Work Text:
They'd only really thought about weapons – about tanks and helicopters and guided missiles – not the small, brutal advantages even limited access to technology gave Monroe. He had motorbikes and radios that crackled across a mile of ground and torches – proper, million-candle torches – that cut through the night like knives.
Bastard, Nora thought, lying in the muddy creek with the water leeching out the heat out of her. She was too tired to give the thought any flare, and she wasn't sure who she meant anyhow. Monroe or Miles or the late, great Ben Matheson? Maybe all of them.
The patrol finally moved on, harried by the bite of Major Neville's fury. She'd worked for him once. He'd been a fair commander, respected if not liked, and had always thought well of Miles. That had obviously changed, apparently the warrant for them now was dead or alive. 'Preferably,' Neville's voice snapped through the static, 'dead.'
What had Miles done back in Philadelphia? Other than burned all his bridges? Nora dragged herself shivering and heavy with mud out of the stream. She'd asked Miles about Kipling and he'd asked when she'd cared so much militia soldiers. So she figured that answered that. Poor sod.
She wiped her face on her sleeve and trudged wearily back to the cave they were hiding in, tossing the sack of provisions to Aaron. He caught it, fumbled it, dropped it and pretended he'd meant to do that.
'They're still there,' she said, crawling into the back of the cave and stripping down unceremoniously. Cold air prickled her skin. 'Neville knows we're here.'
'He can't,' Miles said flatly.
'Then he's staying for the scenery,' she said, pulling her shirt on. 'Either way, if we move he'll find us. If we don't, he'll find us.'
'We can't let that happen,' Rachel said, reaching out to clutch Danny's hand. Her fingers clenched white against his skin. 'Monroe would never let us escape again.'
Charlie shifted, looking away, and Miles stared at her with a raw, unguarded expression on his face. There had been a time he'd looked at Nora like that.
When he thought she was some pure little girl, some ideal of a scrappy heroine. She'd spoilt that for him by being honest, and by not being ashamed of anything she'd done. There were things she wasn't proud of, things she wished hadn't happened, but there was nothing that shamed her.
The idea of not hating yourself wasn't something Miles could deal with back then. The last couple of days, Nora wasn't entirely sure that she could deal with the idea of not hating Miles.
She wrapped herself in a blanket, tucking the fuzzy ends of it under her feet and over her knee, and leant back against the rough stone. When Aaron showed them the pendent the first time, she'd never really thought about where it came from. The story had seemed simple, Ben Matheson was the saint who'd wanted to turn back on the power and he'd been martyred by the evil militia who wanted to use it for their own purposes.
It never occurred to her that he could have been the one to turn it off. Miles would have told her that.
She dreamt about her mother that night – about her mother on that night. It was the first time in years.
Used to be, she had terrible dreams about that night all the time, her grown up self helpless as it played out.
They'd argued, you see, about wanting to go to Dad's. Nora had spent years feeling terrible about that, eating at herself over the idea she'd fought with her mom on the last night she'd ever seen her. About the fact that, maybe, if she'd won it would have changed everything. Then she'd dealt with 13 year old Mia and...there hadn't been a day for five years they hadn't had a fight about something.
And the dreams had just stopped, like the fight was the only thing wrong with that night. Until now, when the same dream crawled into her brain every night.
Nora's neck hurt and her back hurt and sometime during the night – when the screaming started – Mia had bitten into her hand hard enough to draw blood. She crept down the hall on bare feet, already knowing what she'd see.
The door creaked open and there was her mom, lying on the bed. Her pretty black hair was all torn, handfuls lying on the floor, and the room smelt of blood and sweat and (sex). The man was still there, muddy boots on the bed.
Then it was...later. She was wearing her jeans and her leather jacket and her sweaty fingers wrapped so tight around the shiny black handle of Mom's knife that later she wouldn't be able to let got. One step. Two. Her foot came down on torn, blue cotton panties and her chest hurt but she didn't stop.
She reached the bed and put her knife to the man's throat and he turned head to look at her. Some nights it was Miles and sometimes it was Rachel sometimes it was this man that she knew, with dream certainty, was Ben Matheson.
And she slit his throat, blood washing everything clean and red.
In reality, it hadn't been so simple. He'd broken her wrist taking the knife of her and pushed her down on the bed, in her mother's blood, as he wrenched her jeans down. Dirty words in her ear, hands clawing at her, and then Mia had hit him on the head with a tenderizing hammer. Nora had got the knife back and cut his throat.
It hadn't bothered her. She'd thought it would, even though he'd deserved it she'd thought that killing him would hurt something in her. It always did in the movies and the comics. Nora felt nothing. Not even happy. It was something that needed to be done.
She did wish Mia hadn't gotten involved.
Miles came back from patrol limping from a near-miss, face bloody from temple to chin. He sat down hard and wiped his hands. 'Nora's right,' he said. 'Neville isn't going to give up.'
Him saying it made all the difference. They made plans to get out, get around and get away. It all sounded very definite, for Charlie and Danny's sake, but they knew it wasn't.
Charlie went with Miles, that meant that Danny went too because Charlie didn't trust her new found mother that far, and Rachel and Nora.
'We'll go North,' Miles said, squatting over a rough map on the ground. He moved stones that were them, here and here and here. He glanced at Nora. 'They follow us, you booby trap the ground behind them and head East.'
'Meet up where?' she asked.
He named a smuggler they both knew. An ex-rich boy who ran guns and whores and whatever anyone needed up and down the coast in his patched-up, stitched-up yacht. Enough money and he'd take them where they needed to go. Except there wouldn't be enough money in the world to keep him quiet about it, to stop him running to Monroe with the news.
Nora knew that. Miles knew it too. He caught her eyes on him and his mouth tightened, chin dipping in fractional acknowledgement. It couldn't be helped, some things needed to be done.
They all had to live with that.