Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2247429.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Revolution_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Charlie_Matheson/Bass_Monroe
  Character:
      Bass_Monroe, Charlie_Matheson, Miles_Matheson, Maggie_Foster, various_OCs
  Additional Tags:
      54_prompts_in_54_days, non-con_touching_and_dubious_consent_rather_than
      rape, Blood_Play
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-09-03 Updated: 2015-01-29 Chapters: 11/? Words: 7835
****** Tied with a bow ******
by JaqofSpades
Summary
     Miles Matheson, commanding general of the Monroe Militia, goes
     looking for his family, and this time it's not Danny on the end of
     that crossbow.
Notes
     Uh, not sure what I'm doing with this one, because it's veering
     towards the dark. May or may not come back to it.
***** Tied with a bow *****
“I found them,” Miles says, his voice so blank that Bass swings around to
stare. He's not sure which “them” Miles has found, but he does know he's not
going to like what's coming next. He can hear the cold speculation in his
brother's voice, just waiting to see how Bass is going to react.
Fine then, he thinks. He'd hoped, today, they might be able to get over
whatever this is that has sprung up between them since the bombing. He'd sent
Nora away for her own good, but Miles just can't see that, and it's been the
fucking Cold War ever since. As of this morning, he's officially too old for
this bullshit, Bass thinks venomously. He just wants to get drunk with his best
friend, maybe get laid if there's a whore in this city who hasn't bored him
yet.
“Remind me who you were looking for, again,” he says, almost hoping Miles will
go away and leave him in peace. Maybe if he can manage to stop caring …
“My family,” Miles says harshly, and Bass closes his eyes in apology. (He can't
let this show, can't let Miles know how much it hurts to be the only one who
needs like this. Miles is his family. His only family.)
“Of course, Miles. Of course. And?”
“Little place called Sylvania Estates. Wisconsin. Reckon they knew we were
here, but …” his hands twist upwards in a moment of pure frustration, and Bass
bleeds for him. “They're all good. Settled.”
“That's wonderful news, Miles. We'll – throw 'em a party or something! Bring
'em in and show 'em how things are done in the Capital,” Bass grins, waiting
for Miles to look happy. Or something. Look something, Miles, he begs silently.
The slow, vicious smirk that crosses the General's face comes as a shock,
though.
“Oh, they'll turn up eventually,” he grins, eyes as flat as a rattlesnake.
“Might have taken something.”
Fuck. That's it. What he's been waiting for. What the fuck has his brother done
this time?
“Go look in your office, Bass.”
He crosses the room more quickly than is seemly for the President of the
Republic. What could Ben and Rachel have that …. Oh. Jesus.
Furious blue eyes boil him alive from a face that's more arresting than
beautiful. High cheekbones, over a wide, lush mouth – she'll grow into it, two,
three years tops. She's whipcord lean, but the way her hands are tied behind
her back threatens to spill small, round breasts right out of whatever passes
for underwear in the provinces.
He's suddenly, undeniably hard, and knows he won't be wasting time with a whore
tonight.
“My niece, Charlotte Matheson,” Miles announces from his spot beside the door,
eyes cold as they flick over his own flesh and blood, trussed like a turkey for
Thanksgiving. “Doesn't like militia, apparently. Put an arrow into one of my
boys.”
“So you ….?”
“Had to make an example of her, family or no family, so I threw her in the
cart. Figured she could cool off downstairs for a bit, but then I remembered
our plan. Married by 40, right?”
Bass is wondering when Miles forgot exactly how old they are – he's turning 42,
not 40 - when it hits him. His mouth drops open and Miles' smirks at the
perfect gotcha.
“Happy Birthday, brother. She's a bit feral, but think of all of the fun we'll
have breaking her in.”
*
prompt: birthday
***** Her false god *****
Chapter Notes
     so apparently this IS continuing. Looking darker by the moment, so I
     hope y'all meant it when you yelled for more :D
She remembers her uncle from before the Blackout. Impossibly tall, flashing her
a toothy grin when no one was watching, his face falling back into somber lines
when Mom or Dad turned their way. Driving fast in a red car, her champion at
the state fair, his steely eye steady on the prize, piling her arms high with
cotton candy and plush toys and icecream that dripped sticky over black leather
seats.
He'd reached over to catch her once, when she'd leaned out too far to look down
from their carriage at the top of the ferris wheel, sugar and five-year-old
exuberance no match for those huge hands, those long arms that wrapped around
her to keep her safe.
His hands are still huge, but they scrape over her skin now, rough with
calluses from too much time gripping a sword. He'd been a soldier then, too,
but not like this, Charlie knows. Never like this.
The Butcher, they called him. The most reviled man in the country. The rebels
struggled, sometimes, turning people against President Monroe, him of the soft
voice and seductive reason. He was the shining golden figurehead to the
Butcher's devil black – he didn't have to kill, her friends sneered. He had
Matheson to do it for him.
It had always hurt, hearing her name hissed like that, so much venom dripping
from those familiar syllables. Coincidence, she'd been told. Wasn't exactly an
uncommon name. And then the militia marches into the village, and there's a
demon at their head, and she knows him in her bones.
"Hey Ben,” he'd said, and her father's face had twisted with despair, and love.
“Hello, Miles,” he'd replied, and she knew. She had been lied to – and lying –
her whole life.
She'd always thought her Dad was a coward, for wanting nothing to do with the
rebels. So many reasons for refusing to take a stand, but none of them the
truth. General Matheson was her uncle Miles, her hero, him of the warm arms and
no rules and the wicked grin.
Her false God.
She looses the arrow with no conscious thought, her heart stopping when it
thumps into the soldier to his left. He pins her down himself, and there's no
grin, no indulgence, just fury.
Her Dad is begging, Mom is glaring daggers and Danny spiralling down into an
attack as they move out, Charlie chained up in the back of the wagon, just
another prisoner of the Monroe Republic. Except …
He rides alongside the wagon, and when they come with food or water, the
soldiers stand rigid and correct. No one touches her, and she knows that
wouldn't be the case if she was anyone else. She tells herself she hates it,
the special treatment.
But when he calls the medic over to check out her chafed wrists, she's stupid
enough to thank him. Matheson's eyes meet hers, and something flashes deep in
those black pools, something that reminds her of her uncle, until it's banished
by something else all too familiar.
“Can't have you showing up in Philly all scabbed and bleeding, can we?” he
says, picking up her wrist to inspect the damage. One lazy finger strokes the
sensitive skin in a way that makes her want to blush, but it's the way that
he's watching her that makes her uneasy, hot in her skin. He's her uncle, he
wouldn't, she had to be imagining it…
She's so perturbed by the lust in his eyes that she nearly misses their black
calculation. He brings that mouth, that wicked grin, so close to her ear that
her skin prickles with fear or menace or something else completely unrelated to
the spicy, hot scent of him looming over her. Then he whispers her fate, not
even bothering to disguise his excitement at the evil he's about to perpetrate.
“Gonna get you clean, all tarted up, then give you to the President. What a
birthday present you'll make.”
His tongue flicks out then, a mistake perhaps, certainly not the lightning fast
taste of her ear that it feels like. A shiver races through her even as her
brain chants no, no, no, but he's not finished.
“Maybe he'll let me help unwrap you.”
***** The lash *****
Chapter Notes
     written for 54 prompts in 54 days over at the nbc_revolution comm on
     LJ. This one actually slides in under wordcount!
Arousal twists in his gut, and he lashes himself with it.
Pervert. Sicko. Paedophile, even. The girl is still a child.
His niece, he reminds himself. Don't forget that, you perverted fuck. His
niece, Ben's daughter, is still a child, and he's going to give her to Bass to
be the final link in a chain of bad, bad decisions. The link that will lock
them together for life.
He has made his bed, now Charlie's gonna have to lie in it.
He forces himself to think of her sprawled in the Presidential bed, Bass
slavering between her thighs. He'll make it good for her, he knows, push her
over the edge long before he even gets inside. He's seen it often enough, the
way they writhe for him, and beg and clutch at his cock, whores and innocent
society girls alike.
She's neither of those, Ben's Charlie. General Matheson, she'd mouthed, horror
all over her face, and then her eyes had gone cold and flat, and she'd fired.
Poor Thompson.
They'd grabbed her straight away, but she'd been defiant, magnificent, staring
straight back at the man who'd levelled Baltimore, and starved out Annapolis,
and fired every village that had ever sheltered rebels. Unflinching blue eyes
on his, and he'd felt the chains loop around him, strangling the last part of
him that's still a man, locking him onto this path.
Because he knows exactly who she is, and who she needs to become. It's just his
fucking bad luck that the one Matheson Bass really needs is barely 17 years
old, a warrior princess with the shimmering blue eyes of the niece he'd once
adored.
And it's her bad luck that her uncle sold his soul to this farce of a life a
decade ago, and is so black, so rotten, that he clings to the lust, wallows in
it, and strokes it hot.
(It's almost a relief, having something so tangible to hate himself for.)
*
(prompt: chains)
***** The fool's mate *****
He doesn't know where to look. The girl, struggling against her bonds,
threatening to upend the chair with her determined fury. Miles, watching him
watch her, and waiting for him to react.
Bass lets his eyes drift past her, then strolls to the window as if the view is
vastly more interesting. It's not, of course. The square outside is bare and
quiet in the twilight, the pattern on the paving reminding him of a chessboard.
This piece, the pawn. That piece, the knight.
She could be his queen.
It blindsides him, how much he wants that. Not just her - she's a filthy,
angry, surprisingly foul-mouthed teenager, no matter how edible her bouncy
little tits are – but the idea of her. Charlotte Matheson Monroe. Their
families, united.
They'd dreamed it up years ago, drunk in the ruins of a newly-captured city.
“Here's to the Monroe Republic,” Miles had saluted, whiskey sloshing out of his
glass.
“Should be Matheson-Monroe,” he remembers grumbling. “All your damn idea. Half
yours, brother.”
Miles had shoulder checked him in the same way he did when they were eight, and
twelve, and twenty one. Doesn't matter, brother. We're together.
“Shame you don't have a sister I could marry. Then our kids would be Matheson-
Monroe - bet you'd let me call it that then,” he had joked.
“Ben's got a daughter. She'll grow up soon enough,” Miles had smirked across
the top of his glass, making Bass splutter into his whiskey.
“Little Charlotte? Kid calls me Uncle Bass, Miles. That's sick,” he had
scoffed, but Miles had just waggled his eyebrows and said something about
giving her ten years.
And he feels the fool now, knowing that they've been teetering on the brink of
something for months. The good money had been on a coup, his mad, bad general
finally ready for his turn in the top chair. Bass hadn't listened, exactly, but
he'd made a point of getting out to see the troops more. Of promoting more
officers. Of having a few direct lines of communication in place.
But the money was wrong, and he curses himself for every thinking otherwise
because this is Miles, who loves power, but not to wield or tend. He loves
taking it, and pulling the strings from behind the curtain, and outplaying his
opponents. And the minute Bass had dared to think of him that way, he'd slammed
the counter for game on.
He'd loved it once, their little competitions. But this time, Bass had crafted
Miles the very stick to beat him with. This man, his lifelong best friend, knew
his every weakness, from the extra spoon of sugar in his morning coffee, to the
exact degree of kink he preferred in the bedroom. Knew his every moral limit,
and how to drive him right past them.
Bass looks back at the girl – Charlotte, dammit, little Charlotte – and tries
to see her as the ugly, custom-built trap she is. But Miles has tied her up
with the sort of knotwork that makes his cock throb. He'd put her straight in
front of the desk he liked to bend his whores over, and left her fierce and a
little bit bloody, the way the girls had been back when they'd never thought to
resort to whores. Had he touched her? Was he suggesting they share her, the way
they had Nora that insane, glorious summer before things went sour?
Matheson-Monroe, his heart taunts. Matheson-Monroe.
He'd checkmated himself long ago.
*
(prompt: fool)
***** Wild thing *****
“Charlotte Matheson,” the President drawls, and something ripples up her spine.
His husky voice transforms her name into something more than a collection of
random syllables – she's a surprise, yes, but one that delights and amazes him.
He circles her slowly, wary, as if she's a rare, dangerous beast, and Charlie
wants to rend him with her claws and tear him to pieces with her teeth, but
instead she stops struggling, takes a deep breath, and lifts her chin to meet
his gaze.
A mistake, she finds a heartbeat later. His eyes blaze so blue they burn, and
when his lips twitch into an amused looking smirk, he's so beautiful she feels
something shift, deep inside. She clutches to her principles and thinks
“murderer” and yet it still claims her, the lust rising in a slow and slippery
tide. She's horrified, revolted by herself, but outrage can't keep her panties
dry. She drags her eyes away, desperate to save herself, and he takes it as an
end to her defiance.
“Excellent. You've decided to cooperate. It's good to see you again,
Charlotte,” he says. Her brain stumbles over again and her body insists she'd
never forget him, but they've both got bigger things to worry about as
President Monroe steps closer and draws the dagger from his belt. Her heart
stills a little, then stutters back into life as he crouches in front of her to
slice through the ropes tying her ankles to the chair. But there's no excuse
for the way it slams into overdrive when he straightens a little, then pauses,
their faces just inches apart.
“Promise me you'll behave and I'll do your hands too,” he offers, and she can
only nod, proximity rendering her voiceless. She'd been hoping he'd need to
stand behind her to do it; instead he leans over her shoulder, sliding his
knife in behind the knots, supporting himself with a knee up on the chair next
to her, his muscled thigh pressing into the side of her body as he works.
“Your uncle does love his pretty knots,” he purrs somewhere over her head, and
suddenly, the pressure releases. She's rubbing feeling back into her hands when
he puts his lips next to her ear in a perfectly audible whisper: “just be
thankful he wanted me to see these pretty little tits, or you'd have been
covered in rope neck to knees. And he thinks I'm the bondage freak.”
He offers his hand to help her stand up, and when her agonisingly numb feet
protest, throws an arm around her shoulders to keep her from falling.
“I'm so sorry, Charlotte,” he grates, and glares at General Matheson, fury near
tangible. “Don't just stand there, you fucking dick. Get the medic up here and
tell Smith to start filling the bath.”
Matheson sneers back.
“Nothing a medic can do – had her wrists looked at this morning. She's welcome
to my bath, though.”
Something in the way she flinches leaves Monroe rigid.
“Generous of you to offer, Miles, but mine is closer. Dinner's at eight,” the
President barks in obvious dismissal, already steering her towards a pair of
double doors set at the far end of the room.
She leans into him without thinking about it, so full of relief at no longer
having to deal with her looming carrion-crow of an uncle. He pats her shoulder,
and when their eyes meet, she has to remind herself that even cut free of her
bonds, she is still a prisoner here.
His prisoner.
Enemy. Captor. Tyrant, locking her tight in his gilded cage. So be it. If he
wants to pet her like a house cat and forget she has claws, more fool him.
She'll be waiting for the best time to pounce.
*
prompt: bonds
***** Sacrifice *****
His office, he explains, opens into a private library, which has another set of
double doors leading to his sitting room, which opens onto his bedroom. There,
in between the roaring fire and the huge, canopied bed, her bath is waiting.
Her hair practically stands on end, every sense jangling with how dangerous
this is. He notices, of course, and rushes to reassure her.
“You'll have complete privacy here. The guards will be right outside the door,
and I'll tell them no one comes in except Mrs Smith. Just knock if you need
anything, and they'll send her in. Here – let me light the candles for you.”
He takes the taper and lights the four tall candles set on candelabra around
the bath. She sniffs at the waste of it, given the abundant light from the
crackling fire, but there's soap too, she realises with a jolt of excitement,
and fine cloths to wash her body. He's not a man to be denied his luxuries.
Not a man to deny his appetites, something ancient and feral hisses.
“Mrs Smith will bring you some clothes shortly – I was hoping you might join me
to celebrate my birthday? We eat at eight,” he says, nodding towards the clock
on the mantlepiece. A quick bath, then, she sighs.
Or …. maybe not.
She's had it refilled three times by the time he comes looking for her. Her
skin is dark rose even in the room's orange glow, buffed and polished by a
succession of accessories she's sure no man has ever used. Her hair, clean at
last, is a tumble of different coloured honeys, and she's rubbing the last of
the soap over her skin.
Up her legs, as he strides through the door and almost screeches to a halt.
Over her belly as he looks, and looks again, and starts to move once more.
Charlie's heart starts to deafen her as he comes to stand over her, but she's
committed to this plan, and there's nothing left but to follow through. She
wanted him distracted, and careless, and he certainly hasn't looked at anything
else in the room yet.
She arches her back a little and glides the soap over her breasts. The circles
are large at first, but as his eyes darken, and her skin starts to throb, they
become smaller. Encroach on her areolas. Slick over her nipples.
Only … she hadn't expected it to feel so good.
Hadn't realised he would be quite so enthralled, no matter what he might have
said earlier. Hadn't expected the bulge that suddenly tents the front of his
trousers, and the unashamed way he strokes it, mere inches from her face.
Hadn't been prepared for him to drop to his knees, and take the soap from her,
and set it aside.
He drops a kiss on her bare shoulder, and her entire body clenches at the rush
of want. She wants him to scoop her up and toss her in that bed, she realises,
and it's got absolutely nothing to do with the long, thin blade she had ripped
free of the lining of her ratty jacket.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Charlotte?”
“It is your birthday.”
“True, but I've never really been into virgin sacrifice.”
She's suddenly, excruciatingly, mortified, bolting upright to cover herself,
moving so quickly that water sloshes out of the tub and over the sleeves of his
uniform. He frowns, and gives her his back, undoing the buttons quickly and
efficiently, leaving him momentarily bare-chested in the candlelight. Not for
long, though – he plucks another from the cupboard and dons it quickly,
puncturing her hopes that he might, he could just ...
“We've waited dessert on you, Charlie, so get dressed,” he growls. “And for the
record? It's not the virgin part I have a problem with.”
*
prompt: candles
***** The chill of defeat *****
Mrs Smith – who seemed quite sweet for all that she works for an evil dictator
– had laid three dresses on the bed, complete with matching lingerie and heels.
Charlie chose the black dress out os spite, then searched fruitlessly for the
black bra.
It wasn't until she picked up the pile of silk she realised why she hadn't been
able to find it. What she had thought was a sash was the long, trailing ends
that would tie behind her neck, and fall away to nothing, leaving her back
completely bare. Going in there braless seemed inadvisable after being accused
of trying to sacrifice her virginity to seduce him.
But the red would seem too much of a statement, and she was damned if she was
wearing the white, so backless and braless it would have to be.
President Monroe and General Matheson are the only people still sitting at the
table when she's finally escorted in. There had been others in attendance, but
their plates are cleared now, with only three covered bowls, and a single glass
of white wine left on the table.
The men, she notes, have already moved on to whiskey.
“Charlotte,” the President greets her from his position at the end of the
table, and she knows it's a deliberate slight when he doesn't stand. It's
General Matheson who unfolds his long frame and moves around to the opposite
side of the table to pull her chair out.
“Usually we'd finish with birthday cake, but Bass decided on something
different this year,” he says, eyes interrogating her face. “Ladies first.”
She lifts the lift on the bowl, frowning when she finds it icily cold. Chilled,
somehow, she realises, frowning down at the brown-flecked white mass already
starting to melt in the bowl. Cookie dough icecream, she gasps, her finger
already scooping a taste into her mouth.
The sweet, gooey crunch of it has her staring blindly into a melee of memories,
taste and sound and the stickiness between her fingers as she kicks her feet
under the bench. She doesn't want to associate those precious memories with
this man. Uncle Miles is hers, and hers alone.
She pushes it away.
“Why cut off your nose to spite your face,” the President coos from his spot
next to her, and leans over to load up her spoon.
“Here,” he says, and lifts it to her lips, waiting.
She slaps his hand away, but he's stronger than she realised and it merely
results in the icecream catapulting towards her, splatting wetly just below her
collar bone.
“I had six cooks working for the past four hours to make that icecream,” Monroe
says coldly. “I'll be damned if I watch it go to waste.”
Cookie dough surprise is still sticky, still gooey, she discovers as the heat
of her skin sends a small river of icecream gushing down over the silk. She
pats ineffectually at it with her fingers, and only succeeds in making more of
a mess.
“I'll fetch a dishtowel,” Matheson offers and strides away from the table, but
Monroe calls him back.
“No need,” he smirks, and scoops her out of her seat to deposit her squarely in
his lap, mouth already fastening over the sweet mess on her neck.
Charlie freezes as Monroe's tongue works its way around the gooey sweetness,
lapping and licking until she's sure he's sucked the very marrow from her
bones. And then he chases the drips that have ruined her dress, mouth hot and
wet on the silk of her dress, round the curve of her breast, into her cleavage.
Charlie starts to hyperventilate.
Matheson is moving closer, eyes fixed on them, black as pitch.
“Bass,” he warns, but there's a plea in it, too.
“Eat your icecream, Miles,” the President orders. “Maybe when you're finished
I'll let you eat mine.”
Charlie's eyes flicker open long enough to see the chagrin on her uncle's face.
He's been told to sit and watch, she realises, and it shouldn't feel like a
victory. It should still feel … wrong.
But then something cold lands full on her nipple – Miles, not just watching,
she realises – and something clatters on the table behind her but the
President's hot, hot mouth is lapping and sucking and laving the tortured bud
through silk so wet it may as well be bare skin. Might even be better than bare
skin, Charlie moans, and surrenders to the urge to rub herself against the
hardness underneath her.
“Thought you said she was just a child,” she hears her uncle sneer, but this
time doesn't bother to open her eyes. He's immaterial – it's just her, and
Monroe, and the vast, spiralling sensation that is crowding out every part of
her that knows better.
He stops, and her body begs him to keep going, even as her mind grabs at the
respite.
“She is. We signed it into law ourselves, brother. Age of consent is 18,
whether it's drinking, fighting or fucking. This is … a lesson. What happens to
naughty little girls who think they can seduce the President.”
He nods at the table then, and Charlie twists to follow his gaze to the
automatic pistol sitting right in the middle of the table. It can't be loaded,
she tells herself. He wouldn't be so stupid. Couldn't be so sure of himself.
(She couldn't have missed that. Wouldn't have. Surely. It can't have been there
for long.)
“Bring in our final guests,” he bellows, and two guards march in a pair of
struggling prisoners. Charlie's heart flies into her mouth as she recognises
their faces – Maggie, the leader of their local cell of the resistance, and her
lieutenant, Jonah.
“How do you feel, Charlotte? To know you could have saved their lives?” Monroe
asks coldly, and she's still thinking but they're not dead? when he grabs the
pistol and shoots them both, two neat little holes in two foreheads, an object
lesson, purely for her.
*
prompt: icecream
***** Little deaths *****
Chapter Notes
     So, even though 54 prompts in 54 days is now over, I've decided to
     finish out the table. So more bitsy bits of fic.
He can't help but mourn a little as revulsion and outrage chase away the flush
of arousal from her exquisitely open face. It was necessary, of course, but he
hadn't been prepared for how much this lesson would hurt, his rampant cock a
mere annoyance next to the ache of seeing her desire for him so brutally
snuffed out.
She flings herself backwards, practically scrambling onto the table in her need
to escape from him. He lets her go, lets her cross to the bodies and flutter
ineffectually over them, not quite able to check for lifesigns or close their
eyes like a hardened warrior would. Miles sidles over to do it instead, and she
flies at him, alight with fury.
“He didn't kill them, Charlotte. I did,” Bass intercedes just as Miles is about
to lose his patience with her attempts to scratch and bite him. “Your uncle is
just doing what needs to be done – what I've ordered him to do.”
Miles scowls furiously and he knows the barb has sunk deep. There never used to
be orders between them – they made their plans together, and built their empire
on unspoken agreements that didn't need to be voiced. Now there are orders,and
communiques, and Bass sometimes skipping right over his General to talk
directly to soldiers further down the chain of command.
Not in this, though.
It had been Miles who intercepted the whispers about a rebel cadre bold enough
to follow one of their own all the way to Philadelphia. It was Miles who
interrogated the pretty English woman, unwilling to let Strausser and his knife
anywhere near such a pretty face. It had been Miles who had nearly slit brave
Maggie's throat when her snivelling lieutenant had vomited out every last Rebel
plan, including the one they'd blundered straight into the middle of.
“She doesn't know,” Maggie had said, unrepetant. “We just knew that you were
Ben Matheson's brother, and that she might be useful, one day. Leverage,” she
had explained, cut-glass accent underscoring the cynicism of it all.
“Leverage with a set of blow job lips and an ass like a peach. What, you
thought all she'd need was a few instructions on how to use 'em?”
Bass had force himself to unclench his fists, unsure whether he wanted to deck
his brother for the grottiness of the truth, or for daring to notice in the
first place. The rebel commander had no such qualms, one aristocratic eyebrow
shooting up as she chilled the room with the depths of her disdain.
“You're her uncle, General Matheson. You're not supposed to looking at her lips
or her arse,” the statuesque blonde said, and never had Bass been so tempted to
keep an enemy alive.
Miles had just laughed, though.
“That's the thing, sweetheart. I'm the Butcher. The Prince of Darkness. Uh –
lets see. Satan's fucktoy, that's a good one. Heard somebody call me the
Terminator once, but I'm thinking they don't remember the film right. Miles
Matheson. That seems to scare the shit out of people just fine. And you think
I'm gonna keep my hands off a pretty girl just because she's my brother's kid?
Why the hell should I do that?”
It erupted from somewhere deep in his belly, as irresistible and uncontrollable
as any other bodily function. “Because she's mine,” Bass growled, teeth bared,
his tactical brain outweighed by a million years of shrieking instinct.
It was a mistake, to let them know that. The rebels, as much as Miles. Caring
about someone, needing her like that, left him vulnerable. Left him no choice.
He'd stamped their death warrants, then and there. The farce to come was merely
a eulogy. Three more victims of his lack of self control.
Even if he hadn't quite figured out what to do with Miles yet.
*
prompt: eulogy
***** To the victor the spoils *****
Miles blinks, and blinks again as the smell of cordite lingers heavy in the
room, and the pool of blood grows steadily larger. Yowza. He hadn't expected
that.
It's been a long time since Bass had been able to surprise him, but he's done
it twice in two days now. First, his reluctance to just take the girl and be
damned along with him, and now this. The blood all over the floor was easily
dealt with, but the fallout, not so much.
Miles yells for a cleanup crew as he turns over the implications of what Bass
has done. It'll get back to the rebels, soon enough, and they'll find a way to
blame him, so nothing new there. But why the big turnaround? It had always been
Bass who had argued for leniency and understanding, insisting that was the only
way to stamp out all their ridiculous quibbles. Seeing him put a bullet in two
inoffensive regional troublemakers was … troubling.
Nothing to do with their rebel problem, his instincts tell him, and everything
to do with the people in the room at the time. He'd said something about it
being a lesson for Charlie, and he's got to figure there's another message in
there too. A warning, perhaps, aimed right between his eyes.
“She's mine,” Bass had snarled during the interrogation, and Miles had taken it
as a victory, the one that would consolidate his control of the Republic.
Prematurely, it seemed. Perhaps Bass wasn't the love-sotted fool he remembered,
so desperate for family and belonging that he was willing to do anything to get
it. Or maybe he had seen the trap, and decided to spring it.
Good play, Miles has to allow, if that's what had actually happened. Fucked if
he knows. First Bass had tried to pretend he didn't want the girl, then he'd
practically got her off in the middle of dinner. The way she'd begged for him,
he figures Bass must have turned on the charm earlier, but then, why spill his
hand like that? Shooting her friends? Blaming her? Way to show her exactly how
ugly they were underneath. Miles shakes his head, bemused, only to look up to
find Bass watching him, the tiniest of satisfied smiles lurking around his
mouth.
And there goes his vain hope that things had just gotten out of hand, Miles
thinks grimly, then salutes his rival with an exaggerated wave of his glass.
Dick. He watches Bass out of the corner of his eye as they both pretend to
watch Charlie fluttering around the Englishwoman's corpse. Or maybe it's only
Miles pretending, because he catches the moment the President's face softens,
regret and sadness warring in his eyes, before he turns back to the table to
take a swig of his whiskey, mask already in place.
“The stupid, selfish thing every time, right Miles?”
They stare at each other, gauntlet thrown, as Miles slowly figures it out. Bass
wants the girl alright, but he's not about to let her be his Trojan horse. He
plans to take her on his own terms, free and clear. Miles had wanted to pin
down an alliance, but instead, he's started their own private war.
And Charlie Matheson will be both battlefield and spoils.
***** T'was a Maelstrom *****
Maggie's moonlight-coloured curls are a strange, awful pink as the blood pools
around her head. Charlie's hands flutter, frantic to push away the red tide,
refusing to let it take Maggie even as it flows around her, sticky on her skin
as she kneels next to her friend's corpse.
Every moment she'd spent with Maggie is pushing itself into her brain, finding
the woman sitting quietly by a forest pool that first day, and dragging her out
of that strange, quiet stillness to bring her back to town. Back to life, she'd
confessed once, kissing Charlie on the forehead. She hadn't been able to let go
of her old life, the one the Blackout had torn from her, until she met Charlie,
and Danny, and Ben. (Rachel, too, she'd added quickly, but Charlie wasn't
unaware of how much the two women loathed each other. She just preferred to
ignore it.)
Charlie had been 14 when she'd finally figured out Maggie was a Rebel. There
had always been strangers passing in and out of the little house across the
road. The wounded ones were the easiest to explain, but the others, who came by
in pairs and groups of three or four – who were they? How did Maggie know them?
She'd been in the pantry, looking for something to eat the day her father had
pushed Maggie into the kitchen to whisper-shout his concerns.
“You can't have those people here, Maggie. We can't afford for anyone to find
us. We'd miss you, but if you can't keep your Rebel friends away from our
village, you'll need to leave.”
“Why's that, Ben? Who's looking for you?” Maggie had asked coolly, and Charlie
was still pondering the same question when Maggie rose up on her toes to kiss
her father's mouth. “You keep your secrets, and I'll keep mine, love. I'll try
to be more discreet.”
Her father hadn't been discreet at all, pushing Maggie back into the wall to
kiss her hungrily. Charlie had never been able to hold that against the woman,
given the icy detente that existed between her parents, and was more surprised
by the fact that Maggie – sweet, by-the-rules, healer Maggie – was a Rebel.
Not just a Rebel, Charlie deduces as she watches the comings and goings from
Maggie's house. A Rebel leader, collecting information and coordinating
campaigns and giving orders as she treated patients from far and wide for a
parade of complaints, real and imagined.
She wouldn't call it blackmail, exactly, what she'd done. She'd just informed
Maggie what she knew, and that it was in everyone's best interests that Charlie
be trained in spycraft. Maggie had fobbed her off with codes and strategy and
helping out in the surgery, until the day they had needed a scout to lead a
group of refugees through the militia territory to the north of the village.
Fresh-faced, smiley Charlie would be perfect, Jonah Washington had suggested.
No one knew her, she was an outstanding tracker and woodsman, and her loyalty
was beyond reproach. Charlie had beamed at the praise, even as Maggie argued
she wasn't ready. Sixteen, she'd stressed. Charlie was just a kid!
“Not from where I'm standing,” sexy Jonah had smirked, and Charlie had decided
then and there he would be her new crush. He'd seemed so dangerous, with his
huge shoulders and the way his eyes liked to travel over her body, but that was
before she met her uncle, and Monroe. Charlie shudders, forcing herself to look
at his shattered face, what they had done to him. Two weeks before the militia
arrived, she'd let him push her up against the side of Maggie's house and kiss
her silly. Let his hands roam a little, touch her in places no one else had.
Now Jonah just looks dead, and her mouth fills with bile at the memory of how
she had begged his killer to touch her in ways Jonah had never dared.
(Her guilt won't even let her examine the fact that his killer had made her
feel more, want more, with one pass of his hands than Jonah had with a dozen
stolen kisses.)
Her sorrow for Jonah is a welcome distraction from the waves of grief she feels
for Maggie's death. Charlie starts to keen when the guards come in to remove
the bodies, and flinches when Bass tries to approach. In the end, it is Miles
who guides her back to her room, oddly comforting in his heavy silence.
“Get into bed, kid. Try to sleep it off,” he says roughly, and actually looks
away as she strips herself free of the black dress, a ruin of bloodstains,
icecream and tears.
He hovers uncertainly as she climbs into bed, and it's not until he sits beside
her that she remembers he's not the uncle she knew as a child anymore. But for
the first time since they crashed into each other once more, there's nothing
predatory in his eyes. He's just … sad, she realises.
“You need to be careful,” he says eventually, not really looking at her.
“Bass is pissed at me, and he might try and take it out on you. Don't do
anything to ...”
He coughs, unable to finish the sentence, and even with her wits dulled by
grief, Charlie's lip curls in scorn.
She pushes herself up onto her elbow, the sheet sliding dangerously low over
her naked breasts, and positively dares him to look. The red flush over his
cheeks outrages her. Now he gets scruples? Now that he has delivered her to
that monster and her friends are dead?
“To what, Uncle Miles? To make him think he can do anything he damn well
pleases with me? To make him angry enough to – say – tie me up? Would he enjoy
that as much as you did?”
He jerks as if she had slapped him, and for a minute she wishes she had done
just that. Because his eyes are suddenly flat and mean, all their earlier
conflict banished. He's not a man who likes being confronted with his misdeeds,
Charlie realises. But she'd rather have a slimy bastard she can predict than
the Jekyll and Hyde character he sometimes seemed to be.
“Doubt it, girlie. Bass likes 'em willing. Figured you knew that by now, what
with that carry on at dinner. Damn good impression of a hot little slut just
gagging for some big, bad cock,” he drawled. His hand wandered, then, close to
where the fine linen sheet was clinging to the lower slopes of her breasts.
“Anytime you want me to help you out with that, just let me know. I can kill
people just as easy as your boyfriend.”
She didn't even bother to wince, this time. As far as she was concerned, she
didn't have an uncle, now. She and Miles Matheson shared nothing but a name
that branded her a monster.
So she made sure her voice dripped sweet acid when she replied.
“Easier, I suspect. But the difference is that I can hate him, and still want
him anyway. You? I just hate.”
*
Prompt: grief
***** Until the agony *****
Chapter Notes
     This might get a bit icky for some. Warning for bloodplay. I've
     increased the rating for this story to E as a result, even if it is
     taking place in Bass' head.
His feet had led him to Charlie's room unbidden. He couldn't go in, no matter
how much he wanted to grovel at her feet and scourge himself with useless
explanations. Instead, he lays his forehead on the cool wood of her door, let
it chase away the ache gathering behind his temples as he replays the moment he
put a bullet into the forehead of a woman he couldn't help but admire, and a
man so young he'd probably fallen in with the Rebels out of childish idealism.
They join the tally in his head, the short count of people dead at his own
hand. There's a long count, too, those who have fallen to his militia, those
who have starved because he hasn't fed them, those who fell victim to power
struggles and espionage and the paranoia that comes with being head of state.
But these two were different. They hadn't had to die. Not until he'd lost his
head and claimed the girl for his own, leaving them both vulnerable.
Self-knowledge prods at him, making him consider that maybe that had just been
an excuse, the circumstance that allowed him to feed something darker and more
selfish. He wanted to make her his in every way. Wanted to turn that horrified
fascination into something that would bind them together, lock them tight, make
them unbreakable. Sex wasn't enough, though he fully intended to use that.
Kindness might yet play a part. But they needed to be twin souls, completely
naked to each other, every bruise on their bodies and scrape on their souls
exposed for the other's adoration. She needed to see him, and take him for who
he was.
Bass forces himself to face it. He murdered two people as both a test and a
gift for the girl he wants to make his bride. He knows better than Miles does
how to handle a Matheson. Any sane, ordinary person would turn away in horror,
and he'd seen her go pale, and scream just like you'd expect. Then she'd fallen
to her knees next to the bodies, and wept for them. The next time she looked at
him, revenge was already glittering in her eyes, and he'd wanted to pin her to
the floor and take her, right there.
His Matheson.
He has a vision of her in white, an enormous confection of a dress, or maybe
something sleek and silky. It doesn't matter – he's tearing it off, desperate
to get to what's underneath, layer after layer tormenting him until they are
sitting in a pile of frothy material and discarded lingerie, his hands full of
her breasts and her hair and his mouth worshipping her deadly beauty. She is
rich on his tongue, coppery, and he gluts himself on it, chasing the taste
around the petals of her sex and deep into her cavern, every pulse of her body
drenching him in more, more, more. He works his way up her body leaving a trail
of blood, admiring the rich red on her golden skin as he kisses her slowly,
fervently, leaving her lips smeared with evidence of his depravity. Her tongue
flicks out to lick them clean, and she flushes vermilion, scarlet, crimson as
she registers the taste of her monthly flow, and begins to protest.
“Do you think a little blood could keep me from you?” Bass hears himself croon,
and he fits himself between her legs then, plunging inside, stroking
helplessly. She's moaning his name, lifting her hips to meet him by the time he
has himself under control, and he slides out, merely tickling her with thick
bulb of his cock as the bloody shaft is revealed to them both.
“Never be ashamed of who you are, Charlotte,” he says, and their eyes meet.
Even in his daydream, the depth of emotion shocks him as they gaze at each
other. Then she sits up, forcing him out of her body and back onto the pool of
white. “I'm not,” she says, then crawls over him, licking her blood from his
shaft with the delicacy of a cat before she lowers her mouth over him and
begins to suck.
He'll never know if he got the chance to consummate his marriage, because the
mental image overwhelms him even as he drowns in guilt and shame, spilling hard
in his pants as he leans against her door. The coolness of the wood, his sticky
underwear, the raised voices in the room beyond all register at once, just in
time for him to hear the very last thing he should.
Miles, voice vicious with hurt as he propositions her. “... I can kill people
just as easy as your boyfriend.”
And Charlie Matheson doesn't shrink away, or cry wolf, or protest. She goes on
the attack. “Easier, I suspect. But the difference is that I can hate him, and
still want him anyway. You? I just hate.”
Bass thrills to the ruthless in her voice, and his heart pangs a little for
Miles, who never stopped loving that little girl, even as he forced himself
into the shoes of the lecherous old uncle.
But mostly, he hears her admissions. She wants him, and she wants Miles gone.
The idea would have stabbed him in the heart once, but there's only excitement
and anticipation there now. He'll find a war for Miles to fight somewhere, and
launch his own offensive right here. Maybe he'll even take her the front, once
or twice, just enough to whet her bloodlust. She'd look magnificent in uniform,
and he'd introduce her to the glory of the frantic, post-battle fuck, all teeth
and nails and someone else's blood this time.
She hates him, he exults as he spins away from her door and strides towards his
office. But she's a Matheson, even if she's yet to learn the lesson Miles has
spent so many years teaching him. Hate is next to love, just as agony is next
to bliss.
And want is the key to everything.
*
prompt: unbreakable
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