Throw sadness to the wind, sorrow to the sky…

A Revolution fic (Blackout AU): Sebastian (Bass) Monroe/Charlotte (Charlie) Matheson; Charloe. The Monroe Republic has fallen and President Bass Monroe escapes to a small island off the coast of New England. Charlie is searching for him so that she can get revenge for her family. When her small boat crashes and she washes up on Bass's shore… will he look after her? Will she let him? (based on a prompt on the Good Ship Charloe writers page)

Rating M…

Authors note: Thanks so much for having a look at this and I hope that you like it… I don't own any part of Revolution – I continue to love it though and I find Charlie and Bass especially fascinating…The title of this story comes from 'Isle au Haut lullaby' by Gordon Bok, Cheers, Magpie

Throw sadness to the wind, sorrow to the sky… chapter 1.

She'd been a fool and now she was going to die…

Charlie knew plenty about tracking, hell, hadn't she been able to track that bastard Monroe all the way from New Vegas to his little hideaway island paradise off the coast of New England? But she only knew the basics about sailing. She knew enough to maintain the proper heading and to keep the small vessel rigged properly and making its steady way towards Isle au Haut - but she realised now that she didn't know nearly enough about the sea and how easily it could turn…

Things had started out ok, it had been a beautiful, clear dawn, the bay waters clear and inviting and she'd been enjoying herself – especially with the prospect of finally catching up with (and disposing of) Sebastian Monroe, ex President of the ex Monroe Republic; the man – no, the dick – who gave the orders that resulted in the deaths of both her father and her brother and who had held her mother prisoner for years. What made his betrayal worse was that he had known her family, had almost been one of them, he and her uncle Miles had even babysat she and Danny when they were little… But then he'd done things so awful that he'd made Miles – who was his best friend for God's sake – feel that he had to kill him to stop him… Well, now it was up to her… her Grandpa and Miles were focused on trying to keep her Mom sane… nothing else seemed to matter to them, which was partly why she'd left if she was honest… Aaron was off talking about fireflies that no one else could see and Charlie? Well she had nothing better to do… so she was it, it was her job to get Monroe…and after months spent tracking him, she was so close…

She'd been only about half a mile offshore from the island though when the wind suddenly picked up, the sky almost magically fast turning a frightening, angry, black and purple with clouds roiling, the wind shrieking and moaning and the sea rising up in huge, terrifying waves that threw her small, rusty boat around like it weighed nothing… She was having a harder and harder time making any attempt at steering, her fingers numb… and the old boat was taking on more and more water. She was wet through, freezing cold, nauseous and having trouble catching her breath through the drenching salty spray… But every now and then when she was at the top of one of the huge swells she caught sight of the bumpy little strip of land that was her destination off to starboard and somehow, amazingly, the wind seemed to be blowing her closer and closer to it… The waves were still getting bigger though and it was already taking all of her strength just to hang on to the wheel… Then she saw a wave coming that dwarfed all the others… the white foam at the top seemed to stretch up to meet the sky and there just was no way her little boat was going to survive that…

Then the boat rose up and up and she felt herself falling and falling… and a tremendous sound just filled everything and water was the whole world around her - and then there was blackness…

….

Sebastian Monroe was doing his usual morning sweep of the island and the surrounding waters of Penobscot Bay through the telescope mounted on the lookout room on the top floor of his adopted home... He spotted the small craft and wondered vaguely who was fool enough to set sail when it was obvious to anyone with any sense that there was a nasty squall brewing – all the usual fishing and patrol vessels were secured at their moorings or out in safer waters… There wasn't much he could do about it though… whoever it was, they were on their own, the coastguard didn't live here anymore… And if the fool was headed here, well, he wished them luck, if they made it through the storm he could take care of himself and he'd be waiting for them…

The local fishermen knew someone lived on the island but they generally respected his wish to be alone – and while they might wonder why a man might choose to live without human company in the abandoned and decrepit luxury homes of Isle a haut, they hadn't asked and he didn't tell. He kept a low profile these days, his beard, moustache and tough, strong, dangerously capable appearance usually disguise enough to hide who he was and keep people away - unless he wanted them close… Everyone had their stories and secrets and he was far enough here from anyone who'd known him in his previous existence that recognition was a relatively minor risk in his catalogue… He was polite but aloof when he took his little boat over to the mainland on the rare occasions when he needed to trade for something he couldn't make or find… or if he felt like a woman's company – and thank the powers that be he never had trouble finding that, or if he felt like a change from his own, home made whisky – or even if he felt like taking part in one of the fight nights that served as an outlet for those who couldn't find peace and exhaustion enough in the endless hard work of making a living…

He was as self-sufficient as possible, growing or gathering most of his own food – he'd found several good existing gardens on the island, and used what he could find in the abandoned homes for clothes and furniture… and there was a lot to choose from – Isle au Haut had been a rich community but not a particularly resilient one and after the blackout the few people living on the island had either fled to the mainland or had stayed and died - of starvation, accident or suicide, leaving their possessions behind and the island basking in its fading luxury, ghosts and memories, its isolation keeping it safe to a large degree from looting. Bass had buried the bones he'd found in a graveyard behind the tiny church, marking the graves with family names if he could find evidence of them as a sort of thank you… It felt important to him to do that, it was something he could do for them when he hadn't been able to fix anything for anyone else with his doomed Republic.

He'd made his home – although he had bolt-holes in several other parts of the island - in a house at the top of one of the highest hills on the island where he had an almost 360 degree view of most of the island and the waters around it, helped by an antique telescope left by the house's former owner. A few abandoned pets, cats mostly – had survived and prospered and he'd found a few little feral tribes of pigs and goats, descendants of escapees from someone's hobby farm… He'd made friends with some of the cats, had re-domesticated, or at least come to an arrangement with, several of the goats – and he'd recently found an abandoned litter of piglets that he was raising up for breeding and food and had plans on building a smokehouse… It felt good to put some of his survival knowledge to good use, and there was a lot of satisfaction in putting his wits and his hands to work…

There was a tunnel leading from the cellar of the house to a hidden exit lower on the island and he used that to come and go and to hide his main living space from any casual visitors... He'd collected any weapons he found – and there'd been a few, refurbishing them and making bullets and bladed weapons himself on a home made forge using recycled metals… He hid them in several caches, including one in the tunnel, in case of attack from any of the bands of ex Militia, war tribes and others wandering unchecked around the country; shiploads of them marauding up and down the coast or overland like pirates with no one to stop them… Or in the unlikely event of a bounty hunter tracking him here… He'd been carefully setting false trails though as he travelled and had also set a couple of rumours going on the way here that he was dead… hanged by a mob of angry ex Militia…

Then there were these new guys, the Patriots, who said they wanted to protect people and bring back the United States - but they gave him, and most of the local folk judging by the talk he heard, the heebie-jeebies, what with the suspicious timing of their arrival, just after the bombs - and their pretty talk of helping out, when it was plain to him and to plenty of others that they were just another group of marauders leaving just as many bodies behind them…. There were stories too of things that they had done to young recruits that made him sick to his stomach… Bass was also pretty fucking sure that Randall Flynn was one of them – and that Flynn had sent the nukes, after Rachael and Aaron helpfully turned the power on in the Tower, although Bass took at least some of that blame on himself, after all he had taken the asshole there…delivered him to the door and walked him right in… he might as well have been the one to push that button… He was better off out of it and away, the world was better off without Sebastian Monroe complicating things…better to let him fade away…

He'd arrived on Isle au Haut desperate and nearly broken, his hopes of bringing some order to their little part of the country dashed first by his brother's fucking betrayal and then further by the bombs and the collapse of the Republic. He'd come to this isolated place seeking a refuge from a world become even more desperate and insane – and one that made it increasingly plain that it didn't want him… His brief, violent sojourn in New Vegas, where he'd had several lucky escapes from the ever swelling numbers of Bounty hunters and the damn Patriots, proving once and for all that for him there was no place there or possibly anywhere on the mainland... He'd once even thought he'd caught a glimpse of a face he knew, although how she'd found him he didn't know… but seeing, or maybe seeing her had reminded him that he hadn't always been alone, that he had family, and that Miles was his brother still, somewhere… But the gorgeous blue eyes in that beautiful face had been full of hate and anger so he'd left that behind too…

And here, on this beautiful, forgotten island, he had begun to find healing of a sort – he was able to start seeing things in some sort of perspective. His own sorry part in what had happened somehow becoming clearer and he realised now that maybe it hadn't been all his fault… that he had been as lost as everyone else in a world gone dark…and at least he'd tried to do something, he and Miles…and it had worked, for a while, before everything fell apart…

So all in all it was on the way to becoming a good life, away from the world… But it was pretty fucking lonely, he wasn't made to be alone and he was anything but a monk… His dreams were full of honey blond hair, blue eyes and soft, rounded flesh after that glimpse of her… There were no women around here like her, the genetics seemed to favour brunette, which was probably a good thing for his cover of being a solitary man… But he had caught himself more than a few times lately talking and singing aloud in an attempt to give the illusion of some company, although up to now he'd been able to resist the urge to talk to coconuts or put wigs on basketballs… He was pretty damn sure though that at least one of the cats had started talking back…and it was getting damn hard listening to the fun they seemed to have almost every night… Maybe it was time for another visit to the mainland...

Bass checked the location of the boat again and sure enough, there it was, caught in the squall and being thrown around like a cork… He even thought that he caught glimpses of a small figure fighting desperately to hold onto the wheel… He pitied the poor idiot of a sailor but there was nothing he could do to help, his own little craft wouldn't be any use at all in those seas… and as he saw the monster wave gather itself together into a wall of hard water he knew that there was no hope at all for the fragile little boat, labouring square in its path… Then the wave broke and thundered and crashed and motored its roaring way towards the shore and when he looked again the boat was gone…

…..

He raced down to the shore of course, running with a torch down through the musty old smugglers tunnel to its rocky end point about a quarter mile above the shore, then clambering along the wet and slippery goat steep path down to the sheltered, half moon curve of the sandy beach, set snug in between two rocky heads, just to make sure, although he didn't hold out much hope at finding anything – let alone anyone… The boat had been driven quite close to shore by the storm though and even if the crew didn't make it he might find something usable as salvage…

Bass couldn't see anything much at first, the rain was still heavy when he climbed over the last of the piled rocks to get to the fringes of the sand, and he had to be careful of the storm surge waves driven up by the squall - but then, like someone pulling back a curtain, the weather cleared as suddenly as it had turned dark earlier… the rain stopped, the waves settled and he was suddenly bathed in sunlight from an almost clear, gorgeously blue sky, a few scudding, coloured clouds disappearing over the horizon…

He walked down to the water's edge, his clothes steaming in the sun and drying salty on his skin…his feet bare in the damp and giving sand, the footsteps behind him deep and crisp at first then softening at the edges, filling with cloudy, sandy water… the air was clear and had the wonderful tang of the sea… Sea birds circled and swooped above his head, their haunting and raucous voices clamouring… landing briefly to search for edibles carried in to shore by the storm then taking off with their booty held in tight beaks, in a clatter of wings…

Then he saw something up ahead, further along the beach and just above the water line, a longish mound that looked like a lump of driftwood covered in seaweed but that he strongly suspected was something else… He sighed, it looked like the sea had brought him another body to bury in the little churchyard. He hurried over and when he got closer he knew he was right…The body was lying face down, head slightly turned to the side, long, dirty blond and sea weed tangled hair matted around the shoulders… It was obviously a young woman, the side of one of her breasts and a pale nipple clearly visible, exposed by her slid sideways water black tank top and he felt a pang of sadness for her family and the fact that they might never know what happened…

Most of her face was hidden under an out and up-flung arm, the rest by her hair, her other arm and shoulder sunk into the sand by the pull and push of the waves…

Bass knelt down by her side, gently reaching under the heavy, sodden hair so that he could check for a pulse… There was no sign that she was breathing but when he placed his fingers where her delicate jaw met the strong lines of her neck there was a small, thready thump… Cautiously hopeful, he hooked a finger round, cleared the cold mouth of debris while she was on her side, then turned her onto her back, quickly placing a hand over her eyes and nose, the other at her chin, starting mouth to mouth, concentrating on just getting her to breath, occasionally looking and checking the waves to make sure they didn't get swamped, but the sea was quiet now, wavelets innocently lapping at her feet…

He'd almost given up, her lips had been soft but cold and unresponsive under his for what seemed like hours… the skin around them icy against his cheek… but then there was a cough, a rough rattle in her chest and as he let her onto her side again, back towards the sand, a small flood of water and what was probably the remains of her breakfast came pouring out…he reached out a hand to hold her hair back and caught a glimpse of a neat nose and rounded cheek…

Then she collapsed back on the sand, limp and exhausted, eyes still closed, barely conscious and the skin he could see covered in bruises, cuts and scrapes… She was breathing though, alive against all the odds and, brushing back her hair, Bass was finally able to get a good look at her face… He sat back on his heels… he couldn't fucking believe it… how the fuck had she found him… He looked again, just to make sure it really was her… Of all the fucking beaches on all the fucking islands in the whole fucking world and she washed up on his. He looked down at Charlotte Matheson and knew that his life had just changed forever - again - and he knew, just knew, that God really did have it in for Sebastian Monroe.

…..

AN: Hi and thanks so much for reading… this prompt kept going round in my head, and then I was singing this song about Isle au Haut and one of the lines just seemed to fit…anyway, I'll try to update as soon as possible (I'm also working on an update for another story which will be up soon too I hope…) but I am really enjoying writing this…the sea, the possibility of Pirates, Bass and Charlie alone on a deserted island… anyway, hope to see you at the next chapter… cheers, Magpie