Chapter Text
Chapter One: One Late Night (One Ultimatum)
The room is quiet and abandoned. It is full of shadows, the dark flitting thoughts made flesh and yet it is here where he has decided to spend the night. He is desperately seeking the solace he craves and has been unable to get for the past several days. He needs to be alone in the silence considering the outcome of this very day.
And what an outcome it will be, he thinks, a wry smile playing about his features. For after all the days and weeks, all the fighting and bloodshed, a decision had finally been reached. He would term it a consensus, but that would imply that many had actually come to an agreement. As opposed to the same old faces uttering the same words and the same old crowd going along with it. Which, he rolls his tired eyes heavenward, was unfortunately what had happened. The Council had made a determination after endless cycles of discussion.
They had spent a long, long time debating about... it.
Yes, 'it'. He chuckles as he drowns another glass of scotch. Not even a wince as the strong, burning liquor scorches his already parched throat. He needs this drink. Plus several more. And damn anyone who says otherwise to Hell.
Because as they're going to go ahead and do it, he might as well spend the night getting drunk so he doesn't actually reflect on what is going to happen come the morning. He plans to get so damn wasted he cannot remember his own name, let alone the name of – and what will happen -
He even hesitates to think the damn word. Loathes to remember the connotations that come with thinking it. Saying the word is worse. He isn't too sure how many times it has tumbled carelessly out of his mouth before, but that was years ago. A lifetime ago. He had been a different person then. And people change over time.
Right?
Or does he tell himself that so he has something to live for? To live by?
He frowns, staring at the bottle in front of him. Twirls it idly, watching the contents swirl faster and faster.
This though. This is... He pauses, holding the glass (since when had he refilled it?) close to his dry lips.
What are they doing? he wonders blearily. The right thing? The wrong thing? Something dyed a thousand varying shades of morally ambiguous grey to please the masses?
What are they doing? What have they become?
Something about the hope to start anew, the hope of achieving justice. Or so they had said, resolute and all righteous nodding.
He knocks back the glass with a flourish and with a steady hand well accustomed to this type of behaviour over the years. He sighs, the actual world weary sigh of a man who has lived too long, although he is still relatively young. He has seen too much of the fallibility of man, he knows. He has seen too much of the infallibility of man. He has seen the way in which a person changes in the pursuit of power, when authority invokes fear and panic and despair, when people are pushed to their breaking point -
He has seen too damn much to believe in hope anymore. He smiles bitterly at his cynical thoughts.
The fire crackles in front of him, but he does not feel the warmth it seductively offers. A painful cold numbs him from within, and it takes more than a few planks of timber and cracked, gilded panels to chase that kind of coldness away. Even if the now smouldering wood once decorated a President's room. Beautiful engraved panelling burns the same as the rotten wood from the cellar, he has come to find. The fire devours them each in kind - the same end comes to them all.
At that sudden moment of realisation, Miles Matheson stares into the fire, his shadow cast on the peeling walls behind him. A thousand memories and thoughts, each more vivid and real than its predecessor storm his mind. He sighs again, rubbing his temples. His head aches… And it is not from his excessive consumption of alcohol.
Memories are hanging heavy on him.
“Damn it Bass,” he murmurs in an age-tested voice of exasperation and frustration, “where did this all go wrong?”
//
He passes the guards who greet him with their usual mixture of awe and respect.
It’s a small cell, with a fetid reek of mould and damp. The smell, the chill doesn’t affect him (although he would swear the smell of damp lingers on his clothes for several hours after these visits).
It’s the sight of the crouched figure before him that does.
He doesn’t know what to feel. He never does. Anger? Triumph? There’s just numbness, the ever-present and pressing numbness, but glancing at the beaten man before him…He does feel a slight stirring of regret.
His presence causes the other man to look up slowly. He stares at Miles with half-lidded eyes, exhaustion etched on his face.
“Have you come to gloat? To look at how the mighty have fallen?”
“It’s no more than what you deserve.”
“Really? You’re actually gonna go with that line?”
“It’s the truth and you know it. You’ve killed people. Innocent people. Murdered them because they flew the damn American flag or because they kept a gun or broke another one of your stupid little laws!” Miles exclaims, feeling a sudden outburst of anger and frustration and pain and he’s damned if he knows what else it is that stirs in him. He fights the urge to hit out against the cell bars.
The other man just stares, a slight smirk playing about his cut lips.
“If I remember correctly, those ‘stupid little laws’ were your idea, Matheson.”
“And if I remember correctly, we swore to protect and serve under the same flag you outlawed!”
There is a flinch at the yelled words. Several quick and sharp blinks of the eyes. Oh, it was quickly done and covered up, but Miles saw it. He’s breathing heavily, he realises. Monroe is glaring at him; a look of darkness and hate and anger and pain.
“Don’t you dare try to act like you’re better than me,” the voice is low and barely restrained, “I did everything for you. Everything. And why? ‘Cause we were in this damn mess together. ‘Cause you planned and plotted and killed yourself. Don’t you fucking dare act all noble and perfect.”
Miles just glowers, and a smirk briefly dances across the prisoner’s face like the shadows from the candle on the wall. Monroe sits upright, with the air of one with a stack of cards in one hand, ready to play, and a loaded gun in the other.
He has nothing to lose, Miles thinks. Nothing to lose, and thus has the potential to be so very, very dangerous.
Caged animals always are.
“You fired the first shot in all this, Matheson. Not me.”
A pause. The older man slowly shakes his head.
“I’m better than you,” Miles says firmly, resoundingly, “because I knew when to stop. When I was wrong. When I had to set things right.”
An outburst of bitter, hoarse laughter that breaks off into a harsh cough due to the protestations of broken ribs. Monroe grasps the side of the dank wall for support with tied wrists as he stares up at the older man.
“When you had to set things right?” between gasps for breath, the younger man sounds incredulous, “Christ, you really do see yourself as some sort of flawed anti-hero, don’t you?”
“Shut the hell up,” the older man says warningly. Monroe laughs again, the action this time aggravating his ribs just enough to bring tears to his eyes. He may be swaying against the wall, but his eyes pierce Miles’ own. They’re glittering with some kind of emotion Miles cannot quite decipher.
(Miles should feel the confident, domineering one of the two right now. The superior. The one in control. He should be coming out on top. So why does he feel as though the other man has the upper hand?)
Those eyes continue to glower at him. Monroe leans against the wall, almost lazily, his gaze cuttingly sharp.
“You started all this, Matheson. You fucking started it. You better finish it too.”
There’s a heavy air of finality with those words, Miles realises. But he doesn’t know – doesn’t want to think – what such finality suggests.
//