Home in Exile: gift for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
delphinapterus
Dec. 28th, 2011 04:10 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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bandomstuffsitTitle: Home in Exile
Author:halfeatenmoon
Pairing(s): Mikey/Alicia/Pete
Rating: PG
Warnings: mild violence, implied OC character death, bodily injuries, hurt/comfort
Word count: 8000
Summary: When Alicia left Pete, years and years ago, she did it because she thought he was going nowhere. Now he's leading a group of hopelessly outnumbered outcasts in a rebellion against an iron-fisted government, and he's starting to make Alicia frustrated. She doesn't mind the way Pete hooks up with her husband occasionally, or even that he sent for her to rescue him in the middle of winter. On the contrary, she wants him. She's just doesn't think she deserves him.
Alicia's search for supplies had been a relatively short one today, but it was still dark by the time she reached the rock cairn marking the place where she had to turn off the track to get home. The short days were her least favourite thing about winter. She didn't mind the cold, and she actually kind of enjoyed having to stomp through the snow to get anywhere, but the long nights got to her sometimes. It wasn't all bad - the cover of darkness made a lot of the rebellion's work easier, even if only for simple things like gathering food and passing messages undetected. But despite the great tactical advantages the season gave them, Alicia couldn't help missing the sunlight.
She forgot how much she hated the long nights, though, when she slithered down the concealed entrance to their bunker and saw the unmistakeable signs that Mikey was already back. No intruder would be able to tell that this was anything other than an abandoned shaft from this far out, but Alicia and Mikey had their signs. She knew when a rock at the mouth of the passage was out of place, and the marks of his shoes on the floor. Only a little different from an animal's, but it was a difference she could recognise, and no soldier would. [They only knew electronic surveillance these days, not the mundane, old-world business of interpreting bent twigs and footprints. That was probably the only reason the rebellion had thrived.] And when she got further down she could feel the warmth of a fire already burning and the smell of cooking food. When she pushed her way through the heavy door and Mikey turned to smile at her as he stirred the pot, she had to stop herself from crossing the small space and just throwing herself at him.
"Hi," he said, casually, as though he'd only been gone a few hours instead of three days. "Soup's nearly ready."
Alicia set her heavy pack down against the wall, dragged the door back into place, hung her weapons up next to it and lay the new supplies she'd gathered out on the table. And then she threw herself at Mikey.
"Missed you," she said, her voice muffled by the fabric at his shoulder.
"I missed you too," he said, softly, and rearranged his limbs so he could hug her close with one arm and keep stirring the pot while he was at it. "But you need to give me a minute unless you want to ruin our dinner."
"As much as I love your cooking, that's a risk I'm willing to take," she said, before she kissed him, long and hard. And neither of them spilled a drop of soup.
There wasn't much space in their home. They had a place, which was more a corner of the room piled high with blankets than anything resembling what they used to call a bed. They had a few barrels of water and boxes to keep supplies in, a table, some chairs and a tiny camp stove to cook from, and that was their home. Alicia couldn't have imagined, back when they got married, that five years later that they'd be living in a hole in the ground - much less that she would learn to like it.
They ate sitting opposite each other, their ankles crossed under the table, touching but not talking. The conversation could wait until later, when they'd stacked the dirty dishes neatly at the end of the table, turned off the lamp and laid down together on the bedding in the corner.
"Did I miss much?" Mikey asked, his soft tone at odds with the way he held Alicia to him as though he was afraid they'd be separated again if they let go.
"Not a lot." Alicia clung to him, too. It was kind of natural at this time of year, for the warmth, but it could be the height of summer and she still wouldn't want to let Mikey go. "There was a patrol that came within about two miles yesterday, but I threw them off the trail with no trouble. You can lose those guys with a single tweet, I swear. Oh, and I caught a few rabbits."
"I know, they were delicious," Mikey said, and she knew he was smiling, even in the dark. "Well, you've been much more productive than me."
Alicia doubted that. "Yeah, because a couple of dead rabbits goes such a long way to ending the surveillance state. Anyway, didn't you go to one of the bigger camps?"
"Yeah, [latitudinal reference]. It's pretty quiet though, just like here. Everyone's just bunked down for winter now that the government are too. Apparently last week they had a blizzard so they could even get online for a couple of minutes here and there, see what the rest of the world is up to."
"Is that really safe?"
"Don't ask me," Mikey shrugged. "I'm not the tech guy. They said they could only get a signal for a few minutes at a time in the weather, but that also meant they couldn't be traced, so it's fine."
"What's the news from the outside world, then?"
"Same as always. They're the good guys protecting America, we're the bad guys who want to destroy it. But just as long as the government knows every time you scratch your ass, you'll be safem" he said, bitterly. "Sometimes I think even if we weren't fighting them, they'd think we're a menace just for not being on Facebook."
Alicia sighed and stroked her thumb across his cheek, and after a moment, he sighed too.
"On the upside," he said, warmly, I saw Pete.
"Yeah?" Alicia propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over to kiss him, sliding her leg between his at the same time. "Tell me about it."
"He arrived in the camp the same day I did," said Mikey, his voice low and rough, now. "Everyone else is laying low for winter, but Pete's trying to do a tour of all the biggest camps, talking to people, keeping their spirits up."
"And you kept his spirits up too, right?" Alicia smirked. The idea
Mikey was running his hands down her body now, too, until they came to rest on her hips. "Every night. He even travelled with me for a bit of the way back, and then we fucked against a tree on the crossroads when we had to split up."
"You need to tell Pete I said thank you," Alicia murmured, pressing her face to Mikey's neck and breathing in deeply, in the hope that she could still smell Pete on him.
"Sure," said Mikey, and Alicia could feel his smile. "Or maybe you'll run into him some time and you can tell him yourself."
"Yeah," she agreed, "Maybe I will."
It was easy enough to say, and it wasn't really a lie. Mikey didn't need to know that as much as Alicia liked hearing about Pete, the last thing she wanted to do was to go looking for him.
It had been two years since Alicia and Mikey had decided to join the ranks of the citizens who didn't want their every move watched any more, and sometimes she still had to marvel at how far they'd come. Just unplugging themselves from the network and walking out of the cities into the wilderness, the only place they could truly get off grid, was difficult enough. Some people still had trouble with that, turning back to the cities after weeks or even months in the wild. It was hard, not just learning survival skills but having to build your knowledge and hold onto it, without the web to turn to whenever you need an answer, but most people got used to that. What killed them was the isolation of not being constantly connected to everyone they knew.
They all tried, of course. That was why most of the camps grew so large, even though it was a security risk. Nothing could replace the comfort of being able to reach out and message someone instantly, any time you needed to, or the way that when you were feeling down it only took a short status update before you were flooded with love and sympathy. But they tried, with their tight-knit colonies, so that even if you couldn't reach everyone at a moment's notice, you only had to turn around before you at least found someone. And most of the time, it worked. There were just some who couldn't resist the urge to return to a complete connection, deciding that privacy wasn't too high a price to pay to be a part of society after all.
Mikey and Alicia were never going to go back. They'd burned their bridges pretty thoroughly, and if deleting all their contacts, then their web histories, then their accounts and finally smashing their phones hadn't been enough, then getting into a fight with a couple of soldiers on the way out of town made sure that there was no safe way to go back. But they'd always planned to fight, not just hide.
They lived alone, a decent distance from the next main camp, though it was only an hour or so on foot if they needed supplies, help or just to pass on a message. Or if one of them felt the need for a change of company. Most of the rebels lived by the philosophy that when you were a member of a grossly outnumbered rebel army, engaged in a fight so impossible that it hardly deserved to be call a war, they should be free to take pleasure in whatever they could, and not let old social rules get in the way of whatever joy they could take. Mikey and Alicia liked this philosophy. They were still married, but they were both free to sleep with other rebels if they wanted someone else to keep them warm at night, especially when they were out on long missions.
That was the principle, anyway. In practice, all that happened was that sometimes Mikey slept with Pete, and then Alicia made him tell her every little detail.
She still couldn't believe the person that Pete had become. That was the strangest thing. She knew Pete had already left the grid before she had, as hard as it was to imagine him without his blog, his Twitter account, his phone beeping with a text message every five minutes. She knew he was out there. She just couldn't believe that not only had he completely avoided the technological withdrawal that almost always followed the unplugging - the withdrawal that had crippled Mikey for over a month, even with ten times the support and knowledge of it that they had when Pete went wild - but Pete had turned into a leader. That connectwork addict had thrown away his phone one day, walked into a ragtag group of disillusioned outcasts and somehow inspired them to start recruiting and fight back, until the rebellion was twice as big, then ten times, then twenty. She always knew Pete could connect with people, but she never thought that even in the direst situation, he'd be the kind of person who could lead a band of freedom fighters.
These days, Alicia found herself spending a lot of time dwelling on memories she hadn't thought about in years. The memories of her relationship with Pete, or more often, her breakup with Pete. She didn't dwell much on the things she said, though none of them had been cruel. She'd never wanted to hurt him. It was the memory of what she used to think of him. That he was too much of a mess for her to stick around and keep holding him up. She was deeply ashamed, now, of the way she had stood over him as he lay on the bed, curled around with his back to her as she gently explained that it wasn't his fault, and she'd thought, This man is pathetic.
But sometimes she thought of things that had made her fall in love with him, the sound of his voice and the look in his eyes. Or the feel of his skin, or the taste of it, or his mouth, or the way his tattoos had looked under her hands, or the way he sounded when he came. Whenever Mikey came home with another story about Pete, it was almost as good as having him there.
She wanted Pete, too, but she didn't deserve him. Hearing it second-hand was enough.
Mikey was out on another long trip when Alicia got back from hunting to see a girl in concerningly light clothing standing right around the entrance to their bunker, peering at something in her hand. Alicia had a gun aimed at her head and a knife in her other hand before she could think, but she forced herself to keep quiet, and not shoot her before she could be absolutely sure she was a soldier. But only a moment later the other girl turned and saw her, and before Alicia could react she was already grinning and waving as she stomped her way over through the snow, while Alicia stood there stupidly with a useless gun in her hand.
"Hi!" said the other girl, brightly, pulling off her goggles. "Alicia, right? I think we've met before. Your hideout is awesome, I couldn't figure out how to get in even though Pete gave me pretty exact directions."
"Yeah, you must be really good at following them to get so close." Alicia put her weapons away, sheepishly, but still couldn't help but stare at the other girl's outfit. "Aren't you cold? You should come inside and get warm, uh..."
"Bebe." She stuck out her hand to shake, still bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "Thanks for the offer, but I can't stop. I'm here to pass on a message from Pete, he wants you to go meet him at the abandoned mail exchange north of the river, and then I have to keep on running until I get this to Gabe."
She patted the satchel at her side, which was bulging in a mysterious and intriguing shape, but Alicia was too boggled at all the information in that message to even think about it. "Wait, what? Did you run all the way from the mail exchange? How are you still alive? And I'm pretty sure you've got that wrong. Pete must want Mikey, but he's not due back until late tonight."
"Oh no, he specifically said you," said Bebe, offhand. "He told me to come here and get Alicia to go to him. Oh, and to bring a first aid kit."
Bebe said it like it was no big deal, but that little detail chilled Alicia even more than the sight of a stranger standing over her home. "What's happened to him?" she asked, her voice tight. "How serious is it?"
"Oh, nothing that bad," Bebe assured her. "He's mostly fine, but he really wanted to get this artefact to Gabe, and he said he didn't want to risk going out in the snow without treatment, you know? So he said to get you to come and check it out if you were home, that's all."
Alicia didn't share Bebe's confidence that Pete was just fine. Bebe might spend more time around Pete than Alicia did these days, but while he'd changed a lot, Alicia had a hunch that he was still the kind of guy who would never, ever ask her for help unless he desperately needed it.
But Bebe was young and sweet and was working incredibly hard on her deliveries, and if whatever she had to take to Gabe was so important that she didn't even want to stop moving, Alicia wasn't going to put any thoughts in her head about Pete being not quite as 'fine' as he said he was. So she kept her voice steady but firm when she invited Bebe down into the bunker while Alicia got her first aid supplies, and made Bebe catch her breath and drink some warmer-than-freezing water before she went running off to Gabe's. She never would have known that underneath it all, Alicia was dying to get out of there and go running to Pete as fast as she could.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Alicia murmured, when she looked over the crest of the hill to see the mail exchange clearly being watched by a troupe of five or six soldiers, about fifty yards from the north side of the building. "Neither of you could remember to mention that the place was watched?"
Alicia's hastily composed plan, once she'd packed her first aid gear and sent Bebe on her way, had been to head straight north, cross the river at the rope bridge that the tech-savvy soldiers didn't seem to know about, climb the ridge between the waterway and the mail exchange and then run straight down the other side until she burst through the mailroom doors. She'd had to check her enthusiasm very quickly when she reached the top of the ridge, though. If she'd noticed the soldiers' telltale campfire smoke a second later, she would have gone hurtling down the slope right in front of their eyes. They might have been oblivious to a snapped twig here and there, but even they probably weren't stupid enough to overlook a woman with a satchel running down a snow-covered slope.
If they gave any indication that they knew Pete was in there, she might not have been so hesitant. But if they thought there was someone in the old abandoned building, they surely would have gone in by now, and it looked as though they were doing nothing more but setting up camp on their way to somewhere else. Pete was safe enough, as long as they didn't know he was there. Or at least he was safe from being arrested or murdered. She couldn't know how long he'd last without medical attention, and since he could be at serious risk she couldn't afford to just wait until the soldiers moved on. Somehow she had to get down that slope and through the back door of the post office without giving them any reason to be curious enough to go inside.
She found a shrub close enough to the top of the ridge to give her cover and lay on her stomach, surveying the scene. The post office had two entrances; the back door was closest to her, and the front on the other side, facing towards the sealed mountain road, where the soldiers were standing. There was a reasonable amount of brush cover between her and the building, but not nearly enough for her to run down there without being spotted.
What she needed was a distraction, but it was hard to see any way to draw the attention of the group away from her when she was so far away. With the aid of her binoculars she could see several birds sitting in a heavily snow-laden tree on the soldiers' other side, and if she could disturb them, or even just shake the tree enough for it to drop its load of snow, that would probably be distracting enough. But the only weapon she had on her was a gun, and the noise would only draw them straight to her.
"Serves me right for telling Gerard that archery was a waste of time," she muttered to herself, and picked up a stone from the ground in front of her, turning it over and over in her hand. That was something that theoretically she could use, but she wouldn't be able to throw it far enough. But the only other things she had on her were her clothes, a knife, a bottle of water, some food and the first aid kit.
"Huh," she said, thoughtfully, as she pulled out a long elastic bandage. "This might be worth a shot."
She tied the ends of the bandage between two branches of a shrub and gives it an experimental pluck. It seemed to hold fine, and it's wide enough that the rock fits comfortably in the middle. She took a deep breath and stared at the tree. This was a huge risk in itself. There was no way to practice and get a feel for how to aim the makeshift slingshot, and every chance that it could fail, or worse, draw attention to herself or pique their curiousity about the building. And she was wasting a bandage that Pete might need. But when she stopped to think about it, the rock in her hand and the bandage pulled back to it's tautest point, anything she did right now was a risk. As strange a solution as it was, this was the least risky one she could think of. So she took a deep breath, aimed as best she could, and let go.
For a scary, breathless moment she completely lost sight of the stone as it sailed into the air. But then, like magic, she saw one of the distant trees shake, the snow piled on its branches sliding off to the ground, and saw the soldiers' heads all turn towards it. She didn't waste another moment. She launched herself down the slope, doing the best she could to zigzag from tree to tree in case one of them looked back, hoping that they couldn't hear the snow crunching under her feet. It was a long journey when every step was a risk, but it wasn't more than twenty seconds before she was reaching for the door handle.
Just as she crashed through the door, she heard a shout and a gunshot ring out, and she threw herself to the floor on her side, terrified that they were about to come in. Before she could even get a good look at her surroundings, Pete was all over her, alive and familiar, kissing her as though he'd drown if he stopped. It was what she'd been dreaming about for months, and what she thought she couldn't have, and it just doesn't make sense to be kissing when there was only a wall between them and a band of soldiers who may or may not know that they're there.
"Pete," she whispered, at last, and pushed him away. "Stop it. I wasn't going to scream, jackass."
He blinks at her for a moment, slightly confused, and finally pushes himself up into a sitting position again, propped against the side of a nearby sofa. "Sorry. I'm so glad you came. I don't think they're coming in. Could you go into the front room and have a peek through the curtains to check, though? I'd go and look myself, but I'd rather not, with the whole..."
He picked up a bloodstained, wadded up tea towel that he's dropped earlier and pressed it to the gash at his side. Alicia had to physically fight back the urge to make him lie down so she get to work on it right then and there. "Is that thing even clean?"
"You can fix me up once you've checked what the tools of oppression out there are doing," Pete said, and pointed towards the front room. "Security first."
Alicia gave him one last concerned look and slipped into the front room, laying low and peeking carefully through the curtains. There was no immediate risk from the patrol group, though they were still there, but she did freeze for a moment when she realised, far too late, that she'd probably completely misunderstood that kiss.
Alicia had to work quickly to clean Pete up. With the enemy so close by, they wouldn't be able to risk lighting a lamp when night fell, and after all the time it took Alicia to get the message, make her way to the post office and then get inside, dusk wasn't far away. So she just cleared the table in the back room (what would have been the old staff room, Pete said, which explained the couches and the kitchenette) hoisted him on top of it and went to work as quickly as she could.
Luckily it was a clean cut, even if the wound itself was a bit of a mess from Pete's attempts to staunch the bleeding with whatever was lying around. Ideally it probably needed stitches, but Alicia wasn't trained for that and she wasn't going to risk screwing up and getting it infected. She'd just have to clean it up, cover it and hope she could get him back to safety before it got any worse.
The real problem was that it clearly hurt like hell, and there was nothing Alicia could do to relieve the pain except let him swig from the bottle of gin she found in the tiny kitchen. It couldn't have helped much, but as she worked on him he barely made a sound, just lay there, pale and brave. Alicia hated it. She wanted to squeeze his fingers, hold him, kiss him, anything that would be the slightest bit comforting. But all she could do right now was keep on working, trying to ignore the noises he made at particularly painful moments, until finally he was all bandaged up and lying on the couch munching a sandwich.
"So here's the situation," she said, when she'd washed her hands and taken the other sandwich herself. She was sitting on the floor in front of him, still fighting the urge to climb up there and hug him instead of forcing herself to be the practical one. "You need stitches, and I can't do that. I've done the best I can, and it'll do for maybe twenty four hours, but we need to get you out of here soon. Now, we can either try to get back over the river tonight, so we have darkness for cover, or we can wait it out and hope that they will have left by the morning."
Pete chewed the last bite of his sandwich slowly, thoughtfully, and swallowed. "I know that leaving tonight would be the most sensible thing, but I'm wrecked." She couldn't argue with that. He looked as though even smiling took effort. "I just don't think I could handle getting up and going tonight."
"Sounds fair," Alicia nodded, and looked around. It was already starting to get dark. "Is there anything else I can do for you now? A drink?"
"No drink," he said, with the same tired smile. "But if you could climb up on this couch and spoon me that'd be awesome."
She blinked at him. "Seriously?"
"Seriously," he said, with a solemn nod. "Your great leader commands it."
"Oh, fuck off."
"And grab that fucking ugly bearskin blanket, too. It's going to get cold."
It was cramped with the two of them on the couch, but it was warm, and undoubtedly confortable for Pete, Alicia told herself. She wasn't entirely sure that 'comfortable' was the right word for the way she felt. She felt so incredibly lucky to be this close to Pete again, to be able to smell him, his neck a tantalisingly short distance away from her lips. She had to laugh at herself for the absurdity of thinking she was lucky to be in this situation. And at the same time, resisting the temptation to actually do something was at the risk of driving her mad.
"So, you still haven't told me how you got into this mess in the first place, Wentz," she said, to break the silence. "I know you like to make things up on the fly, but this seems haphazard even for you. You could have at least told me the place was being watched."
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," he let out a short bark of a laugh. "I'm so sorry I got you into this. They definitely weren't around when Bebe and I first broke in, and I didn't even notice them until after she left and they tried to get in the front door."
"They did? What did you do?"
"Oh, it was locked, of course. They didn't even think to check for a back door." He sighed. "I'm so sorry for dragging you into this, Alicia. I wouldn't have sent Bebe to get you if I knew they were going to turn up."
The apology irritated her in some way she couldn't pin down, but this really wasn't the time to get annoyed with Pete. "I would have come anyway, you know."
"I hate putting people in danger, though."
"You might have picked the wrong side, then. If you're recruiting people into a rebel army, you're definitely putting them in danger."
"It's not the same," Pete said, and before she could argue back he added "Asking people to fight for their freedom isn't the same as asking them to fight for me."
Alicia just thought about that for a moment. It was true, and she couldn't argue with it, and it was something that the Pete she left never would have said, either. "So why did you send Bebe off thinking that you were 'fine', anyway?"
"Because we need to get the thing to Patrick as soon as possible so he can break it down so we can use it. Bebe's the best runner anyway, but obviously I wasn't gonna be able to do it, since I got hurt this badly, and if I told her that then she would have wanted to stay, but we really need to get the thing to Patrick, so I told her to you to come get me and then I'd be fine."
"You get me out here to save your life, but you can't even tell me what 'the thing' is?"
"Oh, no, that's not it at all." Pete grinned sheepishly. "I just don't actually have a name for it. I mean, I could tell you what it does, and I probably should since that's how we got to be here in the first place, and really you have a right to know about all that since I've dragged you into this..." He hesitated. "It's kind of a long story, though."
"So? It's not like we have much else to do. Sure, it's dark, but I'm not really in the mood for sleeping."
She cringed at her choice of words, and Pete chuckled knowingly. "I could think of other things to do," he joked, "But okay, let's have the story."
The story, it seems, had started when Pete came across an elderly man, new to the wilderness but delighted to be off the grid at last, who used to be a postal worker. The conventional mail service had shut down even before the anti-privacy laws had come in, though they certainly would have done away with it if they'd had the chance. From talking to this guy, Pete got the impression that the posties had, in some ways, been the first rebels.
They fought hard against the shut down of their industry as it became less and less profitable - not just because people were beginning to shift to purely electronic communication, but there was virtually no sellable information you could get about people from delivering their letters. Snail mail was just too private, and you couldn't make money out of protecting people's privacy any more. But the posties had fought, arguing against it, trying to convince the people and the government of the beauty of mail in your letterbox and the advantages of a service that didn't want to sell your personal information to anyone who'd pay. But most importantly to Pete, the old man hinted that some of the posties had tried to develop a machine that would black out electronic transmissions in a limited area. Phone, internet, radio, everything. No more paying for services with your privacy. People would have to go back to mail.
It didn't work, of course. The evidence was all around them. The mail service shut down, the world kept moving more and more towards paying for things with their personal information instead of money, and eventually they reached a point where connectedness was expected and privacy was, in many respects, illegal. But that invention if it did exist, would be unbelievably useful to the rebels. The army were clueless about intelligence-gathering methods that didn't involve online tracking in some way - knocking out all internet service in one of the camps would make it practically invisible. They could be really, truly safe.
So naturally, Pete had picked up an assistant and gone in search of an abandoned post office. With Bebe outside, watching for patrols, Pete had ransacked the place until he finally uncovered 'the thing', which he was fairly sure was the invention that the old postie had talked about. But of course, in all the mess he'd made, he tripped and fell, and some old piece of junk under the debris had ripped a gash in his side. But he didn't want to let that stop him. Excited by the discovery, and determined not to scare Bebe, he patched himself up to disguise the injury, handed her the device and a message, and sent her to Alicia, unaware that there was an army patrol on the way.
"I know it was exciting," Alicia said, when he'd finished. "If Patrick can make it work, then it'll change everything. But was it really so urgent you had to lie to Bebe so she's run straight to Patrick."
"Well now I don't think so," Pete grumbled. "But I was really excited at the time. And I didn't know the patrol was going to turn up and camp outside the front door."
"Do you think those goons out there even know who you are?" Alicia wondered. "I bet they'd be shocked if they realised they've got the hero of the rebellion in here."
"They wouldn't know I'm the leader of anything," Pete snorted. "Unless we have Facebook profiles, we're all the same to them."
"True. Still, they have to wise up and start figuring out how to find people without the use of the internet some time, right? I just don't see how they can remain that clueless forever."
"Oh, I don't think they will," he said, grimly. "They'll get smarter, and they'll get better. But I'm so glad that it looks like a long way off."
They fell into silence again. The night had well and truly fallen by then, the room almost completely black. Alicia couldn't even see Pete's neck right in front of her nose. She could only feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing, and wondered whether he was falling asleep.
"I wouldn't call myself a hero, either," Pete said, suddenly. "I'm not that special."
"Of course you're special," Alicia murmured. "Look at what you've become. Fighting against a government like this one is practically impossible, but you've inspired so many people to join us anyway. I was so wrong about you. I don't..."
"What?" She could feel Pete shift, rolling onto his back, and in the dim light she could just see him turning his face towards her. "What are you talking about?"
"When I left you, I said you were pathetic." She has to force the words out, slowly, one at a time. "I thought you were so fucked up that you'd never go anywhere or do anything with your life. And now you're running this rebellion. You proved me wrong, you're better than me, you're..."
"That's ridiculous," said Pete, quietly. "I'm no different to you. And maybe you're not so wrong. I've fucked up every relationship I've ever been in. I might be running around inspiring people if that's what you want to call it, but it doesn't change the fact that I wish I had someone to go home to instead. Fuck, Alicia, I'm so fucking jealous of you."
"What are you talking about?" Alicia murmured, absently, stroking his hair. "You get to see Mikey all the time. He loves you."
"I'm not talking about hookups. I mean your place. You have somewhere to go home to. You and Mikey picked a place to live, even if it was under shitty circumstances, and you worked on it together, and it's your home." He reached over, gingerly, and touched her face. "And I don't just want Mikey. I want you."
"Why would you want me?" she whispered. "I always doubted you, I never believed in you, and I don't... I don't deserve you, Pete."
"Who gives a shit?" Pete whispered back. "I don't. I just want you."
It seemed wrong, somehow, that after all the time Alicia had spent regretting the way she'd treated him, and wanting him back, and thinking she couldn't, that she could just have him just like this.
When they woke the next morning, in the first grey light of dawn, Alicia kept feeling as though Pete was watching her. She went about checking on the enemy encampment, splitting up the last of their food and examining Pete's injuries in as businesslike a fashion as possible. She just didn't know what else he expected. The kind of comfort they'd shared the night before was just what people did in their community, where they were constantly hunted. Hell, Pete fucked her husband like most people shook hands. And as far as she was concerned, the state of their relationship was definitely not their highest priority.
"So here's the problem," Alicia said, once she'd cleaned and rebandaged the gash again in the earliest morning light. "It looks okay now, but the longer you go without stitches, the worse it's going to get and the harder it'll be to move you. If we had some way to get rid of the troops out there, or at least be sure that they'll be gone soon, we might be able to wait. But we just don't know, and we definitely can't afford to wait another night. We need to get out of here today."
"Makes sense," Pete nodded. "It's mostly a matter of getting over the ridge without them noticing us, right?"
"Yeah, and that'll be the hard part." Alicia frowned. "I distracted them yesterday, but I couldn't pull that off again, and besides we'd need to do something different since it'll take much longer to get you up the slope. I could try being a decoy, but you never know what I'd have to do to escape, and if we had to stay separated it would be dangerous for you to try to travel alone..."
"Oh, don't worry." Pete grinned. "I already have a plan."
"You do?" Alicia looked dubious. "What?"
Pete's grinned just widened as he held up the ugly, hairy blanket they'd slept under the night before. "Do you think we can pass as a bear?"
"This is ridiculous," Alicia muttered, as they shuffled out the door. Pete was clinging to her shoulders and she was holding up the front of the bearskin with her arms so she could at least see where she was putting her feet, but the rest of their bodies were covered head to toe by the pelt. "We look nothing like a bear."
"Yeah, but you have met our national troops, right? They wouldn't know a bear unless it was tearing their face off."
Alicia didn't answer, concentrating instead on leading them up the slope without them both falling on their faces. She couldn't even begin to worry about whether they were attracting attention between trying to find her own way and half-carrying Pete along behind her. But despite her conviction that this plan was going to get them both shot, it bizarrely seemed to be working. There was no sound from down on the highway, no cries of surprise or booming gunshots. Contrary to what Alicia thought when Pete first suggested this plan, it looked as though it wasn't going to get her shot.
But their luck ran out just as they reached the top of the ridge, and they heard a shout from behind them.
"Shit," Pete muttered, and tried to throw the skin off.
"No, not yet." Alicia dragged him a few feet down the slope, until they were below the soldiers' sight line, before she threw the bearskin into a snowdrift and started dragging Pete down towards the rope bridge as quickly as she could.
"I fucking hate this bridge," Pete muttered. He had to concentrate hard on keeping his feet on the wooden slats and not slipping through the gaps. "Fuck, Alicia, you should leave me, we're just gonna die here."
"No we're not," she said, firmly. "There's a hollow off to the side up ahead, do you see? When we get to the other side, you get behind there. I'll take care of the bridge."
They were nearly at the end now, and when Pete finally set foot on solid ground, his "What are you doing?" was drowned out by a shout and a gunshot from the top of the ridge. Alicia shoved Pete forwards towards the hiding place and didn't even look back to see if he made it. She just dropped to the ground and pulled out her knife.
She managed to saw through two of the before a gunshot went off far too close. She didn't feel any fear, though. She didn't feel anything, just an awareness of the freezing snow packed around her and the terror in Pete's voice as he kept up a constant stream of swearing. But the gunshot made her pause and for a split second she lifted her head to lock eyes with the soldier who had just set foot on the bridge, his pistol still aimed squarely at her. Before he could fire again, she slithered backwards down the low embankment and dropped into a hollow next to Pete.
"What are they doing?" Pete hissed. "I thought they were gonna kill you!"
She shushed him and paused to listen. "They're arguing over whether they should try to cross the bridge."
"You mean the bridge is still there? Why didn't you cut the whole thing off?"
"I cut enough," Alicia whispered back, and then took a risk and stuck her head up over the embankment. She ducked back down quickly when another shot rang out, but it the aim was a long way off.
"Are you insane?" Pete demanded, gripping her arm so tightly she could barely move.
"No, they are," Alicia shot back. "I didn't cut the bridge down but there's barely any support. They're already losing balance, they can't aim for shit, and if they've got the kind of common sense these guys usually do, they're all going to charge across it at once and the whole thing will snap."
"Or they could get across and..."
"Shh!" she said, sharply, and clamped a hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes and slumped backwards into the snow, like he could just sink into it and make the whole situation go away.
It was a tense, agonizing wait. They didn't have to wait more than a minute, but it seemed to drag on forever, as they listened to the low, sharp exchanges between the soldiers and the creak of the bridge, all overlaid by the sound of the rushing river. For a few seconds, the voices sounded louder, pleased, and Alicia's hand flew to her pistol, buzzing so hard with adrenaline that it was a wonder she could keep her hand steady at all. But then, one glorious moment later, they heard a crunch and a snap and a chorus of yells, and then the loud impact of bodies hitting the water.
It was Pete who broke the silence afterwards.
"Jesus, Alicia," he said, warmly. "How the fuck could you ever think that you don't deserve me?"
They didn't have any more trouble from the patrols, but it was still a long, exhausting journey home. It was well after dark by the time they got back to Alicia and Mikey's house, and the smell of Mikey's cooking as they shuffled down the entrance tunnel almost made Alicia cry. When she finally got down to the blessed familiarity of home, she didn't have the energy to do anything more than kiss Mikey and then crawl into bed, sinking into sleep the moment she put her head down.
When she finally woke again she felt a mixed sense of safety and disorientation - it was the best thing in the world to be home again, with Mikey lying beside her and stroking her hair, but she had no idea what time it was.
"You've been asleep for, like, sixteen hours," said Mikey, with a small smile. "That must be some adventure you had."
"Oh yeah," she sighed, and nuzzled into the crook of his neck. "And I for once I have a story about Pete to tell you."
"Well, I hate to take the wind out of your sails so soon, but I think I've already heard the pertinent details from Pete."
Alicia blushed and sat up suddenly - and now she could see Pete, lying on the other side of Mikey, smiling sheepishly at her again.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't realise retelling sexual adventures was a thing for you guys."
"If it helps, he was really crap at telling it. I'm sure your version would have been much better." His smile grew a little more devious. "Or you could... well, it felt kind of incomplete. You two could act out the ending right here in front of me."
"I... really?" Alicia looked from Mikey to Pete and back again. "We've never brought people home before."
"We never talked about it. And it's Pete. We both like Pete, don't we?" He raised an eyebrow and she nodded, feeling a blush creeping up on her again. "Anyway, he has to stay here for a few days to recover. I got Ray to come over and check on him after you passed out, and he said Pete isn't allowed to move again for ages. Like, forever, practically. Come on, there's no way we're going to get through a week without having sex, and you wouldn't want Pete to feel left out, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't." She gave Pete a long look, and thought about the night before, his confessions. And hers, too. "I wouldn't mind if Pete stayed even longer than that. What do you think, Mikey? He spends way too much time roaming around getting into trouble. It's about time someone made him settle down and find somewhere to call home."
Mikey lifted his head up off the bed to kiss her. "Sounds like a brilliant plan to me."
He rolled over for a moment and kissed Pete too, then shuffled away towards Alicia's side of the bed. He pushed Alicia over and she tripped a little trying to crawl over his long legs until she almost fell on top of Pete.
"You okay?" she murmured, and his face broke into a ridiculous big-toothed grin.
"I'm fantastic," he replied, and reached up to brush the hair off her face reverently, as though he couldn't believe he was really here. "Thank you. For everything."
"Thank you," she said, and kissed him, gently. "Welcome home."
"Hey, hurry up and fuck, would you?" said Mikey, poking Alicia in the side with one of his stinky socks. "I was promised a happy ending."
Author:
halfeatenmoonPairing(s): Mikey/Alicia/Pete
Rating: PG
Warnings: mild violence, implied OC character death, bodily injuries, hurt/comfort
Word count: 8000
Summary: When Alicia left Pete, years and years ago, she did it because she thought he was going nowhere. Now he's leading a group of hopelessly outnumbered outcasts in a rebellion against an iron-fisted government, and he's starting to make Alicia frustrated. She doesn't mind the way Pete hooks up with her husband occasionally, or even that he sent for her to rescue him in the middle of winter. On the contrary, she wants him. She's just doesn't think she deserves him.
Alicia's search for supplies had been a relatively short one today, but it was still dark by the time she reached the rock cairn marking the place where she had to turn off the track to get home. The short days were her least favourite thing about winter. She didn't mind the cold, and she actually kind of enjoyed having to stomp through the snow to get anywhere, but the long nights got to her sometimes. It wasn't all bad - the cover of darkness made a lot of the rebellion's work easier, even if only for simple things like gathering food and passing messages undetected. But despite the great tactical advantages the season gave them, Alicia couldn't help missing the sunlight.
She forgot how much she hated the long nights, though, when she slithered down the concealed entrance to their bunker and saw the unmistakeable signs that Mikey was already back. No intruder would be able to tell that this was anything other than an abandoned shaft from this far out, but Alicia and Mikey had their signs. She knew when a rock at the mouth of the passage was out of place, and the marks of his shoes on the floor. Only a little different from an animal's, but it was a difference she could recognise, and no soldier would. [They only knew electronic surveillance these days, not the mundane, old-world business of interpreting bent twigs and footprints. That was probably the only reason the rebellion had thrived.] And when she got further down she could feel the warmth of a fire already burning and the smell of cooking food. When she pushed her way through the heavy door and Mikey turned to smile at her as he stirred the pot, she had to stop herself from crossing the small space and just throwing herself at him.
"Hi," he said, casually, as though he'd only been gone a few hours instead of three days. "Soup's nearly ready."
Alicia set her heavy pack down against the wall, dragged the door back into place, hung her weapons up next to it and lay the new supplies she'd gathered out on the table. And then she threw herself at Mikey.
"Missed you," she said, her voice muffled by the fabric at his shoulder.
"I missed you too," he said, softly, and rearranged his limbs so he could hug her close with one arm and keep stirring the pot while he was at it. "But you need to give me a minute unless you want to ruin our dinner."
"As much as I love your cooking, that's a risk I'm willing to take," she said, before she kissed him, long and hard. And neither of them spilled a drop of soup.
There wasn't much space in their home. They had a place, which was more a corner of the room piled high with blankets than anything resembling what they used to call a bed. They had a few barrels of water and boxes to keep supplies in, a table, some chairs and a tiny camp stove to cook from, and that was their home. Alicia couldn't have imagined, back when they got married, that five years later that they'd be living in a hole in the ground - much less that she would learn to like it.
They ate sitting opposite each other, their ankles crossed under the table, touching but not talking. The conversation could wait until later, when they'd stacked the dirty dishes neatly at the end of the table, turned off the lamp and laid down together on the bedding in the corner.
"Did I miss much?" Mikey asked, his soft tone at odds with the way he held Alicia to him as though he was afraid they'd be separated again if they let go.
"Not a lot." Alicia clung to him, too. It was kind of natural at this time of year, for the warmth, but it could be the height of summer and she still wouldn't want to let Mikey go. "There was a patrol that came within about two miles yesterday, but I threw them off the trail with no trouble. You can lose those guys with a single tweet, I swear. Oh, and I caught a few rabbits."
"I know, they were delicious," Mikey said, and she knew he was smiling, even in the dark. "Well, you've been much more productive than me."
Alicia doubted that. "Yeah, because a couple of dead rabbits goes such a long way to ending the surveillance state. Anyway, didn't you go to one of the bigger camps?"
"Yeah, [latitudinal reference]. It's pretty quiet though, just like here. Everyone's just bunked down for winter now that the government are too. Apparently last week they had a blizzard so they could even get online for a couple of minutes here and there, see what the rest of the world is up to."
"Is that really safe?"
"Don't ask me," Mikey shrugged. "I'm not the tech guy. They said they could only get a signal for a few minutes at a time in the weather, but that also meant they couldn't be traced, so it's fine."
"What's the news from the outside world, then?"
"Same as always. They're the good guys protecting America, we're the bad guys who want to destroy it. But just as long as the government knows every time you scratch your ass, you'll be safem" he said, bitterly. "Sometimes I think even if we weren't fighting them, they'd think we're a menace just for not being on Facebook."
Alicia sighed and stroked her thumb across his cheek, and after a moment, he sighed too.
"On the upside," he said, warmly, I saw Pete.
"Yeah?" Alicia propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over to kiss him, sliding her leg between his at the same time. "Tell me about it."
"He arrived in the camp the same day I did," said Mikey, his voice low and rough, now. "Everyone else is laying low for winter, but Pete's trying to do a tour of all the biggest camps, talking to people, keeping their spirits up."
"And you kept his spirits up too, right?" Alicia smirked. The idea
Mikey was running his hands down her body now, too, until they came to rest on her hips. "Every night. He even travelled with me for a bit of the way back, and then we fucked against a tree on the crossroads when we had to split up."
"You need to tell Pete I said thank you," Alicia murmured, pressing her face to Mikey's neck and breathing in deeply, in the hope that she could still smell Pete on him.
"Sure," said Mikey, and Alicia could feel his smile. "Or maybe you'll run into him some time and you can tell him yourself."
"Yeah," she agreed, "Maybe I will."
It was easy enough to say, and it wasn't really a lie. Mikey didn't need to know that as much as Alicia liked hearing about Pete, the last thing she wanted to do was to go looking for him.
It had been two years since Alicia and Mikey had decided to join the ranks of the citizens who didn't want their every move watched any more, and sometimes she still had to marvel at how far they'd come. Just unplugging themselves from the network and walking out of the cities into the wilderness, the only place they could truly get off grid, was difficult enough. Some people still had trouble with that, turning back to the cities after weeks or even months in the wild. It was hard, not just learning survival skills but having to build your knowledge and hold onto it, without the web to turn to whenever you need an answer, but most people got used to that. What killed them was the isolation of not being constantly connected to everyone they knew.
They all tried, of course. That was why most of the camps grew so large, even though it was a security risk. Nothing could replace the comfort of being able to reach out and message someone instantly, any time you needed to, or the way that when you were feeling down it only took a short status update before you were flooded with love and sympathy. But they tried, with their tight-knit colonies, so that even if you couldn't reach everyone at a moment's notice, you only had to turn around before you at least found someone. And most of the time, it worked. There were just some who couldn't resist the urge to return to a complete connection, deciding that privacy wasn't too high a price to pay to be a part of society after all.
Mikey and Alicia were never going to go back. They'd burned their bridges pretty thoroughly, and if deleting all their contacts, then their web histories, then their accounts and finally smashing their phones hadn't been enough, then getting into a fight with a couple of soldiers on the way out of town made sure that there was no safe way to go back. But they'd always planned to fight, not just hide.
They lived alone, a decent distance from the next main camp, though it was only an hour or so on foot if they needed supplies, help or just to pass on a message. Or if one of them felt the need for a change of company. Most of the rebels lived by the philosophy that when you were a member of a grossly outnumbered rebel army, engaged in a fight so impossible that it hardly deserved to be call a war, they should be free to take pleasure in whatever they could, and not let old social rules get in the way of whatever joy they could take. Mikey and Alicia liked this philosophy. They were still married, but they were both free to sleep with other rebels if they wanted someone else to keep them warm at night, especially when they were out on long missions.
That was the principle, anyway. In practice, all that happened was that sometimes Mikey slept with Pete, and then Alicia made him tell her every little detail.
She still couldn't believe the person that Pete had become. That was the strangest thing. She knew Pete had already left the grid before she had, as hard as it was to imagine him without his blog, his Twitter account, his phone beeping with a text message every five minutes. She knew he was out there. She just couldn't believe that not only had he completely avoided the technological withdrawal that almost always followed the unplugging - the withdrawal that had crippled Mikey for over a month, even with ten times the support and knowledge of it that they had when Pete went wild - but Pete had turned into a leader. That connectwork addict had thrown away his phone one day, walked into a ragtag group of disillusioned outcasts and somehow inspired them to start recruiting and fight back, until the rebellion was twice as big, then ten times, then twenty. She always knew Pete could connect with people, but she never thought that even in the direst situation, he'd be the kind of person who could lead a band of freedom fighters.
These days, Alicia found herself spending a lot of time dwelling on memories she hadn't thought about in years. The memories of her relationship with Pete, or more often, her breakup with Pete. She didn't dwell much on the things she said, though none of them had been cruel. She'd never wanted to hurt him. It was the memory of what she used to think of him. That he was too much of a mess for her to stick around and keep holding him up. She was deeply ashamed, now, of the way she had stood over him as he lay on the bed, curled around with his back to her as she gently explained that it wasn't his fault, and she'd thought, This man is pathetic.
But sometimes she thought of things that had made her fall in love with him, the sound of his voice and the look in his eyes. Or the feel of his skin, or the taste of it, or his mouth, or the way his tattoos had looked under her hands, or the way he sounded when he came. Whenever Mikey came home with another story about Pete, it was almost as good as having him there.
She wanted Pete, too, but she didn't deserve him. Hearing it second-hand was enough.
Mikey was out on another long trip when Alicia got back from hunting to see a girl in concerningly light clothing standing right around the entrance to their bunker, peering at something in her hand. Alicia had a gun aimed at her head and a knife in her other hand before she could think, but she forced herself to keep quiet, and not shoot her before she could be absolutely sure she was a soldier. But only a moment later the other girl turned and saw her, and before Alicia could react she was already grinning and waving as she stomped her way over through the snow, while Alicia stood there stupidly with a useless gun in her hand.
"Hi!" said the other girl, brightly, pulling off her goggles. "Alicia, right? I think we've met before. Your hideout is awesome, I couldn't figure out how to get in even though Pete gave me pretty exact directions."
"Yeah, you must be really good at following them to get so close." Alicia put her weapons away, sheepishly, but still couldn't help but stare at the other girl's outfit. "Aren't you cold? You should come inside and get warm, uh..."
"Bebe." She stuck out her hand to shake, still bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "Thanks for the offer, but I can't stop. I'm here to pass on a message from Pete, he wants you to go meet him at the abandoned mail exchange north of the river, and then I have to keep on running until I get this to Gabe."
She patted the satchel at her side, which was bulging in a mysterious and intriguing shape, but Alicia was too boggled at all the information in that message to even think about it. "Wait, what? Did you run all the way from the mail exchange? How are you still alive? And I'm pretty sure you've got that wrong. Pete must want Mikey, but he's not due back until late tonight."
"Oh no, he specifically said you," said Bebe, offhand. "He told me to come here and get Alicia to go to him. Oh, and to bring a first aid kit."
Bebe said it like it was no big deal, but that little detail chilled Alicia even more than the sight of a stranger standing over her home. "What's happened to him?" she asked, her voice tight. "How serious is it?"
"Oh, nothing that bad," Bebe assured her. "He's mostly fine, but he really wanted to get this artefact to Gabe, and he said he didn't want to risk going out in the snow without treatment, you know? So he said to get you to come and check it out if you were home, that's all."
Alicia didn't share Bebe's confidence that Pete was just fine. Bebe might spend more time around Pete than Alicia did these days, but while he'd changed a lot, Alicia had a hunch that he was still the kind of guy who would never, ever ask her for help unless he desperately needed it.
But Bebe was young and sweet and was working incredibly hard on her deliveries, and if whatever she had to take to Gabe was so important that she didn't even want to stop moving, Alicia wasn't going to put any thoughts in her head about Pete being not quite as 'fine' as he said he was. So she kept her voice steady but firm when she invited Bebe down into the bunker while Alicia got her first aid supplies, and made Bebe catch her breath and drink some warmer-than-freezing water before she went running off to Gabe's. She never would have known that underneath it all, Alicia was dying to get out of there and go running to Pete as fast as she could.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Alicia murmured, when she looked over the crest of the hill to see the mail exchange clearly being watched by a troupe of five or six soldiers, about fifty yards from the north side of the building. "Neither of you could remember to mention that the place was watched?"
Alicia's hastily composed plan, once she'd packed her first aid gear and sent Bebe on her way, had been to head straight north, cross the river at the rope bridge that the tech-savvy soldiers didn't seem to know about, climb the ridge between the waterway and the mail exchange and then run straight down the other side until she burst through the mailroom doors. She'd had to check her enthusiasm very quickly when she reached the top of the ridge, though. If she'd noticed the soldiers' telltale campfire smoke a second later, she would have gone hurtling down the slope right in front of their eyes. They might have been oblivious to a snapped twig here and there, but even they probably weren't stupid enough to overlook a woman with a satchel running down a snow-covered slope.
If they gave any indication that they knew Pete was in there, she might not have been so hesitant. But if they thought there was someone in the old abandoned building, they surely would have gone in by now, and it looked as though they were doing nothing more but setting up camp on their way to somewhere else. Pete was safe enough, as long as they didn't know he was there. Or at least he was safe from being arrested or murdered. She couldn't know how long he'd last without medical attention, and since he could be at serious risk she couldn't afford to just wait until the soldiers moved on. Somehow she had to get down that slope and through the back door of the post office without giving them any reason to be curious enough to go inside.
She found a shrub close enough to the top of the ridge to give her cover and lay on her stomach, surveying the scene. The post office had two entrances; the back door was closest to her, and the front on the other side, facing towards the sealed mountain road, where the soldiers were standing. There was a reasonable amount of brush cover between her and the building, but not nearly enough for her to run down there without being spotted.
What she needed was a distraction, but it was hard to see any way to draw the attention of the group away from her when she was so far away. With the aid of her binoculars she could see several birds sitting in a heavily snow-laden tree on the soldiers' other side, and if she could disturb them, or even just shake the tree enough for it to drop its load of snow, that would probably be distracting enough. But the only weapon she had on her was a gun, and the noise would only draw them straight to her.
"Serves me right for telling Gerard that archery was a waste of time," she muttered to herself, and picked up a stone from the ground in front of her, turning it over and over in her hand. That was something that theoretically she could use, but she wouldn't be able to throw it far enough. But the only other things she had on her were her clothes, a knife, a bottle of water, some food and the first aid kit.
"Huh," she said, thoughtfully, as she pulled out a long elastic bandage. "This might be worth a shot."
She tied the ends of the bandage between two branches of a shrub and gives it an experimental pluck. It seemed to hold fine, and it's wide enough that the rock fits comfortably in the middle. She took a deep breath and stared at the tree. This was a huge risk in itself. There was no way to practice and get a feel for how to aim the makeshift slingshot, and every chance that it could fail, or worse, draw attention to herself or pique their curiousity about the building. And she was wasting a bandage that Pete might need. But when she stopped to think about it, the rock in her hand and the bandage pulled back to it's tautest point, anything she did right now was a risk. As strange a solution as it was, this was the least risky one she could think of. So she took a deep breath, aimed as best she could, and let go.
For a scary, breathless moment she completely lost sight of the stone as it sailed into the air. But then, like magic, she saw one of the distant trees shake, the snow piled on its branches sliding off to the ground, and saw the soldiers' heads all turn towards it. She didn't waste another moment. She launched herself down the slope, doing the best she could to zigzag from tree to tree in case one of them looked back, hoping that they couldn't hear the snow crunching under her feet. It was a long journey when every step was a risk, but it wasn't more than twenty seconds before she was reaching for the door handle.
Just as she crashed through the door, she heard a shout and a gunshot ring out, and she threw herself to the floor on her side, terrified that they were about to come in. Before she could even get a good look at her surroundings, Pete was all over her, alive and familiar, kissing her as though he'd drown if he stopped. It was what she'd been dreaming about for months, and what she thought she couldn't have, and it just doesn't make sense to be kissing when there was only a wall between them and a band of soldiers who may or may not know that they're there.
"Pete," she whispered, at last, and pushed him away. "Stop it. I wasn't going to scream, jackass."
He blinks at her for a moment, slightly confused, and finally pushes himself up into a sitting position again, propped against the side of a nearby sofa. "Sorry. I'm so glad you came. I don't think they're coming in. Could you go into the front room and have a peek through the curtains to check, though? I'd go and look myself, but I'd rather not, with the whole..."
He picked up a bloodstained, wadded up tea towel that he's dropped earlier and pressed it to the gash at his side. Alicia had to physically fight back the urge to make him lie down so she get to work on it right then and there. "Is that thing even clean?"
"You can fix me up once you've checked what the tools of oppression out there are doing," Pete said, and pointed towards the front room. "Security first."
Alicia gave him one last concerned look and slipped into the front room, laying low and peeking carefully through the curtains. There was no immediate risk from the patrol group, though they were still there, but she did freeze for a moment when she realised, far too late, that she'd probably completely misunderstood that kiss.
Alicia had to work quickly to clean Pete up. With the enemy so close by, they wouldn't be able to risk lighting a lamp when night fell, and after all the time it took Alicia to get the message, make her way to the post office and then get inside, dusk wasn't far away. So she just cleared the table in the back room (what would have been the old staff room, Pete said, which explained the couches and the kitchenette) hoisted him on top of it and went to work as quickly as she could.
Luckily it was a clean cut, even if the wound itself was a bit of a mess from Pete's attempts to staunch the bleeding with whatever was lying around. Ideally it probably needed stitches, but Alicia wasn't trained for that and she wasn't going to risk screwing up and getting it infected. She'd just have to clean it up, cover it and hope she could get him back to safety before it got any worse.
The real problem was that it clearly hurt like hell, and there was nothing Alicia could do to relieve the pain except let him swig from the bottle of gin she found in the tiny kitchen. It couldn't have helped much, but as she worked on him he barely made a sound, just lay there, pale and brave. Alicia hated it. She wanted to squeeze his fingers, hold him, kiss him, anything that would be the slightest bit comforting. But all she could do right now was keep on working, trying to ignore the noises he made at particularly painful moments, until finally he was all bandaged up and lying on the couch munching a sandwich.
"So here's the situation," she said, when she'd washed her hands and taken the other sandwich herself. She was sitting on the floor in front of him, still fighting the urge to climb up there and hug him instead of forcing herself to be the practical one. "You need stitches, and I can't do that. I've done the best I can, and it'll do for maybe twenty four hours, but we need to get you out of here soon. Now, we can either try to get back over the river tonight, so we have darkness for cover, or we can wait it out and hope that they will have left by the morning."
Pete chewed the last bite of his sandwich slowly, thoughtfully, and swallowed. "I know that leaving tonight would be the most sensible thing, but I'm wrecked." She couldn't argue with that. He looked as though even smiling took effort. "I just don't think I could handle getting up and going tonight."
"Sounds fair," Alicia nodded, and looked around. It was already starting to get dark. "Is there anything else I can do for you now? A drink?"
"No drink," he said, with the same tired smile. "But if you could climb up on this couch and spoon me that'd be awesome."
She blinked at him. "Seriously?"
"Seriously," he said, with a solemn nod. "Your great leader commands it."
"Oh, fuck off."
"And grab that fucking ugly bearskin blanket, too. It's going to get cold."
It was cramped with the two of them on the couch, but it was warm, and undoubtedly confortable for Pete, Alicia told herself. She wasn't entirely sure that 'comfortable' was the right word for the way she felt. She felt so incredibly lucky to be this close to Pete again, to be able to smell him, his neck a tantalisingly short distance away from her lips. She had to laugh at herself for the absurdity of thinking she was lucky to be in this situation. And at the same time, resisting the temptation to actually do something was at the risk of driving her mad.
"So, you still haven't told me how you got into this mess in the first place, Wentz," she said, to break the silence. "I know you like to make things up on the fly, but this seems haphazard even for you. You could have at least told me the place was being watched."
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," he let out a short bark of a laugh. "I'm so sorry I got you into this. They definitely weren't around when Bebe and I first broke in, and I didn't even notice them until after she left and they tried to get in the front door."
"They did? What did you do?"
"Oh, it was locked, of course. They didn't even think to check for a back door." He sighed. "I'm so sorry for dragging you into this, Alicia. I wouldn't have sent Bebe to get you if I knew they were going to turn up."
The apology irritated her in some way she couldn't pin down, but this really wasn't the time to get annoyed with Pete. "I would have come anyway, you know."
"I hate putting people in danger, though."
"You might have picked the wrong side, then. If you're recruiting people into a rebel army, you're definitely putting them in danger."
"It's not the same," Pete said, and before she could argue back he added "Asking people to fight for their freedom isn't the same as asking them to fight for me."
Alicia just thought about that for a moment. It was true, and she couldn't argue with it, and it was something that the Pete she left never would have said, either. "So why did you send Bebe off thinking that you were 'fine', anyway?"
"Because we need to get the thing to Patrick as soon as possible so he can break it down so we can use it. Bebe's the best runner anyway, but obviously I wasn't gonna be able to do it, since I got hurt this badly, and if I told her that then she would have wanted to stay, but we really need to get the thing to Patrick, so I told her to you to come get me and then I'd be fine."
"You get me out here to save your life, but you can't even tell me what 'the thing' is?"
"Oh, no, that's not it at all." Pete grinned sheepishly. "I just don't actually have a name for it. I mean, I could tell you what it does, and I probably should since that's how we got to be here in the first place, and really you have a right to know about all that since I've dragged you into this..." He hesitated. "It's kind of a long story, though."
"So? It's not like we have much else to do. Sure, it's dark, but I'm not really in the mood for sleeping."
She cringed at her choice of words, and Pete chuckled knowingly. "I could think of other things to do," he joked, "But okay, let's have the story."
The story, it seems, had started when Pete came across an elderly man, new to the wilderness but delighted to be off the grid at last, who used to be a postal worker. The conventional mail service had shut down even before the anti-privacy laws had come in, though they certainly would have done away with it if they'd had the chance. From talking to this guy, Pete got the impression that the posties had, in some ways, been the first rebels.
They fought hard against the shut down of their industry as it became less and less profitable - not just because people were beginning to shift to purely electronic communication, but there was virtually no sellable information you could get about people from delivering their letters. Snail mail was just too private, and you couldn't make money out of protecting people's privacy any more. But the posties had fought, arguing against it, trying to convince the people and the government of the beauty of mail in your letterbox and the advantages of a service that didn't want to sell your personal information to anyone who'd pay. But most importantly to Pete, the old man hinted that some of the posties had tried to develop a machine that would black out electronic transmissions in a limited area. Phone, internet, radio, everything. No more paying for services with your privacy. People would have to go back to mail.
It didn't work, of course. The evidence was all around them. The mail service shut down, the world kept moving more and more towards paying for things with their personal information instead of money, and eventually they reached a point where connectedness was expected and privacy was, in many respects, illegal. But that invention if it did exist, would be unbelievably useful to the rebels. The army were clueless about intelligence-gathering methods that didn't involve online tracking in some way - knocking out all internet service in one of the camps would make it practically invisible. They could be really, truly safe.
So naturally, Pete had picked up an assistant and gone in search of an abandoned post office. With Bebe outside, watching for patrols, Pete had ransacked the place until he finally uncovered 'the thing', which he was fairly sure was the invention that the old postie had talked about. But of course, in all the mess he'd made, he tripped and fell, and some old piece of junk under the debris had ripped a gash in his side. But he didn't want to let that stop him. Excited by the discovery, and determined not to scare Bebe, he patched himself up to disguise the injury, handed her the device and a message, and sent her to Alicia, unaware that there was an army patrol on the way.
"I know it was exciting," Alicia said, when he'd finished. "If Patrick can make it work, then it'll change everything. But was it really so urgent you had to lie to Bebe so she's run straight to Patrick."
"Well now I don't think so," Pete grumbled. "But I was really excited at the time. And I didn't know the patrol was going to turn up and camp outside the front door."
"Do you think those goons out there even know who you are?" Alicia wondered. "I bet they'd be shocked if they realised they've got the hero of the rebellion in here."
"They wouldn't know I'm the leader of anything," Pete snorted. "Unless we have Facebook profiles, we're all the same to them."
"True. Still, they have to wise up and start figuring out how to find people without the use of the internet some time, right? I just don't see how they can remain that clueless forever."
"Oh, I don't think they will," he said, grimly. "They'll get smarter, and they'll get better. But I'm so glad that it looks like a long way off."
They fell into silence again. The night had well and truly fallen by then, the room almost completely black. Alicia couldn't even see Pete's neck right in front of her nose. She could only feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing, and wondered whether he was falling asleep.
"I wouldn't call myself a hero, either," Pete said, suddenly. "I'm not that special."
"Of course you're special," Alicia murmured. "Look at what you've become. Fighting against a government like this one is practically impossible, but you've inspired so many people to join us anyway. I was so wrong about you. I don't..."
"What?" She could feel Pete shift, rolling onto his back, and in the dim light she could just see him turning his face towards her. "What are you talking about?"
"When I left you, I said you were pathetic." She has to force the words out, slowly, one at a time. "I thought you were so fucked up that you'd never go anywhere or do anything with your life. And now you're running this rebellion. You proved me wrong, you're better than me, you're..."
"That's ridiculous," said Pete, quietly. "I'm no different to you. And maybe you're not so wrong. I've fucked up every relationship I've ever been in. I might be running around inspiring people if that's what you want to call it, but it doesn't change the fact that I wish I had someone to go home to instead. Fuck, Alicia, I'm so fucking jealous of you."
"What are you talking about?" Alicia murmured, absently, stroking his hair. "You get to see Mikey all the time. He loves you."
"I'm not talking about hookups. I mean your place. You have somewhere to go home to. You and Mikey picked a place to live, even if it was under shitty circumstances, and you worked on it together, and it's your home." He reached over, gingerly, and touched her face. "And I don't just want Mikey. I want you."
"Why would you want me?" she whispered. "I always doubted you, I never believed in you, and I don't... I don't deserve you, Pete."
"Who gives a shit?" Pete whispered back. "I don't. I just want you."
It seemed wrong, somehow, that after all the time Alicia had spent regretting the way she'd treated him, and wanting him back, and thinking she couldn't, that she could just have him just like this.
When they woke the next morning, in the first grey light of dawn, Alicia kept feeling as though Pete was watching her. She went about checking on the enemy encampment, splitting up the last of their food and examining Pete's injuries in as businesslike a fashion as possible. She just didn't know what else he expected. The kind of comfort they'd shared the night before was just what people did in their community, where they were constantly hunted. Hell, Pete fucked her husband like most people shook hands. And as far as she was concerned, the state of their relationship was definitely not their highest priority.
"So here's the problem," Alicia said, once she'd cleaned and rebandaged the gash again in the earliest morning light. "It looks okay now, but the longer you go without stitches, the worse it's going to get and the harder it'll be to move you. If we had some way to get rid of the troops out there, or at least be sure that they'll be gone soon, we might be able to wait. But we just don't know, and we definitely can't afford to wait another night. We need to get out of here today."
"Makes sense," Pete nodded. "It's mostly a matter of getting over the ridge without them noticing us, right?"
"Yeah, and that'll be the hard part." Alicia frowned. "I distracted them yesterday, but I couldn't pull that off again, and besides we'd need to do something different since it'll take much longer to get you up the slope. I could try being a decoy, but you never know what I'd have to do to escape, and if we had to stay separated it would be dangerous for you to try to travel alone..."
"Oh, don't worry." Pete grinned. "I already have a plan."
"You do?" Alicia looked dubious. "What?"
Pete's grinned just widened as he held up the ugly, hairy blanket they'd slept under the night before. "Do you think we can pass as a bear?"
"This is ridiculous," Alicia muttered, as they shuffled out the door. Pete was clinging to her shoulders and she was holding up the front of the bearskin with her arms so she could at least see where she was putting her feet, but the rest of their bodies were covered head to toe by the pelt. "We look nothing like a bear."
"Yeah, but you have met our national troops, right? They wouldn't know a bear unless it was tearing their face off."
Alicia didn't answer, concentrating instead on leading them up the slope without them both falling on their faces. She couldn't even begin to worry about whether they were attracting attention between trying to find her own way and half-carrying Pete along behind her. But despite her conviction that this plan was going to get them both shot, it bizarrely seemed to be working. There was no sound from down on the highway, no cries of surprise or booming gunshots. Contrary to what Alicia thought when Pete first suggested this plan, it looked as though it wasn't going to get her shot.
But their luck ran out just as they reached the top of the ridge, and they heard a shout from behind them.
"Shit," Pete muttered, and tried to throw the skin off.
"No, not yet." Alicia dragged him a few feet down the slope, until they were below the soldiers' sight line, before she threw the bearskin into a snowdrift and started dragging Pete down towards the rope bridge as quickly as she could.
"I fucking hate this bridge," Pete muttered. He had to concentrate hard on keeping his feet on the wooden slats and not slipping through the gaps. "Fuck, Alicia, you should leave me, we're just gonna die here."
"No we're not," she said, firmly. "There's a hollow off to the side up ahead, do you see? When we get to the other side, you get behind there. I'll take care of the bridge."
They were nearly at the end now, and when Pete finally set foot on solid ground, his "What are you doing?" was drowned out by a shout and a gunshot from the top of the ridge. Alicia shoved Pete forwards towards the hiding place and didn't even look back to see if he made it. She just dropped to the ground and pulled out her knife.
She managed to saw through two of the before a gunshot went off far too close. She didn't feel any fear, though. She didn't feel anything, just an awareness of the freezing snow packed around her and the terror in Pete's voice as he kept up a constant stream of swearing. But the gunshot made her pause and for a split second she lifted her head to lock eyes with the soldier who had just set foot on the bridge, his pistol still aimed squarely at her. Before he could fire again, she slithered backwards down the low embankment and dropped into a hollow next to Pete.
"What are they doing?" Pete hissed. "I thought they were gonna kill you!"
She shushed him and paused to listen. "They're arguing over whether they should try to cross the bridge."
"You mean the bridge is still there? Why didn't you cut the whole thing off?"
"I cut enough," Alicia whispered back, and then took a risk and stuck her head up over the embankment. She ducked back down quickly when another shot rang out, but it the aim was a long way off.
"Are you insane?" Pete demanded, gripping her arm so tightly she could barely move.
"No, they are," Alicia shot back. "I didn't cut the bridge down but there's barely any support. They're already losing balance, they can't aim for shit, and if they've got the kind of common sense these guys usually do, they're all going to charge across it at once and the whole thing will snap."
"Or they could get across and..."
"Shh!" she said, sharply, and clamped a hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes and slumped backwards into the snow, like he could just sink into it and make the whole situation go away.
It was a tense, agonizing wait. They didn't have to wait more than a minute, but it seemed to drag on forever, as they listened to the low, sharp exchanges between the soldiers and the creak of the bridge, all overlaid by the sound of the rushing river. For a few seconds, the voices sounded louder, pleased, and Alicia's hand flew to her pistol, buzzing so hard with adrenaline that it was a wonder she could keep her hand steady at all. But then, one glorious moment later, they heard a crunch and a snap and a chorus of yells, and then the loud impact of bodies hitting the water.
It was Pete who broke the silence afterwards.
"Jesus, Alicia," he said, warmly. "How the fuck could you ever think that you don't deserve me?"
They didn't have any more trouble from the patrols, but it was still a long, exhausting journey home. It was well after dark by the time they got back to Alicia and Mikey's house, and the smell of Mikey's cooking as they shuffled down the entrance tunnel almost made Alicia cry. When she finally got down to the blessed familiarity of home, she didn't have the energy to do anything more than kiss Mikey and then crawl into bed, sinking into sleep the moment she put her head down.
When she finally woke again she felt a mixed sense of safety and disorientation - it was the best thing in the world to be home again, with Mikey lying beside her and stroking her hair, but she had no idea what time it was.
"You've been asleep for, like, sixteen hours," said Mikey, with a small smile. "That must be some adventure you had."
"Oh yeah," she sighed, and nuzzled into the crook of his neck. "And I for once I have a story about Pete to tell you."
"Well, I hate to take the wind out of your sails so soon, but I think I've already heard the pertinent details from Pete."
Alicia blushed and sat up suddenly - and now she could see Pete, lying on the other side of Mikey, smiling sheepishly at her again.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't realise retelling sexual adventures was a thing for you guys."
"If it helps, he was really crap at telling it. I'm sure your version would have been much better." His smile grew a little more devious. "Or you could... well, it felt kind of incomplete. You two could act out the ending right here in front of me."
"I... really?" Alicia looked from Mikey to Pete and back again. "We've never brought people home before."
"We never talked about it. And it's Pete. We both like Pete, don't we?" He raised an eyebrow and she nodded, feeling a blush creeping up on her again. "Anyway, he has to stay here for a few days to recover. I got Ray to come over and check on him after you passed out, and he said Pete isn't allowed to move again for ages. Like, forever, practically. Come on, there's no way we're going to get through a week without having sex, and you wouldn't want Pete to feel left out, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't." She gave Pete a long look, and thought about the night before, his confessions. And hers, too. "I wouldn't mind if Pete stayed even longer than that. What do you think, Mikey? He spends way too much time roaming around getting into trouble. It's about time someone made him settle down and find somewhere to call home."
Mikey lifted his head up off the bed to kiss her. "Sounds like a brilliant plan to me."
He rolled over for a moment and kissed Pete too, then shuffled away towards Alicia's side of the bed. He pushed Alicia over and she tripped a little trying to crawl over his long legs until she almost fell on top of Pete.
"You okay?" she murmured, and his face broke into a ridiculous big-toothed grin.
"I'm fantastic," he replied, and reached up to brush the hair off her face reverently, as though he couldn't believe he was really here. "Thank you. For everything."
"Thank you," she said, and kissed him, gently. "Welcome home."
"Hey, hurry up and fuck, would you?" said Mikey, poking Alicia in the side with one of his stinky socks. "I was promised a happy ending."
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