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siribear · 9 months ago

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so anyway i haven't posted anything for this story on tumblr in like 3 years apparently?

basically whisper went to the institute and almost died.

here we go:

MacCready wipes the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand.

When he woke up this morning, there were the usual sounds of Sanctuary that he’s grown used to, fond of: the kids’ lessons drifting out of broken windows, farmers scraping at the land, the hum of the generators powering the lights and signs and water pumps of the neighborhood. Now, it’s the soft sniffling of mourners, a sad track playing through the ham radio connected to the Castle, and shovels scraping the dirt as he and a handful of other residents dig the old psyker’s grave.

MacCready didn’t know her all that well, but Mama Murphy helped Duncan find a toy he misplaced soon after getting here, and he hasn’t minded her since. But as he looks over the faces of the ones gathered near her grave, he counts a lot more people than he’s ever seen at a funeral before. He kinda wishes he sat and talked to her more, especially since he passed her every morning when he took Duncan to school by himself.

Speaking of - he looks up to see Duncan still tucked in next to Alice, holding tight to her hand. Lucky kid, he thinks for a moment, before looking at Alice herself. Her eyes might be on the grave at his feet - almost finished, even though he hasn’t helped for several minutes now - but her gaze is glazed over. She’s somewhere else entirely, swaying like her dress in the wind.

He picks up a shovelful of dirt before someone notices him staring. Though between the music and the crying, he doesn’t think anyone actually would.

When the grave is dug and Mama Murphy lowered into it, Marcy is the first to speak. They’ve all known each other since Quincy, MacCready learns, and things were pretty bad before they got as good as they are. Marcy didn’t trust her until Sanctuary started rebuilding, she helped Jun through the worst moments after his son died, Sturges used to think of her as his own grandma, and Preston used to go to her for advice when the Minutemen first fell apart.

And then the eyes of the present Museum Survivors turn to Alice, waiting. She looks smaller now. It’s not the denim dress, even though he’s never seen her outside of jeans and some kind of shirt (hers or Deacon’s or the one time without). It’s as if when she came back, she left some big part of her behind.

“Like everyone else here, Mama Murphy saved my life.” There’s a gasp and hush through the radio. Someone certainly didn’t expect to hear from her. “When we first met, I didn’t know who I was. So I made someone up. Someone they needed. Someone I needed to be.

“The last thing she told me was that, even though there was a decision I was struggling with at the time, whatever I chose would be the right thing. Honestly, it scared me that she knew me better than I know myself, but at least she thought the best of me.” Even he can’t help but chuckle, though he has trouble imagining her doing anything but the right thing.

“Because of that, I never thanked her enough for saving my life, and the lives of those I care deeply about. And now the only way I can do that is to keep going. To turn Sanctuary, the Minutemen, the whole Commonwealth, if I can, into a place she’d be proud of. A place people can be safe. A place where they can pass in peace, at home in their beds, surrounded by people that care about them. That’s how I’ll carry her memory with me.”

There’s a reverent silence that follows, and then more crying, and then Duncan pipes up with a heartfelt, “Me, too!” that brings some levity. Alice picks him up and balances him on her hip. Duncan waves when he can finally spot him over the crowd, and when MacCready waves back, Alice smiles. And if standing next to her as she freed him from Winlock and Barnes and the gunners, or as she risked her life for Duncan’s serum, that right there - that would have him joining with the Minutemen in a heartbeat.

That's a smile that should be on the recruitment posters.

Preston has a million and one questions for her once the funeral is over and Mama Murphy is buried. Is she okay? Is her son okay? When did she get back? Does she need anything? She lets him go on, until finally Sturges tells him to give her a chance to answer at least one of them.

“I’ll be down there soon, I promise. There’s something I need to do up here, first.” There’s a scrap of paper in the breast pocket of her dress: he’ll be there. Just wait one more day. There weren’t any jet inhalers in the room when they found her, she was told. Mama Murphy said she knew how she was going to go… so maybe it was a package deal of information. It’s a hope she carries to keep the gnawing feeling of guilt at bay.

Whisper runs a finger along the top of the ham radio. “I got that party favor you asked for, Sturges,” she says, intentionally vague.

“Really?”

“Mhmm. Preston, could you get everyone together for the party? I’m thinking it’ll be a big one.”

She hears his clothing rustle sharply. “Yes, General. I’ll make sure everyone’s ready to celebrate your return. Did you need anything else, ma’am?”

“No.” She stands. “Just be prepared for any party crashers, will you? I appreciate all you do.”

Preston clears his throat. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll see you soon.”

With school canceled for the day, MacCready takes Duncan back home and Whisper is left to what she hopes is her final stake out. The violin pieces over Radio Freedom are more somber, but the message to her keeps on its loop. She has no doubt the Brotherhood listen in to their station, and if they hadn’t been listening in to her conversation with Preston and Sturges, there’s no reason to give them cause to wonder.

She flips over to Diamond City Radio with a hiss of static then straight into I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire. She hums along, foot bobbing to the tune. Anxiety tightens in her chest with every breeze that rustles the dead leaves, but whenever she turns her head, she’s still alone. Honestly. How long does it take to cross the Commonwealth these days? Whisper did it in a few days and all it cost her was a few days of sleep!

Head in her hands, she groans.

A twig snaps. Just the one. Her hand twitches toward Deliverer resting on the surface of her lookout. The sound of footsteps grows closer. Whisper stands and turns to look behind her -

- And out from the forest, finally, steps Deacon, dressed in his dirty white tee, hands tucked into the pockets of a familiar pair of distressed jeans.”Hey, partner. You wouldn’t believe the traffic getting up here. It was terrible.”

Whisper blinks. Tears prick the corner of her eyes. Her bottom lip quivers. Then she grabs her gun and aims it at him before he can get too close. His eyebrows shoot up over the frames of his sunglasses, as do his hands to the air. The pistol is shaky in her hand, even with the other braced under it to keep her steady.

“Do you have a geiger counter?”

Deacon relaxes, and she almost does. But she can’t. Not yet. “Mine is in the shop.”

The dam breaks. She tosses the pistol to the ground and runs to him, tears already streaming down her cheeks. She tucks her head against his shoulder, and he holds her to him with one hand cradling the back of her head and the other trailing gently up and down her spine. He smells like sweat and gunfire and stale cigarettes and catacomb air. He smells like home.

“I’m sorry,” she hears him say. “I’m so sorry, partner. We should have found another way. You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

“It’s my own fault.” She lifts her head to look up at him, and from her angle she can see the furrow of his brow. “I bulled over everyone else because it had to be me. I didn’t think - ” She wraps her arms around him tighter. “I had no idea what I was walking into.”

“Whisper.” He takes her by the shoulders, gently pries her off him. “What did they do to you?”

She looks over to the vault and wipes away a stray tear. “I think it’s better if I start from the beginning.”

Whisper isn’t the first one to try to get into Vault 111. Deacon knows. He’s sat up in that very same lookout that he found her and watched and waited as others attempted to break in. But no other stolen vault pip-boy or percussive maintenance could persuade the door to open. Yet when she pulls the cord out from her own pip-boy and plugs it into the door control mechanism, the machine flickers to life.

“I said that I would tell you everything when I got back,” she says, voice still a little rough.

Of all the things he thought he’d see when he got up on that hill (a trap, an Institute courser, three super mutants in a trenchcoat - ), Whisper pulling a gun on him then breaking down wasn’t one of them. He’s never seen her cry before, he realizes. Not that he’s much of a cryer himself, but for someone with as much on her shoulders as she’s had, he’s surprised she didn’t break sooner.

Whisper presses the button, and just outside, the blast doors slide open in the middle, like a great eye waking up.

“The first time I went down here,” she breaks the silence and begins walking toward the vault-tec symbol painted into the metal door. “I was dressed almost the same.” She flares the skirt of her dress. “We were supposed to go to a ceremony. Nate was going to give a speech, get a medal for his service. And then we were going to go shopping for Shaun’s Halloween costume.”

Deacon follows her onto the symbol and waits. The ground feels unsteady on his feet, and when it rumbles, he half expects for the metal to fall out from beneath them, for them to tumble down into the vault below. Instead, the ground rises up around them, until it passes over their heads, and the only light are the fluorescents built into the wall of the large elevator.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he answers, as casually as he can. He’s still processing the small bits of information he’s gotten. First: her pip-boy worked on the door. Second: first time she went down here?

“If you had a second chance at a life with Barbara, right now, would you take it?”

Now he turns to her. The elevator ride casts her face in light, then shadow, then light, but her expression is neutral. Not expectant. If he chose to lie to her now, she would understand and move on, as always.

“I’m not the same person she married anymore.”

She turns away, the corner of a smile casting a sharper shadow across her face. She’s pleased with his answer, at least.

“That’s how I felt.”

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.” The elevator hits the bottom with a slight pistoning bounce. Deacon spreads his arms and feet wide to brace himself for the whole thing to come down, but Whisper grabs him calmly by the forearm. “It’s okay. We’re at the bottom.” A high mesh fence surrounds the elevator; the opening slides around to the back, and then they’re free to enter the vault.

It looks just like the entrance to vault 81, from here.

“Watch your step getting out. The floor is uneven.” Deacon toes the edge of the elevator floor and finds the lip she’s talking about. He steps over it. “It’s okay. We were all in shock when we reached the bottom, too.”

“Whisper, who’s ‘we,’ exactly?”

Still holding on to him, she leads him up the stairs, across the grated bridge, down a long, narrow hallway. Windows lining the walls peer into rooms lined with individual pieces of heavy machinery, each uniformly the same. Metal boxes, with water leaking out from underneath them.

“My neighbors and I,” she says. “We were led just down here.”

There’s no atrium to greet them at the end of the hall, no welcoming signs of life. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something isn’t right.

“Here.” He doesn’t know when she released his arm, but now she gestures at a terminal jutting from the wall. “The guest list. Nate and I were last minute additions.”

He steps up slowly. Compared to before, Whisper’s calm. Not serene, but… detached. He looks over the list; names and descriptions, male, male, female, male and infant… Nathaniel and Shaun Ward. Female: Claire Ward.

When he turns to look beside him, she isn’t there. Instead, she’s standing in front of one of the machines, one hand on the glass window. He passes by the dead bodies in the other pods as he walks down the remainder of the room. Sealed shut, the bodies aren’t even decomposing. They could be sleeping. Her neighbors.

“The one behind me was mine,” she says without looking away. “A little over two hundred years ago, I stepped into that pod. We didn’t - we didn’t know. They said it was for decontamination. We had just seen the bomb drop. The one that made the Glowing Sea? I’m sure none of us ever could have thought…. ” She takes a deep breath. He feels himself mimic her.

Then it all comes out. From start to finish; from bomb drop to Institute and back. She ends it with, “Deacon, this is my husband.” Whisper’s got good taste, he has to admit. Handsome - not even death could take that from him - and a vain part of him can’t help but notice Nate is also a ginger. “Shaun tried to tell me that they… saved him. I know we say synths are people, but that wasn’t my Nate. He was programmed to… to…

“He wanted to try again at raising a family. But I walked away.”

“That’s why you asked about Barbara.”

She wraps her arms around herself and shivers. “Yeah.” With a look to her husband’s pod, “I don’t know if Nate could look at me the same after all I’ve done. He fought in the Great War, but… I’m not the same woman he came home to afterward.”

He shrugs. “He’d be an idiot not to.”

Whisper stares. “I - thank you.” She coughs. “Can we, um, can we go? This place still makes me uncomfortable.”

Deacon steps in beside her, puts an arm around her shoulders. “I get why the catacombs bothered you so much now. Don’t look at me like that. You were more jumpy down there than you were walking through raider-infested territory.” He stops when they’re halfway back to the entrance. “You, er - didn’t want to bury him just yet?”

She pulls him back along. “When this is over. We’ve already buried one person today, anyway.” At his look, she clarifies, “Mama Murphy.”

“Sorry to hear.” He steps into the elevator, and when she sends them up, he’s hit with a wave of vertigo as the floor disappears below them. She draws his attention with a hand on his cheek.

“How many agents am I facing when we get back up there?”

“It’s just me here, partner.”

Two of her fingers walk their way up his chest. His heart skips a beat. “Really? I didn’t think they’d trust me after…” The fingers fall away.

“Well…” He lets the word trail off, high and pitchy. “You’d still be waiting for me if I hadn’t snuck out when I did.”

She hangs her head. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

The sun breaks over the top of the elevator, spreading over them like the world’s quickest - and most welcome - sunrise. He grabs her hand and swiftly leads them off the elevator before the earth decides it wants to swallow them back up.

“Did you know?”

“I know a lot of things, pal. What do you want to know about what I know?” She huffs, and there’s a grin threatening to break her frown.

“About… any of that. I saw the rail sign up on the hill. Have you just been humoring me this whole time? Letting me think I had this big secret, but everyone was in on it?”

Ah. “Not exactly.” They walk past the gate of the would-be military checkpoint. The skeletons have all gone since he’s last been up here himself. “I had PAM look into past Institute sightings, and this place came up. Figured it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye out, but for the longest time it seemed like a bust.” The bustle of Sanctuary is good to see. Exactly what he’s been begging Desdemona for the Railroad to branch out into. “Once again, you found us before we could officially find you.”

She squeezes his hand.

“Allie!” Lost in her own thoughts, Whisper doesn’t see Duncan until he runs into her and wraps his arms around her thigh.”Dad took me out on patrol with him since we didn’t have school today! We didn’t go too far though, but I saw a molerat and a bloatfly and Dogmeat and I played fetch with a stick.” He takes one long, inhaling breath. “Where did you go? Who’s he?”

Duncan maneuvers around to put her squarely between him and Deacon. She pets his head as he goes shy and cautious around the newcomer. “This is Deacon. He’s a very good friend of mine. He’s a little silly sometimes, but you can trust him. I promise.”

“Mac’s kid, huh?” Deacon says, kneeling. “I can see the resemblance.” Whisper grins, feeling Duncan lose his tight grip on her just a little.

“Why do you wear those?” Duncan asks, pointing at Deacon’s sunglasses. “No one else does.”

Deacon’s voice dips low into a conspiratorial whisper. Duncan leans in close. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says, looking between her and Duncan, “but these hide my reptile eyes.”

Whisper explains what he means when Duncan gives her a confused look. At that, the little boy’s own eyes go wide. “Can I see?”

Deacon stands and props himself up by the elbow now resting on her shoulder. “Sorry, kid. Wouldn’t want to scare her.”

Duncan frowns. “But if Allie’s your friend, she wouldn’t be scared.”

A conceding nod that she feels in her shoulder. “You’re probably right. But I like having her around, so I won’t risk it. Hey, Mac.”

“Deacon.” MacCready looks between them, then down to Duncan now standing comfortably next to Deacon. “Does that mean you’re leaving now?”

Her hand that’s been idly combing through Duncan’s hair stops. “I - ”

“No!” Duncan whines. “I don’t want you to go.” He clings back to her leg. “What if you don’t come back? Like mama?”

Whisper picks him up before he can work himself up into a full blown meltdown. She walks them toward their home instead of continuing to draw attention in the middle of the road as they always seem to do. Duncan murmurs a litany of you can’t go, you can’t go into her ear in between sniffles and mucousy coughs. In return, she whispers anything she needs to, to soothe him. When she sets him down on his own bed, he only holds onto her neck tighter. MacCready sits down next to him, one hand on his back. Deacon, she hears lean against the doorframe.

“Please don’t go,” Duncan says, muffled against her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I have to. But I’ll come back, okay? I’ll come back, just for you.”

He pulls away, eyes big and watery. Snot runs freely down one nostril. “Do you promise?”

She holds one pinky up in front of him. “I promise. Pinky promise.” His little finger wraps around hers. “There, that means it’s real.” He wipes his nose with his sleeve.

“Are you going away tonight?”

She looks to Deacon. Originally, she wanted to, but now - Deacon yawns, long and loud, and stretches his hands up to the top of the doorframe. “Boy, am I tired. I don’t think I could head out tonight if I tried.”

She mouths thank you over Duncan’s head. “How about we all have dinner together tonight, then Deacon and I will head out in the morning.”

“Okay!”

“That means we need to get you all washed up, kid.” MacCready gathers his son in his arms, and he goes easily. “Sorry about that. He’s - kind of attached to you.”

Whisper smiles. “Well so am I.”

“Thank you again,” Whisper says once they’re back in her bedroom. Outside the closed door, Codsworth prepares dinner with a clatter of pots and pans. “How long do you think we have until Des sends a search party looking for you?”

Deacon sits cross legged on the bed. “We can spare the night, anyway. Any longer and I’d have to send a note with one of your caravans.”

“Well, good. I’d hate to leave Duncan like that. He’s a good kid.”

“And he adores you enough to rub snot all over your dress.” He gestures her closer, and puts his fingers to work undoing the buttons down the front. Slowly, he unhooks the fabric around each one, the knuckle of his forefinger leaving a trail across her bare skin.

Stepping closer between his newly splayed thighs, she says, “Speaking of, thank you for earlier, also.” She hadn’t expected to fall apart so suddenly. With all the relief at seeing him again, knowing it was really him, there was no more room for the tension welled up inside her, and it had only one place to go. “I won’t make it a habit.”

“Mi shoulder es su shoulder, sugar.” He shrugs her out of the blouse. The skirt hangs on by the belt, but he doesn’t make a move to uncinch it. Instead, he runs his hands across her stomach, up to the hem of her bra, her muscles fluttering at the touch - and then he flinches back.

She looks down at him and his hands frozen an inch away from her skin. “Deacon?” No answer. With a finger under his chin, she forces him to look at her. “What’s wrong?” Her other hand removes his sunglasses and places them on the bed. There are no reptilian eyes staring back at her, instead all she sees is blue eyes filled with -

The door to the bedroom swings open without so much as a knock. “Hey, Codsworth says dinner’s almost - Jesus - “ Whisper takes a half step away and covers herself with her arms. MacCready quickly slips back into the hall. When she looks back at Deacon, he’s already standing with his sunglasses back on. “Look, Duncan’s waiting at the table. If you two are done - ?”

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” Is all Deacon says with notable false cheer before leaving without so much as a glance in her direction.

Whisper covers her mouth, either to hold back a sob or to stop herself from being sick, she isn’t sure yet.

“Hey,” MacCready says, stepping slightly more into the room but eyes firmly on the floor. “Everything okay?”

Whisper buttons up the dress, snot be damned. “Yeah, Mac.” She sounds normal to her ears, at least. “Everything’s fine.”

Except it isn’t. She’s seen Deacon afraid before, but never of her.

Duncan keeps dinner from being awkward. He insisted on sitting next to her, which leaves MacCready on the other side of the table and Deacon at the head beside Duncan. Conversation flows as Duncan wills it, their little conductor oblivious to how the adults do their best to avoid looking each other in the eye.

“It’s okay if you go now,” he says with the most glowing approval. “Because daddy’s going, and he can keep you safe from bad guys, like you said.”

“What?” MacCready asks when her look is questioning. “Were you just going to leave me behind?”

Yes, she thinks. Because you have this little boy to live for. “No, of course not. The more the merrier.”

He leans back. The chair bears his weight with only a small protesting squeak. “Good. I still owe ya for… you know.”

Duncan shines under the spotlight MacCready casts on him. “I’m gonna be as strong as dad one day. Then I can protect you, too.”

Whisper steeples her hands over the table, then rests her chin on them. “Is that so? You know you have to eat your greens first.” A pile of green stalks, like too tall broccoli, lays untouched on his plate. Duncan glares at it as if she just asked him to eat bloatfly.

“They’re gross, though. I don’t want to eat them.”

“Eat up, kid. You’re gonna hurt Codsworth’s feelings if you don’t.” The Mr. Handy is in sleep mode in the laundry closet, unable to dispute the claim. Duncan still pushes his plate away.

“You’re such a dad about it, Mac.” Deacon pipes up. “Watch this. Hey, little Mac.” Duncan’s favorite new nickname gets his full attention. Deacon leans over the table, and his own plate with a slightly smaller pile of vegetables, and grins. “I bet you can’t eat all yours before I eat mine.”

Turned to Deacon as he is, Whisper can’t see the kid’s reaction, but she can see his back straighten at the challenge. “Nu-uh.”

Deacon goads him further, “I bet you don’t even eat one before I finish eating.” Duncan jerks his plate back and holds his fork in a fisted death grip. He goes to stab one of the stalks, Deacon grabs his arm. “Whoa there. Rules first, right?” The little boy nods eagerly. “You have to chew and swallow each one before you eat the next. And show your dad, too, so I know you’re not cheating.”

“Okay. Allie has to make sure you’re not cheating too.”

“I’ll make sure he isn’t being sneaky. Don’t worry.” Deacon grins.

“Count us in, partner.”

She does, and at Go! Duncan tears into his vegetables with the gusto of a starving animal. He chews quickly, swallows, then makes a loud ah! sound every time he shows his dad his empty mouth. He barely looks at Deacon, eating as slowly as if his greens were the mirelurk they ate at Coastal Cottage, but when he does Deacon makes a show of chewing quickly and struggling to keep up. And Whisper can’t keep her eyes off him. Not because of the contest, even though she has to give him a Vault-boy worthy thumbs up whenever Duncan is looking, but because she’s missed this. Missed him. And in this moment she gets a glimpse of… something too intangible to put a name to, just yet.

She finds she wants to, though.

“I win!” Duncan startles her with his shout. “Look, you didn’t even finish,” he gloats.

“Nope, kid, you got me.” Deacon sighs theatrically, one hand on his stomach. “I concede my defeat. You are the better green eater.”

“What do I get?”

“Duncan,” MacCready chides, but Deacon hushes him.

“Come on, dad, it’s only fair. He won. Say, ever heard of Grognak?”

That opener gets the two of them started on a whole conversation about comics, with Duncan hanging on Deacon’s every word. Whisper and MacCready clear the table of plates and empty nuka cola bottles (the bottle caps go into MacCready’s pocket), with Whisper pausing only to take a chance to press a kiss to Deacon’s temple. Her own victory is to feel him lean into it.

At the sink, Whisper washes and MacCready dries. Whisper tunes her pip-boy to DCR. “You’re sure you want to come along? I - “ quieter now, though Duncan isn’t paying attention, “... I plan on going after the Institute. It’s going to be dangerous.”

MacCready shrugs. “You’re my boss. My… general. Is that what I’m supposed to call you? Whatever.”

“But Duncan - ”

“Isn’t safe with the Institute still around. I’m doing this for him, too. C'mon, let me do this.”

“I can see where he gets that sweet pleading look from.” She looks up at him, tall and lanky, as if a stiff breeze could knock him over. “One condition.” She raises one soapy finger. “You cut your hair. It’s getting way past regulation.”

He laughs. “Yes, ma’am.”

The departure of MacCready and his son finds Whisper leaning against the back of her couch and Deacon staring at the door as if he’s debating whether or not he wants to leave as well.

Whisper doesn’t let him. “Deacon, talk to me.”

She watches as his demeanor changes; his shoulders shift down in resignation, then up in acceptance. “What do you want to talk about?”

Her and Nate had a rule: never let the sun go down on bad feelings. “Are we good? I’m sorry I kept everything from you - from everyone, really - but I guess I thought...” She wilts like what remains of her centuries old garden.

Deacon puts a friendly hand on her shoulder. “You and me, we’re always good. If you had told me that story when we first met, I’d have laughed in your face. Probably.”

He holds himself stiffly. Keeps a healthy distance between them. “Then why did you flinch when you touched me?”

“Random muscle spasms. When you get older you’ll get them too - ”

“Deacon.” Her tone is desperate.

He runs a hand over his head and walks a contemplative little circle in front of her. “Fuck. Well, I’m dead anyway if I’m wrong.” She stops him before he can make himself dizzy. “Your… your scars are gone.”

Whisper blinks. She had put her hands on Nate and she knew. “Oh. Oh. No, they - the Institute had to stitch me back up after - ” After Glory downed her. Her blood spilling out onto the ground, her strength getting weaker, staining Deacon’s shirt red. “I’m not a synth, Deacon. I’m still - me.”

His mouth is a thin frown. “Whisper, I don’t think you realize how bad you got hurt in Bunker Hill.”

Anger rises to the surface. “So tell me. Because I sure as hell felt how bad I got hurt.”

Deacon looks at his hands as if she should see something in them. “I held your-your guts in my hands, Whisper. What I wasn’t trying to hold in was… ” He takes a shuddered breath. “... was on the ground. Or quickly on its way.”

“I was in an autodoc for three days,” she says, shrilly. Once again, Deacon flinches. “I wasn’t replaced. I can’t be - it wouldn’t make sense - ”

Once again his hands are on her shoulders, gentler now, soothing. “It’s okay. It’s okay, we’ll deal with this.”

She shrugs him off. “Listen to me. Shaun hates synths. He doesn’t even see them as human, so he wouldn’t make me one. Not when he wants me to lead the Institute. His legacy.”

“He remade your husband,” he helpfully supplies.

“For me. So I would stay.” A knot forms in her throat, the truth difficult to swallow. “Besides, if I was a synth, they would have just programmed me to love him, instead.” She’s going to cry again, she can feel it. The dam’s already broken, and now it’s all free to rush out. Her legs give out like a tree uprooted in the deluge, and she slides to the floor with a sob. “It would have been easier,” she hiccups.

She hears Deacon join her on the ground before he pulls her to him again. “I thought you were a synth the moment I saw you again,” he confesses into her hair. “I didn’t think there was any way you could have survived. I even thought about going under the knife again. Getting a new face, so I didn’t have to stare at the one that watched you die.

“Whisper, I flinched because I thought you had been replaced, and, for that moment, I didn't care.”

Didn’t care? If she was replaced, the Institute could ruin the Railroad, the Minutemen, the fragile peace they’ve cultivated across the Commonwealth. “Deacon…? What are you saying?”

He leans back, but still huddled close like they’re sharing a secret. His nose nudges the hollow of her cheekbone, and every breath breezes across the curve of her neck. “One last test.” For this, he removes his sunglasses, and the apprehension glittering in his eyes can be felt in the shaky grip he has at the nape of her neck. “Whisper, what’s my name?”

A shiver runs down her spine at the roughness of his voice. “You told me to forget in the morning,” she answers, even though she never did.

The hand at her neck reaches up to tangle in her hair, and then Deacon kisses her first.

She had asked him once why he never did before, when insecurity made her feel as if she was forcing intimacy on him despite his enthusiastic response. Plausible deniability, he told her. Lies are always more believable with a little bit of truth dashed in, and if Des pressed him about starting something with her, well, it would be the truth if he said no.

There is nothing plausibly deniable about his tongue caressing the soft palate of her mouth, or her keening whine in response. She climbs into his lap, throwing a leg over his to straddle his hips. She pulls away to breathe, and he takes the opportunity to kiss a trail from the hollow of her throat up to her jaw.

Whisper moans his name - his real name - and is rewarded with his hand hiking up her skirt to her hip. He kneads the skin there, thumb dipping under the band of her underwear. She thinks of his poor knees when he shifts. “Deacon,” she struggles out, mind a fog, and nothing registers but his hands and his mouth. “Take me to bed.”

His hand on her hip yanks her hard against him, and she feels just how excited he is at that suggestion. “Your wish is my command, sugar.”

Legs hooked behind his back, she anchors herself to him as he carries them - almost back to her bedroom. Her back hits the wall outside the door. With one hand, he locks her wrists above her head. When he kisses her again, his hips mimic the thrust of his tongue. The other hand works the buttons of her dress. The cool air is a relief against the flush spread across her body, the burning heat spreading through her veins, flame set alight every time he touches her. She rocks her hips forward. WIth a soft hiss, he releases her wrists and finally carries her to her bed.

Even when he deposits her on the mattress, they aren’t apart for long. As if even letting her go for a second pains him. If he isn’t touching her, she’ll disappear for good. She sits up to pull her dress over her head. He helps her, fingers skimming every inch of skin he exposes.

He dips his head to her breasts and licks the valley between them. Whisper arches against him, grinding down against his still too-clothed lap. God help her when he unhooks her bra and draws a nipple lightly between his teeth. She goes when he eases her back down to the mattress. He hovers over her, eyes roving, and even in the dark she can see his pupils are blown wide.

Whisper runs her hands up under his shirt to help him out of it. With a hiss of fabric, it joins her dress and bra somewhere on the floor. Her hands go to the button of his jeans before stopping, finding the the rough scars across his torso. The one just below his ribs from the mirelurk queen, the peppering of scars from gunshot and knife wounds, and a new one high up on his collarbone. He watches her as she maps them out, his chest steadily rising and falling as he catches his breath.

“Everything accounted for?” He huffs.

She hums low. She presses a kiss to the scar on his collarbone. “What happened here?”

“Bunker Hill. Ran into a Courser but your, uh, Brotherhood friend helped me out.”

Whisper shows him just how glad she is that he survived.

Their next steps are slower, more deliberate. No longer frantic, but tempered. Want still simmering beneath the surface, but no longer threatening to burn out all sense. Deacon begins again, mouth moving determinedly south. One finger hooks through the band of her underwear, and she arches again to slip them off. Still he takes his time, pressing kiss after kiss to the inside of her thighs. And just when she hopes he’ll grant her some relief, he glances at her over the planes of her stomach and grins. He rests one of her legs on his shoulder, presses another kiss to her thigh. Then one hard swipe of his tongue has her loudly moaning his name.

He’s always been good with his tongue, but now it’ll be the death of her. Sometimes, she swears she recognizes a snippet of shorthand that he writes into her until another swipe erases any semblance of thought like an eraser to a chalkboard. Once he introduces his fingers, it isn’t long until he has her seeing stars.

When she comes back down, he’s pillowed his cheek against her thigh, watching her and looking incredibly pleased with himself. “Knew I missed you for a reason,” she sighs with a grin. “Come here.”

He does, and it’s her turn to taste herself on his tongue. His jeans and briefs join the growing pile of clothes on the floor, and then she finally gets to learn the feel of him entirely against her. No longer hindered by just-get-naked-enough, Deacon fits a knee underneath hers and hikes her leg at an angle. Open beneath him, she urges him forward, and he finally thrusts home.

They moan together. Whisper’s head falls back further into the pillow, and Deacon pulls out and buries himself again. His breath is hot and heavy against her shoulder, the only sound other than flesh against flesh and encouragement moaned in the dark.

Pleasure builds quickly, welling in her core and tightening every nerve. Deacon’s hips stutter, pace uneven, fingers caressing where they’re joined in an effort to send them over together. He whines Alice in her ear and she builds her home in it. The tension snaps, and she’s falling hard, taking him with her, and together they’re tumbling limp limbed on the mattress.

The afterglow finds Whisper’s head on Deacon’s chest, listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. It’s almost enough to lull her to sleep, mental and physical exhaustion doing its best to pull her under.

“Go to bed,” Deacon rumbles. Hypocrite, she thinks. Under the blanket, his fingers keep a lazy circle on her hip. Every fifth circle he dips down into the vee of her hips, then returns. “We have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Not that early.” He’s already half hard in her hand. “We have to say good-bye to everyone.”

“Not that early,” he agrees.

She rides him until names given and made blur together in unbroken breaths of oh, god, and please, and fuck, and they come apart again when words have no meaning and the feel of them is enough.

#series: we will all go together when we go #siri drabbles #otp: i'm in your corner

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vaultscavver · 1 year ago

Text

wasteland, baby!

falloutober days four and five: DADDY-O & THIS THING CALLED DEFEAT ( 3.8k / eventual sole x hancock x maccready )

a/n: i'm so so late but i'm catching up! here's a well due day four, with an included day five :) this chapter is dialogue-heavy but i tried to smoothen the pace a bit just to make it easier to read, but there still might be a few mispellings and weird spacings because i was rushing to post. enjoy! xx, scavver

synopsis — a few weeks into traveling together, nora discovers that this arrangement means more than just caps to her new bodyguard-turned-friend and doesn't quite know what to make of his unveiled story.

─ ─── ──── ─── ♠ ─── ──── ─── ─

"More caps, huh, hotshot?"

MacCready rolled his eyes at her over the corpse he was looting. "Is there a reason you're bringing this up again?"

Huffing a laugh, Nora didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. She just rocked her head back, resting it against the metal beam behind her, looking out at the view of the wasteland. Miles and miles of dead grass and dry trees, lit with the dim orange glow of the wasteland's sunset sky, the sun so large and bright against the horizon that it washed the world in a warm glow that shone through the heavy clouds and the layer of fog that sat upon the world like a blanket.

Atop Mass Pike Interchange, the overpass crumbling around them, they could even see the distant lights of Diamond City, the ballpark so alit that it looked like boasting. They had more electricity than they knew what to do with, and yet the majority of what was left of Boston was left starving and freezing as winter rolled in.

Around Nora and MacCready, the corpses of a dozen Gunners were sprawled around the overpass, still-warm blood pooling out onto what used to be a busy bridge.

"I thought it would be a harder fight." Nora admitted, adjusting her gasmask. "Especially with that robot."

"The assaultron? Yeah, it was probably the most dangerous thing here." MacCready stood and dusted off his beige duster, counting the bottlecaps as he dropped them into his old military backpack.

"Winlock and Barnes, though… they couldn't kill a squirrel with a rocket launcher."

Nora snorted as Mac fell next to her, the two of them perched on a broken slab of concrete. They'd been travelling together for weeks, and she'd more than paid off his two-hundred cap fee, but he was still scrounging for every cap they could get their hands on.

And Kellogg was still out there.

The thought was a constant weight on Nora's mind; she'd found him easily enough, with the help of Valentine and the inside knowledge from Hancock, who seemed to know everything about everyone in the Commonwealth. They'd tracked him down to an old military bunker, but they had been unable to win the fight against his army of synths. Evacuating the building was one of the hardest pills for Nora to swallow. Admitting that she wasn't capable of finding and saving her son was too much to bear, so much that she couldn't even face Valentine or Hancock again.

They'd understood when she told them to go back to their homes, but they hadn't wanted her to travel alone, so they had instructed her to track down RJ MacCready, a relatively loyal hired gun, which seemed to be rare in the Commonwealth. Hancock himself had said that Mac had good aim, a good heart, and wouldn't choose a higher bidder over Nora… probably. So long as she told him about her son.

Apparently, he had a soft spot for kids that ran deeper than his greed.

"Impressed yet?" The merc in question knocked his shoulder against hers, pulling her out of her worrying. MacCready always seemed to know when Nora was overthinking. "I told you I was a damn good shot."

Nora rested her weight against him, head lulling back against his shoulder, her tired eyes drifting closed. She'd learned early on that he was just as touch starved as she was, and as their friendship grew, she found it easier and easier to be comfortable leaned or pressed against him, knowing that if he had a problem with it, he would always tell her. "I dunno. Haven't really noticed."

"Oh, come on! You've got to know talent when you see it!"

"Mhm. Guess so."

"There it is. Wasn't too hard to admit, was it?"

Laughing, Nora picked herself up and turned towards him, his crooked smile a familiar sight through the circles of her mask.

"Actually, I am impressed."

His smile faltered. He turned to his gangly fingers, suddenly flustered, and started fiddling with a cap, voice weak. "Yeah. I thought you might be. I'm… I'm completely self-taught, you know. Picked up a sniper rifle when I was ten and never looked back. Always thought it was smarter to hit my targets long-range. I mean, why take chances, right? Besides, I had to come up with every trick in the book to survive the Capital Wasteland."

Sensing his mood shift, Nora matched his posture, her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward, head ducked close to his. She tried to joke around again, to take them back to the lightheartedness they had before. "I'm sure your parents were thrilled with that hobby."

"Never knew my parents."

"…Oh."

"I was born in the wastes. It…" He turned to her, searching her mask for an expression he'd never see. "It wasn't so bad. I wasn't alone. I grew up in an underground place called Little Lamplight with a bunch of other kids. Left there when I was around sixteen. We had a policy… no adults. When you were sixteen, you packed up and left. It sounds crazy, but having adults around was something those kids couldn't trust."

Nora's heart constricted in her chest, squeezing with worry for tiny children with weapons, forced to survive and live in a big, scary apocalypse. "How could kids survive without help?"

"Everyone pulled their own weight, just like any colony. We had jobs and we watched each other's backs. Can you believe I was actually their mayor for a while? Me?" He scoffed out a laugh, a nostalgic smile pulling at his mouth. "Sounds crazy, I know. But everything is. Nothing makes sense anymore. We just… roll with the punches. Always have, always will."

"Pretty brave, a bunch of kids living alone like that."

"I dunno." MacCready squinted into the distance, the sunset lighting his sea storm eyes into melted honey, casting a warm glow over him. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, like he had to force the words out. "I think we were just lucky."

Silent, Nora stayed as still as possible. She often felt like her and MacCready understood each other on a level that shouldn't have been possible. He was a hired gun from some underground club, and she was a pre-war lawyer thrust out of time on a manhunt for her son's kidnapper. But there were too many layers to both of them, too many similarities next to wide, abstract differences.

Clearing his throat, MacCready looked down, tugging his hat lower, casting a long shadow over his face. "Anyway, when I hit sixteen I ended up wandering the capital for a while, taking odd jobs here and there. But things were pretty hot with the Brotherhood of Steel running the show, so I hitched a ride with a caravan and made my way north until I ended up here and heard the Gunners needed some sharpshooters. Biggest mistake of my life. They were animals, killing anything that got in their way. I… Well, I went with it for a while because the caps were good, but, I dunno, I guess it all started to catch up with me. So I quit. Which… pretty much brings us to now. And that's… my whole life in a nutshell, I guess."

Not knowing what to say, Nora looped her arm around his, intertwining their fingers. It wasn't a foreign movement; she often held his hand, especially when she got too freaked out around ferals, or when she couldn't sleep and needed reassurance that she wasn't alone.

He turned their hands, running his thumb across her pale knuckles, red and raw even from the gloves she'd been wearing, now strewn on the rubble-covered ground in front of her, covered in the blood of a dead Gunner. After a long moment, he turned back to her mask, his voice quiet. "I don't… I haven't been able to rely on anyone since I was a kid. Everyone has either ripped me off or tried to plant a knife in my back. But you…"

"Me?" Her voice was too-quiet, rough as the word choked out.

"You're different. We see eye-to-eye on almost everything." A slow smile grew on his lips, the light returning to his eyes. "I have a funny feeling you actually care about what happens to me."

"Don't get cocky, 'Cread." She smiled too, even though he couldn't see it. "But... even though you're an ass, the road can be a lonely place. I'm glad to have met someone to share it with. Being alone scares the shit out of me."

"I know." He squeezed her hand, "I'm beginning to realize how much I missed having someone around that I can depend on. I… I couldn't have done this without you."

They both turned to look at the carnage before them. Nora rested her head back on MacCready's shoulder. "Do you think they'll retaliate?"

"No. There's nothing to worry about. For the Gunners, it's always about the bottom line. They just lost an entire waystation and that's costing them big. Besides, they have no way of knowing I was involved. Everyone who knew my name is dead."

They both went quiet again.

Nora couldn't articulate just how much his word struck her like a stake to the heart, ripping her apart from the inside out. Everyone who knew my name is dead. Did her son ever know her name? Was he even alive, out there in the wastes?

"Anyway," MacCready said quickly, pulling his hand from hers. "I owe you a favor. You're the one who hired me, but I dragged you all the way out here."

"You don't have to. It's okay."

"Nah, I don't like these things hanging over my head. Tell you what, I'm giving you back the caps you promised me in Goodneighbor." He dug around in his pack while Nora sat, speechless. Pulling out an old lunchbox that rattled as he sat it on her lap. "I'll still stick with you, but now we're even."

Shaking her head, she pushed the box back to his hands, "You don't— you don't owe me anything—"

"I'd like to keep everything nice and even."

Forcibly putting the box back into his military bag, Nora just kept shaking her head. "You don't owe me anything. How about you just buy me a drink, Hotshot? It's not like I was about to let you have all this fun alone anyway."

He laughed, giving in and letting her situate the caps back into his bag. "Glad you enjoyed yourself. Lead on, Boss."

~~~

MacCready always knew where to get the best drinks. It was probably Nora's favorite thing about traveling with him.

The Dugout Inn, a little bar and hotel in Diamond City, was run by the Bobrov Brothers, Vadim and Yefim. Vadim, who ran the bar, snuck MacCready two bottles of his specially distilled "Bobrov's Best", which was the strongest moonshine Nora had ever tasted.

The building was in the city's southern dugout, a single-floor structure with a lobby bar and several rooms. A wanted was posted on the wall by the entrance corridor leading to the lobby, where Vadim's bar was located, it up with a single lightbulb. To the left was another hallway leading to the bedrooms that Yefim ran, and to the left was a small area with closely packed tables and a loud radio playing some sad repeats of old songs. A few city residents loitered, drinking and talking softly, each looking exhausted and scared to make too much noise.

Beyond the tables, farther to the right, was the illuminated kitchen where fluorescent lighting pooled out, reflecting off the cracked tile flooring and catching on every metallic surface in the lobby. But, tucked away in a dark corner was a faded corduroy sofa, the faded brown and red fibers patched and stitched up in multiple places. It was away from everything else but not isolated, just a private little couch where two friends could share moonshine and softly spoken words.

"Swindled your way into another one?" Nora asked with a quiet laugh as MacCready came stumbling back over to that brown and red couch where they had been loitering for the past hour.

His shins bumped into the coffee table, and he cursed reflexively and nearly dropped the two blue bottles he held. Shushing himself, he fell onto the musty sofa next to Nora, nearly sitting on top of her, sending them both into another fit of giggles.

Watching MacCready struggle to uncap his third bottle of Bobrov's Best, Nora fought back more laughter.

She had removed her coat and gloves, leaving her in just her mask and blue jumpsuit, her Pip-Boy heavy on her left wrist, the green glow dimmed in the low light. She'd been drinking through an oddly bent metal straw just so that she could keep her gasmask on, but the straw just made the unholy flavor of Bobrov's Best somehow worse, the moonshine burning down her throat and settling uneasily in her stomach.

"Freakin' finally." MacCready grumbled as he finally got the cap off, taking a heavy gulp as Nora was sent into another fit of giggles.

"Cursing doesn't offend me, yanno." She teased, rolling the lukewarm glass bottle between her bare hands.

MacCready's smile fell, eyes becoming distant as his entire being seemed to darken, to sober up in seconds. "Didn't think it did."

"Hm… then you ought to let it go once in a while. It's good for the soul."

He snorted, half-turning to her and searching the lenses of her mask. He slung his legs over her knees, leaning against the sofa's back with a false look of comfort. "Believe me, I know."

Nora tried not to get too jittery at the heaviness of his legs over hers. "Then why…?"

"I figured you'd ask sooner or later." With a huff, MacCready leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, knocking his hat askew. The two bullets tucked into the rim gleamed in the dim light. "I… It's not about you, I just…"

He fell silent, hand covering his eyes as he mulled over his words. Slowly, he straightened on the couch, pulling his leg from hers and putting distance between them. One of his hands formed a fist and rested against his collarbone. Like the alcohol had risen from his stomach and was filling his chest, drowning his heart. Like he couldn't fake the comfort anymore. Like he was too drunk to pretend that he wasn't in pain.

Nora didn't press for answers. She took a glance around, taking in the peeling paint on the walls and the few patrons that lounged around, each looking more miserable than the last. The radio was buzzing lightly, filling the room with the sound of a young man sounding way too awkward for his occupation as a radio host.

"It's about a promise I made." MacCready finally managed to say, lifting his moonshine to his lips again. "When I left the Capital Wasteland, I didn't just leave Little Lamplight behind… I left my family. My actual family. A wife, a son. Duncan's the one I made the promise to. I told him I'd clean up my act and be a better person." Laughing hollowly at himself, MacCready heavily sat the bottle down on the coffee table in front of them. "I guess that sounds pretty stupid coming from a guy who shoots for a living."

A cold feeling rose through Nora, the hairs on her arms standing up. Bile overtook the flavor of moonshine in her throat. The blue bottle felt too heavy in her hands, and as she set it on the table next to MacCready's, her hands shook.

He had a family. A family waiting for him at home while he spent weeks at Nora's side, helping her hunt down her own son while abandoning his own. He had a wife, but he'd slept next to Nora for weeks, sometimes so close that they'd wake up curled around each other — and she didn't know much about apocalyptic society and their rules, but Nora was pretty sure that they had crossed more than a few lines in their weeks together.

His son… holy shit, he'd left his kid behind. Nora was tearing apart the entire fucking world looking for her son, but MacCready had just left his own. Was it for greed? For the caps? Did the Gunners really pay that well?

The irony pulled a startling laugh from Nora's chest, the moonshine making her unable to bite it down.

MacCready tensed, just as drunk as she was but handling it easier. "You think this is funny?"

"Yeah, I do." Nora's modulated voice was deeper through her mask, and as she laughed through her icy rage, she sounded utterly mechanical. "You left your kid at the capital, hundreds of miles away? You just left him?"

"I didn't have much of a choice!" MacCready threw his hands up as he spoke, face flooding red. "Duncan is sick! I don't know what's wrong with him, nobody does!"

"So your solution was just to run away? To leave?" Nora's voice was rising, and her entire posture stiff and tense, a million uncertainties running through her. She thought she knew MacCready. She thought she had a solid grip on his character — but now her memories of Nate were clouding her judgement; every anger she'd held onto regarding her dead husband leaving her alone with a newborn was resurfacing. How dare he leave her? How dare MacCready leave his own family? What if MacCready died out here, like Nate had died? What if MacCready's family never got to see him again, just like how Nora had never seen Nate again?

MacCready's hat was off. He ran both hands through his hair in a lame attempt of self-soothing.

Nora fought to keep her voice down, body heat rising as she drowned in too many emotions to handle, especially after two bottles of specially distilled moonshine. Her voice was a gravelly whisper when she finally managed to speak, "You left your family behind to come fuck around with raiders in Boston?"

A sudden sob tore out of MacCready.

Nora froze, her anger freezing with her.

Wiping at his eyes in frustration, MacCready was trembling. She'd never seen him cry before.

Yell, yes, and get annoyed and frustrated with her at what felt like every turn and every mistake until they both got more comfortable around each other. He'd once gone a whole two days without saying a single word to her. He'd once threatened to leave her in a hoard of ferals because she'd dropped her gun. He'd been cruel, frustrating, rude, greedy, and as they warmed up to each other in the last few weeks, he'd shown her a softer side, a funnier side, a happier side of himself that he kept hidden under layers of green turtlenecks and sniper rifles. But she'd never seen him cry.

His voice was uneven when he finally managed to speak. "I don't… I don't know how much longer he has. Every doctor I've talked to has been useless. Nobody's even heard of his disease, I've… I've done everything I can think of, hired a hundred doctors that ask for too many fuckin' caps just to tell me that they don't know how to help. And Duncan… One day he's playing out in the fields behind our farm, and the next he took a fever and this blue rash showed up all over his body. Last I saw, he was too weak to walk. I couldn't ask him to come with me. I wouldn't dare travel with him and risk worsening whatever the hell's going on."

"I…" Chest aching, Nora tried to piece together what he was telling her, quickly realizing that her perception and understanding didn't matter. He was hurting, his son was hurting, possibly even dying. Nora's judgement meant nothing compared to those stakes. She might not ever find her own son, but if she could help MacCready save Duncan… "I'm so sorry, 'Cready. What can we do?"

He looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, his baby blues so wide and hopeful that it chiseled at some icy part of the iceberg in Nora's chest. "You're serious?"

"Yes. Whatever you need, I'm there."

"I need someone like you." He blurted, still drunk as he clumsily grabbed her hands and squeezed with both of his. "You've already done so much for me, I… I feel horrible asking for more, but if you're willing to risk it, I'd be… I'd be really grateful."

Maybe she'd never get her baby back. But MacCready could get his. All of their abstract similarities started making sense, like a puzzle piece coming together. "How risky?"

"It's no walk in the park," He breathed, "If it was easy, I would've done it already."

"Count me in, partner."

He grinned, wide and slow, turning to his military bag and pulling out a bundle of papers. "A few months before we met, I bumped into a guy called Sinclair who claimed his buddy caught some kind of disease. I thought he was wasting my time until he said his partner broke out into blue boils. They dug up information about a cure at a place called Med-Tek Research. They even managed to grab the building's lockdown security codes, but Sinclair's buddy died before they were able to break into the facility. I mean, there's no way that's a coincidence, right? Med-Tek has to be the place!"

"I hope so." Nora squeezed his wrist as he gave her a pile of papers held together with a rubber band. "If there's a cure, we'll find it." His shoulders relaxed, and he rushed to wipe at his eyes again. Nora pretended she didn't see him cry. "Thanks, partner. For Duncan's sake, I hope so too."

Knowing how it felt to abandon her hunt for Kellogg after being attacked by a swarm of synths, Nora bit the inside of her cheek, hoping that MacCready never has to feel like that. "Just… Let's not get our hopes up too much, okay? This could be a dead end."

"I've been disappointed so many times in the past, nothing gets my hopes up anymore." He retrieved his bottle and took a long drink. "What you're doing, Noor… No one's ever cared that much for me in years. At least, not without expecting something in return."

What about your wife? Nora wanted to ask, but kept her mouth shut.

"Even if it takes the rest of my life, I'll repay this debt to you. I swear it."

Not looking at him, Nora unbound the papers and glanced through them at the clumsy handwriting she knew to be MacCready's, at all the notes he'd taken on Med-Tek and of Duncan's illness, of any hint of a cure and of the letters Sinclair wrote to him.

Some of the pages were scrawled with what looked like crayon drawings done by a child, of a tall man in green next to a small boy in yellow.

And, again, Nora squeezed MacCready's wrist, saying the same words she felt like she'd be saying for years to come. "You don't owe me anything, MacCready."

#falloutober2023 #fo4 #fallout 4 #sole survivor #rj maccready #fo4 maccready #scavver writes #wasteland baby!#duncan maccready

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