Author's Note: This chapter fought me kicking and screaming, but we've finally come to a mutually agreeable standoff, so here it is. This is actually the last chapter of this story, but look for a longer multi-chap that picks up about where the mid-season finale left off, coming soon. It will be world-compliant with this story, but you'll get POVs from more characters, including Bass!

Also, so far I've been playing "in between chapters" of canon, so to speak, but since I was already post-"Ties that Bind" in my last installment, I actually had to slip this one into the three-hour window of empty time in "Kashmir." Thus, we open with that scene - yes, the one you're thinking of - from near the end of the episode.

Disclaimer: Characters and show don't belong to me; neither do the few lines of dialogue lifted from "Kashmir." Don't sue; just for fun; etc.

al·che·my
/ˈalkəmē/
Noun
1. The medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed transformation of matter, esp. that of base metals into gold.
2. A process by which paradoxical results are achieved or incompatible elements combined with no obvious rational explanation.

- Google Dictionary

Alchemy

It's taken more than a month of traveling to shakily reforge Miles Matheson's new world. It takes less than a second to shatter it.

Wheatley falls in slow motion, raising his gun, and Charlie is already ducking out of the way, but the barrel's moving faster than she is and when Miles hears the crack of the pistol, he knows - knows - it's over. Charlie flies backward and Miles jolts like somebody shoved an ice pick from his heart through his stomach.

He's kneeling at her side with no memory of how he got there, and dammit, she's the one who's supposed to get him killed, not the other way around.

They haven't even gotten into Philly yet.

It's just too damn early.

Nora's voice is soft, but she tries to look him right in the eyes when she answers his question, same way she would on a goddamn battlefield, and Miles knows that look because he's seen it before, so he twists his head away and refuses to meet her eyes, because seeing that look will make this real.

He looks at Charlie instead, and keeps talking, because she's going to open her eyes any second, and because he can't - can't - fall apart in front of Nora and Aaron. "Charlie, c'mon…Hey, I promise, I am going to get Danny back. You can count on me, 'kay? But I need you to open -" His voice cracks, but he holds it together and forces the words out: "- just open your eyes, okay?"

Not even a flutter. "Dammit, Charlie, just open your eyes. Come on, open them!"

There's an interminable pause…and then, finally, Charlie stirs. Slowly, her eyes crack open. Miles feels a flood of relief so intense it shakes his whole body.

"Hey, kid…" He's certain that at least Nora can hear the tremor in his voice. "You okay?"

His niece turns her head to the side, winces, and gives him the ghost of her usual smile. Miles releases a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, heart hammering like he's sprinted a couple hundred meters. Charlie half-smiles against his hand, and then he backs off, slumping onto the stairs as Aaron and Nora crowd around Charlie to make sure for themselves that she's all right.

He lets Nora and Aaron take it from there, concentrating on securing their position as best he can while Aaron helps Charlie sit up and Nora finds her a clean cloth to hold against her still-bleeding head wound.

When he announces, a raw edge to his voice, that they're staying put for at least two hours, not one of them (including Charlie) argues with him.

Charlie wants to sleep, which Miles vetoes immediately, after which (thankfully) Aaron volunteers to trade jokes with her to help keep her awake. Miles waits until Aaron has sat down next to Charlie and started in with a knock-knock joke about a cow, then puts Nora on patrol and mumbles something about going for a walk.

He makes it around a corner about seventy feet down the tunnel before his legs buckle.

He ducks into an old storage alcove and grabs at the nearest wall for support, sliding into a sitting position. He's shaking and sweating, and he knows it's just residual nerves, but this hasn't happened to him since his first tour in Afghanistan - about a million years ago - and it hits him so suddenly that he's intensely glad he's alone. The crack, crack of Wheatley's gunshot, followed by Charlie's head hitting the stairs, plays over and over and over on a looped track in his head.

Miles rubs his eyes with shaking hands, then leans back against the cool concrete, just trying to get his breathing under control. Holy hell. He'd known he was getting in deep with this new family of his, but thinking he was going to lose Charlie...

Immediately, he's brought back to a memory of the one and only time he'd ever taken Charlie for a ride in his car - four blocks, to the ice cream store and back. It had been the one and only time, because when he'd roared back into the Mathesons' driveway, the Challenger's tires squealing on the pavement and little four-year-old Charlie laughing her head off in the backseat, Ben Matheson had burst out the front door, angrier than Miles had ever seen him, and torn into Miles for "endangering his daughter" with his "reckless behavior." Miles is pretty sure the conversation had also included phrases like "driving like a maniac," and "my child!"

He'd gotten angry with Ben and had delivered some harsh words of his own, then roared away in his Challenger, feeling totally justified in setting Ben straight about his paranoid, uptight behavior.

After that, neither Ben nor Rachel had let him drive Charlie anywhere ever again.

If he weren't so rattled, he's sure he could see the irony in the fact that he's now escorting her halfway across a crumbling, anarchic republic full of looters, bandits, rebels, and Militia lunatics with guns, all of whom seem to want to shoot them on sight.

It's one hell of a trip to the ice cream store.

Of course now, he's sorry - good God, is he sorry - for yelling at his brother that day, because what he hadn't understood at the time was that Ben was just protecting his damn kid. Hell, Charlie was twenty now - a full-grown adult who Miles had known for less than two months - and seeing her in danger was enough to inspire panic in Miles Matheson - evil dictator, torturer, and mass murderer. If he'd been in soft-hearted Ben's place, and he'd seen someone drive around like that with his Charlie as a tiny little kid, he'd probably have lost it too.

He's managed to mostly stop shaking, so he takes a couple more steadying breaths, then rises, rubbing the back of one hand across his eyes to dispel a growing headache. A soft scrape sounds in the corridor outside, and Miles draws his sword before he hears Nora's voice:

"Miles?"

"Yeah." He sheathes the sword and steps out of the alcove. Nora's standing there, silhouetted in flickering torchlight from the other end of the tunnel. A sudden, wrenching thought occurs to him. "Charlie okay?"

"She's fine." Her tone is gentler than usual; she'd heard his voice shake back on the stairs, and now she's found him lurking in a dark corner, and she's not an idiot. She doesn't ask if he's okay, but the question hangs unspoken in the tilt of her dark eyes. She steps a little closer, studying his face in the half-dark, and says, "Of course, Aaron's now taught her several hundred of the most obnoxious knock-knock jokes in the book, so we're going to have to deal with that the rest of the trip."

Miles tries to laugh, but he's still too raw, and it comes out a little strangled. He looks away down the tunnel. "Damn kid's annoying enough already."

He hears Nora snort, then she's grabbing his sleeve with one hand and his cheek with the other, pulling him in for a kiss, fingers tugging at his jacket and tangling in the back of his short hair. And he finds he needs this kiss like he needs oxygen, desperately and without reservation. For a moment, it's smooth lips and jasmine-and-gunpowder hair and a soft moan that sends a shot of fire straight through to his belly. Nora's back hits the concrete wall with a thud -

- and Aaron's worried voice travels down the tunnel. "Guys? Small problem..."

Miles jumps back, breathing hard and looking at Nora, and then they both break apart and sprint down the tunnel toward Aaron and Charlie.

Miles arrives, sword drawn, Nora at his heels, to find Aaron holding up an almost-burned-out torch. Aaron's eyes widen when he sees Miles running at him with a drawn sword and as Miles skids to a halt, looking around for an enemy, Aaron mutters guiltily, "Um, the torches are burning kinda low. I said it was a small problem, but, you know, I do need to be able to see if Charlie's head wound is still bleeding…"

Miles looks down at Aaron, sheepishly holding up the low-burning torch, and feels sudden hysterical laughter trying to escape from his chest. He's got to be grinning a little like a maniac, because Aaron looks at him like he is one. A single chuckle bubbles up and escapes, and then Miles begins to laugh in earnest, hard enough to bring tears to his eyes, as he slumps to the floor in a fit of desperate merriment, sword clattering to the ground.

Aaron and Nora look at him like he's gone insane. Then Charlie, leaning back against the wall near Aaron, holding a rag against the side of her head, starts to laugh too. Aaron looks at her, at the torch, and then at back Miles - and then he bursts into laughter as well. Nora just stares at all three of them. Then a very unladylike guffaw bursts from her lips, and she slumps next to Miles on the floor, giggling uncontrollably.

For a few glorious moments, they forget about Monroe and the Militia and the fact that they'll all probably be dead by tomorrow - and just laugh.

Because really, what the hell else can they do?

When the moment fades to just the occasional chuckle, Miles picks up his sword and stands, reaching out a hand to pull Nora to her feet. Without a word, he walks five feet down the tunnel to a sconce containing a brand new torch, pulls it out, comes back, and hands it to Aaron. Aaron blinks at it, then at Miles, and wordlessly lights it with the old torch. Miles can feel Nora, beside him, choking back another bout of hysterical laughter.

He's drained to exhaustion, and Charlie's head is still bleeding, so he gives them all another two hours and sends Nora and Aaron off to sleep for the first hour while he sits with Charlie. An hour later, he wakes Nora up to trade with him. He's not happy about it, but he can barely keep his eyes open, and he'll be useless in Philly if he doesn't get some sleep.

Philly. This whole damn trip, he's been wondering what the hell he was going to do once they got to Philly, and now they're here, and suddenly, he realizes he already knows. The key had been right there in his own words to Charlie. He'd thought he was going to lose her, and what had he said? Not, "I'll burn the whole goddamn Militia to the ground." Not even, "I'll kill Monroe for you."

No, just: "I promise, I am going to get Danny back." As he drops off for a last hour of sleep, Miles knows with absolute clarity that he's going to keep that promise, no matter what happens on the other side of that door.

Because Charlie Matheson is his family.

And for the first time, Miles Matheson is starting to understand what that means.