Chapter Text
You need to settle down. You need a job. Why can’t you be happy? What’s wrong with Billy/Johnny/Jeff? He’s a nice boy. Why did you blow Heather Matthews off? She just wants to be your friend. Why are you so angry? Why do you drink so much? Why can’t you talk to me? What’s wrong with you?
If I once had thought that I could just slip seamlessly into life here in Willoughby after everything that had happened, I’d been fooling myself. When you spend your entire adult life chasing one monster after another, it’s hard to suddenly flip a switch and turn it off.
I’d gone from Wisconsin to Philly, to the Plains to Texas and everywhere in between. I’d watched as nations fell, friends and lovers died and new monsters rose up to take the place of others. I’d buried my brother, sent my first love to an early grave and somehow made an ally out of one of my greatest enemies.
I wasn’t normal because I’d never really known normal. Even growing up, there was always something off. Of course, now I know that peculiar feeling that the world was slightly tilted came from the fact that my parents caused an apocalypse, but nobody’s perfect, I guess.
By the time the blood stopped spilling and the dust settled, I’d had no more battles to wage. The unfortunate fact was that even though I knew it was okay to be safe and happy, I couldn’t quite figure out the execution of the whole thing.
I still jumped at the slightest sound, halfway expecting there to be a patriot or clansman in the shadows. I still felt my heart pound and my blood raging at the slightest provocation and I couldn’t quite find a way to be content with some menial task when I’d led men of my own and had followed two of the greatest warriors our continent has ever known into the heat of battle, all the way to Washington.
Maybe that’s what drew me to him in the first place. If anyone had asked me, I’d have told them it was because I was bored and he was just there. Of course, no one could have, because no one knew until it was quite too late for it to have mattered.
I’d have been lying, but I’d have said it anyway. Looking back, there was so many reasons—so many layers of reasons that maybe I couldn’t see them for what they were. It began one night after one of the biggest all outs my mom and I’d had yet.
Having lost my temper, I’d ended up screaming at her much to the stunned horror of both my grandfather and Miles. At one point, Miles had looked at me, shaking his head in disappointment. “Why?” he’d asked.
That moment, I felt so very ganged up on that I’d just bolted out of the house. I was a Sunday, and so the bar had closed early (gotta love the comeback of blue laws). With nowhere else to go, I’d just walked right through the gates, insisting that the current jackasses on watch let me out. I was a big girl and could fend for myself. I think they did it just because along with half of the town, they thought I was a freak and were halfway hoping I’d just stay away.
I didn’t mean to go there, exactly. One minute, I was cursing my family under my breath. The next, I was stumbling through an overgrown field, and practically tripping over an old and now useless mower at the edge of an almost equally overgrown yard. I looked up and there he was—sitting on the front porch with his feet up on the railing, barely visible in the light of the dying fire in the pit he’d dug at some point near the side of the house.
After the war, Sebastian Monroe had come with us to Texas. At first, he’d settled down in one of the lofts above the main drag in town—the closest one to the bar he could find, of course. In those early weeks, he’d often share a drink with Miles after dinner (much to Mom’s annoyance) and they’d just bullshit, talking about one stupid guy thing or another.
And then, about two months after we’d come back, he and Miles got into it about something. No one really knew what it was about, but the end result was a fist-fight and Monroe moving to the old farmhouse outside of town—the one that we’d brought him to after he’d rose from the dead like the world’s most unlikely (and undeserving) Lazarus.
For the most part, I’d avoided him. Sure, he was okay to be around when you had to, but he really was sort of a dick. He was helpful in that creepy kind of way when someone’s just appears with whatever you need, when you need it. I spent most of the war wishing Miles would put a bell on him or something. And, on top of that he was about as crude as a person could be.
Miles never told me why he and Monroe were suddenly on the outs and I never asked. For one, it wasn’t really any of my business. For another, a part of me wondered if it wasn’t Miles’ fault and I really didn’t want to be in a position to pick sides or be disloyal. So, I stayed out of it and went about my miserable business.
That night, however, I didn’t give him wide berth. I just walked on up and sat down in the empty chair next to him. He was infuriating as ever—didn’t say a word, just handed me the bottle he held, as if he could sense I needed a good stiff drink.
One thing led to another that night, and the next thing I knew we were headed up to his bedroom. Well, it wasn’t exactly right that. At first he asked me what the hell I was doing. Then, he tried to send me home—only to pull me back towards him seconds later.
The sex was good. Hell, the sex was great. He didn’t ask me why I couldn’t be normal. Instead, it was like he just understood and accepted that I wasn’t. Of all the things, to find comfort in the arms of Sebastian Monroe…
Afterwards, he held me in the darkness of his bedroom and asked if I wanted to talk about it. Using his body to blow off steam had been something I could rationalize, but idea of confiding in him seemed to go against the concept of hating him, so I told him no—in no uncertain terms did I want to talk to him about anything. I was even kind of bitchy about it.
Instead of nagging me about it like my family, he just said okay and then got up. When I asked him where he was going, he looked at me like I was an idiot. “Gotta piss if it’s alright with you,” he’d said in that typical prick way he always had about him. When he got back, he even seemed mildly surprised that I was still lying there.
He didn’t ask me if I wanted to stay. Instead, he just left it up to me, as if he hadn’t cared one way or another. It was so novel—to be given a choice and to not feel as if I had to answer for it. Because of that I did end up staying that first night. I woke up in the morning wearing a former general as a blanket. I’d have never guessed that one of the most psychotically ruthless men in North America was a total cuddler.
He hadn’t tried to make uncomfortable small talk or pressure me at all. He just made breakfast and shrugged it off when I gobbled it down and left right afterwards. I didn’t say goodbye to him and he barely acknowledged that I was leaving. It wasn’t exactly what one would call the best morning after, but it had left me feeling lighter than I had in weeks. That’s what had me going back a few days later.
It was such a dark time for me in general. I was depressed and tended to drink until I was dizzy. The world felt like it was spinning out of control around me, despite the fact that it was really slowing down.
At first, I’d wait until I felt like I was going to explode from the agony of it all and then I’d track him down. The release I felt when he touched me (and I’m not just talking sexually)—it became addictive. It is a powerful thing, to be able to feel anything I want (or not) and to be comfortable in it.
He just got me. He understood—and, one night when I was a particularly bad wreck, I’d apologized for my erratic and crazy behavior. Monroe just looked at me and nodded. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to fall apart every now and then—you’ve earned the right,” he’d said that night.
As time passed, he finally got me to talk. We’d bang it out like it was our last night on earth and then he’d hold me and let me ramble on. Sometimes I’d bitch about my family. Sometimes I’d talk nonsense. Sometimes, I’d just lie there and cry for no reason at all and he’d let me soak his pillow while he rubbed my back and told me to do what I needed to do.
In bed, he’d always ask me what I wanted—what I needed. It didn’t matter what I told him, he’d give it to me. Fast or slow; rough or gentle; tied up or being the one doing the tying. Whatever it was, he seemed more than happy to comply. Sometimes, when the weight the memories of war pressed to much, I’d want to feel guilty and punished. I even asked him to rape me once. He’d been a little more reluctant, but once he’d given me a really long lecture about safe words, he gave it to me.
It wasn’t like it was only a one way street, mind you. The only reason why he understood me so perfectly was because he was just as damaged as I. He’d just had a lot more practice coping with it than I had. This wasn’t his first rodeo, so to speak. He’d been broken by war and loss well before he’d become the bastard I’d always taken him for.
There were nights that he needed to talk too. He’d tell me things—sometimes it was about the past. Other times, he’d tell me about regrets he had or things he wished he could be doing instead of rotting away in Texas. They ranged from sitting on a beach somewhere to punching Tom Neville in the dick to finding a town where no one knew him and just starting over.
The more time I spent with him, the more I learned that I had never known who Monroe really was before I’d started fucking him. I’d never hidden my previous opinion from him—I’d told him to his face more times than I could count that he was a bastard; that he was this empty and blank thing behind a charming façade, incapable of real emotion or altruism.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was dangerous to be sure, but not in that heartless way I’d assumed. His danger lied in his depth. Monroe wasn’t a cruel and violent void or, as my mother claimed a black hole of pathetic childishness. He was more of a tornadic storm brought on by his hot headed nature and the whirling pain of his past.
One would think that such a creature would only drag a broken girl like me down into his own hurt. Instead, he somehow managed to use it to ease my own. When I was ready to escape, he talked me down. He let me get it all out without ever once judging me. Once I had, he wouldn’t tell me what he thought I should do. He’d just listen to my rants until I ran out of words and then say, “Okay. So what do you want?”
If someone could see us not as Sebastian Monroe and Charlotte Matheson, but as some generic man and woman, they might have said we made quite the couple. The only problem I faced with our arrangement at all was the fact that it was with him. It wasn’t just who he was, exactly (although that was a huge part of it). It was also the realization that it should bother me more.
When all of it first began, he’d show up in town every so often for supplies. I never asked where he got his money from (as far as I knew, he rarely left his place other than those supply runs), because I quite frankly didn’t want to know. We never did more than exchange passive nods of acknowledgment when we saw one another in town, but if I’d gone a while without seeing him, I found myself worrying about him.
And then I caught myself thinking of him as if this thing we’d stumbled into had some type of permanent place in my life. By the time that we’d been fooling around for a good six months or so, I’d realized that my wounds were on the mend. I had an urge to build a life and set down my roots and I kept daydreaming about how we were going to figure it out together.
I could have just denied it and ignored it (for a while at least), but then he had to go ahead and ruin things. We were lying there one night in the afterglow of great sex (that night, it had been a little on the tame side, but it had been perfect all the same). And then he dropped a bombshell. That first night I’d come to him, he’d spent the day planning on leaving the next morning.
Of course, I’d had to open my big mouth and I’d asked him why he’d stayed. “Because of you,” he’d told me. He didn’t elaborate, but I knew then that this would not end well. He’d stayed in a place he hated, surrounded by people that hated him because of me.
I started to drift away from him after that. It was kind of ironic, really. This man had given me what I’d needed to be able to finally start to come back to life and yet doing so meant breaking away from the very person that more than likely had saved my life without even knowing it.
It was hard at first, staying away. I was still addicted to the sense of comfort and peace I felt whenever I was with him. I’d felt safe there and now I had the scary unknown of my new life ahead of me. So, I took baby steps.
When Heather Matthews asked me to hang out, I finally went. It was just a drink at the bar, but I survived the evening. Then, I got a job at the school when Aaron finally convinced the town to reopen it with him as the new principal. I started making friends and I got a little loft of my own.
I began to stretch out my visits to Monroe as far as I could. At the height of our relationship, I went to him a few times a week—always feeling like a junky looking for a fix. It had been hell, forcing myself to stay in my lonely bed in my new place, but I won out. It turned to once a week and then just a bit more spaced out than that.
Little by little, the other people in town my age stopped acting like I was a freak and actually wanted to be around me. Sometimes it was just a stupid quilting party—not that I could sew but they invited me anyway.
There was a dance at the town hall. Of course, all were welcome (well, except Monroe), but people took the time to actually talk to me and a few guys wanted to dance with me. It felt nice to be liked and I found my social anxiety melting away.
The times that I gave in and went to Monroe’s, he’d tell him what I’d been up too. I told him that I’d been invited to Sarah Billingsley’s engagement party and about how one of my second graders made me a paper heart for Valentine’s and the like.
He always praised my little successes as if they were his too. He told me several times that he was proud of my having found myself and creating a life that I actually loved. And, in all those months Monroe never mentioned my increasing absences from his life.
All the while, however, I could feel it—the change in him. He went from holding me to bring me comfort to holding me like he was afraid it’d be the last time. He stopped asking me what I wanted. The first time he’d taken me to bed without asking that habitual question, I mentioned that I wanted it fast, rough. What I got was slow and so tender that it hurt. Not that I complained—far from it. That night had resulted in what was probably the most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced.
That next morning, I’d woken up well before he had. I’d turned to look at him as I’d gotten dressed and I noticed then how tired he looked. There were shadows under his eyes that didn’t disappear when he slept. On my way out the door, I noticed more empty bottles than I usually saw. I knew he’d been to town (people tended to recycle them and Monroe was no exception), so it meant he’d been drinking more than usual.
By the time that we were nearing a year into it, He seemed so shuddered and wary when I came over. By then it was only a few times a month. When he answered the door the last time, he’d seemed so hesitant, but after a second he let me in. After making my body sing, he held me afterwards and asked me about my life, just like he always did. If he held me just a bit tighter than usual, well neither of us said a word about it.
It’s now, as of today two months since I’ve seen him. Staying away has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done and yet with each day, it gets easier. I know now what’s been happening and I’m finally able to admit it to myself.
I’ve been putting myself back together again. I’m not the broken girl anymore. I’m stronger and I’m really learning how to be happy. I’ve made amends with my family and I’m now a well-adjusted twenty-four year old.
And yet all these months that my internal wounds have been scabbing over and healing, he’s been slowly falling apart. Monroe must have realized at some point that he can’t fit into my new life. All this time that I’ve been drifting away from him, he’s been trying to hold on. Continuing to see him here and there may have been a bit unhealthy for me, but it’s destroying him.
I can’t do it anymore. For some reason, this morning was really tough. I’d really wanted to just check on him. Rumor has it that his rotgut purchases are at an all-time high and I’m a little worried. But I have to be strong, because going there now will only make things worse.
This morning, Caleb Webber tracked me down on my way to school to ask me out. He’s decent looking and he’s a nice guy. I’ve been out with him a few times and while I’ve never done more than accept a chaste kiss on the cheek goodnight, I think it’ll be good for me to finally end the previous chapter of my life. And so, despite my urge to go to that farmhouse outside of town, I accepted Caleb’s offer of dinner and drinks instead.
We sit at a table in the bar. Dinner is over and now it’s on to the drinks. I’ve already hinted at Caleb that I don’t necessarily want our date to end here. He is in the middle of telling me some story about this guy he knows in Crockett when the rest of the bar goes completely silent.
I turn my head, curious and I see Monroe standing there, just inside the bar. He looks like he’s been punched in the gut. I freeze and there’s a lump in my throat that I can’t force down.
“Charlie? You okay?” Caleb asks.
I nod. “Um, yeah.” It’s a lie. It’s such a fucking lie.
Monroe is suddenly just a few feet away. “Can I talk to you a second?” he asks. His voice is slow low that can barely hear him—and it’s quiet enough to hear a pin drop in this place.
“Yeah, alright.” I try to sound nonchalant, but my voice sounds small and downright guilty in my ears. One thing I’d never told him about was the occasional dates I’d had with the boys in town. I’d convinced myself that because I’d never so much as fooled around with any of them that it hadn’t mattered. I should have known then how stupid that was.
I follow Monroe outside and around the corner. We stand at the top of the alley between the bar and the general store. In the light from one of the burn barrels across the street, I can see the pain in his eyes.
“I- um… You haven’t been around,” he begins. There’s no heat in his words—just disappointment and a very mild accusation.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself as much as I do right now. This man has somehow made me want this new life of mine and how have I thanked him for it? By treating him in the most cruel and ungrateful way imaginable. No matter how good my intension might have been, I’ve made things worse.
I don’t know what to say, so I pick pure and blunt honesty. It’s the best I can do. “This is for the best. It can’t mean anything—not to me and not to you.”
“Why?”
“Because of the past and because—because I want a future. I want things that you don’t.” I tell him. Surely, he can see that? I’m twenty-four. He’s forty-nine. I want a family of my own someday.
Monroe flinches. “How do you know what I want? You’ve never asked me.”
I realize then that he’s right. I never have. I’ve not once asked him what he wants or how he feels. I’ve just sort of washed over it all this time. I have nothing to say in my defense. There is no excuse and we both know it.
He takes my silence for what it is. “How can it mean nothing to you? A year? It meant a hell of a lot to me.”
My eyes sting. I could have maybe handled insults and his normal snarky retorts and attempts to hide his hurt—something he’s always done so well. His honesty about his feelings for me lash out and cut me deeply. “Where could this have gone?”
“Where ever you’d have let it,” he replies. “You- you’re all I’ve got left.”
I reach up and stroke the side of his face. He closes his eyes and we just stand there, stuck in a stolen moment of time. “That’s why this can’t go on. I have to move on and it’s not fair to you if I keep showing up.”
Monroe shakes his head like he’s trying to block out my words. He opens his eyes, but he won’t look at me. I can see them shining and it makes mine run over. “You’ve been there for me in a way that my family couldn’t and I’ll always love you for that—you helped me find myself again and you deserve better than what I can give you,” I continue.
I let my hand fall and I take a step back. My palm still feels tickled from his beard. I’ve always loved that sensation. I ball my hand up and dig my nails into my palm, trying to erase the memory of it.
“So that’s it then? I made you feel all better and now that you don’t need me anymore, it’s just ‘hit the road?’ Just like that?” This is the first time since we’ve been out there that he lets his temper take control—he’s got every right to be pissed off, so I can’t reciprocate it (another thing about me that’s better because of my time with him).
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. It occurs to me then that I’ve never called him by his name—all those nights of passion and affection and I’ve never allowed myself that luxury. It seems only appropriate that I offer him the curtesy of familiarity now. “I don’t want to hurt you, Bass.”
“Then stop.” Those two words, spoken with a wavering voice almost shatter my resolve.
“I’ve got to go,” I tell him. Before I lose my will, I turn and flee. I go back into the bar, the sound of his pain echoing in my ears still.
“Is everything alright?” Caleb asks me as I sit back down. I barely even hear him. I grab my jacket from where I’d left it draped on the back of the empty chair at our table. I can’t stay here now. I’ve really hurt someone that had given me himself freely, no questions asked. He’d let himself love me and he’d taken care of me and I’ve treated him so horribly.
I make my excuses and leave. The gods must be smiling upon me (or have abandoned me completely for my sins), because Monroe is nowhere to be found when I leave. I can barely see as I walk down the street, passing up my place and heading for the house my mom shares with Miles.
Mom’s already in bed for the night, but Miles is up. It’s him I really want to see anyway. Of course he senses something is wrong. He knows me so well. He asks, and I tell him that it’s nothing. I have to give him credit, he doesn’t call me out for the little liar that I am.
He pours me a drink and we get buzzed there together, just like old times. At one point, I ask him something that I have no business asking. “What happened between you and Monroe?”
“What hasn’t?” he replies with that old wolfish grin of his.
I get serious then. “You know what I mean. After he came back with us. You guys were fine for a few weeks and then something happened. I—I really need to know what.”
Miles looks almost sad and then he looks very uncomfortable. He tries to get me to drop it, but I demand an answer. I’m only torturing myself, but my mind is suddenly obsessed. I have to know. And so, he tells me, “Bass and I were having a drink and he told me something that pissed me off.”
“After everything that happened between you, what could possibly have been that bad?”
Miles pours us both one more. He downs his and with shaking hands pours yet another for himself. “He sort of let it slip that he had a thing for you.”
I literally spit my drink out on the table. “You—he… What?”
“We ended up having a fight about it. I told him he wasn’t good enough and I told him to stay away from you. He was pissed about that, obviously—fucker always did have entirely too high an opinion of himself. We threw a few punches and I threw him out. We haven’t spoken since.”
I’m floored. Monroe’s friendship with Miles had always eclipsed. It’d surpassed his own madness and he’d even chosen Miles over his own son. And yet he’d let that fall apart because of me. He’d never said or done anything to suggest that his feelings for me had preexisted our relationship.
If I felt like shit before, I feel like a total heartless monster now. I don’t know what’s worse—having to hear that or seeing the look on Miles’ face when I have tell him what Monroe and I had been up to for the past year. At first he’s pissed—furious.
He rants and rages and growls a bunch of nonsense about shooting Monroe for daring to go after me. That’s when I tell him how it started and how it ended. And then, he’s only pissed at me. “How can you be that cruel?” he’d asks me. He’s used my own word against me, which only makes me feel.
He suddenly grabs me by the arm and practically drag me out the door. Despite my tears and protests—I clearly can’t face Monroe after all of this—he insists that we fix this and we do it now. There’s no waiting until morning or sobriety. No, I’ve broken his best friend’s heart and I have to fix it, as far as he’s concerned.
Somehow, the thought of his support in the matter makes all those other obstacles seem like pathetic excuses now. By the time we get there, I just know that there’s a way to work it all out. We barge on in. The house is dark save one light coming from the kitchen.
We head in there, only to find it empty. I search the rest of the house. Monroe is not there. In the bedroom, I discover that the drawers are empty and open. His things are all gone. I start to cry and head back downstairs. Miles is standing in the kitchen, staring at the table.
I tell him Monroe is gone, but he refuses to look at me. At first, I think he’s just checked out for a minute, but then I realize that he’s looking at something in particular. I go to see what it is. I miss it at first, but then I see the glint in the dying lantern—a simple gold ring.