moment, helping both Charlie and Nora with their horses – tossing out unnecessary gear, tightening cinches and breast collars, and knotting the ends of their reins around the saddle horns.

Now, Rachel stands next to her own mount, staring into the whorl of hair where its neck meets its shoulder. She's thinking about the whorl and the river water and the way that mountain lion's snarl had rippled through the forest, and doesn't even realize how still she's standing until she hears Jason approaching behind her, presumably to help her with her own tack.

Miles limps into the boy's path before he can offer. (And in this, as always, he's interposing himself between Rachel and…well, everything.) "Narrowest crossing, fewest rocks. Scout," he growls at the kid, and Jason moves off, like that, to walk the river edge.

Miles moves in, close enough for her to taste copper on her tongue as she smells the blood on his coat, and, silently, sets to work sorting out her tack.

"I can do that, Miles." He doesn't shrug, but she can read his response in the lack of one. She reaches out a hand, hesitant, but there's hardly a place on his arm that isn't torn and bloody, and briefly, insanely, she thinks that this is what it must be like to try to touch her (though it's not her skin that's marred by the last eight years, never the outside…).

So she withdraws, observes (it's what she's good at – best at, really – a natural inclination honed by so many years of necessary practice). And then she sees:

His hands are shaking.

It's a slight tremor, probably barely noticeable unless you can feel Miles the way Rachel can, but it goes right down through his legs, and it scares the hell out of her. Miles has always been so close to invincible as to be indistinguishable from the real thing (and this is, perhaps, the only thing upon which she and Bass had ever agreed). And Rachel has never been a person of faith, but, staring at this shocking evidence of Miles' weakness, she realizes that she has believed in Miles' invincibility – unconsciously, undetectably, deeply.

And, with that tiny tremor, her faith is crumbling.

"Miles…" This time she does touch his skin, reaching across to a patch, unmarked, on his left wrist. And he stills – not freezing, not tensing – just stops moving. It's as if it's taking all of his energy just to remain upright; he can't spare any to react to her query. So he just waits – waiting on her, waiting on her whim – and suddenly, Rachel can't not. She leans forward and kisses him with a sureness she hasn't felt in fifteen years.

For a moment, he doesn't move. And then he shoves against her, hard and demanding and desperate, backing her right up against her horse until the stirrup and saddle leather digs into her back and the horse snakes its head around in irritation. Miles grunts, elbowing the horse away, then turns and drags her five limping steps into the trees.

And then he's on her again, and she actually whimpers, because his hands wrap around the small of her back and the back of her head, crushing her against him hard enough to feel every line of his jagged frame and kissing her like he's dying for lack of it. She can't get close enough fast enough, and tries to wrap a leg around his hip before he hisses and the sound clears the haze enough for her to remember his shredded back.

"Shit; I'm sorry," she mumbles into his mouth, but he just shakes his head and walks her back into a tree, rough bark cutting through her blouse and scraping the skin of her palms raw. And it's torture not to touch him – with his hands in her hair and his tongue in her mouth and the scent of whiskey and river water and rich earthcoiling around her brainstem.

Because this is Miles, and she has somehow wanted him through all of it – from that first goddamn Christmas in 2002, through thirteen years of marriage (to another man), through three years of hell (at his fucking hands…oh god, his fucking hands…), and five years of abandonment (never again, those hands are whispering) – and it's possibly the most fucked up thing in all of her fucked up life, but this, finally, is the sum of all of Rachel's calculations:

She belongs to Miles. (And he to her, though he says it with his hands and his swords and his eyes and never, ever aloud.)

After a minute, he pulls back, gasping, breath hot against her neck. Then he forces himself slowly back from the tree, resting his fever-hot forehead against hers. "Rache…" Shit. His voice sounds like wet gravel. She should have been spending less time trying to swallow his tongue and more time trying to keep him alive long enough to reach New York.

But even with that guilt burning in her veins and his forehead burning against hers, she can't keep from leaning up to kiss him one more time. It's slower this time, and she can feel his fatigue and his pain and taste the faint metal of blood from a cut lip. She leans forward, pushing her back away from the tree with both hands, pressing her chest and her mouth and her hips into his until he breaks off with a growl that devolves quickly into something that might almost be mistaken for a laugh.

"Holy hell, Rachel." He's still breathing hard, wavering on his feet. "There are easier ways to kill me." He rocks a half-step forward –

And it's stupid, because it's just Miles' typical terribly mistimed dark humor, but all the same, Rachel can't help but stiffen and pull back. Because of course, if he dies on this trek, it will be her fault.

A million or more deaths on her conscience, and this would be the one to break her.

Miles pulls back, dropping his hands to his sides, misinterpreting her reticence. "Sorry, I – "

"No – " she begins, softly. "It's –"

"Miles?" It's Charlie. Miles straightens. The strain, the weakness, the slight sway on his feet – they all vanish under a confident grin the second his niece comes into view through the trees.

"Over here, kid." His voice still sounds terrible, but Charlie doesn't seem to notice.

"Jason found a place to cross," she's saying as she steps into the clearing, then falls silent as she sees Rachel.

For a surreal moment, Rachel has to fight the urge to smooth out her hair and readjust her blouse, feeling absurdly like a teenager who's been caught making out by an overprotective parent. She is an adult, goddamn it, and Charlie is her daughter, and –

– and Miles is Charlie's uncle. With whom Rachel cheated on Charlie's father.

And yet, in the scheme of awful things she's done in her life, she finds that this one hardly even ranks among the top ten anymore.

Charlie has obviously decided to leave the matter be for now, and she leads Miles off toward the river without a word. Rachel follows them as far as the horses, then sets herself back to the task of lightening her horse's load and tightening its cinch.

Ten minutes later, they're all lined up at the edge of the river at Jason's chosen crossing spot, ready to take the plunge. Rachel, as the weakest rider, is furthest upriver – not that anyone will actually have a chance in hell of catching her if she loses hold of her horse, but she knows the idea that maybe they could is supposed to make her feel better. Jason is furthest downriver, next to Charlie – who'd practically had to fistfight Miles for the placement – then Miles, then Danny, and then Nora, closest to Rachel.

Without torches, the water is black glass against the starlight, unnervingly fast and silent as it cuts around the shadows of boulders just upstream of them.

Unsurprisingly, none of the horses want to go anywhere near it. It takes Jason actually riding around and cracking her horse on the butt with the end of his reins before it half-rears in protest, and plunges into the current.

The water is breathtakingly cold, and not in the symbolic way – in the actual holy shit, I can't breathe way. Rachel actually lets out a yelp as her horse hits the river and cold, cold, COLD rushing water soaks her jeans to the waist. A second later, the horse lurches forward and the bottom drops out from under them. Rachel follows Miles' instructions and, wincing in preparation, throws herself the rest of the way into the freezing river, keeping one hand on the saddle horn and latching the other onto her horse's breast collar.

As Miles had predicted, the horse yanks her forward through the icy current, making her only job to not let go – a job that is made terrifyingly difficult as the water instantly numbs her hands and arms to the point of nonfuctionality. Her grip slips twice in the first thirty seconds, and it's only the shot of adrenaline as she considers being swept downstream alone that gives her the strength to hold on.

She's downriver of the horse – again, per Miles' orders – which keeps her clear of its pistoning legs, and the tow across the river is almost smooth apart from the rhythmic tugging on her arms and the constant pull of the water on the rest of her body.

She swivels her head, trying to catch a glimpse of the others, and feels an abrupt twinge of guilt when she realizes that she's looking not for Charlie or for Danny, but for Miles.

Halfway across, her horse starts to thrash harder against the current, the rhythmic puff, puff, puff of its breath increasing, nostrils flaring, struggling to keep its head clear of the water. And suddenly, there's a boulder in front of them, the current wrapping around it and throwing them into its gravity, and Rachel clings to her horse with every remaining ounce of strength in her numb fingers as the horse's shoulder ricochets off the boulder and the water sweeps over both of their heads.

She's certain that's it, that the horse is going to take her down with it as it drowns, but the creature's will to live is perhaps a bit stronger than her own, because a second later, Rachel finds herself gasping for air, her left shoulder half-dislocated as the horse lunges to the surface, yanking her up with it.

Then she hears Charlie's blood-curdling scream from ten feet downriver.

"MILES!"

And then another shout, almost as panicked, from Jason:

"Charlie, NO!"

She tries to twist around to see something, anything, but the current half drowns her, and a second later, her horse's feet are striking bottom on the other side of the river and she's desperately trying to disentangle her numb hands as the horse rushes up the bank to be free from the water.

Nora is already standing on the bank, dripping and shivering, squinting desperately out into the darkness. Her horse is grazing a short distance off, and Rachel's runs to join it.

"Down here!" Jason's quiet shout carries upriver to them, and both Nora and Rachel force their numb legs into a jog until they're close enough to make out the forms of both Jason and Danny, and, nearby, the shadowy shapes of three horses.

"What the hell happened?" Nora gets out the question before Rachel can ask, before Jason's face has even resolved into view in the darkness.

"Charlie…I couldn't stop her. Miles' horse went under; I didn't see what happened. One second he was there; next, he's just fucking disappeared. Then Charlie just lets go and gets swept downriver after him." He's already marching toward the horses, but Nora grabs the shoulder of his coat and yanks him back.

"Like hell – " he starts, but Nora twists him into a wrestling hold and clamps a hand firmly over his mouth.

"You hear that?" she whispers in the sudden silence. Rachel strains to hear anything over the low rushing water and the horses shifting on the grass. Then, very faintly…

…the sound of marching footsteps.

Directly downriver.

"The patrol that blew the bridge." Rachel hardly realizes she's spoken until Nora nods.

"They'll have heard that shouting." Jason moves immediately toward the horses again, but this time, Nora lets him go, nodding.

"We've got to move. Trying to find Miles and Charlie now will only draw attention to them. We'll draw the patrol away, find your friends in New York. Charlie and Miles are smart; they'll meet us there." …or they'll be dead, Rachel can hear her leave out.

It's been less than a minute since they emerged from the water, but as Rachel remounts her horse, she's shivering even more violently than when she'd actually been submerged in the icy current.

But now, it's only half from the cold.

...

Charlie is swimming. Or…spinning? Floundering? …Drowned? It's dark, and she's coughing up water, coughing her way…back to consciousness, that's it.

She's been out – not long, because it's still dark and she's soaked to the bone and freezing and still laying half in the water. And shit, she's cold.

She turns on her side, retching up another half-lungful of water and managing to drag herself on her stomach across the gravel far enough that she gets everything but her boots out of the water.

Miles. Where's Miles? She'd jumped in after him.

With a groan, she forces her knees to bend and manages to tuck her numb feet underneath her. It takes balancing on both her hands and knees and another round of vomiting up water before she can stand, and when she does, it's on frighteningly unsteady legs. She turns, trying not to fall – and how is it so damn hard to walk when she can't feel her feet? She can still see them, after all – and looks up the bank – nothing – and then down the bank.

A large, black form lays motionless on the grass at the side of the river. It's too big to be Miles, but she stumbles forward like she's lost all sense of both coordination and self-preservation (and maybe the latter is true) until she gets close enough to figure out that it's a horse.

Miles' horse.