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The long road had worn sturdy boots down to their uppers, cracked the toes and creased the heels. Charlie felt like it had done the same to her. She leant back on the rusted hood of a car - the heat of old metal comfortable against weary hips - and took a measured sip of sour, lukewarm water. It didn’t do much to quench her throat, but water was rationed - despite the river roaring nearby.
It was poison now, Miles said. After the bombs everything was poison - the water, the animals, the fruit on the trees. It hadn’t been enough for the Patriots to destroy everything; they’d salted the ground in their wake.
So all they had was the rations they’d carried with them. After 1000 miles, those were running as thin as their boot soles.
Monroe tossed her a pack of pills. She pulled a face but obediently popped them, dry-swallowing the acrid, crumbly tabs. They were old, scavenged like the dry rations from the scorched ruins of the Tower.
The memory caught her unexpectedly - twisting in her guts like dystentry. Afterwards...after everything, they’d found children in the tower. Orphans. Corpses. The children of her mother’s old co-workers.
It hadn’t touched Rachel - her composure uncracked, uncrackable - but Charlie thought it had broken her. She’d damned Monroe for killing Danny, for killing her father, and now she was just as bad. It didn’t matter she’d not pulled the trigger - no more than than it mattered Monroe hadn’t been flying that helicopter. They’d been the instigators.
She could either forgive Monroe, or damn herself.
Forgiving Monroe wasn’t something she thought he could ever do.
Tolerating him on the way to Chicago was almost more than she could bear, but they needed him. Or at least, that’s what Miles said. The Rebels were now their enemies, that made the militia their...only option. Charlie couldn’t bring herself to go as far as ‘allies’. Monroe would make laying claim to their loyalty easier.
His condition was this detour. Charlie had held her tongue till now, but his ridiculous, sentimental pilgrimage would add months to their walk.
‘It’s stupid,’ she said, pulling a handful of dried fruit from her pocket. ‘This is taking us miles out of our way.’
‘It’s not a democracy,’ Miles said, sagging against another tree. None of them were sitting down. Too damn hard to get back up. His face was exhausted, lines like scars bracketing his mouth, but unyielding. ‘We’re going to Jasper.’
Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said. ‘Even if they were stupid enough to stay after our last visit -’ She didn’t look at Monroe. She didn’t need to look at Monroe to feel him flinch - his rediscovered, performative regrets on display. It wasn’t meant for her anyhow. ‘They won’t be there now.’
Her glance around took in the sere, drooping grass and brittle trees, the empty roads and abandoned buildings. Animals lay where they’d died, yellowed bones sticking through moth-eaten, work skin. The crops had died in the fields and were rotting, sour and bitter in the air.
‘I have to go,’ Monroe said.
‘For God’s sake,’ Charlie snapped, glaring at him. ‘Surely you committed some sort of atrocity in Chicago. Can’t you go and be miserable at the site of that?’
‘Enough, Charlie,’ Miles said.
‘No!’ she snapped. The crack of real anger in her voice caught both of them by surprise. She hardly ever spoke to Miles like that, but, well, there was a lot of things she couldn’t let herself be angry with him about. It made the things she could let go with...bitter. ‘I’m not your soldier and I’m not your child.’
The silence was thick with the ‘maybe’ she couldn’t say. Ben was her Dad, but... Sometimes she wondered if that was why Rachel had loved Danny best.
‘Charlie, this isn’t up for discuss-!’
‘What’s so important in Jasper!’
‘Who,’ Monroe interrupted.
She turned to glare at him. They didn’t speak much. Information was passed back and forth through Miles, when they didn’t just ignore each other.
‘Who?’
‘It’s a who,’ he said.
‘The redhead’s dead,’ she said. ‘There’s no point weeping over her grave now, even if we could find it.’
His eyes flared with cold, his face sliding into the cruel lines she remembered. He took a step forwards, into Miles’ blocking arm.
‘Stop it. Both of you.’ He shoved Monroe back a step, glaring at him until the other man backed off. Then he turned to Charlie. ‘Monroe is looking for someone.’
‘Emma’s son,’ Monroe said. For a second - remembering Miles’ threats - Charlie looked wide-eyed at Miles. Then Monroe finished. ‘My son.’
There wasn’t much left of Jasper. Charlie dragged her coat tight around her shoulders and walked down the empty street. Swings rattled emptily in the front yards, dying trees rattling their brittle branches in the tainted wind from the East. The house was small and white, with a picket fence and a neat handkerchief of a garden. It wasn’t that much different from home.
This was where Miles had grown up. Her Dad.
She climbed over the locked fence, crushing withered flowers into the dry dirt, and walked around to look for the huge old apple tree in the yard. It had a swing and a tree-house and when she was little it had been like something out of a fairytale.
There was just a stump now.
For some reason it caught Charlie on her funny-bone, laughter that felt dry with disuse creaking out of her chest. It was typical. All her quests ended like this - with the thing she’d wanted dead or spoiled.
She sat down the stump, rubbing her face and stared at the house. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Dad had left years before she was born, Miles years before that, and there had to have been other people living in the house. It was no monument to the Mathesons.
Charlie stayed there until she got cold, then left the house to its most recent memories. Last time she’d been here, there had been no time for sightseeing, and she wanted to see her where her grandparents were buried.
She let herself into the graveyard. The whole town felt like a graveyard now, and crunched her way along the path. He watched her walk towards him. It wasn’t why she’d come, she was almost sure of that.
‘Your parents?’ she asked.
He looked surprised that she’d spoken to him. ‘My parents. My sisters.’
The idea of him with a family was still...weird. In her head, whenever Miles talked about growing up with Monroe, it was always grim, ice-eyed General Monroe in his uniform stalking a little boy that shifted between sorta-Danny and not through long grass.
One of those odd, weary smiles twitched over his mouth. ‘Emma’s here too somewhere. Everyone that mattered to me is buried here.’
‘Except Miles.’
‘Except Miles,’ he agreed.
The realisation that they were the same - in this, at least - was an unpleasant one. Charlie shoved her hands in her pockets and scowled at the gravestones.
‘I don’t know if I can find where Danny is buried,’ she said.
It wasn’t an accusation. Monroe still sighed, ‘I can’t bleed anymore for that, Charlotte.’
The use of her full name in that rough gravel voice made her feel uncomfortable. She shifted away from him, hunching her shoulders.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘Just...I don’t know, Miles is all I have left.’
He looked at her. ‘You’ve got Rachel.’
Charlie shook her head. ‘Danny was the only one that had Rachel really.’
‘She loved you.’
Charlie crouched down and picked moss out of the M on the gravestone. ‘When you had Danny hostage, did she ever ask about me? Wonder if I was OK? Ask if there was news?’
Silence was her answer. There had been a time it would have hurt. She glanced at Monroe sidelong. He didn’t seem to be enjoying any of this.
‘Your son,’ she said.
‘My son.’
She thought about asking why he’d betrayed Miles or why he’d threatened Emma if they’d been lovers or... There was no point though. It was the past, and no amount of regret or resentment could change it.
‘Any luck?’
He offered his hand. She stared at it for a second, then gingerly accepted it so he could pull her up. It just felt like a hand, a bit cold and calloused in all the familiar places.
‘I burned down the Town Hall,’ he said. ‘Any records went with it. She had family a few towns over - maybe... But you’re right, we can’t stay here chasing rumours.’
He let go of her hand. Charlie resisted the urge to wipe it on her jeans.
‘I can’t...you’re not my family,’ she said.
‘I don’t expect to be,’ he told her.
She stared at the gravestones. If she could have Danny back...?
‘We can stay a while longer,’ she conceded slowly. ‘Chase a few rumours. Not for long, but for a while.’
He caught her sleeve as she went to leave, reeling her back in. She stiffened, resenting it.
‘Why?’ he asked.
She jerked away from him. ‘I don’t know. I guess, I wish there was someone left to come looking for me.’