Pledge of Allegiance - Bagheera (2024)

Chapter 1: Debt

Chapter Text

“Say your last prayer, asshole,” the guard dragging Nate along hisses to him just before they enter the mayor’s upstairs den. Behind them are the other two who are helping Fahrenheit, and Hanco*ck, who’s sitting on one of the couches, looks at everybody before he picks up the shotgun on the table and walks over to Fahrenheit.

“Who started it?” he asks. His voice is surprisingly calm.

Fahrenheit, who is covered in her own blood from the hip down, is pale as ash and shivering - she’s in shock, despite the stimpak Nate put into her before the guards captured him. The shot went through her leg, and he saw the bone splinters. A stimpak can knit flesh, but it won’t heal the fractured femur. She might survive, but Nate isn’t sure anyone in this modern world possesses the kind of medical knowledge and technology needed to fix her leg. Anyone except the Institute, that is.

To Nate’s surprise, she doesn’t point straight at him. Instead, she grits her teeth and says, “Bobbi No-Nose. Dug into our storeroom. This idiot cleared the tunnels for her. He got me before I could put them down.” Every word out of her mouth sounds strained and angry. Nate can’t believe she’s still conscious after walking all this way. “Bobbi got away.”

Hanco*ck offers the gun to her. “You do the honors, then, sister.”

She huffs a shallow breath, shaking her mohawked head. “I’m going to Amari to get my leg sorted out. He’s all yours, boss.”

Hanco*ck watches her go, helped by the two guards, before turning to Nate. His face is hard to read - a mask of ghoul scars and glittering dark eyes. The remaining guard takes this as his cue to twist Nate’s arm painfully behind his back to force him down onto his knees. He offers no resistance, allowing himself to hit the floor hard. He imagines his blood spattering the dusty wood, dark stains that will stay there until other dirt covers them, and the idea fills him with nothing but exhaustion. It doesn’t matter that he won’t be getting back to Sanctuary. Preston probably never expected him to return with the supplies he promised. This mission was a Hail Mary at best, an excuse for him to run away at worst.

“So you helped Bobbi No-Nose break into my store room,” Hanco*ck says.

“I didn’t know it was yours,” Nate tells him, but the excuse seems cheap. It doesn’t make him innocent of the crime, just stupid enough to be a patsy. “It was nothing personal. She promised a lot of caps.”

“And she took a lot,” the guard says. “The No-Nose nicked everything she could carry while this one distracted us.”

Hanco*ck is silent for a long moment, and his silence is more threatening than anything he might say. Then he turns away, walks back to the table, puts down the gun, and picks up a tin that rattles when he shakes it. It sounds like pills, but he doesn’t open it as he comes back, just twirls it between his fingers.

“If it was just the money, I’d rough you up, break a few bones, and we’d be quits,” he says in his raspy ghoul drawl. “But you had to go and shoot people.”

Nate agrees with him, and that’s why he doesn’t see the point of this. Why is the mayor still talking? Why hasn’t he already blown out Nate’s brain? Hanco*ck, however, seems to wait for him to say something. He toys with the pill box, impatiently. “Give me a reason not to kill you.”

Nate spent almost a month sitting in Sanctuary staring at his 10 mm and wondering the same thing. But then one morning all the trees and grass were covered in frost, and Preston came in to talk to him about winter. He never openly said that it was Nate’s fault they weren’t prepared, but the matter was clear enough, in hindsight. He drained their resources, occupied their time with his futile search for Shaun. Built a giant teleporter, just to find that he had lost his son years and years ago, while he was still on ice. He came back from the Insitute empty-handed and without an explanation, unable to talk about that evil old man in the labcoat, and still Preston did not blame him. Just told him, quietly and seriously, that everyone in their settlement would starve and freeze and be slaughtered by hungry raiders if they didn’t find some way to quickly store up on food, meds, winter clothing and ammunition.

That is the reason Nate got up again. It’s much too long a story to explain to Hanco*ck now, but it still holds true.

He finds himself saying, “I’ll do what it takes,” in a voice much more decisive than he expected.

“Really.” Hanco*ck draws out the word thoughtfully as he takes a step closer.

It’s true. He’d steal, he’d probably even track down Bobbi and kill her, in case Hanco*ck wants justice served that way. Or he’d beg and grovel, if that’s what Hanco*ck has in mind. But the expression on Hanco*ck’s face isn’t one of cruelty or revenge. He looks speculative, and as he watches the ghoul’s gaze travel down his body, Nate’s mind plunges into wild imagination, supplying a flood of half-formed ideas. It’s not panic, but something else, that constricts his chest and makes it hard to breathe.

There are wires crossed in his brain. Nate has known this for a long time, since he was a kid. He was always too busy trying to ignore these f*cked up parts of his self to figure out exactly it was. He doesn’t just like women, and he doesn’t just like things a little spicy and a little sweet. There’s a rough, filthy vein deep in the bedrock of his soul, and for a second as Hanco*ck looks at him like that Nate knows what it is: he wouldn’t just let this freak touch him to get out of this alive, he’d enjoy it.

It’s clear that Hanco*ck has noticed the shift in Nate’s posture, that he knows exactly what it means. He lets his gaze linger on Nate, lets it wander down the blue of his suit, more and more suggestive. Then suddenly, he shrugs.

“Guess you could be useful to my outfit,” he says lightly. “Usually I like my employees a little more self-motivated, but I think we could work together. Fahrenheit’s gonna be laid up for a few weeks. You take over her bodyguard duties and whatever else needs to be done, and I might forget that you crossed me.”

Life has been throwing Nate curveballs for years, and still this one takes him by surprise. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense. Hanco*ck knows what went through his mind just now. Nate wouldn’t have been surprised if the mayor had taken advantage - he’s heard enough rumors about Hanco*ck that it’d be easy to believe the ghoul is corrupt in every way, including being open to having his co*ck sucked by a pervert. And if Hanco*ck isn’t interested, then the natural response should be disgust, disdain, not… a job offer.

Also, he just tried to rob the man. Where does Hanco*ck get the idea that he can be trusted?

“You want me to be your bodyguard? After what just happened?”

Hanco*ck gives another shrug, as if he doesn’t see the problem. “You going to do something that stupid again?”

Nate frowns, but shakes his head. “No.”

“Going to stab me in the back as soon as you get the chance?”

That is a different question. It’d be easy to say no, but Nate hesitates. He’s still reeling from the offer Hanco*ck made. It’s strange, and strangely forgiving, and it’s not the swift, brutal justice he expected from the ghoul. But it doesn’t matter - he can’t accept the offer.

“I can’t stay,” Nate admits. “I signed up with Bobbi because I need the caps for some friends. Their settlement isn’t prepared for the winter. If I don’t find a way to get the things we need, they’re as good as dead.”

Despite the scars, despite the brim of the tricorn shading Hanco*ck’s eyes, his features are surprisingly expressive. Emotions pass quickly over them, almost too quickly for Nate to parse, but he thinks he sees surprise and something almost like pity.

“It’s okay,” Hanco*ck tells the guard. “Looks like we’re going to finish this conversation without anyone getting hurt.”

The grip on Nate’s arm loosens, and for a moment, as he sits up straight, the pain in his shoulder socket flares up even more. He grits his teeth around it and gets up, slowly, cautious not to make any sudden movements. His knees let him feel every single one of his thirty-four years.

Still, he could use this chance to overwhelm the mayor. Hanco*ck is a few inches shorter than Nate and looks like he has half his weight - under his fancy get-up, he’s all skin and bones, and he moves with a loose, slightly unsteady swagger, like he’s never entirely sober. Nate has seen him kill a man, but that guy didn’t suspect that Hanco*ck would drive a knife into his guts. In a fair fight, he’s sure he could get the upper hand before the guard comes back. Hanco*ck isn’t trusting in his own prowess, here, unless is self-confidence is vastly inflated, he’s trusting in Nate, and more importantly, in the fact that every single person in Goodneighbor would be out for blood if he tried to harm their mayor.

Nate has heard them cheer for the ghoul. He’s never seen a politician inspire this kind of enthusiasm.

The mayor motions at one of the couches and tells Nate to sit. It doesn’t sound like an order, but it feels like one. Hanco*ck remains on his feet, pacing slowly as he speaks.

“Here’s the deal,” he says. “It’s October, everyone is smelling the snow. Things can get a little ugly around this time of year. Word will get around that Bobbi got away with her caper, and I can’t have people think I’m weak. Now, if you work for me, that keeps them guessing, keeps them wondering how I turned you, but if I let you go to collect your share from Bobbi, they’ll say I’ve lost my edge. You feel me?”

Nate nods. Hanco*ck sounds like a mob boss from a Silver Shroud serial, but when you think about it, that’s pretty much what he is. “You’ve got to make an example of someone.”

Hanco*ck grimaces with distaste that almost seems genuine. “I hate that sort of dictatorial bullsh*t, but yeah, I’ve gotta set a sign. So here’s your choice. We make it public and ugly, but I let you get out alive, and you don’t show your face around here again. Or we bring your people down here - I’ve been wanting to go on a little walkabout, breathe a little fresh air, so that suits me just fine. They winter in Goodneighbor, and you work off your debt for the rest of the season. Quick or slow - what’s it gonna be?”

Nate imagines being dragged out in front of the State House, pictures Hanco*ck rolling up his sleeves and beating him with those narrow, bony fists, kicking him while he’s down, quick and vicious and barely pulling his punches. He imagines limping out of town afterwards to the jeers of the crowd.

Or he could choose the second option. Working off his debt. Explaining things to Preston, convincing the settlers to come to Goodneighbor as essentially Hanco*ck’s insurance policy, and then… taking orders from Hanco*ck, whatever they may be.

Neither option is good, but he knows which one he needs to take, for the sake of everyone back in Sanctuary. They’re the reason he hasn’t put a bullet through his brain yet, so he can take a few months of indentured servitude for them.

“You’ve got me,” he tells Hanco*ck. “I’ll work for you as long as it keeps them alive.”

Chapter 2: Test Run

Chapter Text

The next day, Nate stands with Hanco*ck on the balcony as the mayor spins the whole incident to the people of Goodneighbor. He keeps his head down, tries to look chastised and beaten, which isn’t too hard given that his face is still bruised from when the guards took him down at the storehouse the day before. As he listens, he quietly admires how magnetic Hanco*ck is on the stage, how little it matters that his speech is rambling and whimsical, how perfectly he times his cues to the mood of the crowd.

“This is a great town,” he says, towards the end of his speech. “The best place in the Commonwealth to call home. A place where everyone is welcome. But if you play rough, so do we. Everyone here knows,” and here he glances sideways at Nate, pausing to make it obvious to the people who he means, “that it’s better to be with the people than against us. And those that don’t will soon remember.”

The crowd hisses and shouts their agreement, and if he weren’t standing next to their mayor, they’d probably be throwing dirt and rocks at Nate, or worse. Being the center of so much agression is terrifying - like something out of Nate’s most secret fears. For a moment, he sees not the haggard visages of drifters and ghouls, but the faces of his classmates, of the crowds lining the streets for the military parades, of his neighbours in Sanctuary. Even as he stands perfectly still, he feels his muscles and tendons grow painfully taut with the need to run.

Hanco*ck, on the other hand, leans onto the balcony railing, basking in the attention. He lowers his voice, and the crowd hushes instantly, hanging on his lips.

“That’s why I’m going on a little tour of the Commonwealth. To remind them that you don’t f*ck with this town. To keep the legend alive. And I need every one of you to do the same here. Shouldn’t be too hard, eh? Just keep the party going.”

The anger lifts and turns to happy cheers and elation, and the only bottle that gets thrown hits the wall opposite the balcony, eliciting raucous laughter and clapping. Someone shouts, “Give them hell, Hanco*ck!” and the cry is taken up by others until someone else cries, “By the people,” and the crowd responds like a church congregation after two shots of vodka, “For the people!”

It almost surprises Nate that they don’t carry Hanco*ck to the gates on their shoulders. After the doors slam shut behind them with a metallic creak, Hanco*ck just stands in the street and listens, a co*cked grin on his face, until the noise dies down. Then he rolls his shoulders, tilts his head at the sky, and blinks up at the bright scraps of blue between Boston’s skyscrapers. He looks like a man who hasn’t been out in the sun for a long time and just now remembers that he doesn’t particularly like it.

Perhaps he’s having second thoughts about the whole going on walkabout thing. He doesn’t strike Nate as an outdoor kind of person - the red frock coat looks slightly tattered in the sunlight, but not as though he regularly trudges through the rubble heaps. Hanco*ck isn’t carrying any other equipment besides his shotgun, which he has slung around his shoulders, and a long knife, but just before they left some of his guards handed Nate a heavy backpack.

Possibly, Nate is here to be his beast of burden as much as his bodyguard.

After a moment, Hanco*ck’s doubtful squint clears into a smile. “Good to be on the road again,” he says. “Been too steady lately. So, your settlement’s up near Concord, right?”

It’s a small shock that Hanco*ck is so well-informed about Nate. He has never mentioned Sanctuary in his presence. But of course word might have travelled with the caravans, or possibly it has spread because of Sturges’ radio beacon, which they used for a while to attract new settlers. The shocking part is less that the information is out there, and more that Hanco*ck keeps tabs on these things. Perhaps he asked around after the robbery, just to have some insurance should Nate try to run or double cross him, now that they’re out alone.

“Yeah,” Nate confirms. “It usually takes me about two or three days, depending on how much trouble’s on the road.”

“We’re gonna take a few detours before we head this far into hillbilly country. You ever been to Bunker Hill?”

“Not lately.” He went on a school trip there once, as a kid. If the place attracts the likes of Hanco*ck these days, it’s probably not what Nate remembers.

They’ve made their way to the next corner by then. From here on out, Boston resembles a battlefield. Nate feels naked without a gun, “I’m not going to be much more useful than a brahmin this way.”

“Hopefully with less heavy breathing,” Hanco*ck quips.

Nate startles himself with a laugh, but when Hanco*ck turns around, there’s an answering grin on his face. He says, “Almost forgot. Most of your stuff is in the pack. Help yourself, brother.”

‘Most of it’ turns out to be an understatement - other than his caps, and the few pieces of valuable junk he scavenged in the sewers, everything is there. His guns, the security baton, his sleeping bag, his food, even his pip boy. Nate puts it on gratefully, slips the pipe pistol into its holster, and pulls out the baton. There are a couple of other things in the pack, he notices - a rolled-up wool blanket, a small bundle of clothes, not neatly folded but simply smushed together, some ammo that isn’t his own, a large flask of what he hopes is water. He adjust some things to distribute the weight a little better, then hoists the pack back onto his shoulders.

Hanco*ck picks their route as they head out, telling him which alleys to take, but he lets Nate take the lead. This is fine with Nate. He suspects that Hanco*ck simply doesn’t quite trust him with a gun at his back just yet, but it allows Nate to set the pace and be as cautious as he wants. Hanco*ck isn’t noisy, but he doesn’t particularly look like he’s paying attention to where he’s going as he ambles through the ruined streets.

Two blocks from Goodneighbor, they run into their first trouble. Nate has his eyes on the corner store, because they’re favourite haunts of mutants and raiders, so he ignores the rusting, overturned wreck of a city bus that is blocking nearly the entire road.

Just as he’s about to say, “Clear,” and slip past the store, a pallid naked body comes tumbling out of a broken bus window, arms flailing, slaps down onto the pavement like a side of meat, and rises to tottering feet.

Nate rears back just as the feral hurls itself at his throat, blocking its yellow teeth with his bracer, and sees another come stumbling after it. The bus is full of them, a groaning, stumbling mass of bodies, like maggots inside a corpse. Before he has time to figure out the best escape route, the first one rushes at him again with a sputtering groan. He sidesteps, grabbing its last few tangled hairs and kicks it in the back, tearing the head straight off. As he tosses the tattered skull aside, turning to face the rest of them, he sees Hanco*ck, hanging back by the end of the bus and watching the whole scene with utterly inappropriate amusem*nt.

No help is coming from that quarter, Nate realizes.

Ghouls are slow and uncoordinated, but also unpredictable, and so many of them at such a close range pose a serious threat. Nate has no time to worry about the mayor. Perhaps ferals won’t attack a fellow ghoul - they’re driven by hunger, and Nate presents the juicier meal.

It’s times like these he remembers that he relies too much on his guns. Right now he has a choice between his hunting knife and the security baton he picked off one of the dead vault guards and neither is good.

Nate picks the baton, sliding it to its full length with a flick of his wrist and falling back into a steady stance to give his attacks maximum force. Ghoul bones are brittle, and their tendons are rotting. He smashes the skull of one with a single swipe and uses his free hand to grab the next one coming at him, tossing him against another feral and sending them both into a squirming heap. One of them begins crawling towards him, but he brings his foot down hard, breaking its back.

Two more pile out of the bus, one of them glowing ominously even in the morning sun, and Nate has to make quick a choice - he slams the baton into the glowing one’s belly, giving the other just enough of an opening that it flings itself at him. Its wildly grabbing hands tangle in his hair and jank painfully at it. Nate jerks his head to the side, trying to escape, but the thing is strong and determined, and the one still alive on the ground uses the opportunity to grab his ankle, clinging to him like a vise. They’re about to topple him, and if they do, he’s dead.

That’s when he sees Hanco*ck out the corner of his eye, aiming his shotgun.

Crack, and the glowing one goes down, convulsing, and Hanco*ck reloads and fires again, and the one on the ground that is just about to get up again is thrown back by the force of another bullet, going limb against the wheel cap of the bus.

Nate doesn’t have time to stare. He’s got a feral clinging to his shoulder, about to sink its teeth into his jugular. For a second, he sees its eyes, dead and monstrous, and then he grabs it by the throat, twisting them around, and slams it against the side of the bus with enough force to loosen the grip on his hair. It lets go of him with a guttural, angry noise, and he pulls back, slams it down again, and a second time, and a third. It slips to the floor, lifeless.

He tightens his grip on the baton, panting, but that’s all of them. The only ghoul that remains standing is Hanco*ck, who looks entirely relaxed, shotgun resting on his shoulder.

“Not bad,” he comments. “Good to see Fahrenheit wasn’t taken down by some lucky idiot.”

Now Nate takes a moment to stare at him. He’s not sure whether to be grateful or offended. The shotgun looks like a museum piece. It’s a real wonder that the bullet found its mark. Maybe some of that was skill, but there was definitely some luck involved in the fact that it’s the glowing feral and not Nate lying dead on the ground.

“That was close,” he says flatly.

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck agrees, sauntering past him.

Nate stares at his back, and realizes his expression must be the same that Preston wore, that day in Concord, when he watched Nate pull his knife from the dying Deathclaw.

In passing, Hanco*ck kicks the arm of a dead ghoul with the tip of his leather boot. “f*cking ferals,” he mutters. “Still, better than politics.”

*

Charlston Bridge is only a few hundred yards away, and beyond the sluggish river, Nate can already see the thin white spire of the obelisk emerging from the cityscape. Before they can make it any closer to the bridge, however, Hanco*ck points at the roofless third floor of a harborside building and says, “Let’s take a little break before we do the bridge.”

It’s probably wise. Bridges are chokepoints and always good for a nasty surprise in today’s Boston. Nate still feels jittery from their encounter with the ferals.

They make their way into the abandoned house Hanco*ck pointed out. The ground floor is nearly all rubble, but there’s enough of the staircase left that they can make it to the upper floors, and what remains of the attic forms a sheltered, safe nook with an excellent view of the river and the bridge. It’s an excellent place to rest. Not only will they see any hostiles coming at them, they’ll also have a chance to get a lay of the land before they go on.

He probably shouldn’t be surprised that Hanco*ck knows what he’s doing. Everyone who grew up in the Commonwealth knows more than Nate. It reminds him of the time he travelled with Nick on the search for Kellogg, except that Nick never used a break to pop mentats like they’re peanuts.

Hanco*ck does exactly that, after claiming the only functioning piece of furniture in the room, a mouldy chintz armchair, as his own and propping his boots up on the wreck of a minifridge with a small sigh of relief.

“Been a while since I gave the old legs a workout,” he says, wiggling his feet. “How about a foot massage for your new boss?”

Nate stares at him, stunned, and for a brief second vividly imagines getting down and rubbing the mayor’s feet like he used to do for Nora, but then he spots the impish gleam in Hanco*ck’s eyes and squashes his overactive imagination. “You’re joking.”

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says happily. “Come on, brother, relax. Catch a breath, have a mentat.”

He offers the tin to Nate, who tries to be polite about it as he shakes his head. Hanco*ck must be massively addicted to them if he takes them at this time of day and without good reason - they always make Nate feel like his gums are about to bleed and keep him awake for days.

Hanco*ck hums in a ‘your loss’ kind of way and closes his eyes, sucking on the pill with obvious pleasure. It reminds Nate oddly of how Nora took her first sip of coffee every morning. He busies himself with the backpack, not wanting to think of her.

He’s hungry, but he hesitates a moment before reaching for anything. There’s not much food in the pack, not enough rations for two people on a march that’ll probably take several days. Perhaps Hanco*ck intends to stock up or scavenge in between, but Nate wonders if he should ask for permission, in case Hanco*ck claims first right to their rations.

He decides to test the waters by unpacking a strip of mutt jerky and sitting down on the floor to eat it.

“I sometimes forget about food,” Hanco*ck muses when he sees Nate take the first bite.

He chews and swallows. “You don’t have to eat?” That would explain why Hanco*ck packed no rations for himself.

“Not as often as you smoothskins do. Never was a big eater, though, even before I turned ghoul. Always too busy running around, getting high.”

Nate continues eating, feeling strangely awkward to be the only one. He feels the urge to push some of his food on Hanco*ck even though the ghoul clearly isn’t interested. It must be an instinct he learned from his mother. Her family came from the middle east, and although she always focused on being as American as possible, hospitality was sacred to her. Whenever Nate brought any friends to the house, she would try to make them eat something.

He shakes his head, trying to push away the memories. He didn’t call his parents as often as he should have. They were proud of him for serving his country. He found their pride harder to stomach than their unspoken dislike of his wife. They never said so, but it was clear that they disapproved of Nora continuing to work after Shaun was born, even though as a lawyer she would clearly earn more money than him - his dad kept calling him about openings at Corvega, desk jobs that he had no qualifications for, and Nate grew less patient each time, closer and closer to honestly speaking his mind about the war, the country, the lies they were living.

He takes a deep breath, swallowing meat that tastes too salty, and says the first ugly thing that comes to mind.

“Killing ferals got to bother you.”

Ferals must be a sore point for ghouls like Hanco*ck, even Nate can guess that, but he’d rather get into a fight, even one involving his new boss, than think about his parents.

“Does killing raiders bother you?” Hanco*ck shoots back. He doesn’t sound offended, not quite, but there’s a hard edge to his voice.

It’d be easy to leave it at that, to say ‘No’ and get back to the road. But once upon a time, centuries ago, he was expected to enjoy killing reds, to wear his kills like another medal, proud to serve my country, sir, and never talk about the fact that they were people.

Of course it bothers you, Nora said to him once. You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.

“It does,” Nate says, feeling the words drop like stones. “I hate it.”

Something flashes in Hanco*ck’s strange, murky eyes. He tilts the tins of mentats thoughtfully, making the pills rattle, and starts twirling it between his fingers.

“Must be something,” he says quietly.

Chapter 3: Raid

Chapter Text

Bunker Hill turns out to be a settlement. There’s a sturdy wooden fence around the perimeter, and the usual turrets and guard posts at the entrance, and if Nate were alone, he’d avoid it, because it looks like raiders. Hanco*ck, however, walks straight up to the gate, and the guards lower their guns almost instantly.

One of them hollers over his shoulder for someone named Kessler, while the other comes down from her post and says, “Fancy seeing you around here, mayor,” as if she’s another Goodneighbor citizen.

Is this some sort of satellite settlement to Goodneighbor? Behind the gate, Nate can see a maze of shacks like the lower parts of Diamond city, and a large compound at the base of the obelisk - it’s not a huge place, but they seem to have crammed a lot into its walls.

Kessler turns out to be a woman in her early forties, and before the war, Nate would have pegged her as a schoolteacher, she has that mix of tough authority and kindness. But it’s clear from the way she comes up to the gate that she’s in charge here.

“What sort of trouble are you bringing to my settlement?” she greets Hanco*ck. There’s a warmth in her question that tells Nate she likes the ghoul, as unlikely as it seems for a woman like that to like a guy like Hanco*ck.

“Only myself,” Hanco*ck says in way that makes her smile, and then with the same warmth he says, “It’s good to see you, sister. You should come to Goodneighbor more often.”

“I’m not a lazy drifter like you, I’ve got responsibilities. Seriously, what are you doing here, Hanco*ck?”

“Just going on a little fall walkabout. Cleaning up some messes before we settle in for the long snow. Visiting old friends like you.”

She rolls her eyes at his charm. “You want to talk shop with Stockton, more like.”

Hanco*ck grins. “I’ll talk shop with you any time you like, Kathy.”

*

Hanco*ck doesn’t bother to introduce Nate to the elderly gentleman in the well-kept suit he eventually seeks out, but from their conversation and the few things he’s heard from Preston about how the Commonwealth trade routes operate, Nate gathers that this is Old Man Stockton, the guy behind all those caravans. Listening to them, Nate learns a lot about how Goodneighbor’s economy works. The settlement doesn’t really produce anything other than chems, moonshine and some tech, but it offers a lot of services that people come a long way to enjoy - music, entertainment, prostitutes, the Memory Den, traders, a safe, cheap place to stay if they’re too much of a freak for Diamond City. Some of these visitors, in turn, bring goods to trade, mostly scavenged junk, but a lot of the town’s supplies of food and fire wood come from out of town, brought by Stockton’s caravans.

But Hanco*ck clearly is more than a customer, since the discussion soon veers to mutual acquaintances and standing trade deals with settlements Nate has never heard of and others that bear the names of old cities along the coast and inland, far beyond what he has come to consider the Commonwealth. Not all of their talk is business. They’re comparing notes on these people, swapping stories, and sometimes slip into a strange, slightly opaque jargon, almost a secret code between them that leaves Nate at a loss. His best guess is that they’re doing it on purpose, in case someone is listening in.

It’s late in the evening when Stockton mentions that a couple of his caravans have been attacked in the Cambridge area.

“Anything suspicious?” Hanco*ck asks with that same undertone of secret meaning that Nate can’t quite figure out.

Stockton shakes his head, dipping his cigarette into the ashtray. “Just raiders, I think. There’s a gang holed up in the old BADTFL building that’s been getting co*cky. We sent a couple of scouts up there and they haven’t come back. Might have to pay them off or change the route.”

“f*ck that,” Hanco*ck says with feeling. Stockton raises a brow in genteel disapproval and doesn’t comment. He changes the subject quickly, and Nate has forgotten all about it by the time the old man bids them good night.

Hanco*ck watches Stockton go, then slams down the last of his whiskey, tells Nate to drink up, and gets out of his chair like he has springs in his heels.

“Let’s go, brother,” he says.

“Now?” Nate protests, still in his chair. “Where?”

Hanco*ck leans in close, a manic glitter in his eyes. He’s wired, unsurprisingly after how many mentats he’s had over the course of the evening, and sounds like he’s spoiling for a fight, “Where I tell you, right? That’s our deal.”

“Right.” Nate never thought working for Hanco*ck would be a piece of cake, but he was looking forward to a few hours of sleep, at least. Still, he says, “You’re the boss,” and gets up, ignoring the creaking of his joints and the ache of his muscles, which have stiffened after the long hours of sitting.

At the gate, the guards look at them as if they’re insane. Nate agrees with them - anyone in the Commonwealth who has a safe place to spend the night in knows what they’ve got. Everyone except the mayor of Goodneighbor, apparently.

He rolls his shoulders, grimaces, and follows Hanco*ck into the night.

*

They’ve made three blocks before the cool night air manages to clear the fug from Nate’s sleepy brain and he realizes they’re not headed back to Charleston Bridge. “Where are we going?” he asks, with a sinking feeling, catching up to Hanco*ck, who has paused behind a Pulowski shelter to observe the road ahead.

“Hunting,” Hanco*ck says, eyes gleaming in the dark with an almost feral glow. “Killing raiders. That gonna be a problem for you?”

“I’ve done it before,” Nate says guardedly. “I’ll do it again if you tell me to. As you said, it’s part of our deal.”

Hanco*ck makes a pleased little hum. “I like a man who keeps his word in the dark of night,” he says, and puts his hand on Nate’s shoulder, so close to his neck that his thumb brushes the skin just above the collar of the vault suit. The little touch carries a vibrant thrum of excitement, and Nate suddenly finds it hard not to feel electrified. “Come on, brother,” Hanco*ck smiles. “They probably deserve it.”

“Yeah,” Nate says, his mouth dry. He doesn’t know if they deserve it. But he shivers when Hanco*ck pulls away his hand, and he wants to follow the touch, follow Hanco*ck further into the night.

It’s quiet in the deserted streets, only the wind rattling insistently in the broken roofs and windows of the houses around them. Dry leaves and centuries-old pieces of plastic drift along the cracked pavement. The wind comes in from the coast, wet and cold, making Nate wish he had a scarf and a pair of mittens to go with the suit. But he’s no longer tired. It’s like he’s swallowed one of Hanco*ck’s mentats, even though he’s perfectly sober, his blood pumping faster and harder.

They move west, the Mystic to their right, never straying far from it. After about an hour, the clock on the pip boy says it’s 2:30, Hanco*ck begins to slow down. “There, that’s the place.”

His night vision must be a whole lot better than human, because it takes another two hundred yards before Nate can make out the building in the wet dark night. It’s got the look of a governmental building, and he thinks he vaguely remembers it - he thinks he drove Nora there once to meet with a defendant.

“The Burau of Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco and… “ he tries to recall the acronym.

“Chems and arms and stuff, yeah,” Hanco*ck says impatiently. “Old timey fun police, right? Nicky told me about it. Raiders love to make it their digs, for some reason.”

The building looks quiet, and there are no lights in the windows, but Nate gets a feeling that Hanco*ck might be right. Something about it says occupied. He listens for the tell-tale chugging of a turret, but hears none. “If they’re in there, what’s your plan?”

“Improvise,” Hanco*ck grins and begins walking straight towards the front door of the building.

For a split second, Nate just stands still. He’s in the cover of bus station. There’s no reason to walk into this clusterf*ck of a situation like it’s high noon in a cowboy movie. But he’s following the mayor before he can make up his mind, pistol at the ready.

Hanco*ck kicks open the front door with an explosion of dust and splintering wood, walks into the lobby, fires his shotgun at the long broken security monitor, co*cks it and shouts,

“If you want to live, assholes, run and never show your face again.”

Five seconds later, some painted face idiot charges at them from the next room. Hanco*ck aims and blows his head straight off his shoulder, sighing loudly. “They never listen.”

There are voices, angry and loud, coming from everywhere in the building. The place is a hornet’s nest, and they’ve punched it with bare hands.

“Find some f*cking cover!” Nate yells, but Hanco*ck isn’t listening. He’s ambling towards the door, co*cking his gun, riding high and invincible on his chems.

Two raiders come barging down the stairs. Nate lays down some cover fire, and runs for the receptionist’s counter, vaulting over it before he aims again.

Hanco*ck’s strategy, if it can be called that, turns out to be not completely idiotic. The two on the stairs are half-naked, a woman in just a shirt and some underpants, and a bleary-eyed guy with only one boot on. They’ve clearly just woken up, and all their shots miss their mark. Nate takes her out with a shot to the shoulder and a second one that kills her instantly, and the guy starts screaming like a maniac, running for the door.

He’s gone, off into the night. Nate doesn’t aim for his back, because the sound of total havoc is coming from the next room already.

He tries to stay low to the ground, gun at the ready, and ducks into what clearly used to be an office, desks and monitors and old filing cabinets, faded portraits of the president on the wall, an American flag defaced by raider markings. There are five sleeping bags on the floor, and bodies on three of them - one still bleeding out, choking on his own blood.

In the middle of the room, Hanco*ck is locked into a wild dance with a woman holding a fire axe, swinging savagely at him. He’s using his shotgun to defend himself, laughing maniacally as he blocks another blow and rolls off a table just before she hits him with the next. He swings the gun at her legs, trying to take them out from under her and misses by a mile.

A head pops up behind a desk, and Nate pulls the trigger without a second thought. Blood spatters the wall. Across the room, Hanco*ck’s gun hits the floor, sliding away from him, and he’s left bare handed.

“You’ll pay for this!” the raider leader screeches, and raises the axe high over her head, and Hanco*ck simply looks at her, as if he’s daring her to try and hit him.

She doesn’t care. She brings it down, and at the last moment, Nate barrels into her in a flying tackle. They crash against a cabinet together, paper going everywhere, and the blunt side of the axehead hits him in the temple at the same time as her knee finds his groin.

The pain and the speed of everything happening at once make what he does next much easier than it should be. She’s a woman, young enough to still be in college if this were another world. Her teeth are small and white and crooked as she tries to sink them into his arms, and his hands look big around her head as he grabs it and twists.

He stares into her eyes, wide and brown, a look of surprise in them that fades after a second. She slumps and drops warmly against Nate’s chest.

He rolls away, scrambling to get out of the pile of paper and dead body, and finds himself at Hanco*ck’s feet. The ghoul offers him a hand. Nate crouches on the floor, panting, but after a moment, he reaches up and takes it. Hanco*ck’s grasp is surprisingly firm, and surprisingly warm as he pulls him up.

“See? No planning necessary for these dumb sh*ts.”

“That was insane.”

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck agrees. “I’m impressed you followed me.”

Slowly, Nate’s pulse returns to normal. The sweat cools on his face. He probably won’t be able to sleep for the rest of the night, and he knows the post-combat shakes are coming, but there’s always a golden moment where everything is fine and nothing matters, where it’s a wonder to just be alive. He basks in it, sitting on the edge of some long dead cop’s desk, when Hanco*ck interrupts by saying, “We should check the basem*nt and the storage rooms.”

“You think there’s more of them?”

“Loot,” Hanco*ck says. “And maybe prisoners.”

They go down the stairs to the basem*nt warily, Hanco*ck leading the way. Nate has to turn on the light of his pip boy, and in the eerie green, the scene below looks grisly, like something from a nightmare.

There are no prisoners, at least none that are alive. But there’s an elderly woman who doesn’t look two days dead, and at the sight of her, Nate stops feeling the crack of the young raider’s neck bones between his palms. The old woman’s naked body is small and wrinkled, her matted hair grey. She would have been someone’s grandmother, once upon a time. They tortured her, probably for no other reason than boredom.

He remembers the guy upstairs, the one he allowed to run.

“One of them got away,” he says, still staring at the body. She’s handcuffed to a radiator, a bone protruding from the skin of one skinny wrist. “I let him escape.”

Hanco*ck tugs at his elbow, guiding him back towards the stairs. “Good. He’ll spread the news of what happened to his friends.”

Nate drags his feet. He looks back at the body. “Shouldn’t we - “

To his surprise, the ghoul knows what he wants to say. “That’s probably one of Stockton’s scouts. We’ll tell him. They’ll take care of her.”

Upstairs, in one of the evidence rooms, they find most of the supplies the raiders took from Stockton’s caravans. There’s a whole box full of meds and chems, disinfectant, water filters, several satchels of dried hubflowers and other plants that Hanco*ck claims are medicinal, a pile of army blankets, half a dozen boots in different sizes, cobbled together from old rubber tires and brahmin leather, a whole collection of sewing kits, whetstones, glue, pots and other tools. Everything else is too big for them to carry, but there’s nothing that can be done about that. They pack the most valuable things into a duffle back together with the raiders’ guns and ammo, and leave the rest behind.

Outside, the sky is already a very faint pink in the east. It’s freezing cold, but the wind has let down. Hanco*ck sits on the concrete stairs to the main entrance and pats the spot beside him. It’s a dangerous place to stay, out here in the open after they made so much noise, but Nate doesn’t argue. His legs are about to give out anyway. It’s good to sit and breathe the icy air, letting his breath fog when he exhales. Inside, the whole place smelled like blood. The shakes are coming already, starting in his hands. He touches the dusty concrete to steady them, running his hand over the broken edges of the stairs.

Hanco*ck silently offers Nate an inhaler. Jet is a post-war thing, not something people used to abuse in the old days, at least not as far as Nate knows. He has occasionally found some while scavenging, but always sold it to traders at the next opportunity. His hands are clumsy around the plastic as he put his lips around the mouthpiece and tries to figure out where to push on the canister to release the spray. Hanco*ck leans closer, reaching for the inhaler, and Nate thinks he’s going to take it away again, impatient with Nate’s fumbling, but Hanco*ck’s narrow, bony hand closes around his, softly, almost as if asking for permission, and Nate nods as much as he can with the thing in his mouth, closing his eyes and tilting his head back and inhaling deeply as Hanco*ck pressed down the canister, releasing the spray. On his first deep breath he thinks he feels nothing but a sharp chemical burn, then suddenly on the exhale the inhaler slips from his lips and he sways backward. The hard concrete steps behind him have become as soft as cushions, and for three entire heartbeats, the sky above him is awash with light.

Gradually, the world sinks back into its contours, but some of the pleasant fuzziness remains. He lets his head loll to the side, and sees Hanco*ck looking down at him. It should bother him, to be seen like this, sprawling, loose-limbed, defenseless, rolling in the dirt like some strung-out junkie, but it doesn’t. He doesn’t even wonder what Hanco*ck is thinking, why his expression is so intense but at the same time distant, why it changes abruptly when their eyes meet, a practiced smile covering his strange stare like a mask.

“I got you,” Hanco*ck says and it’s in that moment that Nate realizes the mayor’s hand rests on his thigh. It’s impossible to tell how long it has been there, but the sudden awareness of it brings Nate back to his senses. His slow, languid breathing hitches, and for a second, he lies perfectly still, feeling the touch like a brand, unable to move.

Then it becomes clear that Hanco*ck isn’t going to go any further, and Nate, feeling a flush of embarrassment creep onto his face, pushes himself up into a sitting position, gritting his teeth against the moment of dizziness.

“We should get a move on,” he says.

“Easy,” Hanco*ck tells him. “What we should do is catch some rest.”

“Not out here in the open.” Nate doesn’t know what he was thinking, allowing himself to be drawn into this dangerous moment of indulgence.

Hefting the bag of loot onto his shoulder and ignoring the gummy feeling in his knees, he forces himself to his feet and starts walking. His brain seems to lag behind a few steps, much like Hanco*ck, protesting against the hurry, but when it catches up with the rest of him, he realizes he more or less just gave Hanco*ck an order. What the hell? This should get him into trouble with the mayor, but all Hanco*ck does is complain under his breath, muttering something about a waste of perfectly good jet.

There’s a possibility, not exactly slim, that Hanco*ck, who hasn’t eaten a single a single thing that wasn’t a pill since Nate has begun travelling with him, has the attention span of a pre-schooler on an exclusive sugar diet, and has forgotten that Nate is supposed to be here to work off his debt.

How in the world does this man rule a town?

Nate knows exactly how. He remembers the thrill of following Hanco*ck into the raider lair, the shock of seeing him fight like a lunatic, way he had thrown himself at between him and the axe without thinking. It felt good, all of it. He doesn’t regret a thing. It doesn’t feel like jumping from a vertibird into another meat grinder battlefield, like coming back with half his squad gone, like watching them sluice the filth off his power armor. There’s no hollow pit of shame and anger opening up inside of him.

He doesn’t know what the hell to make of this feeling.

He continues walking until they’re out of sight of the BADTFL building, and then picks the first ruin that looks like it isn’t infested with radroaches and ghouls. The door is barricaded, but the old, rotting boards splinter easily. The ground floor smells of mould, old furniture crumbling in darkness, but the living room ceiling has partly collapsed, offering steep access to the first floor, which is lacking a section of the wall and roof. It’s cold and drafty up there, but the hole in the wall looks out on the river and what remains of the building offers enough shelter from the wind and the road that Nate declares it a good place to make camp.

Hanco*ck just plops himself down on the wreckage of a queensize bed, ignoring the stains on the mattress. Nate takes one look at the situation, squashes the temptation to find out what would happen if he joined him there and rolls out his sleeping bag on the floor.

He doesn’t intend to sleep, this isn’t a safe place to do so, not without someone keeping watch, and he isn’t sure he trusts Hanco*ck to do so. All he wants is to get out of the cold for a bit, to huddle up inside his sleeping bag and rest his limbs a little before they go on. He needs to come down from the jet. That’s the only way he can explain the jumble of feelings welling up inside him.

His body begins to warm inside the sleeping bag. He closes his eyes and drifts, then startles awake again, blinking. He needs to stay awake.

He tries to remember what he used to talk about with his squad in situations like this, the sort of thing they’d mutter on the comms to stay awake when a mission dragged out into the night. But none of the safe topics of conversation apply here. He can’t ask Hanco*ck what sports he likes, of if he’s got a girl back home.

He finds he doesn’t want that sort of nothing talk.

“Why didn’t you just execute me?” Nate asks.

Hanco*ck rolls over with an inquiring grunt.

“For breaking into your storage room and shooting Fahrenheit in the leg,” Nate clarifies. “You’ve killed people for a lot less than that.”

There’s a moment of quiet. From down on the floor, he can see Hanco*ck toying with a loose thread on the cuff of his red coat. “Mitigating circ*mstances,” the mayor says after a moment. “For one thing, you shot her in the leg. And my men said the only reason they caught you is because you stayed to staunch the bleeding. ‘sides, you pulled Nicky’s ass out of the fire when he got himself caught up in that Malone business, and I don’t wanna have to explain to him why I murdered his pal.”

It’s the second time today that Hanco*ck has mentioned Valentine.

“What’s the story with you and Nick?”

“He’s one of the good ones. Known him since I was a kid.”

Even though he doesn’t volunteer more information, the respect and affection as Hanco*ck speaks of Valentine shines through clearly. It makes Nate reconsider what he thought about Hanco*ck until now. It’s clear that Hanco*ck isn’t the worst the Commonwealth has to offer, but something in the way he says “one of the good ones” makes it sound as if he counts himself among that number. Maybe, by today’s odd standards, he is.

He wonders what Nick would say, if he found about about their arrangement, about how Hanco*ck pressed him into service, about Nate’s misadventure with Bobbi. It’s easy to imagine Nick shaking his old synth head, muttering in disapproval at both of them around a cigarette stub, and the mental image has Nate smiling.

He wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later to the sound of rain lashing against the broken windows to the east, and Hanco*ck moving about on the bed, stretching, cleaning his gun. It’s much darker than it was before, the sky heavy with thick drifting clouds, fringed yellow towards the coast, heralding a rad storm. Nate flicks on the pip boy display: four in the afternoon. They’ve slept for most of the day. His stomach is a tight knot with that feeling that comes past hunger.

“Didn’t wanna wake ya,” Hanco*ck says.

The last person who said anything like this to him was Nora. It fills him with a raw loneliness that pulls at his insides and takes his breath away, so Nate doesn’t say much as they break camp and head back towards Bunker Hill, moving as quickly through the sheeting rain as they can before the rad storm rolls in. The vault suit is wetproof, but water runs down Nate’s legs and sloshes up into his boots, and his hair curls icy and slick against his neck. By the time they finally reach the settlement, his face is a frozen mask, thawing painfully in the warmth inside the compound.

Hanco*ck takes the duffle bag from Nate and drops it onto Stockton’s table and himself into a chair, shaking the rain off like a dog. Stockton gingerly peels the bag open, peers inside, and asks, “How much do I owe you?”

Even Nate would ask for a reward, given they’ve just risked their lives to recover the stuff, but Hanco*ck waves the trader off disinterestedly. “If you pay me, it’ll start to feel like work, and you know what I think about work.”

Stockton glances at Nate as if he expects him to stop Hanco*ck from this foolishness. Maybe that’s what Fahrenheit would have done in his stead, because it certainly doesn’t seem like Hanco*ck is the one managing his settlement’s finances. Having tried to rob Hanco*ck of most of his wealth not two weeks ago, however, Nate doubts he’ll ever feel comfortable giving him financial advice, not that he has much to give - he went from being dependent on his family to being in the army to marrying a woman with a higher income. It was Nora who managed their taxes and insurances, who took out the mortgage and all the other intricacies of adult life before the bombs fell.

Besides, he’s still standing there dripping freezing rain water onto the concrete floor. Even sitting down seems like it would be a pain. He’s content to just stand there, like a brahmin still loaded with burdens.

“A hot meal for you and your man, then,” Stockton says to Hanco*ck. “It’s the least that we can do.”

The meal that is brought to them, a thick brown stew of radstag and carrots and flatbread straight from the oven, is the best Nate has had since he woke in the cryopod. It’s served to him alongside a tall glass of bubbly nuka cola and a rag to dry his hair, and he feels himself growing warm from the inside and outside as he sits down to shovel the food into his mouth.

When his bowl is empty, the kid who brought it to him comes and takes it away and returns with a second helping. As he holds it in his hands, perfect and steaming, Nate thinks that isn’t just the best meal he’s had in the Commonwealth. It may well be the best since he’s had since he was a boy. Not because it’s warm and well-seasoned and he’s been half-starved for weeks, but because it feels like something he earned.

He’s travelling with Hanco*ck to pay off his debts and to make amends for trying to rob him and of course for Preston and his friends back in Goodneighbor, so they won’t starve and freeze to death. He’d never even have considered this arrangement otherwise, but in this moment, it feels good. It feels right, even when Stockton talks about him like he’s some sort of manservant in a period drama.

He could do this, he thinks, for more than one winter. If he survives that long.

Chapter 4: With Benefits

Chapter Text

They are given a small room in the back of the memorial compound to stay for the night. It doesn’t have a window and there’s only one matress on the floor, an oil lantern and a chair and it looks like it might have been a broom closet once, but it’s perfectly dry, clean and safe, so by Commonwealth standards it’s the penthouse suite of this place. While Nate still takes in the room, Hanco*ck claims the matress and the single straw pillow for himself. So it’s the floor for him again, then, Nate thinks, but just as he tries to figure out where to put his sleeping bag, Hanco*ck slides a little closer to the wall, leaving just enough room for Nate to lie down on the matress as well.

He does it like it’s perfectly natural, just generosity, but Nate immediately feels his joints grow stiff with tension. Hanco*ck sees him hesitate, and his reaction is a thin, tired smile. “It ain’t contagious,” he says. “Just turn off the lights and you won’t even see this mug when you wake up.”

Nate doesn’t know what to do. If he turns Hanco*ck down, it’ll be an insult. Sure, many ghouls look ugly enough to scare small children, and you don’t have to be a racist to feel a little uncomfortable looking them straight in the face. But one, he’s a grown man and he can deal with it and this would be like hating someone for having been in a car accident, and two, he doesn’t actually have that issue with Hanco*ck. He’s looked at the man a lot in the last couple of days, and the long and the short of it is, Hanco*ck is an attractive guy. He’s missing his nose and his skin is in tatters and he’s so thin he’d be sick if he were entirely human, but he’s still somehow handsome enough to give Nate pause.

Which is an issue. Hanco*ck is dangerous. For most of his life, Nate has stayed away from guys like him, not that he’s met many who could compare. But still Nate doesn’t say no. The only thing he can bring himself to do is extinguish the light of the lamp, and then, in total darkness, he feels his way to the mattress and sits down on the very edge of it. Moving more slowly than he needs, he takes off his boots, the pieces of armor he wears over the suit, his belt.

“The rads keep away the bugs,” Hanco*ck says into the uncomfortable silence. “Little benefit of having me around.”

Has he honestly not noticed the way Nate’s been reacting to him? Or is this intentional, some kind of game he’s playing? Nate is so caught up in wondering that he only realizes he’s been taking off the vault suit when he’s already naked to the waist, the cool air stroking his back, his bare sides. Hanco*ck didn’t even take off the coat when he lay down. Nate hestitates, but putting it back on would make this even weirder.

So he finally lies down on the rough mattress in just his underpants, his back to Hanco*ck, and pulls the blanket over himself, up to his neck. Next to him, Hanco*ck shifts occasionally, settling in for the night. His breathing sounds a little strange, not heavy, but not quite human, either. Nate, on the other hand, breathes very lightly, trying to keep as still as possible, like he’s hiding from a monster prowling the room.

This was never a problem. Nate has been able to deal with his defects just fine. He’s spent what feels like half his life in locker rooms and barracks, and he was never even particularly tempted to let his gaze linger on someone’s bare skin, or to put his hand where it doesn’t belong. He never got hard just from wrestling with a guy, or any of the things queers supposedly do.

All his life, it was easy to pretend he was normal. Like marching with 45 pounds on your back - your first couple of times, everything hurt and chafed, but after a while you stopped feeling the weight.

Why does it all come crashing down on him now? Because there’s no longer anyone beating the drum. There are no more ranks, no more uniforms, no more white picket fences, no more locker room talk setting down the rules. He’s no longer a member of the team, no longer a soldier, a neighbour, a father, a husband, a son. The more he thinks about it, the more he feels like he’s driving a car with no breaks.

He’s breathing so lightly because every movement, every brush of the rough blanket against his skin is a test of his strength of will. He’s going to crash. The wall is coming at him with a hundred miles per hour.

And then it just happens. Hanco*ck rolls onto his side, bringing them close enough to touch. Nate almost can’t keep still, because he can feel Hanco*ck’s breath against his neck as the ghoul murmurs, “Hey. You seem a little tense there.”

Nate’s voice is a low, breathy, almost animal growl. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says. “Could be I creep you out. But I’m starting to think that ain’t the case.”

“What?” Nate asks and attempts to sit up, but shifting accidentally brings his back into contact with the ghoul.

Hanco*ck catches him, holds him in place like that, his fingers digging into the skin just above Nate’s waistband, and grinds their bodies together, letting him feel the hard jab of an erection against his ass. At the same time, he leans in so close his lips brush Nate’s ear, and in the filthiest low whisper says, “You tell me to f*ck off, and this ain’t gonna be part of our arrangement. No problem.”

Part of the arrangement. A transaction, a service rendered to pay off his debts. He won’t even have to admit that he wants it. Nate exhales, supressing a needy groan, and nods. “Got it.”

Hanco*ck hums a raspy ghoul chuckle against Nate’s pulse. His hand wanders, gliding up Nate’s stomach and then down, nearly killing him when he stops, just inches from Nate’s co*ck, which is wet at the tip and achingly hard. He hooks a finger into Nate’s waistband and snaps it against his skin. “Take ‘em off.”

It’s exactly what Nate has been aching to do for several minutes. The order is a relief and another thrill at the same time, and he hurries to shimmy out of his underpants while Hanco*ck undoes his sash and his pants.

When they come together again it’s the first time Nate has felt another man’s co*ck, and it’s right there against his ass, and it instantly confirms what he has known about himself for years. He knows this will be painful without some form of lubricant because he and Nora went there a few times, but he wants it nonetheless, he wants to know what that smooth hard length will feel like pressing into him, wants it even if it's going to hurt.

Hanco*ck, however, seems more intent on getting his hands everywhere, running them along Nate’s thighs, kneading his hips, finally palming his dick, with a constant murmured commentary. “Knew keeping you around was a good idea,” he says as he ruts against Nate, “you and I, we’re going to have a lot more fun this way than shooting you would’ve been.”

The way he jerks Nate off is far from gentle, a rough, quick, teasing rhythm that allows Nate no reprieve or control. He comes with his teeth clenched, his head thrown back against Hanco*ck’s shoulder, and he’s still in the last stuttering throes of his org*sm when Hanco*ck’s dick slides against his hole and the ghoul rocks his hips forward and enters him with just the tip of his co*ck. Nate’s body clenches violently around it, and it feels so good, that blunt, thick, unyielding pressure. He groans, shuddering with the urge to move. A second later, Hanco*ck grunts, “Yeah, like that,” and Nate can feel the spurts of come filling him, slick and hot.

The burning sensation inside of him only really registers when Hanco*ck drops onto his back with a happy grunt, leaving Nate empty. It’s the sudden, unprepared stretch, but also something else, the tickle of rads, unnaturally warm even as the slickness inside of him cools. Against all rational thought, he enjoys the sensation. He lies there, listening to his own quick, shallow breaths, and trying to wrap his head around what just happened.

After minutes of silence, he hears himself laugh. It sounds like another man, someone without a past, without a care. Someone slightly drunk on his own freedom.

“Get some sleep,” Hanco*ck orders, already sounding half gone, and Nate obeys.

*

In the morning, he doesn’t feel great. It might be regret, and the clench of nerves at having to deal with what he’s done in the light of day, but there’s something else as well, a queasy headache that he recognizes after a moment as radiation sickness.

Hanco*ck is faster getting up, since he doesn’t have so many clothes to put on, and while Nate is still struggling into his vault suit, the ghoul goes through their pack and pulls out a pill bottle, tossing it into Nate’s lap.

“Forgot about these last night,” Hanco*ck says. “If you’re gonna let me f*ck you, you’re gonna need them.”

It’s Rad-X, which isn’t really going to do much good now, what he really needs is a RadAway treatment to scrub his blood clean of the rads he’s already soaked up, but Nate swallows one of the pills anyways.

Hanco*ck leaves the room before him, and is already talking to the lady who runs the store when Nate enters Bunker Hill’s common area. Nate stops at the entrance, feeling as if there’s an invisible barrier in front of him. There aren’t that many people around, it’s either too late or too early, but it feels like everyone there will know what he is as soon as they look at him.

Then Hanco*ck spots him and points to a table. A few people notice, but their looks are quick, wastelanders assessing a stranger and dismissing them as no immediate threat. The same way anyone looks at anyone here. Would it actually make a difference to them if they knew? Maybe times have changed so much that people have stopped caring.

He crosses the room, and the only thing that happens is that almost as soon as Nate sits down at the table, the same kid who served them last night comes up to him with two steaming cups and a bowl. It’s razorgrain porridge and some sort of tea, nothing special but just the right kind of bland for Nate’s radiation hangover.

He spoons it up slowly. After a while, Hanco*ck returns from the store counter with something long wrapped in frayed cloth. It sounds heavy as he puts it down on the table and slides it over to Nate. “Here,” he says. “Lil’ something for ya.”

Nate looks from the cloth to Hanco*ck, and puts down his spoon. “For me?”

The ghoul shrugs. “Saw you whacking those ferals with your little stick, and I thought that man needs a weapon to match those skills.”

Curious, Nate lifts the cloth. At first it doesn’t look like much, a makeshift leather scabbard, with straps to tie it to a belt or harness, but when Nate pulls out the weapon inside, it’s a long, elegant blade of sharp-edge stainless steel. He breathes a note of surprise when he recognizes the make. “That’s a Chinese sword.”

“Is it?”

He nods, lifting it. For it’s length, it’s relatively light, and although Nate is no expert, he can tell it’s well-balanced. It has a lot more reach than the baton, and it’s going to go through ferals like butter. “I’ve seen a few of these in the war. The reds had them - only the officers, of course.”

“Huh, so it’s true.”

Nate looks up from the sword. “What is?”

Hanco*ck quirks his hairless brows. “Heard a rumour that nice smooth skin of yours isn’t just because you’re a vaultie. Word on the street is, you’re the genuine vintage model. Pre-war.”

It’s not exactly a secret - Nate gave that interview to the reporter in Diamond City, mostly because he didn’t really think anyone read her newspaper, and Nick knows about his story, too. Nate shrugs. “Yeah. Everyone in the vault was frozen. I’m the only one who made it out alive.” He returns his attention to the sword, not wanting to talk about the vault and what’s in it and the lie he just told. Shaun might as well be dead.“Are you sure you don’t want this for yourself? It’d go well with your outfit.”

Hanco*ck shakes his head, a gleam in his eye. “Gonna look good on you, too.”

The way Hanco*ck leers at him, right here in public, the way he just said that, is so obviously sexual that it quickens Nate’s pulse.There’s a flash of heat under his skin, not a blush but a thrill at how little Hanco*ck cares that they’re not alone. How little Nate cares, when he’s entirely honest with himself.

“Thanks,” he says.

What does he have to lose? This is it, the ugly, reckless, Commonwealth version of freedom.

“I’ll earn it,” he adds, and he manages to return Hanco*ck’s gaze, to look him straight in the eyes.

"Lookin' forward to it," Hanco*ck says, a sharp, possessive grin on his face.

Chapter 5: A Place You've Never Been

Chapter Text

The radstorm that passed through in the night has left behind a big, blue Indian summer sky. It’s windy, the air just cold enough to be bracing, and it’s surprisingly easy to forget all the dangers lurking in the Boston ruins and pretend that they’re just taking a sunday stroll. He doesn’t ask Hanco*ck where they’re headed next. They cross the Mystic, following a road that parallels Skyway 1, leaving behind Boston and passing through an area with fewer ruins and thus relatively little trouble. To the west, sparse forest covers the hills, a quiet, forlorn wilderness. Only a few wild mutts cross their path, unwisely choosing to attack, and Nate skewers one of the mangy creatures with his new sword while Hanco*ck chases the rest of the pack off with a blast from his shotgun. Dogs are good eating, so Nate ties the animal’s legs together with some leather straps and throws it over his shoulder, adding to the weight of the backpack before they go on.

It’s easy to let his mind wander on a day like this, and for once the thing it keeps coming back to is not so harrowing that Nate needs to push it away with everything he has. When he thinks about the night before his skin prickles and his pulse picks up and the load on his back grows light. The cracked road under his soles no longer feels solid. He remembers this feeling. He felt that way the day after he met Nora, when he carried her phone number in his pocket and kept going over every detail of their conversation, how she had come up to him at the bar, the only person in that place not staring at his buzz cut with hostility and suspicion, how she’d talked to him about the music instead of the war, her smiles a silent, knowing welcome, as if he belonged there, among the grad students and beatniks.

As if she knew, from the moment she saw him, trying to lose himself in that place, that underneath the dog tags on his chest beat a heart full of twisted, jagged edges.

This isn’t a romance. He’s not falling in love. But he sneaks a look at Hanco*ck now and then and feels a shiver of anticipation at what might be in store for him.

Late in the afternoon they pass by an old ironworks factory which forms a looming dark outline of smokestacks and furnaces against the reddening sky. There’s movement on the walkways around the factory, and Nate watches the small figures move for a moment until he’s certain it’s wearing power armor before pointing them out to Hanco*ck. “Any chance these are friendlies?”

The ghoul responds with a soft snarl of contempt. “f*ck, no,” he grunts. “See the flamer that one’s carrying? Bastards call themselves Forged. Fahrenheit used to run with them before she saw the light. Says their leader’s a special kind of maniac. Word is, they’ve been recruiting.”

The place looks like a death trap, and if the gang that inhabits it is as bad as Hanco*ck makes it sound, paying them a visit sounds like exactly the sort of insane thing Hanco*ck would be up to, so Nate is only half-joking when he asks, “Are we here to say hello?”

But the mayor turns on his heels, facing Nate with a dangerous glint in his ghoul eyes. “What if I said yes?”

Nate has been given orders this bad. The meat grinder battles of the Easter Offensive in 2075, crossing the Bering ice shelf during Operation Diomede. But with a hundred men jumping from a helicarrier in power armor, you could always tell yourself that it wouldn’t be you.

He thinks of the sword Hanco*ck gave him. The Chinese would use them in close combat sometimes, mad as devils, going up even against men in power armor. They usually lost.

“Are you?” he asks Hanco*ck doubtfully.

The moment before Hanco*ck answers him stretches long and tense. Then he says, “Maybe not tonight.”

Nate isn’t sure what his answer would have been, if Hanco*ck had said yes.

The sun has set behind the hills to the west by the time they reach the low concrete building that appears to be their destination. Behind it, there’s a large outdoor pool, half-filled with water that shimmers in the lights from the building, and other than an ancient chainlink fence around the pool, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of defences, not even a guard at the door.

There are voices coming from inside, low but animate, conversation occasional punctuated by soft laughter, and Hanco*ck pauses for a moment outside, listening with a faint smile. It’s an expression Nate hasn’t seen on his face before, tender and pensive and almost a little reluctant. He wonders who these people are to him.

Family, he thinks when they cross the threshold, because the small group of people inside the building turns out to be comprised exclusively of ghouls - men and women in simple, dirty clothing, some of them even barefoot. The only weapon Nate sees anywhere is an ancient looking hunting rifle one of the women instinctively reaches for, startled by their sudden intrusion. Otherwise, there are only farming tools - rakes and shovels and shears, and a great number of woven baskets and shelves full off glass jars filled with something dark. Four of the ghouls are sitting at a low table in ancient pool chairs, playing a game of cards, one is busy with a large pewter kettle over the cooking station, two others are weaving baskets out of a strange plant that vaguely resembles seagrass. They’re farmers, the sort of simple folk Preston would try to recruit as Minutemen if he were here, except they’re all ghouls.

The ghoul lady who reached for the rifle aborts his movement as soon as she recognizes Hanco*ck. “Well, I’ll be,” she says, putting her hands to her hips. “Did they finally throw you out of that thieves’ nest, Johnny?”

“Still mayor of the place, Deidre,” Hanco*ck grins. “Just taking a little holiday.”

The other ghouls come over as well. Not all of them seem as familiar with Hanco*ck, and a few are introduced to him by Deidre, who says, “This rabble-rouser here calls himself Hanco*ck these days, you’ve probably heard of him.”

One of the last to greet Hanco*ck is an ageless, lanky ghoul in a check shirt, who squeezes Hanco*ck’s arm, gives him a long, searching look, and then nods. “Good to see you,” he says.

A brother? His father maybe? Nate wonders. It’s hard to tell, because Hanco*ck’s response is unusually subdued. “Same to you, Wiseman.”

Wiseman is the first to give Nate more than a passing glance. “Welcome to the Slog,” he says and offers his hand to shake. Not many people do so anymore, but to Nate returning the handshake is instinct, and he only realizes the significance of the gesture when Wiseman gives him a small, appreciative smile. There are probably folks who wouldn’t touch a ghoul.

Nate, of course, isn’t one of them. Not after last night.

“Nathan Hale,” he says, going for his full name because he’s got the distinct feeling he’s talking to someone a good deal older than himself.

“Wiseman,” the ghoul replies. His gaze travels over Nate’s armor and weapons, the heavy pack on his back, the mutt carcass. “What brings you to our little settlement, Mr Hale?”

While Nate still searches for a polite way to explain the deal he and Hanco*ck have going, the mayor simply says, “He works for me.”

Wiseman gaze wanders between him and Hanco*ck, but he doesn’t ask any further questions, just nods. “Nice to meet you, then.”

They’re offered seats, food and and cups of an odd, fermented brew that tastes a little like cider with an undertone of swamp. He sips it cautiously, trying to get used to the unusual aroma, while Hanco*ck is quizzed by Deirdre and Wiseman about a number of mutual acquaintances, most of whom Nate doesn’t know. In turn, they tell him about life on the farm, about crops and trade, minor troubles with raiders and mutants they’ve had, just normal, unexciting stuff. Hanco*ck claims to be bored by it, repeatedly telling them they’re missing out, expressing his disbelief that they aren’t tired of farming yet. Watching him, however, Nate has the distinct impression that it’s all a show: Hanco*ck is happy to listen to them, paying attention even to the trivial minutiae of tarberry harvesting.

It’s not yet ten pm when the Slog residents begin excuse themselves, heading to their beds. “It’s harvesting season,” Wiseman tells them by way of apology, “we’ll be up before the break of dawn.”

He shows them a little nook in one of the former locker rooms with a bed, a lamp and some blankets. “Traders don’t come by here often, we try to make them as comfortable as we can,” he says. “There’s only the one bed, but I can get you some tarberry straw for the floor.”

“Won’t be necessary,” Hanco*ck says casually before Nate can reply. He freezes like a deer in the headlights when Wiseman gives him a look - it’s hard to tell if he’s raising his brows, but he clearly knows what Hanco*ck means.

“Sure,” he says after beat, and bids them good night. Nate doesn’t manage to answer.

Only when Wiseman is gone does he face Hanco*ck, who is giving him a low-lidded, slightly amused look. Then he jerks his chin at the ragged curtain that serves as a door. “He’s gonna know anyway.”

Nate exhales, trying and failing to calm down. He’s angry, but only on the surface. It’s clear that Hanco*ck crossed this line on purpose, that he wants to offend, to see Nate’s reaction. And through the clinging material of the vault suit, his reaction is pretty obvious. He tries to cover it by turning away, pretending to explore the room, but his movements are still stiff with the same heady mix of embarrassment and arousal.

At the end of the locker room, there’s another open door leading to a communal shower. The tiles are cracked in places, but the place is clean. On a whim, Nate turns one of the faucets, and jumps back in surprise when water sprays down from the shower head. It looks clean enough, and the stream remains steady, as if there’s a working pump somewhere in the building.

Hanco*ck’s voice behind him makes him jump again. “Go on,” the ghoul says. “I’m sure they won’t mind you making use of this f*cking miracle.”

It is a miracle, in this modern world. Nate waits for Hanco*ck to give him some space, or get out of his own clothes to join him, but Hanco*ck does neither, leaning against the door, arms crossed, a smug look on his face. It’s clear he intends to watch.

Nate stares at him for a moment before slowly beginning to unbuckle his armor, pip boy and belt, and stripping out of his boots and the suit and finally his underwear. By then, he’s half-hard because Hanco*ck’s gaze has turned narrow and dark with hunger, watching his every movement. The coil of anger at the liberties Hanco*ck just took with his most well-guarded secret remains, but it only adds fuel to the fire.

And Hanco*ck knows it. He clearly knows it, and he stokes it with yet another provocation. “I could sell f*cking tickets,” he murmurs under his breath when Nate is fully naked. “Make a fortune that way.”

Nate declines to comment. He’s sure Hanco*ck is just playing with him. The expression on the ghoul’s face is just short of gloating, deeply focused, not like he’s planning to share this with anyone.

The water starts off ice cold, immediately chasing away Nate’s arousal, and he has to clench his teeth and hunch his shoulders against the urge to jump out of the way. But as he rubs the soap into his hair it gradually turns warmer. A true miracle in this day and age, and one that seduces a surprised moan of gratitude out of him as he takes his first real shower in more than six months.

For a moment, he’s so inundated in pleasure that he forgets the tension between them. Eyes closed, he says, “Are you sure you don’t want to join me?”

“I’m good,” Hanco*ck says. “Enjoying the show.”

Nate isn’t actively putting on a show, but he finds that there’s no need. He and Nora shared showers sometimes, but she never watched him like this, and under the prurient gaze of his audience, every act becomes sensuous, whether he bends forward to rinse his hair or runs his hands over his chest and sides to spread the soap lather, or reaches down between his legs to wash his privates, slowly, taking his time as ordered, resisting the urge to hurry.

By the time the water runs cold again and he turns it off, Nate is fully hard once more, and his skin is so flushed he doesn’t even feel the cool of the air. He just stands there, dripping, as Hanco*ck prowls closer and finally touches him, wrapping his hand around Nate’s erection and crowding him against the tiled wall. His touch is firm, almost rough, as possessive as the look on his face. His face, which is only inches from Nate’s, the scars and ravages of clearly visible, and Nate realizes that Hanco*ck is watching him for a sign of revulsion, gripping him so tightly to test if his erection flags at the sight of him.

It’s a test he’s passing with flying colors. He comes before the water has had a chance to dry on his skin, comes the sound of his own grunts, echoing softly from the tiled shower walls, thinking about the fact that none of the rooms in the buildings have doors, only ragged curtains for a little privacy. Even if Hanco*ck hadn’t given it away, anyone walking by their room is going to know what they’re doing. He bites his lips, trying to keep quiet, and finally lets his head drop back against the shower wall, spending himself into Hanco*ck’s hand.

As he catches his breath, trying to come down from the rush, Hanco*ck calmly wipes his hand on Nate’s wet thigh, a gesture so rude and filthy it makes Nate’s co*ck twitch even though he just came. It doesn’t go unnoticed. “Ya know,” the ghoul says with a rough, low laugh, “I’m impressed. Didn’t think a nice clean pre-war lad like you could be into this.”

“This?” Nate pants.

“Kinky sh*t,” Hanco*ck says as he steps back. Nate follows instinctively, as if pulled on a string, out of the showers and back to the bed, where Hanco*ck tosses aside the blankets and pushes him down onto the matress, crawling after him, one hand buried in Nate’s wet hair, yanking back his head to scrape his teeth along Nate’s throat, “you’re a filthy ghoul-f*cker, aren’t ya?”

He only groans in reply, pushing up his hips, and Hanco*ck slides a hand underneath his ass, squeezing tightly. “This turns ya on. Being told what to do, like I own ya.”

It doesn’t. It never used to. Nate never liked being ordered around, it always rubbed him the wrong way except now, here, it drives him crazy. Hanco*ck is right, he loves it. “Please,” he says in a ragged moan. “I - “

Hanco*ck hums against his jaw. “Shh, I got ya. Been there, brother. Here, don’t forget these.”

Nate feels him push something against his lips and does as he’s told, swallowing, the familiar chalky taste of rad-X on his tongue. This means he’s going to get f*cked, he knows. Finally. He tries to help as Hanco*ck takes off his coat and sash, but the ghoul brushes away his fumbling hands, clicking his tongue. “Turn around.”

Time seems to come to a halt as he kneels on the bed, naked, not sure what Hanco*ck is doing, what is going to happen next, as exposed as he’s ever been in his life. He recalls what it felt to have that hard, blunt co*ck nudge into his body, and the anticipation makes him shudder, dropping his head down onto his arms.

Hanco*ck clearly knows what he’s doing, and he’s prepared. He gives Nate his fingers first, coated in something slippery that makes it much easier to breach the tight, clenching muscles and open him up before he aligns his dick with Nate’s now slick and sensitive hole. The pain is still there, and it mounts as he pushes in deeper and deeper. Nate needs to bite the blanket to keep from crying out, and then to stifle his moans as he begins to rock back against the thrusts, wishing it would never stop, wishing that he could take more and more of it, wanting nothing but this.

Above him, Hanco*ck seems a lot less concerned with making noise that others might hear, making low, pleased noises as he buries himself in Nate, telling him how tight he his, how good he looks, how much he wants it, and then a loud, animal growl as he comes.

Afterwards, Nate lies on his belly, Hanco*ck draped against his side, and tries to comes to terms with the new, unexpected sensation of still being loose and open. He wonders how long it’ll last, if he’ll still feel that way tomorrow, when he has to get up and face other people who have probably heard him get f*cked. He can fee the tickle of rads inside him where Hanco*ck shot his load, like a soft brand, only slightly dulled by the meds.

His face buried against the crook of his arm, he asks, “You do this often?”

“Gotta be a bit more specific there,” Hanco*ck rumbles. “Great sex? Yeah, as often as possible. If you mean mixing business and pleasure, that’s another story - I don’t usually f*ck people who owe me, but you seem to be into it.”

That wasn’t what Nate wanted to know. He’s silent for a moment, then he tries a different tack.

“Wiseman and the others. Are they your family?”

“Cause they’re ghouls? Nah.” Hanco*ck moves up the bed, sitting up a little, and reaches for his coat. He’s taken it off and tossed it on the floor, along with his boots. The hat dangles from the bed’s metal frame, along with the sash. Everything else he hasn’t taken off, and it’s now in various states of dishevelment. His trousers are unbuttoned and riding very low on his narrow hips, and he’s clearly not wearing any underwear. After a moment of rifling through the pockets of his coat, he pulls out a cloth wrapped bundle of cigarettes and a lighter. They’re hand-rolled, and the scent that curls in the air when he lights one of them is familiar and strange at the same time, like weed but with a sharper sting and murkier undertone to it.

“Doesn’t work that way,” Hanco*ck explains, waving the joint vaguely in the direction of his now flaccid dick. “The rads f*ck up your junk - it still works fine for the fun stuff, but us ghouls can’t breed. Wiseman and his crew, they’re just folk I know. Old friends.”

The mayor pauses there, as if he’s not going to delve deeper into his personal life, and why would he? They’ve only known each other for a few days, and just because they’re f*cking, just because Nate is losing himself fast in this, doesn’t mean Hanco*ck feels the same.

But then the ghoul runs his hand over Nate’s naked back, letting it rest between his shoulders. He’s giving off unnatural heat, making it almost comfortable without a blanket even in the cool October night. The weight of his hand feels good, a silent steadying anchor. It feels like an answer to Nate’s doubts about how much this means to Hanco*ck, like he’s staking a claim, and Nate is quietly shocked at how much that pleases him.

“They’re from Diamond City. Like me.”

“I thought ghouls weren’t allowed in Diamond City.”

“Back when I grew up, things weren’t like that in the old green jewel. I mean, I wasn’t a ghoul yet, so I don’t know all of the sh*t that went on, but it was mostly peaceful. Ghouls and normal folks living side by side. I had my issues with the place, never a big fan of living on the straight and narrow, but it wasn’t so bad back then.”

Hanco*ck takes a deep drag from the joint, exhaling slowly, his gaze lost somewhere in the smoke. His voice, when he continues to speak, is edged with bitterness, a surprising counterpoint to his relaxed body.

“It was that dirtbag McDonough who ruined it. Campaigned on a platform of hatin’ anyone different. From one day to the next, everyone’s parroting his talk about ghouls not being human. Hissing at them in the street. Throwing rocks. Lightin their houses on fire. Ordinary folks murdering their neighbours. Hard to imagine, huh, if you visit the place now. No one talks about it anymore.”

It’s the first time Nate has heard about it, but it doesn’t surprise him that much. “As far as I know, that’s how the war started. The people on top looking for a scapegoat, and finding the reds.”

Hanco*ck grunts softly. “Huh, yeah. Never thought of that.”

“How did your friends get out?”

“Wiseman didn’t get his name for nothing. Packed his things before the real ugliness started. I helped him and some others get by during the early days, when they were hiding in the ruins - shoulda done more than that, helped more people, but instead I ran away and buried myself in chems until I ended up looking like this.”

There’s a lot of emotion wrapped around Hanco*ck’s voice, anger and shame and old, unhealed wounds. Nate remembers the expression on his face just before they entered the Slog, the softness in his smile, the way Wiseman touched Hanco*ck’s arm, the way Deirdre called him Johnny. They may not be his family by blood, but they’re probably the closest thing he has.

“Do they know you’re…” Nate tries to find a non-insulting word for what they are, but after a moment, Hanco*ck laughs. He swallows some of the smoke, coughs, and stubs out the rest of his joint against the metal bedframe.

“Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago. I got thrown in jail a few times as kid for turning tricks for chem money… and to get my kicks scandalizing the straights. Not even Nicky could keep me out of trouble. If I hadn’t left when they turned on the ghouls, I’d have been thrown out sooner or later. And now that I’m mayor of Goodneighbor, I’ve got no reason to hide it.”

Nate huffs a laugh. “Politics sure have changed since my time if that’s not an issue.”

“Wasn’t always like that. Before I put on the hat, that place was a sh*thole. The bosses ruling it used the drifters and whor*s, treated them like cattle. Acted like they were better than us, like the city wasn’t built on the backs of freaks. Anyone who tried to act up was beaten or chased out of town or worse. Wasn’t an easy life back then, if you tried to get by without stepping on someone weaker than you. I only stuck around for the chems and because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Then one day it got too much. Saw something that made me realize I couldn’t live with myself if I just kept on turning away.”

The strange thing is, Nate knows exactly what Hanco*ck means. He had dozens of days like that, a legion of moments where he saw the truth. At the front, in the barracks. In the perfectly clean streets of Boston, seeing the world fall apart while the radios still blared patriotic jingles about the greatest country in the world. And he still got up the next day, still went on with his life, because there just wasn’t anything you could do about it.

Because he wasn’t the right person to do it. Just an ordinary joe, or worse, a guy desperately pretending to be that. Not like Hanco*ck.

“You fought back.”

Hanco*ck laughs, a bitter, reedy sound like the rattling of dry leaves in the trees. “Nah. I did what I usually did back then. Crawled up my own ass. Thought maybe it’d be better to blast my brains with chems until I didn’t care anymore. Thing is, I nearly succeeded. Woke up looking like this, and there right in front of me was the coat of John Hanco*ck and it spoke to me. I looked at it and I knew. That’s what this place needs. A revolution. So I put it on and went outside and told all the other beaten down drifters that it didn’t have to be that way. That it was our city, and f*ck the bosses.”

He pauses, and Nate feels the tension in him subside a little. “Didn’t intend for it to be a take-over, you know. Scared the sh*t outta me the first time someone called me boss. But I know it only works because folks know I’m no better than them.”

He might be underestimating himself there, Nate thinks. He has never met anyone quite like this man. It’s not the costume that makes him so impressive, he thinks, or his quick wit, but the fact that he fought back and won and knows it, that he’s doing what he believes in.

All the things Nate never did, never knew how to do.

*

Early in the morning, they’re woken up by the sounds of people moving about and starting their day, their sounds only slightly dulled by the curtain. Nate thinks about slipping out of bed and putting on his clothes to look presentable in case anyone comes in, but instead he lies there, his head buzzing with other possibilites, until he’s certain that Hanco*ck is also awake. When the ghoul begins petting him lazily, his hand dipping low, into the hollow of Nate’s back, just above the swell of his ass, he shifts up the bed, allowing Hanco*ck’s hand to slip lower, and breathes into the pillow, “Yes.”

Hanco*ck reaches up and cards his hand through Nate’s hair, which is in tangles from going to bed without drying it, and tugs at it, making him show his face. “Can’t get enough, huh,” he says, and when Nate fails to answer, he laughs and pushes him gently down against the pillow again with a murmured, “yeah, I’ve got your number.”

Nate is still loose, his body remembering the night before. He’s also still tender, and the drier, rougher sensation as Hanco*ck enters him from behind hits him hard, as does the slow, languid way Hanco*ck grinds into him. He gets hard, but he doesn’t touch himself, doesn’t quite try to get off, just rides that edge until Hanco*ck finishes inside him with a satisfied groan, rolling onto his back.

“I’ll do ya later,” he mumbles. “‘s way too early.”

It is early, but unlike Hanco*ck, Nate isn’t a big fan of lazing in bed once he’s awake. He lets Hanco*ck curl into the blanket and pads into the shower where he left his clothes. After getting cleaned up and dressed, he hovers for a moment, but waiting until Hanco*ck gets up will be like pulling a band-aid off slowly. Better to get it over with.

Hanco*ck may be secure in the fact that his reputation precedes him, but Nate ducks out of their room unsure what sort of reaction he’ll get from the locals. The first person he runs into is Wiseman, who seems to be working on some sort of ledger in the common area, tallying up their baskets of tarberries.

“Morning,” Nate says, trying to keep his voice even.

“Good morning.” The look Wiseman gives him is perfectly inscrutable. “An early riser, eh? Not what I’d expect from a friend of John’s.”

“I try to stay away from the mentats.”

“Hmm. Good. John’s done well for himself, but a lot of others wouldn’t have, living that way. You’re probably best off pacing yourself a little.”

Paranoid, Nate wonders if that’s a veiled comment at the other sort of vices he and Hanco*ck have been indulging in, but if anything, Wiseman sounds pleased at Nate’s sensible choices. He asks Nate if he wants to join the others in their berry harvest, and Nate, recognizing the offer as the silent gesture of acceptance it is, says yes.

Once he joins the other ghouls in the pool, wading and diving between the fronds and roots of the strange plants, following the instructions they give him, the tension gradually eases, until he is certain that whether they know or not, they’re too polite to mention anything.

After a while, he feels bold enough to start an actual conversation and asks Deirdre about their prep for winter.

“The harvest was good. Stores are full, so we don’t have to worry about starving - not that we’d be in much danger of that anyway,” she adds with a rasping chuckle.

“Only trouble we’ve got is those Forged,” Jones grumbles. “Getting shaken down by raiders now and then, that’s one thing, but they’ll torch you as soon as take your caps.”

“I noticed you don’t have a lot of defenses,” Nate says.

“Don’t need them, usually,” Deirdre shrugs. “Us being ghouls keeps away a lot of the usual trouble. But Jones is right about the Forged. I’ve heard they even brand their own members, and worse.”

Nate knows he shouldn’t say things that might be interpreted as promises, not with the way he has failed to keep them so far, but he can’t help it. Nate can’t imagine Preston saying no, especially not if he could come here and meet them. Maybe next year, in spring… “Have you thought about making alliances with other farmers? Something like the Minutemen?”

“Not everyone’s as ghoulblind as you are, honey,” Deirdre sighs.

Jones scoffs. “Yeah, I doubt the Minutemen would wanna get in bed with us. But then, we can’t all be the richest ghoul in the Commonwealth, can we?” With that and a slightly dirty look, he wades off, to the other section of the pool.

That appears to be all the scorn he’s going to get from these people. Deirdre only clears her throat, shakes her head, and goes on picking berries, and Nate, after a stunned minute, follows her lead.

He doesn’t last as long in the cold water as the others. After an hour, his teeth start to chatter. Wiseman, walking by the pool, seems to notice his discomfort, and takes mercy on him.

“I’ve got something for you, if you have a moment.”

What Wiseman wants to give him, once they’re back inside and Nate has gratefully dried off with an ancient, ragged towel, is an ancient, dusty book. It’s tied up with a piece of string so the pages can’t fall open, and the letters on the spine have long since faded.

“I don’t know you, son, but I like you. Not many folks can look past appearances that easily, and the one’s John usually runs with are… let’s say you seem a little different,” Wiseman says before he hands him the book. “I’d give this to John to deliver, but he’s gonna run his mouth and I’d like to keep this between me and the lady. You know Daisy?”

At first, Nate draws a blank, but then he remembers that her name fell in the conversation last night and he manages to place it. “The trader? From Daisy’s Discounts?”

Wiseman nods. He hands Nate the book with a laconic smile. “Tell her I said hello.”

*

It’s the early afternoon when Hanco*ck finally strolls out, still looking a little rumpled. He sits glumly by the pool for a while, squinting at the bright sunlight, but with each mentat he brightens visibly.

He’s tapping his foot by time Nate sits down in the pool chair next to him.

“About those raiders in the factory,” he begins.

The ghoul co*cks his head. “Yeah?”

“How much of a chance do you figure we stand against them?”

“You and me? Pretty decent, from what I’ve seen. Fahrenheit’s told me about a few of their secrets. We could get the drop on them.” A slow grin spreads on Hanco*ck’s face as he says this. “What changed your mind?”

Nate looks at the pool, glittering in the afternoon sunlight. The settlers at their work. Deirdre and Jones, arguing softly over the baskets of berries. Wiseman, teaching some of the newer members of the Slog how to boil the berries to make preserves.

“This place,” he says. “It reminds me of home.”

He’s never truly had a home. Not just a sanctuary, away from the storm, he and Nora and their silent understanding of all the things wrong with the world, clinging to each other to escape it for while. These people are building something together. A future. It's strange, to be reminded of a place where you've never been, but that's what this feels like.

“Just say the word,” he tells Hanco*ck. “And I’ll follow.”

Chapter 6: Fury

Chapter Text

The weather is in their favour in a way that almost feels like kismet. When they set out, it’s still bright and clear, allowing for perfect sight as they circle the ironworks, using the forest as cover. Even at a distance, they pick off Forged one by one. The first one drops without any of the other raiders even noticing, but the second one has time to shout for help, and more of them appear on the roof and in the yard, swarming like angry hornets.

“Idiots,” Nate says under his breath, lining up another shot. “This place is a fortress, they’ve got cover everywhere, what the hell are they doing?”

“Raider gangs don’t pick ‘em for their brains,” Hanco*ck shrugs. He’s on his third mentat, his hands steady as steel, and with the hunting rifle borrowed from the Slog he takes a shot that looks offhand but finds its target with deadly precision. A head explodes in a smear of red, and Hanco*ck cackles in triumph before slinging the gun over his shoulder and hurrying on to the next big rock offering cover.

It takes almost five minutes for the Forged to change their tactics, which costs six more of them their lives. Then the factory grounds grow quiet, and the only moving target Nate sees is the hulking shape of a power armor on the roof. Hanco*ck aims towards it when he sees it, but Nate puts a hand on the rifle’s barrel, shaking his head. “That’s a T-51. At this range, all you’re going to do is give away our position, and I bet he’s got a fat man or something similarly nasty.”

“You know your stuff.”

“Infantry,” Nate says, and at Hanco*ck’s blank look, clarifies, “I was in the army, back in the war. Used those things myself.”

Hanco*ck looks more amused than impressed, but after a moment of taking Nate in thoughtfully, he says, “Let’s hear it, then, soldier boy. You’re in charge. How do we do this?”

It’s clear that he’s not taking this as seriously as he maybe should, that he wants a show more than he wants Nate’s expertise, but they’re in combat now, and it’s easier to pretend that he’s leading a unit than to figure out this strange, shifting dynamic between them. Nate decides to fall back a little, and to circle further around the ironworks until he feels safe enough to hunker down.

“Tell me everything you know about the place. You said your bodyguard worked for them?”

“Couple of years back, yeah, when they first showed up in the Commonwealth. She was just a kid then and you know how it is - playing with fire sounded like a good idea. But Fahrenheit’s too clever for this sh*t. Said it was a choice between getting out or staging a coup against their leader, but the sh*theads who went through with the trials weren’t worth leading.”

“Trials?”

“Their boss is some maniac who calls himself Slag, not from around here, thinks he’s going to conquer the ‘wealth or something. Makes his recruits prove themselves with these seriously messed-up trials, like burning off their own fingers or ears and sh*t, kidnapping people and throwing them into the furnaces - you get the theme.”

Nate winces. “Why would anyone…”

“Beats me. But there’s always been idiots - or was it any different before the war?”

His first reaction is an emphatic yes, because this is just another example of how the world’s gone crazy, but then he thinks about boot camp, about the stories Nora has told him about the sort of sh*t some of her fellow grads put up with just to get into prestigious law firms, about the things people put up with in job interviews for jobs they didn’t even want.

“It usually didn’t involve literal self-mutilation, but maybe that just means more smart people fell for it.”

He shakes his head, trying not to let Hanco*ck distract him from the task at hand. He asks more questions: how many of them are there, what sort of weapons have they got, what’s inside the ironworks, how many points of entrance are there. This last proves the most useful, as Hanco*ck, after a moment of hazy recollection, tells him that there’s probably a pipe leading up to the roof that is climbable if you’re dexterous enough, which would allow them direct access to the blast furnace where Slag tends to hole up.

Climbing a pipe seems like a bad idea. Even at night it’s going to be very visible, but as Nate watches the factory thoughtfully, he sees a heavy bank of clouds drawing in from the east, swallowing the afternoon light under a shroud of darkness and rain.

The weather is in their favor.

“Let’s get into position,” he says. “We wait till the storm hits, then we move up the pipe. I’ll try to get the drop on the guy in the armor, you cover me. If we take him down without damaging the armor too much, it’ll be a huge asset. Then we pick them off one by one as they come to the roof - or if they haven’t noticed us by then, we go in and strike them from the back. Remember to stay on the move once we get close - flamers are nasty, but they don’t handle like a shotgun, so you’ve got the advantage as long as they can’t corner you.”

“Heard that before from Fahrenheit,” Hanco*ck says. “You survive this, she’ll love hearing about it. Might even forgive you for making her stay in bed for months.”

Fahrenheit’s opinion of him isn’t very high on Nate’s list of priorities, but it’s true that he isn’t doing this entirely out of altruism. It’ll help the people at the Slog, and that’s his main reason for even considering this Hail Mary of a mission, but ever since Hanco*ck looked so pleased when Nate changed his mind, the thought that this will impress the mayor hasn’t left his mind. It’s a matter of survival, he tells himself - the more Hanco*ck appreciates his service, the easier it’ll make things for the Sanctuary settlers, once they get to Goodneighbor.

Hanco*ck pats down his coat until he finds what he’s looking for - a loaded syringe. “Only one dose,” he says, “but this’ll go a long way to making this crazy plan of yours work.”

“Psycho?” Nate asks, frowning in distaste.

“The brainy version of it with some mentats in the mix. Won’t turn you quite a deadly, but the upside is you stay smart.” Hanco*ck gives him a thin, hard smile. “It’s gonna f*ck you up just as badly, though.”

They used to hand out psycho before the worst missions during the big offensives, then later made you flush it from your system with addictol until the next time they needed a platoon to walk straight into a killing field. The addictol was the worst part of it, because after a few rounds of lather, rinse, repeat it hollowed you out to the bone. You could refuse the chems entirely, of course. That’s why Nate went through most of the war horrendously sober and sane.

But an hour later they’ve found a pipe that looks like the one Fahrenheit told Hanco*ck about, and the clouds have rolled in with a rumble of thunder. As the first fat drops of rain start to fall, Nate leans back against the tree behind which they’re hiding and grits his teeth as Hanco*ck rolls up his sleeve, slaps the soft skin in the crook of his elbow and plunges in the needle, releasing a different kind of storm into his veins.

It takes a moment for the drug to work, and in those few second, Nate shudders, holding his breath, wishing he hadn’t let Hanco*ck do this. Then the heat blooms inside him like a mushroom cloud before the blast wave hits - silent and beautiful, rising higher and higher. It’s a unique feeling, blood lust and cold, rational intensity at the same time, keeping a precarious balance. This is what serial killers must feel like, Nate thinks, and the thought brings a smile like a knife to his lips for no reason at all.

He turns around and gets going. The whipping wind almost plucks him off the pipe a few times, but he climbs quickly and without looking down, only one thing on his mind: he’ll get to the top and then he’ll unleash hell.

Right beneath the edge of the roof he pauses, clinging to the warm metal, waiting for the next flash of lighting, and when it comes, skittering through the clouds, he starts counting the seconds. One, two, three, and the thunder crashes around them as he draws the sword and heaves himself up over the side of the building.

The raider in the power armor isn’t alone. There are two more besides him, a man and a woman, both carrying flamers, their faces black voids - smeared with soot, or perhaps it’s the psycho blotting them out.Behind him, Hanco*ck has dropped onto the roof with the wavering grace of a drunken cat. He puts a hand on the small of Nate’s back. “Go get them,” he says in a rough whisper.

It’s like someone has pulled Nate’s trigger. He draws a deep breath as the next bolt lighting rips through the sky, putting the roof into stark relief, and launches himself into a run. His first strike glances off the raiders armored arm, which he raised at the last second to fend off Nate’s attempt to get at the weak spot where armor meets helmet. Sparks fly as metal shears against metal, and Nate hears a dull shout of surprise from inside the helmet.

The raider’s arm slams into him, the armor giving it enough force to break bones, but Nate doesn’t feel a thing, all the pain and shock subsumed under glorious waves of psycho. He lets himself be pummelled and bounces straight at the raider again, this time using the blade like a club to beat the helmet with all the strength of his chem-fuelled rage. He doesn’t stand a chance of even denting the armor, but that’s not the goal - the noise is so loud that the raider inside sways sideways in a daze.

From the corner of his eye, Nate sees a flamer light up, hears the sound of a gun, but he doesn’t care. He grips the hilt of the blade with both hands and drives the pointy end forward into the raider’s neck, like punching a fork into a tin can. A shout of savage triumph rips through him as he twists the blade around and a spray of blood hits his face.

The raider twitches a few times, lurching forward, and then stills, caught inside the armor like a sarcophagus.

Nate’s chest feels tight as he stands there panting. The coldly rational part of his brain takes stock: some of his ribs are cracked, perhaps even broken. He doesn’t care. He turns his head, and sees that one of the unarmored raiders is already dead, and the other is locked in a dance of flamer and shotgun with Hanco*ck, who is taunting her as if the flames can’t hurt him.

Nate puts his boot against the now still power armor and yanks the sword free. Then he walks towards the fight, drawing a line of blood on the roof with the end of the blade.

*

An hour later, perhaps two, there’s nothing left alive inside the Saugus Ironworks.

Nate’s only measure of time is the fading of the chems. There’s beginning to be a washed out, flickering quality to the night as he finally stumbles out into the factory yard. He takes two, three, four steps out of the roaring heat of the furnaces and into the rain. The water sizzles on the metal of the armor dredging up hazy memories of men cooked inside their own overheated powerarmor, and Nate’s body grows stiff with terror for a second before punches the armor’s switch. It opens up with a steamy hiss, spitting him from its confines.

He slips in the mud in his hurry to get out, almost falling flat onto his face, and has to crouch down, cursing breathlessly as he fights the dizziness.

Behind him, he hears Hanco*ck’s voice, raspier than usual. “Hey, hey, you get fried in that tin can or something?” His hand comes down on Nate’s sweat-soaked head, tousling his hair a little roughly, “You did f*cking great in there. Too bad nothing survived to tell the tale, you’d be a legend after this.”

“Are we clear?” Nate manages to say. He knows the fight is over, the message just hasn’t reached his body yet. “Are you sure - “

“Hell yeah, I’m sure,” Hanco*ck says in a soft, slightly giddy voice. “You were in the zone, brother. Not a big fan of psycho or power armor, but they sure work for you. Come on, let’s - “

Grabbing Hanco*ck’s elbow, Nate pulls himself back to his feet. There’s still some of the psycho left in him, burning low and hot. He’s got a few inches on the ghoul, and he’s dimly aware he must look frighteningly unhinged, not to mention filthy, soot and dried blood smeared on his face. But Hanco*ck’s expression changes quickly from startled to knowing, his eyes narrowing in a smirk. He curls a hand around Nate’s neck, tugging him closer by his collar. “I was going to take you back to the Slog for a celebration,” he purrs, his voice scratching straight down Nate’s spine, “but maybe we need to take that edge of first, hmm?”

Nate can’t answer, because his mind and body are on two different tracks, each falling apart in a different manner. However, it seems Hanco*ck’s question wasn’t really a question. He pushes Nate backwards, until his shoulders hit the corrugated iron wall of one of the makeshift shacks in the factory yard. Nate’s fingers curl at the impact, clawing the rusted material, the psycho raging in protest, demanding he take back control. He manages to stay still, even though Hanco*ck pauses for a moment, clearly giving him a chance to fight back.

The kiss the ghoul claims when he doesn’t push him away is something Nate isn’t prepared for. His only response is a shocked yielding, allowing Hanco*ck to take it from him. It doesn’t feel like any kiss Nate has ever had, smooth and arrogant and demanding, nothing of romance about it. It leaves him stunned, overwhelmed.

The inside of the shack is barely illuminated by the floodlights out in the yard, black shadows yawning in the corner, dimly outlining the few squalid pieces of scavenged furniture. The matress on which Hanco*ck strips him out of his suit smells of mould and old sweat, and it’s scratchy against Nate’s back once he’s naked. The sex that follows is just like that, nasty and rough, the f*cking of two men who have between them killed more than two dozen this night. There’s a moment, as he watches Hanco*ck’s face, the carnal half-grin twisting his ghoulish features as he grinds into Nate, where he thinks that this should be one step too far. If there was a way to cure perversion this should be it, the overdose that either kills him or turns him off this forever. But it is isn’t. Neither is the smug glint of the ghoul’s grin as Nate comes, like he knows exactly the power he has over him, or the minute or so afterwards as Nate’s body slackens into a limp wreck while Hanco*ck continues to rut into him, taking his sweet time before he finishes.

It’s only afterwards, when he comes down from the mindless, hazy rush to find himself resting on Hanco*ck’s chest, his cheek against leathery skin, feeling the soft, rise and fall of Hanco*ck’s bony sternum, his bruises and aches slowly filtering through the fading of the chems that fear seizes him. It’s too close, too tender, almost like an embrace, and the feelings it digs up are more terrifying than anything else that happened tonight. He’s surprised that Hanco*ck even allows it, that he doesn’t push him away to get some space, but it’s probably because the mayor collapsed into a sated stupor within seconds of rolling off him, and hasn’t even noticed.

There’s an unintelligible mumble from Hanco*ck as Nate extricates himself to grope for his gear on the shack’s floor. It takes him a while because his hands are jittery and stiff with panic. But when he has finally found a stimpak and the rad-X and dosed himself, exhaling in relief, he turns around to find that Hanco*ck has rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow, watching.

“If you want me to lay of the kissing, that’s fine. You’re holding up your end of the deal pretty f*cking well as it is.”

It’s strange that Hanco*ck thinks he crossed a line and not the other way round, but maybe that’s not the point of what he’s saying. It’s a reminder of what the line is: they have a deal and even if Hanco*ck seems constitutionally incapable of not mixing business with pleasure, that’s what this is. Business. Nate feels himself relax, leaving only a small twinge of guilt and confusion at what just overcame him.

“It’s fine,” he says, in an even, steady voice, as he puts his clothes back on. “I don’t mind.”

“Ouch,” Hanco*ck chuckles, dropping back onto the bed. “Not exactly the sort of rave review I’m used to. Message received.”

He doesn’t actually sound as if this is going to put a noticeable dent in his massive self-confidence, because a moment later, he tells Nate to get back in bed. Nate follows the order gladly, because he’s drained and starting to feel the cold, and lying down and closing his eyes feels like heaven. He keeps enough distance between them that it doesn’t feel weird and manages to drift off inspite of the strange smells and unfamiliar surroundings.

A few hours later, the urge to piss wakes him up. The grey light of pre-dawn outside is enough to hurt his eyes as he shuffles out of the shack with his boots still untied. He feels strung-out, thirsty and hungover, and badly in need of another bath. As he tucks himself back in, he lets his eyes wander over the factory yard. It’s a morbid view - the power armor hunched a few feet from the open gates of the factory, the bodies flat in the mud and slumped over the edge of the walkways. A scruffy crow sits on the head of one dead raider, pecking at the man’s eyes, and croaks brazenly at Nate, refusing to give up its breakfast.

Just as he ducks back into the shack he hears another noise. There’s a moment of silence, then it repeats - a distant clanging of metal against metal from inside the ironworks. As soon as he’s sure it’s there, Nate slinks back to his stuff, drawing his pistol and picking up the sword, before crouching by the matress. Hanco*ck is asleep in an expansive sprawl, his tricorn on the ground next to him, and for just a moment, Nate hesitates before waking him.

The ghoul doesn’t startle when Nate squeezes his shoulder, only utters a smoky murmur of encouragement.

Nate says his name, low but firm. “There’s something still alive in the factory.”

A groan of protest. Hanco*ck throws his arm over his eyes, shielding them from the grey light. “Sure,” he slurs, waving him off with his other hand. “Go kill it, will ya?”

Nate frowns, weighing his options, and decides that Hanco*ck is no useful backup in this state anyway. He picks up the mayor’s shotgun and drops it next to him. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

In the yard, he checks the armor first, but the fusion core is at 4%. He didn’t even notice how close they cut it the night before, with all the psycho coursing through him. Leaving it behind, he ventures into the ironworks. Much of it is defunct, ancient rusting machinery, but the raiders have generators still going, keeping the lights on as well as some of the furnaces. The heat welling up from the molten ore is much worse without the armor, solid and palpable, reminding Nate of how dry his throat and eyes are.

The clanging repeats. It sounds like someone hitting a metal pipe with a hammer, not rhythmic enough to be malfunctioning machinery. The sound echoes a little in the cavernous manufacturing halls, but it’s still fairly easy to pin-point. It leads Nate to a room he doesn’t remember from last night. The heavy metal door is still closed.

He waits for the span of three heart-beats, then pushes it open, charging in, and comes to a startled halt.

There’s a living person inside, but they’re not a threat. Dangling from heavy metal chains affixed to a hook in the ceiling is a young man, naked from the waist up. His skin, under the filth and blood and heavy burn scars, is a shade darker than Nate’s, though grey with dehydradation, and what remains of his curly hair is singed and patchy. The wiry muscles of his torso and arms are look so taut that Nate winces in sympathy when he imagines the pain he must be in just from hanging there like this. He’s the source of the noise, trying to bang the manacles around his wrist together in a hopeless attempt of escaping.

On the floor at his feet, among dark spatters of blood, there’s a metal poker, and the kid’s naked skin makes it awfully clear for what it was used. There are burns all over him, but the worst is his belly, where someone used the brand to write on him, four jagged letter: WEAK

He grunts in fear when he sees Nate, trying to get away from him.

“They’re dead,” Nate tries to calm him down. “The Forged are history.”

“No, they’re not,” Hanco*ck says. Nate startles and turns around to find the mayor standing in the doorway, still looking grumpy and dissheveled.

“This sucker here’s one of them. A recruit. Aren’t ya?”

The kid barely manages to make a noise, but it’s an affirmative.

“A recruit?” Nate asks, aghast. Then he remembers what Hanco*ck told him the day before about the trials.

Hanco*ck saunters over to them and pokes a finger at the burn sores of the letters, making the young raider convulse in pain. “Didn’t pass, huh?”

The reply is garbled, incomprehensible. Hanco*ck shakes his head. There’s no pity in his expression, no horror at the torture, and Nate’s guts twist for a moment as he wonders if Hanco*ck will kill this man himself or order him to do it. But the ghoul merely gives the raider a loose-wristed, disinterested pat on the cheek before he leaves the room.

“It’s your lucky day, punk. I’m done getting biblical on your asses.”

*

Once he manages to get the young raider down from the chains, Nate searches the rest of the premises. It takes him more than an hour to check every room and all he finds are the dead bodies of the night before, but he can’t stand the idea of any other damned souls being left here to die a slow agonizing death. The upside is that he gathers an impressive amount of valuables, more than he and Hanco*ck will be able to transport to the Slog in one go.

When he returns to the raider, the kid has managed to crawl a few feet away from the torture chamber and lies curled up on the metal grate of the walkway. At second glance, he’s not that young - twenty, perhaps even twenty-five. Old enough to know what he was getting himself into. It’s strange to feel sorry for him, after killing all his compatriots last night, but there it is. Perhaps he’ll have learned his lesson. He’ll have the scars to remind him of them for the rest of his life.

He drags the kid out into the yard where Hanco*ck is sitting on an old shipping container, dangling his feet and nursing a bottle that must have come from the raider’s stash.

“What do we do with him?”

Hanco*ck shrugs. “Send him on his merry way.”

The raider pushes away from Nate, staggering a few steps on his own, and looks back and forth between them before his stare settles on Hanco*ck. “You killed Slag?” he croaks.

“Probably,” Hanco*ck says. “We didn’t exactly ask for names. Was he the big ugly motherf*cker with the tricked-out blade?”

There’s an expression of disbelief on the young man’s face, but then he gradually seems to get it together, looking almost satisfied. He takes a step towards Hanco*ck and Nate tenses, ready to get between them.

But the raider just goes on talking. “You’re… I’ve heard of you. The mayor of Goodneighbor.”

Hanco*ck leans forward. “Don’t push your luck, kid. Yeah, I’m Hanco*ck. Now get out of here.”

The raider shakes his head, then slowly collapses onto his knees. His head sinks forward, defeated. “Take me with you. I’ve got nowhere to go. I’ll do anything.”

With a faint scoff, Hanco*ck hops down from the container, dusting off his coat. “Not interested.” To Nate, he says, “Come on, brother, I’ve seen enough of this sh*thole - let’s go tell Wiseman about the loot and we can be out of here.”

Nate follows him, but after a couple of minutes, he can’t stop himself. “Shouldn’t we do something about him? Take him with us?”

“The little sh*thead wanted to join that circus. He’s got his just desserts.”

“Fahrenheit was one of them, and she changed, didn’t she?”

“So?” Hanco*ck sounds pissed, rounding on Nate with a glare. “I’m not running a raider rehab.”

Nate senses that he’s close to pushing too far, that Hanco*ck is still in a foul morning mood and he’s making demands he doesn’t really have any right to make. But it feels like Hanco*ck isn’t seeing the whole picture here. He doesn’t even know why this suddenly matters to him so much, when until a few days ago, he wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. This has nothing to do with saving the people in Sanctuary and it isn’t about some raider who only has himself to blame for his sh*tty choices. It’s something else, something new.

“I thought we didn’t just risk our lives and murder a bunch of people for fun. Wasn’t making a difference the whole point?”

Hanco*ck goes on walking, as if he hasn’t heard, or rather, doesn’t want to hear, but after a few moments he curses under his breath and stops. “All right,” he says without looking back. “Any trouble this causes down the line is on your head.”

The warmth this brings to Nate’s chest surprises him, and he glances down, startled by his urge to smile. “Sure,” he says. “Put it on my tab or something.”

Chapter 7: Snapping At Your Heels

Chapter Text

Wiseman takes in the armful of raider loot Nate dumps on his table, then looks from his soot-smeared face to Hanco*ck’s brash grin, and shakes his head.

“Young folks. You think you’re going to live forever,” he says, with a tone that hints he’s well aware of the irony of a ghoul saying something like that. “Well, I can’t say I’m not grateful to you, John. They’ve been trouble for years now.”

Hanco*ck claps Nate’s shoulder, pushing him forward a little, and lets his hand rest there for a moment. “Piece of cake. I brought my own personal weapon of mass destruction to the party.” He nods at the chems and caps on the table, the handful of fusion cores they found. “There’s more where that came from, down at the factory. Take Arlen with you, he’ll know which of the gadgets are the most valuable.”

“There’s a working power armor,” Nate adds, taking his cue from Hanco*ck. Apparently they're going to leave most of the takings to the Slog, the way they did with Stockton. He has no problem with that - if the Sanctuary lot winters safely in Goodneighbor, he doesn't need to scrounge for caps anymore. And if there's any settlement he'll gladly give free stuff to, its these ghouls.

Wiseman seems less than enthused. “There’s a reason we don’t have much in the way of guns in this place, son. You only need to look at the world to see where arms races lead."

Nate tries a different tack to convince him. “Power armor doesn't have to be a weapon. They're great for heavy lifting and construction, if you’re thinking of building a second pool. I could at least explain the basics to one of you, and you can see if there’s any use for it.”

With a small sigh, Wiseman finally assents. “A second pool would be great.” He looks past Nate to the third member of their party. The young raider, after getting a stimpak from Nate, is back on his feet. Before they left the ironworks, he put on an old parka filched from one of the dead Forged, a muddy, torn thing. He still doesn't have a shirt, but he stands with his shoulders hunched in the doorway, avoiding eye-contact, and hides most of the burns and scars that way.

“Who’s this, then?” Wiseman asks with an avuncular smile. “Don’t I know you, son?”

“No,” the young raider says gruffly, but Wiseman’s face lights up in recognition when he hears the voice, and he nods to himself.

“Abe and Abby Finch’s youngest. Jake, isn’t it?”

“You know this fool?” Hanco*ck asks. “We picked him up at the ironworks. Failed raider recruit.”

This doesn't seem to unsettle Wiseman too much. He gives the kid another once-over, no judgment in his gaze, just a little pity. “He’s the son of one of our neighbors. Good people, the Finches. They weren’t so keen on us at first, but once they saw we were serious about growing crops, they warmed to us. Can’t imagine what losing a son to the raider life would've done to them. You did a good thing there, bringing him back.”

Nate can imagine what that did to them. He can imagine it far too well, and being reminded of Shaun in this way feels like a vise closing around his chest, dragging him down.

Hanco*ck brightens at Wiseman's words, however, as if a great idea just occurred to him. “You need another farm hand, Wiseman?”

On the surface it sounds like a good solution. The Slog is a place where someone could find redemption easily, but a glance at Jake Finch tells Nate all he needs to know. Despite his beaten-down appearance, he’s clenching his jaws and his fists. If they leave him here, he’ll run straight back into trouble. He's too young, too rough around the edges to get what a blessing this would be. Luckily, Nate doesn’t have to be the one to rebuke Hanco*ck's glib suggestion, because Wiseman is already doing that, telling him that they’d be glad to give the lad a second chance if he looked like he wanted it. Hanco*ck grumbles, but he doesn't argue the point.

He makes an executive decision to stay at the Slog til the next day, so Nate takes Jones, Deirdre and two of the other ghoul farmers back down to the ironworks to help them gather up the loot. He uses the chance to teach Deirdre how to navigate the armor, and unlike Wiseman, she seems to think it's grand, whooping and cackling as she lifts a metal crate twice her weight.

Arlen Glass, the person they bring along with them to assess the technology inside the ironworks, turns out to be another ghoul, more ancient than any others Nate has met. As soon as they've been introduced to each other, he begins to quiz Nate about his opinions on robots, robot toys in particular, and doesn’t seem incredulous when Nate tells him that he had an animatronic Manta Man as a kid. Delighted, Glass says, “Oh, yes, the Incredibles line! I haven’t seen one of those in, oh, it must have been before the war!”

Nate was aware that there are ghouls out there who remember the world as it was, but he’s never had a chance to talk to one of them, and now that he does, he doesn’t know what to say. Luckily, Glass doesn’t seem to mind his silence. He takes Nate's arm as they walk, putting some of his weight on him for support, and happily chatters on about his obsessions, requiring no more than a semblance of attention and an occasional nod to go on. Now and then, Nate gently points him at a terminal or a machine, asking if it's something they ought to salvage, and Glass grudgingly diverts his attention, passes a swift judgement, and then returns to the subject of robot toys. It doesn't bother Nate too much, if anything, it makes him a little sad. His grand-parents died when he was very young, before he really got to remember them as people, and he'll never see his parents grow old.

The next morning, however, Deirdre sits down next to Nate as he eats his breakfast of razorgrain gruel and tarberry preserves, and hands him a bundle of cloth. “Here, take this. I won't lie, that vault suit’s a look on you. Always loved a man with long legs and a nice... well." She chortles at the way he flushes. "But you’ll need something warmer than that when the snow comes around.”

Nate unwraps the bundle. It’s a thick loop scarf, knit from a patchwork of different kinds of wool that she must have taken from a variety of different clothing, thick socks of a similar make and finally a pair of leather gloves, furlined and fingerless, the sort that will keep his hands warm and still allow him to handle a weapon at the same time.

He can't accept this. “It’s Hanco*ck you should thank, not me. Fighting the Forged was his idea.”

“And we appreciate it, but this isn't about killing raiders. It's a thank you for being so nice to Arlen,” she says, not letting him return her gifts. “You made the old man happy, talking to him about his toys. It’s not often he gets a fresh pair of ears to talk off. So take these and stay warm. And if you ever grow tired of Johnny McDonough’s bullsh*t, you’ve got a place to call home.”

No one has ever made an offer like this to Nate. The realization hits him hard, and it instantly makes him forget about everything else she said. He remembers, suddenly, retiring from the forces. His parents received him warmly, of course, and his father, after talking a long time about Nate’s prospects for the future, about getting him good, well-paying job, said, “If you need a little help finding a place for you and your young lady, we’d be happy to give you a loan.” It wasn't that his parents were stingy, but to them, not taking handouts was part and parcel of being a man. He thinks of Sanctuary, a whole little village of brand-new houses, and almost no one there had their mortgage paid off when the bombs fell. No one would have thought to invite a homeless stranger to their house, not even for a night, much less in the sense of Deirdre’s offer, like they'd take him in for good, no questions asked.

These thoughts still occupy him as they say goodbye to the Slog. Jake Finch tags after them like a bad-tempered, beaten mutt, silent and wary. Nate’s pack is lighter this morning, because when Hanco*ck saw the kid hadn't run away in the night, he told Finch to carry most of the heavier, less valuable stuff like their sleeping bags and rations. Now Nate only carries their caps and the few extra guns they took from the Forged, his sword, and the book Wiseman asked him to deliver to Daisy in Goodneighbor. It feels strangely like a promotion.

They head west along the Saugus River. Other than some wild animals and a small band of super mutants, nothing dangerous crosses their path. Towards the end of the day, Jake’s silence grows grimmer and he gets a haggard, determined look on his face. Every few minutes, he misses a step on the cracked road. He doesn't ask for a break, but it’s clear that the stimpak didn’t heal all of the damage the Forged did to him. Nate has had a few glimpses of the burns under the parka - they’ve closed up and scabbed over, mostly, but the welts in his skin still look tender and red.

There’s still some daylight, and they could go on for another hour, but Nate thinks of Shaun. Where was the point of no return for him? What was the thing that turned him to that cold, evil shadow of a man? Nate will never know if kindness from a stranger while Shaun was with Kellogg would have made a difference. Perhaps not, perhaps it was the time with the Institute that corrupted him, but ultimately the outcome doesn't matter. If there ever was such a person, if anyone ever smiled at Shaun just for being a kid, asked him if he was all right, gave him even the smallest gift, they still did more than Nate has ever been able to do.

As soon as he spots a likely place to camp, a section of overpass with a somewhat sheltered space underneath that looks dry and free of critters, he points it out. Hanco*ck grumbles a little about roughing it, and makes some noise about going on until they find a proper settlement or at least a ruined house, but he does follow Nate off the road and down to the spot.

“I’ll go get some wood for a fire,” Nate says once he's satisfied that there's no danger, but Hanco*ck tells Jake to do it.

“Why are you so hard on him?” Nate asks once the kid is out of earshot. "He's no different than Fahrenheit."

"Hell yeah he is. She quit because she was fed up with taking orders from a jerk. He just failed the entrance exam."

It still seems unneccessarily harsh. Nate wants to argue that they don't know how Jake failed the test - maybe he refused to take a bad order. Then the penny suddenly drops. "Wait. Are you being cruel to him on purpose?"

Does Hanco*ck want Jake to disobey?

The mayor makes a vague gesture, neither denying nor confirming, but there's a hint of mischief in his eyes. "Maybe I'm just hoping he'll run off."

"I didn't," Nate says as he unrolls Hanco*ck's sleeping mat.

Hanco*ck sits down, stretching out his legs with a groan, and then lies back, propped up on his elbows, watching Nate curiously. “Yeah,” he says. “Why didn’t ya? I can’t help but notice you’d have been easily capable of making caps and friends without Bobbi or me. You're smart, you're capable, you're damn good-looking. How come your settlement’s in as much of a pickle as you say?”

“I wasn’t sure if you wouldn’t come after me for revenge if I ran, at first,” Nate says, evading most of the question.

Hanco*ck seems to find that both amusing and absurd. “Haven’t you been around me long enough to figure out I haven’t got that kind of attention span?”

“Don’t you? You keep track of your friends, even if you haven’t seen them in years.”

This time it’s Hanco*ck who doesn’t seem keen on following through with that line of conversation. He hides it behind a co*cky, challenging expression, immediately going on the offensive. “I think I know why you’re sticking around. You like the job. ‘Specially the benefits.”

Hanco*ck hit the nail on the head far too easily. It isn’t embarrassment, but something more painful that constricts Nate's chest and makes him look away. He can’t very well tell the ghoul how he feels. It’d be strange to say, I like working for you more than I like running free, to a man who more or less coerced him into doing it. A normal person would hate their arrangement. And even if they had met under different, more amicable circ*mstances, it’d still be strange.

He unrolls his sleeping mat a few feet from Hanco*ck's own, but the ghoul click's his tongue and with his voice dropping low, a growl that rolls across Nate, making his breath hitch, he says, "Come here."

Nate throws a look over his shoulder. It’s growing dark, a mist rising from the wasteland, and Jake is nowhere in sight. But Nate doesn’t have Hanco*ck’s confidence that the kid won't come back.

“We’ve got company."

“Should’ve thought about that before you begged me to take him along,” Hanco*ck returns with a smirk that is just verging on callous. Although he's probably just teasing, it might also be his way of getting revenge for being made to bring along Jake. Not that Nate actually made him do anything. Hanco*ck’s the one in charge here, he didn’t have to listen to Nate's request.

Quietly, he takes his mat and puts it down next to Hanco*ck’s, settling on it a little awkwardly . He keeps his eyes on the ghoul, but he’s listening for the sound of footsteps. Hanco*ck’s expression shifts after a moment, from aloof to amused, as he looks up from under the brim of his hat. Then his hand snakes around Nate's arm. His pulse quickens as Hanco*ck pulls him down, but just as their faces get close, the ghoul lets go. He cackles softly, flicking the tips of his fingers at Nate’s cheek in a friendly imitation of a smack.

“You look like you think I’m going to do you right in front of him. Not saying I don’t enjoy an audience now and then, but it’s gotta be the right one.”

Nate sucks in a breath at the suggestion. It's shameless and rude. He wouldn’t enjoy it, not in actuality, but the idea of letting that happen is the antithesis of a lifetime of keeping up appearances. He understands, suddenly, that that is what makes it so tantalizing. Nora tried to get him to talk about his fantasies once, telling him her own. She was good with words, so good that she managed to make it sound cheeky rather than crass, but it made him feel ashamed - not for the half-formed ideas in his head, but for his inability to follow her lead. Unlike Hanco*ck, she never pushed so far, got so close to guessing right.

Perhaps he wished she'd been less patient with him. But he couldn't have told her that this is something he wants, because up until now, he didn't know.

He's obviously not doing a great job at hiding his reaction, because the Hanco*ck purrs, “I could change my mind, if you like the idea."

That’s when Nate hears the soft crunch of gravel under the sole of a boot, and he pulls back quickly. A moment later, Jake drops a pile of branches into the middle of their camp and begins stacking them, oblivious to the tension between them.

Hanco*ck draws back, watching the kid work for a moment, then throws him a lighter with a sneer. “What’s the saying? Once burned, twice a chump? Light it up, Forged.”

Nate sees the flicker of hesitation as Jake looks at the lighter. The kid’s shoulders tense as he watches the first flames lick along the wood, his nostrils flaring at the smoke rising thickly from the damp branches, and as soon as the fire takes hold, he withdraws quickly, hugging his own chest. He looks lost in his own world for a moment, before remembering to return the lighter to Hanco*ck. As he does so, he seems to notice for the first time how close Nate and Hanco*ck are sitting. His eyes dart between them and down to their mats, surprised, a little disturbed, but clearly too wary of them to say anything.

By now, Nate knows his new boss well enough to almost expect Hanco*ck to respond to that grimace with an open provocation, like kissing him right in front of the kid. He'd let it happen. The anticipation is a thrill that lingers, subsiding only gradually as Hanco*ck leans back and lets him prepare the last haunch of mutt, keeping himself occupied with a cigarette, blowing the smoke in almost-circles.

Finally, Nate takes a slow, deep breath, letting go of the coiled up tension.

“Why did you try and join those raiders?” he asks Jake as the meat cooks over the flames.

The kid gives him a sullen shrug. “You don’t know what it’s like, being a farmer.”

“I don’t know what it’s like having that little of an imagination,” Hanco*ck shoots back. “There’s plenty of options that don’t involve picking on folks who can't fight back.”

But Nate understands it, sort of. It’s an answer, if not a good one. “I was drafted into the army at eighteen,” he says, ignoring the confused looks he gets from both of them. “Could’ve gone conscientious objector, but I didn’t. And I stuck around for way longer than I had to because as bad as it was, fighting the reds, going home and getting a real job seemed worse. Doing the 9 to 5 while the world went to hell.”

“What’s a conscientious objector?” Jake asks, stumbling over the words like a pre-schooler. Nate guesses he’s one of the many people in the Commonwealth who can’t read or write much besides their own name, if that. Next to Nate, Hanco*ck holds back, but he looks curious, too.

“You could refuse to join the army on moral grounds. Because your religion forbids killing people, or just your personal beliefs. You’d still have to serve, but it’d be civilian work.”

The kid looks spooked, like Nate is talking about aliens or ghosts. “Where did you grow up?”

“Before the war. Long story.” He doesn’t feel like sharing it with a stranger, not just yet. Besides, it seems like it might only confuse the boy even further. How much has he seen in life? Just his farm and the Forged, probably. A small world. Cryo-vaults are far beyond his horizon.

“Why didn’t you just leave?” Hanco*ck asks, puffing smoke. “If you hated all of it.”

For a moment, Nate is as baffled as they are by him. Then he understands what Hanco*ck is asking. “You couldn’t,” he says, still surprised. “I mean, I could’ve gone to Canada or something, but it would’ve been the same thing. It… it wasn’t like it is now. There weren’t any places without governments and laws. The world was… it was bigger, but also smaller, in a sense. Everything was connected, because of… the economy, I guess? The jobs, the military, it was the same everywhere. If you don’t like Diamond City or Goodneighbor, you can pack your things and become a drifter or wander the wasteland or start your own settlement with your own rules, but there were no places like that before the war.”

Hanco*ck huffs thoughtfully. “Always suspected I wouldn’t have liked the good old days. There’s old timers who’ll tell you it was paradise, but ask one of the cool ones, like Daisy, and they’ll get lukewarm pretty quickly.”

It was paradise. Green trees and clean water and safe roads and food in so many flavours. Nate never went hungry a day in his life, before the bombs. People didn’t die from dysentery, at least not in this part of the world. Winter was a season for warm sweaters and hot drinks, not a thing to be feared. There were laws, a voice belonging to Nora whispers, other than the law of the jungle.

But you couldn’t sue the people stockpiling bombs. You couldn’t leave their world, because paradise belonged to them. You couldn’t even do anything about companies like vault-tec, who used the fact that people were afraid and helpless to sell them an escape plan that was more likely to kill them than anything else.

It’s easier to solve a lot of your problems, these days, Nate thinks. Easier if you’re someone like Hanco*ck, who will pick up his gun and do it.

Then, out of nowhere, Jake Finch has a belated revelation. “Oh. You were in a vault.”

Nate glances down at his blue-clad arm, at the pip boy. “Uh, yeah.”

“That’s how you got so old!”

“Turns out the mutt has half a brain cell after all,” Hanco*ck says with a laugh that is mostly, but not entirely mean-spirited.

Jake falls quiet again. Occasionally, he sneaks a look at one of them, furtive, but no longer quite as wary. After a while, he curls up on the sandy ground, wrapping himself tightly in his parka. They forgot to bring a bedroll for him, but it’s clear that he’s used to worse. Nate offers to keep first watch, but Hanco*ck shakes his head and says something about not being an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy, so Nate gets into his sleeping bag. It’s difficult, to come to rest in an open, wild place like this, and sleep takes a while to come. Nate lies on his side, his head with bedded on his elbow, Deirdre’s scarf wrapped around his neck to fend of the creeping subzero temperatures, and listens to the last crackling of the embers of their fire. This is the first night since Bunker Hill that they haven’t ended the day with sex. He no longer feels the curl of anticipation, waiting for Hanco*ck to make a move, but it’s strange how quickly he became used to touching another person again, to that space in his mind of not needing space, of all the walls being broken down, gone.

He turns a little, shuffling slightly closer to the fire, and incidentally to Hanco*ck. The ghoul moves as well, and Nate expects the weight of his touch, leans into it almost, but Hanco*ck merely pushes the embers closer together and then settles back to light another smoke, keeping the distance between them.

At some point, Nate falls asleep. In his dream, ice crystals bloom in his eyes, and he has slipped through the hands of time. He breathed in and now he can’t breathe out again, the dead air still and cold in his lungs, forever.

When he comes awake it’s with a start. He jolts to his feet and instantly falls down again, his legs tangled in the sleeping bag. Panicked, he gropes at the cold ground, sucks in air like a drowning man.

A hand seizes him by the back of his neck, squeezing. It's hard and so inhumanly warm Nate shivers. Hanco*ck, in a soft, rasping tone unmistakably his, commands, “Look at me.”

Nate stares at him blindly, before slowly coming back enough to choke out, “What?”

Hanco*ck lets go of him, patting the side of his face with a flounce of lace. “Figured this mug was gonna be worse than whatever you’re seeing. Fight fire with fire. Worked, didn’t it?”

Nate shudders. The cold wasn’t just in his dream, he realizes, but it still seems unnatural, terrifying. He gropes for the light switch on his pip boy, and when the ghostly green glow illuminates Hanco*ck’s face, he’s pathetically glad to see it. It’s frightful, especially in this light, or it should be, but it’s real. He has to force himself not to reach out and touch it, to cling to the ghoul like a lifeline.

“Flashbacks, man,” Hanco*ck mutters with a rueful grin that turns his face from a spectre into just that of a man. “Haven’t had one of those in a while.”

Finally managing something like a deep breath, Nate looks around. The fire is dead, the overpass a yawning shadow above them. And the wasteland beyond it is covered in a shroud of white. It has begun to snow while he slept.

“Anything you need?” Hanco*ck asks. “Jet? Vodka? Shooting raiders? We’ve got a spare one over there.”

It’s not a good joke, but enough to crack the icy shell of dread around Nate and make him laugh.

It stops snowing after a while, but the sky is still heavy with clouds, and the world has a numb, dull quality to it, as if the sun won’t ever rise again. The snow covers everything, unmarred by tire tracks or snow plows, a uniform, inhuman desert of white that swallows every sound but the whistling of the wind.

Nate understands why people fear winter now.

The last few days were a strange escape from reality, like he got on the wrong bus and ended up in another country. Along with his freedom, he ceded a part of his responsibility, his guilt, and only now does he notice how rarely he thought about Sanctuary, about the reason he ended up in this situation in the first place.

He shouldn’t have forgotten so easily. This isn’t a holiday.

“I need to go back.”

It isn’t a petition. He can’t be afraid of standing his ground on this, not with what’s at stake. But the idea that this might be the end of their agreement does fill him with a faint echo of the cold dread that seized him in his dream.

But Hanco*ck doesn’t fight him on this. “Looks like it,” he says, a little ruefully. “Time to get back to Goodneighbor, too.”

“We can split. I promise I’ll keep my end of the deal.” It’s surprisingly hard to say, because he means so much more than that and it twists his tongue with fear, realizing how deep that promise runs.

The grin Hanco*ck flashes him says nothing about whether he noticed the crack in Nate’s voice. It’s bright and devious and strangely impenetrable. “Got you hooked, don’t I?” But then he shakes his head. “Getting a bunch of settlers across the Commonwealth under these conditions? You’re gonna need every helping hand you can get. Even him.”

“Protecting your investment, huh?” Nate mumbles, fiddling with his pip boy. Then he takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. “Thank you.”

With a soft huff, Hanco*ck stretches out on the mats, arms crossed behind his back, the tricorn hiding his face. “No problem,” he says. “Just looking for an excuse to slack off a little longer.”

Nate can’t fault him for that. He's glad that Hanco*ck agreed so easily, but the thought of returning to Sanctuary soon also fills him with anxiety. Things weren't good when he left. Aside from Preston and Codsworth, the others would hardly even talk to him. If there was a way to put his return off without risking their lives, Nate would gladly do it.

*

Two days later, as they pass walk past the monument to the American Revolution that stands watch over the wooden bridge to Sanctuary Hills, Nate notes the large, undisturbed drifts of snow on the road and feels the numb, unformed sense of unease he felt since that night tilt into sudden terror.

There should be some signs of life. A guard at the bridge, smoke rising from a fire, noises from Sturges' workshop. But it’s as silent and still as the vault. Sanctuary looks like a ghost town, the sort of place where ferals rise from the ground if you tread too close.

He stops in the middle of the bridge, feeling the blood drain from his face, the strength from his legs. He can’t, he can’t take another defeat, not like this, without even a fight -

Hanco*ck comes to his side, surveying the abandoned houses before them. “How long have you been gone?”

“Two weeks,” Nate says. The words catch in his throat. He and Hanco*ck razed the Forged base in less than one night. It wouldn’t wouldn’t take them less than five minutes to wipe out a settlement like Sanctuary. He’d give anything, anything to have come here a day, a week earlier.

There’s a moment when the sound of river gushing between frost-rimmed banks drifts away and the sunlight on the snow blinds his eyes, and it feels like freezing again, the world coming to a halt around him.

And then flash of red light zaps past his head, ripping him back to reality. The laser beam hits the railing of the bridge behind Nate, shattering it in a spray of wood splinters. Jake yelps, dodging back to the other end of the bridge to hide, and Hanco*ck whips out his shotgun with a snarl, but Nate, after a second of his heart stopping, jumps up, waving his blue-clad arms and shouts as loud as he can, “Don’t shoot! It's me!”

For a second, all is quiet, then he hears a series of joyous barks and Dogmeat comes racing down the hill to the riverside and up to the bridge, claws clattering on the wood. The dog barks once at Nate, tail wagging, then races around him and Hanco*ck like an excited puppy before bounding back to the Sanctuary side of the bridge, waiting for the other figure to come down the hill.

It’s Preston, carrying his laser musket. As he comes closer, Nate can see his face under the brim of his hat - wary and grey, staring at Nate like he’s a ghost. It’s as he thought: Preston never expected him to come back.

But as Preston stops at the end of the bridge, lowering the musket, the dead look bleeds from his gaze bit by bit and he shakes his head in wonder. “What is it they say? You never know til you know.”

Nate draws a ragged breath, trying to push past the mix of shock and relief to some semblance of control. If Preston is here, the others must be as well. “Where is everyone?”

“Keeping their heads down. I figured if we don’t have proper defenses, hiding’s the next best thing. Your robot showed us a root cellar behind one of the houses. I think someone wanted to use it as their personal bunker and never got the chance. Everyone who can’t run or fight is in there, waiting for the all clear.” He shrugs a little helplessly. “It’s not much of a plan, but you have to do something, right?”

As Preston crosses the bridge to meet them, he inspects Nate’s companions for the first time, and it’s easy to see the several stages of surprise and curiosity as he takes in the ghoul in the revolutionary outfit. Then his brow knits as if something just sparked a memory. He still offers his hand to Hanco*ck. “I’m Preston Garvey, of the Commonwealth - “

“Minutemen,” Hanco*ck finishes for him, flashing a sharp smile. His fingers dig into Nate’s arm as he brushes past him. Under his breath, he hisses, “Explain to me later why you neglected to mention this,” even as he takes Preston’s hand. The handshake he gives is clearly intended to startle Preston because it’s aggressive and too quick, too close, getting all up in the man’s personal space. “The name’s Hanco*ck, if you haven’t guessed. Mayor of Goodneighbor. And here I thought the only place to see a Minuteman these days was a museum.”

Preston extricates his hand, taking a small step back. “Hanco*ck? I think I’ve… heard of you.”

“Yeah?” Hanco*ck waggles his hairless brows. “Worried what I’m going to do to your little settlement, Hick Patrol? You shouldn’t be. Turns out in a twist of fate, the big bad ghoul is here to rescue you.”

Nate doesn’t know what Hanco*ck’s issue with the Minutemen is. It’s entirely unexpected, if anything, with Hanco*ck’s attitude towards raiders and protecting those who can’t help themselves, he’d have expected the ghoul to be a secret fan. But that’s not his biggest concern here. The last thing he wants is a fight between these two ruining any chance of Preston agreeing to the deal. He needs to be the one to break this to Preston, because the Hanco*ck version of the events that have passed is going to be beyond the pale.

“Look,” he says, to Preston. “Why don’t you give the others the all clear and then I’ll explain?”

Preston frowns at Hanco*ck a moment longer, his expression harder than Nate has ever seen. Honestly, he always thought Preston was a little too placid for a leader, a little too reserved, but maybe he just hasn’t seen him angry before.

Which is a bit of a surprise, given how much reason to be angry he has given Preston.

“Right,” Preston says. “We’ll do that.”

As Preston leads them to the heart of the settlement, Nate walks close to Hanco*ck. Unlike Preston’s open glare, Hanco*ck’s irritation is veiled behind amusem*nt, a sharp glitter in his eyes that is worse than fury. It might not be the best moment to ask him for a favor, but Nate gives it his most sincere attempt. “Let me break this to Preston in private. It’ll be easier.”

“Oh no,” Hanco*ck says. “I want to hear this. The f*cking Minutemen. Do you even know how much righteous judgement you’re in for?”

Nate stops him by putting a hand on his arm. Hanco*ck gives it a look that says he’s stabbed men for lesser offences, but nonetheless tolerates it. “This better be good.”

The problem is, Nate’s got nothing. Nothing he can give Hanco*ck that he hasn’t already given him, or promised to give him, at least implicitly. All he could do is repeat those promises. Instead he tightens his grip on Hanco*ck’s arm and says the only thing he can say.

“Please.”

The coldness in Hanco*ck's gaze lifts and blossoms into something that sends a shiver down Nate's spine. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there are things he hasn't given Hanco*ck yet.

“Oh, yeah." Hanco*ck's voice is rich and silky. "That’s pretty good.”

*

The snow crunches under their boots as they circle the island, every step a quiet echo of Nate’s failures. The sun is crawling low over the ridge of hills to the west, a dim peek of afternoon gold between the afternoon clouds, illuminating their fogging breath. Nate remembers when this part of the island was a park, children playing on the grass.

“So?” Preston says. “That explanation coming up any time soon?”

Nate keeps his eyes on the ground. This is worse than the time he had to confess to Nora that he’d blown off his dad’s offer to get him a job at the Corvega offices, after leaving the service. He’s pretty sure Preston isn’t going tell him he made the right choice. In any of this.

“You’re not going to like this,” he says. “But it’s going to keep everyone alive, and that’s what counts, in the end. Right?”

“You really believe that?” Preston asks. His disappointment is so quiet, so held back. Not for the first time, Nate wishes Preston was the kind of guy who’d just punch him in the face. Where is the temper he showed earlier?

“Hanco*ck has offered to let all of us winter in Goodneighbor. It’s a bit of a rough place, but we’ll have a roof over our heads, food, medicine, walls to keep out the mutants and raiders. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s only for a few months.”

“Huh,” Preston says. He’s quiet for a moment, then he says, “That would be one hell of a generous offer from anyone, and that man? He has a reputation, and it’s not for generosity. You can’t tell me there isn’t a catch.”

“There is. But only for me.” This is it, the part Nate has dreaded since the moment he made this deal. “He wants me to work for him. For as long as we stay there, and maybe after that, as well. Just me, okay? You won’t have to - he doesn’t expect you to do anything.”

“Pardon me?” Preston sounds incredulous, and more than a little upset. “There’s no way in hell that’s true, man! There’s no work, honest or otherwise, that pays that well. I don’t - I don’t see what that ghoul gets out of this, but it’s gotta be something more than mercenary work.”

“Maybe,” Nate says, his jaw clenched so tight it hurts. “But whatever it is, he gets it from me, so it’s my business.”

To his pathetic relief, Preston doesn’t push the issue any further. He just shakes his head, and keeps on walking. Then suddenly he stops, staring out at the lake. “After Quincy, I’ve had to make some tough choices.” He sounds tired, at once older and younger than he really is. “Not all of them good ones. I mean, you saw how bad things were when you found us. But I never betrayed the uniform. Never gave up on what the Minutemen stand for. It’s all I’ve… I’m all that’s left of them.”

Nate has never before understood why the Minutemen matter so much to Preston, why he carries on the name even when he's the only one. He never felt this kind of loyalty to anyone except his wife and son, and the Minutemen are just an abstract idea, something that no longer exists. But he thinks of the Slog, of that sudden feeling of homecoming, of something larger than himself. Perhaps he finally does understand Preston.

“You can still change that. Build them up again. If you survive.”

“No, I can’t. I’ll be alive, sure, but at what cost? Every cap that man owns has the blood of hard-working people on it. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one doing the actual dirty work, I’d still be looking the other way, living at his expense.”

He’s wrong about that, Nate wants to tell him, but he wavers, doubt cutting in. He’s known Hanco*ck for, what, all of a week? And although he’s seen some good things in that week, who’s to say that Hanco*ck is the same when he’s running a town full of chem dealers and low lifes? He’s an addict and a killer, and the mercy he has shown Nate might well be a moment of whimsy, the passing mood of a bored tyrant. Preston has lived in the Commonwealth all his life, and he’s one of the most generous, level-headed, forgiving people Nate knows. Tolerant, too, of people like Marcy Long and Mama Murphy and even Nate. Someone whose judgment he shouldn’t so easily disregard.

The twist of doubt is unpleasant, but ultimately it doesn’t change anything. Hanco*ck’s offer is the only one they’ve got. And whatever dangers there are, whatever dark surprises may be in store, Nate will be the one to compromise himself, not Preston.

“The Commonwealth needs you,” Nate tells him. He thinks of kids like Jake Finch, who if he had the chance to join a group like the Minutemen might never look twice at raider gangs like the Forged. “It needs the Minutemen. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner, that you’re in a position where you need to accept whatever help you can get, but… it’ll be worth it. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get you in a position where you can do it.”

Preston has this way of looking at Nate, every now and then, that makes him want to crawl into a hole. Like he expects Nate to hang the moon, if he just waits a little longer. It’s there and gone again, a little longer this time than usual. And then it turns to frustration, sadness, a last ditch effort at refusal.

“I can’t ask this of you.”

Nate shakes his head gently, and turns back to Sanctuary. “Yes, you can, Preston.”

Of all the things Preston has ever asked of him, this might be the one most suited to Nate. And this time, he’ll see it through.

*

When they get back to the settlement, the scene looks peaceful enough. The Sanctuary bunch, bundled up in their ragged winter gear, sits on the porch in front of Sturges’ workshop, roasting a radroach over a fire. Sturges, Jun, Marcy and the other, more recent members of their settlement are all holding cups, and on the formica table between them there are a bunch of bottles that look like they come from the supplies he and Hanco*ck brought along with them, moonshine and nuka cherry.

Jake Finch is quietly sitting off to the side, at the edge of the porch, but he’s not alone. Dogmeat is beleaguering him, happy to have found a new person to make friends with. The kid is very obviously trying not to smile as he cards his hand through the dog's thick winter coat.

Even Hanco*ck appears to be peacefully sharing a bench with Mama Murphy, leaning against the wall of the house and looking like he’s dozing, ignoring the fact that the settlers all keep sneaking nervous looks at him.

And then, just as Nate thinks he might have succeeded in bringing them together, Mama Murphy opens her blind eyes wide, sways forward on the bench and begins to prophesize.

“Now you listen to your ol’ Mama,” she says with that horrid blind stare. “You listen. You know it’s coming, coming for you… fate snapping at your heels all your life and you keep kicking up, not down. Not down… but down is where they are, below, in the shadows, hiding.” She cackles, like a witch in a Halloween special, and beside him, Nate hears Preston curse under his breath as he rushes to her side.

“Hush, Mama - can you hear me? We’re home, in Sanctuary, right? No one’s coming for us.” Preston crouches before her and tries to grab her veiny hands to keep them still, but she pushes him off with surprising strength for a frail old lady.

"Oh, but it is. Bigger than you are, so much bigger... it frightens you, and yet you run towards it... lead, kid, lead and they'll follow -"

She stops, suddenly, with a gurgling noise deep in her throat as if she’s drowning, and clutches her own chest, sagging back on the couch.

Hanco*ck catches her, draping his arm around her shoulders. “Easy, sister. Ride it out slow.”

Preston sucks in a sharp breath and bolts to his feet, clutching his laser musket so hard his knuckles grow white. “You - ! She’s been clean for months and you - can’t you see she’s too old for this junk?”

Hanco*ck scoffs, unimpressed by the shouting. “What do you know, corn-fed? The way it looks to me, the lady’s tougher than any of you clowns. Ain’t that right, sister?”

To Nate’s surprise, Mama Murphy doesn’t appear to be suffering a heart attack after all. She still sounds rough, her eye-lids drooping, but she pat’s the ghoul’s hand on her shoulder and slurs, “Good boy... takin’ care of an old woman like that. Oh, I’ve been waiting for him to bring you.”

Nate has never heard anyone talk to Hanco*ck the way Preston does, like it takes every inch of his self-control not to hit the ghoul, like he wouldn't be scared to do it. “Get away from her.”

It’s surprisingly bold of him, and surprisingly foolhardy. Hanco*ck, however, merely laughs in his face, and Mama Murphy scowls in Preston's general direction as if he’s a troublesome child. “I’m fine, Preston. Quit fussing.”

It’s obvious that Preston doesn’t agree, but it seems he knows the futility of arguing with the old woman. Sending a last murderous glare at Hanco*ck and one that is almost as dark in Nate’s direction, he stalks off in a huff.

There’s a moment of awkward silence, then Marcy says to Nate, “Isn’t that just typical? About the quality of help I’ve come to expect from you.”

There’s no way to defend himself, because yes, this is an unmitigated disaster. Nate felt bad enough about the few times he slipped Mama Murphy some jet to get her to talk about Shaun, but this is worse somehow, because it was entirely avoidable - he should have known Hanco*ck and her would come together like gasoline and fire. He should have done something to prevent it before he left them alone, warned Sturges maybe, to keep an eye on her...

But before he can find something to say, one of the newer members of the settlement speaks up in his defence. Nate doesn’t even remember the man's name, or his face, if he’s entirely honest - it might be someone new. The guy tips his cup in Marcy’s direction with a small ironic smile and says, “I didn’t hear any protests from you when he handed out the nuka, Marcy.”

She turns like an angry cat and hisses, “Shut up, Bishop, no one asked you.”

The man gives her a placid, irritating smile and then blows her a kiss, which makes her slam down her cup on the table and stalk off into the house.

“Charming,” Hanco*ck comments as he gets up from the bench, dusting off his coat. He pats Nate’s chest in passing. “I can see why you bust your ass to save these folks.”

Nate just stands there for a moment, after Hanco*ck ambles away. Around him, the remaining members of the settlement get back to their drinks, avoiding his gaze. The only one happy appears to be Mama Murphy, who hums happily to herself, still coasting on whatever chems Hanco*ck slipped her. Codsworth bobs around the cooking fire making vaguely disapproving noises about manners and people making a scene at the dinner table. Jake seems stunned, as if this is the wildest, most incredible thing he has ever seen, and Dogmeat, lying next to him looks at Nate without lifting his head from his paws and gives a concerned little doggy whimper.

Nate rubs his face, stealing a glance at his old house across the street, the paint peeling from the walls, the crooked roof. He wishes Nora were here. She was always much better at dealing with people than he. She could make Preston see reason, and she could probably stand her ground with Hanco*ck, too.

Preston walked away towards the bridge, along his usual patrol route. In the opposite direction, Hanco*ck is taking an aimless stroll between the ruined buildings. Nate dreads both conversations, and wishes he could delay a little longer, catch some rest after this exhausting mess of an afternoon, but it’s going to get even worse if the two of them run across each other without Nate there to defuse the situation. He’s never seen Preston this livid, and Hanco*ck seems to be in a dangerous mood as well, just looking for ways to cause trouble.

He turns to Sturges. “Could you talk to Preston?”

Sturges grimaces. “Man, this sort of drama really isn’t my thing.” But then he nods with a resigned sigh. “Sure, I’ll do it. Somebody’s gotta fix it, right?”

Nate gives him a faint smile of gratitude. Then he follows Hanco*ck into the evening gloom.

Chapter 8: Feral Pact

Chapter Text

The sun has dipped behind the naked trees on hills to the west, submerging the snow-covered ruins of Sanctuary Hills in a cool, blue-tinged twilight. Hanco*ck’s red coat looks more subdued in this light, almost purple in color. He has lit one of his hubflower cigarettes, smoking it meditatively over the ruin at the end of the road, and turns when he hears Nate’s crunching steps in the snow.

His expression is calm and detached, but underneath simmers something unpredictable and volatile that Nate notices a moment too late, when he has already said, “You shouldn’t have given that stuff to Mama Murphy.”

Hanco*ck’s puckered lips twitch. “I didn’t hire you to tell me my business.”

It hits him like a slap. This is where Hanco*ck shows his true colors. Preston was right about him. Everything he said by the lake was right, and Nate was a fool to believe otherwise. What made him think the mayor of Goodneighbor cares about what Nate thinks, about the lives of these people?

Something cracks in Nate. He doesn’t get truly angry very often, but when he does, it feels like a stab of physical pain, like someone’s twisting a knife in his guts, like the only way to get out of it is to lash out.

The words feel like jagged shards of glass. “Right, sorry, my bad. I should have realized keeping my mouth shut was part of working for you.”

The way he stresses the ‘you’ is ugly and savage. Nate doesn’t know if he has ever spoken to another person like that, and it terrifies him. But after a moment of just staring at him with blank, hard eyes, the mayor’s expression shutters and then twists into a grimace. “Well, sh*t,” he says flatly, flicking the cigarette to the ground and crushing it beneath his heel. “You got me there.”

Nate doesn’t know what that means. A part of him desperately wants to take back his harsh tone, wants to fall into line and go back to the way it was, these last few days. Given what he promised Preston, at the lakeshore, that’s what he needs to do anyway. He’ll work for Hanco*ck no matter what, he just won’t… he won’t love doing it anymore.

Hanco*ck quirks his brows at Nate’s silence. “So?” he asks. “What else have you got, brother? Hit me.”

“I - what?”

“You got something to say, say it.”

Is Hanco*ck testing him, pushing him? Spoiling for a fight, maybe, so he can put Nate in his place? “I thought you didn’t want me to tell you your business.”

“I don’t,” Hanco*ck says. “I hate it when people tell me I’m wrong. Always takes me right back to those sanctimonious pricks of my youth. But if I ever turn into the kind of tyrant who can’t tolerate the f*ckin’ truth being spoken to power, do me a favor and shoot me.”

He must be joking, except Nate knows he’s not. He’s deadly serious. It’s there in the flint-like hardness of his ghoul eyes, in the jut of his chin. He doesn’t just mean the part about wanting Nate to speak his mind. He means the part about shooting him, too.

In the white noise of Nate’s mind in the wake of that revelation it’s very hard to remember what he was angry about in the first place, but Hanco*ck is looking at him expectantly.

As if he wouldn’t flinch if Nate pulled a gun on him now. As if he would take the bullet.

“I… she’s an old lady,” Nate says, floundering for a better explanation for why he was so angry. “Preston is right, she needs to stay clean.”

But perhaps Preston was wrong about Hanco*ck. Perhaps.

Hanco*ck waits a beat, perhaps expecting more, a harder truth to swallow, then he shakes his head. “That it? We all gotta die some time. So what if she croaks on a high note? It’s how she wants to go. The least we can do is respect an old lady’s wishes. Do you think growing any older than she is is gonna be a piece of cake?”

He might well be right. Growing old in this harsh new world is not something Nate has spent a lot of time thinking about. He’s lived in the moment or in the past, but Shaun was the only future he had. How many people past the age of fifty has he seen since leaving the vault? Mama Murphy is certainly one of the oldest, not counting ghouls. She’s already blind and easily exhausted, unsteady on her feet, dependent on the people around her. Getting her to Boston will be hard, and perhaps she doesn’t want to be a danger to her friends.

He’s starting to see what the real difficulty of being stuck between Preston and Hanco*ck will be: they’re both stubborn and far more firm in their convictions than he. All he wants to do is to get through this alive, but they’ve got an agenda, they’ve got beliefs. He’s going to lose a lot of arguments, it seems.

Strangely enough, losing this one feels less awful than winning it.

Nate sighs. “Did you have to do it within five minutes of meeting her, though? I had just convinced Preston that coming to Goodneighbor was the best option.”

“Are ya kiddin’ me?” Hanco*ck manages to snort even without a nose. “Getting him riled up was half the reason I did it.”

Before Nate can ask him why, a soft clatter of metal and the hiss of thrusters announces Codsworth’s approach. The Mr Handy cranes two of his big round eyes at Hanco*ck in a gesture of suspicion, but the third eye bobs eagerly in Nate’s direction.

“Master Nate,” he says, with that slightly cracked, tremulous tone that he only acquired after the bombs. “I say, isn’t it dreadfully cold for an evening stroll? You should come into the house. I’m afraid it isn’t much, but in anticipation of your return, I did my best to get it in shape for winter - a cup of tea and I dare say it’ll be downright cozy!”

After spending the whole day outside, Nate’s face is numb with cold. A hot drink and somewhere to sit that isn’t open to the elements sounds like someone’s idea of heaven right now, but it would mean bringing Hanco*ck into his house. So far, this is just another settlement to the mayor. He doesn’t know about the vault up on the hill, about Nora, about Shaun.

Getting Codsworth to ease up on the mothering is going to be difficult, but a glance at Hanco*ck gives him an idea. “I was just having a private conversation with the mayor,” he says, casually dropping the title of office. Here’s hope that Codsworth’s personality programming will get him to back off.

However, it backfires spectacularly. Codsworth wavers in the air, visibly confused, his eyes whirling and then locking on the ghoul. Then the round pupils zoom into little pinpricks. “The mayor? You don’t mean that - ah, yes, certainly, the mayor! Don’t worry, Master Nate, I am the very soul of discretion - as soon as you’re comfortable, I shan’t be underfoot at all!” He executes a smart turn in the air, drifting ahead while chortling under his breath, “Tea with the mayor! Oh, if only Mum could be here to see this!”

Hanco*ck is already following the bot, casting a curious, bemused look at Nate over his shoulder, so Nate has no choice but to follow them.

It turns out that Codsworth wasn’t lying about winter-proofing the house. The broken windows and holes in the wall have been boarded up, at least in the kitchen and living room, and he has repaired the old fireplace. It already has a log burning merrily inside, and the heat that envelops Nate when he steps inside makes his skin prickle and his eyes run. He blinks, wiping his face, wishing he had a handkerchief. The kitchen cabinets are still rusted and dinged, and the carpet largely consists of holes and stains, but there’s a semblance of the coziness Codsworth promised. But only a semblance. The house is still empty, the comfort sterile, the way Nate remembers it from the last time he was here. The house isn’t a place where people live, it’s a museum.Codsworth jealously guards it from the other settlers. The only ones allowed inside are Dogmeat and Sturges, whom Codsworth treats as some sort of handyman. On the kitchen counter, photographs sit in broken frames, so faded there are barely ghosts in them, and the china on the coffee table is too well preserved to be anything but a memento.

Hanco*ck takes it all in with a single sweeping glance, oblivious to the pang Nate feels stepping over the threshold. It doesn’t seem to impress him much, perhaps because he lives in a museum, too. He takes a seat on the ancient couch, in pride of place, and lets Codsworth pour him a cup of steaming tea. Nate quietly sits on an armchair which Codsworth must have dragged in from another house.

“There’s nothing to be done about the tea,” the Mr Handy apologizes. “We’ll have to make do with herbal. The water is purified, of course, though if you don’t mind me saying, Sir, it looks as though an unfortunate accident with radiation has already occurred? I must say, you’re rather a credit to your people. So far, I’ve had to shoot all the ghouls trying to get into the house.”

It’s obvious by the way Hanco*ck’s eyes flash with a silent, dark amusem*nt that he doesn’t take offence, or if he does, he reserves it for Nate rather than his robot. But the longer Codsworth stays, the higher the chance he will veer into topics Nate doesn’t want to discuss. Codsworth, for all his talk of discretion, is a terrible chatterbox, and two hundred years of slowly becoming unhinged hasn’t done anything to change that. The first time Nate clears his throat, Codsworth doesn’t seem to notice. It takes a second, sterner attempt to get his attention, and then the Mr Handy cries out, “Oh, yes, how silly of me, I’ve been making a nuisance of myself! If you need anything, anything at all, do call for me!”

There’s a brief moment of silence after Codsworth closes the door behind himself, and then Hanco*ck stretches his legs under the coffee table, drapes one arm over the back of the couch and repeats, “Master Nate,” with obvious relish. “Hadn’t pegged you as the sort who’d go for that. The other way round, actually.”

Christ. There’s going to be a day when Nate finally gets used to Hanco*ck’s teasing, which has all the subtlety and restraint of a convenience store robbery, or his sudden, unpredictable twists and swings of mood, or the fact that Hanco*ck, after only a week, already knows the hidden, dirty corners of Nate’s mind better than anyone ever did. Today isn’t that day. Nate is glad he’s sitting down, and at the same time he has to fight the urge to dart back to his feet.

“I didn’t program him that way,” he says. “Those are the factory settings.”

After spiking his tea with a shot from his flask, Hanco*ck takes a sip and continues, “Hate to be the one to say this, but we need to have a little talk about this thing we’ve got going.”

“You’re having second thoughts about your offer.”

“Nah. Wish you’d played your cards a little less close to your chest, but going back on it now would be a dick move. ‘sides, it’s gonna give me a special kind of satisfaction, harboring the last Minutemen in Goodneighbor.”

Nate wants to ask him what his history with them is, but he can tell Hanco*ck isn’t finished. It’s a relief that their deal still stands, but that means he wants to discuss some other part of their relationship. Nate reaches for his cup to occupy his hands. The tea is still warm, but aside from that, he barely tastes it when he takes a sip. It might be bland, or it might just be his nerves.

Hanco*ck swirls the tea in his own cup like it’s a tumbler of bourbon. “When we blew out of town, I thought maybe I need more than just a little break from politics. Maybe it’s time to pass on the reins, let the people govern themselves. Bobbi, Finn - there’s been a lot of this kind of trouble, lately, and it’s got me thinking maybe it ain’t coincidence. Might be the town’s way of telling me to f*ck off.”

It’s a perplexing idea to Nate, and not just because Hanco*ck talks about his town like it’s living, breathing being. No politician back in his time would have willingly left office just because he or she got a little unpopular. Bobbi and Finn were criminals - it’d be very easy to mark them off as such, and besides, although Bobbi said she was looking for dirt on Hanco*ck, Nate had the impression that her motivation wasn’t political so much as a simple power play.

It occurs to him that he never really thought about this part of Bobbi’s plan. Dirt on Hanco*ck? What would that even be? Goodneighbor, according to everyone else, is a town of low lifes and criminals, and Hanco*ck wears all his vices openly and with pride. If Bobbi was looking for dirt, it must have been something more sinister.

More pressing, however, is the realization that Hanco*ck doesn’t sound angry or upset by the idea that his town might want to be rid of him. He almost sounds as though he’s trying to convince himself that this is true. As if he wants it to be true.

Is this the part of their arrangement Hanco*ck wants to talk about? Without him, Goodneighbor sounds much less like a safe haven for Preston and the others.

“You’re not planning on going back?”

Hanco*ck shrugs, looking a little lost. “Who knows? If I’d gone alone, I might be in a ditch somewhere now, blowing out my brains with jet. But I’m still here, I’m too damn sober, and now I’ve got a point to prove to the Minutemen, so I’ll be going back. That was the whole point, ya see? When I first had that bright little idea of letting you work off your debt this way, I thought: worst case, guy’s a jerk and you get to blow off some steam, get those dictatorial impulses out of your system without hurtin’ anyone who doesn’t deserve it. And if he ain’t that bad, he’ll keep you from takin’ the coward’s way out.”

Nate has wondered, now and then, what Hanco*ck really gets out of their arrangement, why he suggested it in the first place. He would never have guessed that his reasons are this complex and personal, that Hanco*ck is playing a game of chess against his own baser impulses.

“Worked out pretty well so far, except for one thing. I thought I’d made it clear that the fun we’ve been having on the side ain’t a condition of our deal - and I’m pretty sure you’re into it.”

Nate looks down at his tea and swallows. He nods, slowly, without looking at the other man. Yes, he’s into it. He might have been into it even if Hanco*ck had turned out to be who Preston says he is.

“I’ve done all sorts of crazy sh*t with all sorts of people. Granted, you’re nicer looking than most who’ve come my way since I turned ghoul, and you’re hittin’ some of my kinks pretty hard with that strapping, clean-cut wasteland warrior deal you’ve got goin’. Most guys like that, they’re assholes, and don’t get me wrong, fifteen years ago when I was just a skinny drifter, that was my type. Still is, but turns out when you look like I do and all you’ve got going for you is a title, some swagger and reputation for taking down the worst kind of parasites on the people, you don’t get a lot of that action. Which isn’t a problem, because if you were the kind of asshole I’m talking about, I’d get tired of it pretty quickly, and then things would get ugly.”

He lets that hang in the air for a moment, until Nate is certain that he means it just the way he meant it when he said he wanted to be shot if he turned into a tyrant. It makes him think of something Nora once said, when she came home from a case she lost, angry and disappointed: the law isn’t worth a thing if it only applies if you haven’t got the money and the power to buy your way out.

There’s no such thing as a codified law in the Commonwealth, and she’d have things to say about Hanco*ck’s personal union of executive and judicative, but that night, when she came home so frustrated, she would have liked the way he thinks.

“But you’re something else, aren’t ya? Kicking ass and taking names like you should be leading a raider gang, talking military like one of them Brotherhood soldiers, saving the Minutemen rather than waitin’ for them to save you - and a guy like that gets turned on taking orders from a ghoul.” Hanco*ck smiles, slow and hot, like banked fires. “I’ve been tryin not too think about it too hard because there’s still a possibility this is some whacked out perfect trip.”

What a strange perspective on life does this man have, that he thinks of what they do as perfect? And yet. Looking around, at the shambles of the old world, of his old life, maybe it’s Nate whose standards are skewed. Where do his vague, uncomfortable ideas of perfection come from? Picture books about happily families and picket fences, store fronts and the silver screen, the facades everyone put on in places like Sanctuary, where you knew everything about you neighbour’s lawn and nothing about the secret lives quietly churning away within the four walls of their bedrooms.

What did they want that they never spoke of, because it wasn’t on the pages of some glossy magazine?

“It feels like that, sometimes,” Nate says haltingly. “A trip.”

“Yeah. But the tricky thing about tripping is, you’re always only one step away from a bad one, and you don’t always come back from those. So we need to lay down some ground rules. I’m fine with a little power play, and I’m fine with being your boss, but not if you think I’m going to put a knife to your guts for speaking out of turn or that I’ll change the terms of our agreement whenever it suits me.”

Oh yes, Nora would like him. She tried to have that talk with him, too, when they went steady, and he avoided it by brushing her off. Said, Babe, I trust you, I’d never do anything to hurt you. He said it in good faith, from the bottom of his heart, but also because he didn’t fully understand why Nora felt the need to discuss their relationship like they were entering some kind of legal contract. He understands it much more clearly with Hanco*ck, and yet, he still doesn’t know how to do this.

“What do you want me to do?” It’s a helpless question, but it comes across gruff and stand-offish.

Hanco*ck shrugs, but his tone is serious. “Be honest. If I give you a bad order, tell me where to stuff it. If I cross a line, with you or anyone else, give me a piece of your mind, and if I ain’t listening, feel free to make me. You get what I’m sayin’? I don’t need a yes man, I need a feral pact.”

“A what?”

“Feral pact. It’s a ghoul thing. You find a partner, someone you trust who’s tough enough to go through with it, and you promise each other, if I turn feral, you put me down.”

That’s horrifying. Nate knows what it’s like living with the threat of total annihilation hanging over him every day of his life, but turning feral is different. It’s like you’re the bomb, waiting to go off. Some people, rather than building fallout shelters or buying Pulowski shelter tokens, kept a gun or a dose of poison for themselves and their loved ones in their home as a different, more fatalistic kind of insurance. But if you turn feral, you can’t choose to end it.

Who would Nate have trusted to do this for him? It’s not just a matter of trust, it’s a burden, too, something he wouldn’t have wanted Nora or his parents to bear. The truth is, he has never had that kind of friend. Maybe Gus Mendoza, but Gus never came back from Anchorage. And who knows… Gus might have put him down for any number of the things he’s done with Hanco*ck.

What Hanco*ck is asking of him, is if anything even scarier and harder than a feral pact. At least it’s clear when a ghoul turns feral. Even Nate, being as new to wasteland as he is, would never mistake a feral for a normal ghoul. You know them when you see them, and once you turn feral, there’s probably no way back. This isn’t that simple. Hanco*ck is talking about ethics, about decisions, about the slippery slope of power. Who is Nate to judge where he crosses the line?

“You need to give it some thought, that’s fine,” Hanco*ck says. “I know it ain’t what you thought you were getting into when we made our deal.”

Nate gives him a grateful nod. Yeah, he’ll have to think about this. Just maybe not right now, when feels the full weight of his nerves and exhaustion slowly crashing down on him. Their fight is over, and it feels almost like coming down from a dose of psycho. The only energy that remains is jittery, unfocused. Perhaps he should go look for Preston, but he can’t, not in this state. He’d only make it worse. He won’t be able to sleep, either, and he definitely can’t focus enough to think through the things Hanco*ck has said. Even the soft cracking of the wood in the fireplace sets him on edge. It’s times like these that Nate wishes there was still something on TV, something to help him come down until he actually feels tired.

There’s a part of him, full of that jumpy, poisonous energy, that wants to go down the hall to the nursery, and that way lies madness.

“I don’t know about you,” Hanco*ck says, stretching, “but I could do with a chaser, after all that serious talk.” He rifles through his pockets, laying out an assortment of little jars, satchels, tins and inhalers, a veritable pharmacy of illicit substances, eyeing them critically for his poison of choice.

He should be offended, Nate thinks, and the thought makes him want to laugh hysterically. This used to be his living room, not some junkie’s den.

In truth, he almost feels tempted to ask for a dose of jet. It felt good, floating like that, wrapped in softness and light. His favourite high, so far.

But he doesn’t ask for it, because it isn’t softness he craves, not really. Not in this house, where letting down his defences like that might kill him. He sits still until he can feel his heart beating in his throat and then he rushes out, “Do you wanna - “

Their eyes meet, and in a hazy heartbeat, he’s on his feet, and Hanco*ck pulls him down onto the couch. There’s the briefest of pauses, Hanco*ck waiting for him to make a move, and then their lips lock and Nate pours all his frantic tension into a kiss that has teeth and gasps and tastes of liquor and smoke and heat. It’s Hanco*ck who pulls back from it first, but only to kiss his way down to Nate’s jawline, teeth grazing against stubble, nipping at the skin of his neck in a way that makes him groan and writhe. Hanco*ck doesn’t let that stop him from unbuckling Nate’s armor, pushing Nate’s hand aside when he makes a flailing attempt to help. He unzips the suit, all the way down, roughly, and then, before Nate can bend down to reach for his boots, Hanco*ck slips off the couch, kneeling between Nate’s legs. He runs his hands hungrily along the undersides of Nate’s thighs, kisses the taut, quivering muscles of his abdomen. Then he pulls Nate’s dick out, pumping it slowly, keeping his gaze locked on Nate’s face.

He’s a funny sight like that, his tricorn half askew, grinning at Nate like a hungry coyote at a juicy piece of roadkill, and that analogy is funny, too, because if anyone here looks like roadkill, it’s Hanco*ck. The laughter bubbles up in Nate, silent at first, then spilling out even as he tries to stop, because it’s f*cking rude to laugh at a man who is trying to get you off. Strangely, his erection doesn’t flag, and Hanco*ck doesn’t look at all pissed off - he continues to jerk Nate with a firm grip and easy pace, still grinning. When Nate’s breath grows ragged and his laughter softens into moans, Hanco*ck dips forward, licking a long, lewd stripe up his dick.

He stares, in fascination and shock, at the sheer skill and enjoyment Hanco*ck is bringing to this, until he loses even that much control, dropping his head back onto the couch and trying to ride that wave as long as he can. Dimly, he notices the unrelenting warmth around his dick as he comes, the working of Hanco*ck’s throat as he swallows, the tantalizing, teasing touch of his tongue as he licks up the last beads of come.

“Oh god,” Nate gasps, trying to catch his breath, “you’re good at that.”

“Told ya, good enough make a livin’.” Hanco*ck is still holding him in his hand, stroking him slowly, as if he thinks he can bring him straight back to hardness. He might, at that. “Wanna pop a buffout and let me ride that nice f*cking dick you’ve got?”

Nate pushes up from the couch. His head is light, and his his skin sticks to the suit when he peels it off. He’s hot all over, hot and loose, and Hanco*ck told him to be honest.

“No.” His voice sounds like an animal’s, shredded, raw. “I want - “

“Yeah?”

Nate turns around, sliding off the couch, knees on the floor and his forehead resting on his arms, his blood rushing in his ears, barely able to breathe. “f*ck me.”

He asks for it, straight up, and gets it the way he wants it, needs it, hard and fast, rocking his pliant body with the motion, bent over the edge of his living room couch. And as he listens to his own grunts and gasps, Nate imagines the stained cushions whole again, imagines the walls freshly painted and steel still stainless, and the windows not boarded up, sunlight streaming in, the neighbours walking by outside, just a few feet away from their rutting, and this is perfect, Hanco*ck is right, it’s a trip but it’s perfect.

A piece of cloth hits the floor, and Nate turns his head to find the red white and blue, the stitched little stars of the flag, discarded like a rag, and covered a moment later by John Hanco*ck’s red coat. Blinking, he rolls onto his back just in time to see Hanco*ck pop the last button of his shirt.

The ghoul pauses, for a moment, allowing Nate to look at him. Then he puts the hat down onto the pile. Nate realizes he has never seen him that way, bald and bare. Even in bed, Hanco*ck doesn’t seem to undress. His body is a wasteland, every inch of it covered in welts and tears, scars and burns, his arms mottled with track marks. Without the coat to cover up his bony shoulders and narrow chest, it’s starkly obvious what a small man he is.

“Seriously,” Hanco*ck says, looking down with a small, self-deprecative twist of his lips. “You see this? It ain’t gonna be hard for you to take me down, if I ever stop being worthy of that coat. I want you to f*cking do it, alright?”

He can’t imagine doing it. The things he feels looking at this man are overwhelming,foreign, terrifying. “Yes,” he says, choking down the urge to reach out and touch Hanco*ck, to pull him closer and hold him. “Yeah okay, I’ll - I’ll do it.”

He can’t make that promise. He hasn’t thought about it at all, and even as he says it he knows that if that moment ever comes it’ll be the last nail in his coffin, but there’s no way to take it back now. A wordless, raw noise is the only thing he can manage, because Hanco*ck is there again, touching him, kissing him, sliding in deep and hard, destroying all capacity of thought.

*

They doze on the couch, wrapped up in each other and their discarded clothes, until the log in the fireplace has turned to ashes. As the last glow of embers goes out, so does the warmth. Nate tries to fight the return of awareness as long as he can, leeching heat off Hanco*ck’s unnatural body, but eventually he has to get off the couch to put the suit back on. Hanco*ck gives him a sleeper’s mumble, telling him to come back, but Nate has lost the thread of sleep.

He goes down the hall. The rockets hang still over the crib, and there’s snow on the broken edges of the window, reflecting cold moonlight. He stands in the doorway for a long time, until his face feels as numb as it did when the frost covered his vision and he fell asleep two hundred years ago, until he feels ever single winter that has come and gone while he slept, until he feels as old as Shaun, down in that frigid white prison.

Then he goes back into the living room. Hanco*ck shuffles to give him space when he sits on the edge of the couch, mumbling a soft, welcoming, “Hey.”

The air is different there, warmer, thick with smoke and the scent of their naked bodies, a heavy, stifling embrace. Nate breathes it until it fills him up, and then he exhales in one long rush.

“This is my house,” he says. “I lived here, before the war. With my wife. And our son.”

Hanco*ck pushes up on his elbow, rubbing his face. “sh*t, really?”

It was hard to begin, but it’d be even harder to stop now. Nate tells him the whole story. It surprises him how steady his voice is, how little it breaks as he talks about going into the vault together, about being led to the crypods like lambs to the slaughter, about watching strangers come and shoot his wife. About waking up alone and lost. He tells him about how he went down to Concord, wanting only to find some survivors and a trace of his son, and accidentally saving Preston and the others from a gang of raiders and a deathclaw.

“Preston and Sturges,” Nate says, “they did everything to help me find my son. Let me use all of their time, every cap we made. I promised Preston I’d help him once I found Shaun, get the Minutemen going again. It seemed like a good idea, to have a place to raise a child.”

“But you didn’t find your kid,” Hanco*ck guesses.

“I did. I had Nick to help me, and we followed the clues, we tracked down the - we found him.” This is the part that breaks Nate. The part he still hasn’t told anyone. He lied to Preston about what he found and he still can’t tell the truth. “My son is dead.”

Hanco*ck is quiet for a moment. Then, “Did you get the sons of bitches who did it?”

“Some of them.” It was sweet and savage, when he killed Kellogg. But he was only the middle-man. Revenge against the Institute seems as distant and unreal as trying to get back at the people who let the world go to hell in the first place. Nate is only one man. And even if he could hurt the Institute, it wouldn’t bring back Shaun.

He’d have to kill Shaun, too.

“Want me to help you finish them?” Hanco*ck asks.

Nate shakes his head wordlessly, swallowing the salty taste of tears. He doesn’t know why this is the moment the levee breaks, but it’s something about Hanco*ck’s offer - it’s the way he says it, unconditional, without even asking who he’d be going up against. The same way he offered to take in the Sanctuary settlers without knowing who they were, how many.

There is a minute or ten where he just sits there, on the edge of the couch, staring through the misty curtain of tears, his jaws clenched around pain until it ebbs away and he can breathe again, can speak again. His voice is thick but at least it isn’t a sob.

“I’ll go get our pack. It’s too cold to sleep like this.”

When he steps outside, Nate is a little disoriented by the fact that there are still a few people sitting on the porch by Sturges’ workshop, bundled up as best as they can and warming themselves by the remains of the cooking fire. Startled, he checks his pip boy - it’s only ten pm. Somehow, inside that house, he lost all sense of time.

He scrubs at his eyes and hunches his shoulders, pulling Deirdre’s scarf over the lower part of his face as he jogs across the snowy road.

The people by the fire are Jake Finch, Sturges, Preston and Bishop, the newcomer who didn’t seem to mind Hanco*ck handing out the booze earlier. He’s the only one who acknowledges Nate with an easy nod and a friendly “Hey” - the other three seem to have fallen into an awkward silence at his intrusion. Sturges attempts a smile, at least, but Preston’s stare is far too penetrating for Nate’s liking.

He nods at them and grabs his pack, pulling out Jake’s bedroll and tossing it to him before hoisting it over his shoulder. They’re used to him behaving strangely, he tells himself, and it’s cold and late. No need to stick around for small talk.

But as he crosses the street again, there are footsteps following him. It’s Preston, softly calling his name.

“Nate.”

He stops and turns. It’s hard to figure out Preston’s expression, in the night, with the brim of his hat shading his features, but his posture speaks volumes - there’s an openness in the way he approaches, the way he touches Nate’s arm, worried and apologetic. “You okay?”

His response is instinctive, engrained. “Fine, yeah. Just turning in for the night.”

Preston takes a small step back, giving him space. “Okay. Look, man, I just wanted to say… sorry about earlier. I know it isn’t your fault.”

Nate’s too exhausted to have this conversation now, so he just nods.

Preston watches him a moment longer, then he sighs. “Let’s talk tomorrow, okay? We need to figure out how to get everyone safely to downtown Boston.”

Relief washes over Nate. He sends a silent prayer of thanks to Sturges or Preston’s sense of responsibility or whatever he has to thank for this change of heart, and decides that trying to convince him that he’s wrong about Hanco*ck can wait another day.

Back in the house, he unrolls their mats on the floor, but then he wraps the sleeping bag around his shoulders like a blanket and joins Hanco*ck on the couch. He’s tired enough to sleep without artificial aids, but when Hanco*ck passes him the inhaler of jet, he takes a deep huff, closing his eyes and letting his body thrum with the drug, soaring in a quick, bright sea of warmth until he comes floating back down to his body, which rests, heavy and sore, against Hanco*ck’s chest.

Chapter 9: The Road

Chapter Text

A milder wind comes up from the south the next morning, making the snow slip from the roofs in soggy sheets of white. Sturges directs the settlers to pack up what they’re going to take and to secure everything they are going to leave until spring. It doesn’t take long - their stores are low, and most of the settlers only possess what they wear on their bodies. It turns out that they’re particularly short on weapons and ammunition. Aside from Preston’s laser rifle, there are only two ancient pipe pistols carried by Sturges and one of the newcomers, Judy. Once Hanco*ck gets wind of this sorry state of affairs, he gives a laconic headshake and goes for their pack, pulling out two of the rifles they’ve looted at the Saugus ironworks. He gives Jake a hard, almost challenging look, but when the kid doesn't say anything, he hands the better rifle to Bishop, the newcomer who spoke up in his favor the night before. The other he offers to Marcy Long, smirking at the startled glare she sends his way.

“I don’t know how to shoot,” Marcy spits, even though she’s already holding on to the gun like she’s never going to give it back.

“Someone with your attitude oughta learn, sister,” Hanco*ck shrugs, and wanders off to smoke a cigarette at the bridge, waiting for them to finally get going.

The water rushes loudly under the bridge as they set out. Nate waits, letting everyone pass: Preston and Dogmeat in the lead, followed by Judy, Marcy, Jun and the other two newcomers, Stan and Elise, Sturges leading along Mama Murphy, then Codsworth and Jake, carrying much of their provisions, finally Hanco*ck and Bishop bringing up the rear. He turns back one last time, casting a glance up the hill - there’s a scrap of blue sky over the vault, the exact same color of the suits they put on before they stepped into the pods.

Nate isn’t wearing his this morning. Attracting as little attention as possible is key with a trek of people this slow-moving and defenseless, so this morning Hanco*ck exchanged his red coat for a brown leather jacket and the flag for a regular belt, and handed a second set of road leathers from the bottom of their pack to Nate. The clothes are worn, but clean and well-made and Nate realized with some surprise that Hanco*ck must have packed them for him, because the leather pants are cut for someone with long legs and the jacket is wide in the shoulders. So despite what he said the night before, he must have expected their arrangement to last for a while - or else, he just dislikes the vault suit, although he has made some comments to the contrary.

Putting the suit away felt like a strange rite of passage, like the first time he put on a uniform, or rather, like taking off his dog tags after he came home. The suit is in the pack now, but it feels almost as if Nate has left it behind, buried it, along with the rest of the past. He isn’t sure he is ever going to put it back on, just as he isn’t certain he will return to Sanctuary.

He feels unmoored as he turns and trots after the others, like a row boat adrift on the high seas. There's an urge to ground himself again, to check in with someone, but Hanco*ck is in conversation with Bishop, and it looks like there’s some sort of trade going on between them, probably chems exchanging hands. The mayor gives Nate a small wave, almost a dismissal, so he moves on to join Preston at the head of the caravan.

Preston acknowledges him with a nod, and for a while neither of them says anything. They both stay focused on the road, alert for any threats, but after an hour of walking without any interruptions, Nate’s nerves settle a little, and Preston begins softly humming under his breath. They've picked the road that’ll lead them around the center of Concord, away from the most likely raider hideouts. Dogmeat is trotting ahead of them, nose on the ground, becoming their eyes and ears.

“You got some new faces while I was away,” Nate says when he finally feels comfortable striking up a conversation.

Preston nods. “Going it alone is fine in the summer for some, I suppose, but when winter comes around even drifters start looking for a settlement that’ll take them in. I told them that we have barely enough to feed ourselves, even if they work hard, but I couldn’t turn them away.”

Nate isn’t going to argue with him on that. He remembers the brief time at the Slog, what it felt like to be offered a home. He can’t imagine turning anyone away, either, not after that. “So, are any of them Minutemen material?”

That earns him a startled, almost bashful look from Preston. “I haven’t asked them,” he admits. “It’d feel… wrong. The Minutemen are all about helping out other people, and we’ve got our hands full just surviving.”

Nate shrugs, looking back over his shoulder at Jake. He’s trudging along with their pack on his shoulders, staring at the road with a sullen, far-away expression. “Some people might need a cause more than they need a helping hand,” he points out. “The kid we brought with us, Jake. Hanco*ck and I picked him up at this raider base we took down. He’s some farmer’s son who turned to raiding because he didn’t have anything better to do, but I don’t think he’s a bad apple. If the Minutemen had been around, those raiders might not have seemed so attractive.”

He expects that Preston will need some convincing, or maybe even flat out refuse to consider someone with a history like that, but the smile Preston gives him is one of bright surprise and hope. “You thought of that, huh? Have you talked to him about joining?”

“That’s your job.” Nate pulls his least valuable gun, a modified pipe pistol, from its holster and hands it to Preston. “Something to sweeten the deal.”

Some of the excitement in Preston’s gaze dims when he realizes that Nate won’t go recruiting for the Minutemen, but he’s still smiling when he tips his hat at Nate and slows down, letting the others pass. He checks in with Sturges and Mama Murphy first, then falls into place next to Jake.

The mildness of the southern breeze is gradually followed by a drop in air pressure heralding a front of dark, low-hanging clouds. The air grows heavy with the smell of rain as the afternoon progresses. As they reach the northern outskirts of Concord, the first drops start falling. On his own, Nate would go on for another hour or two at least, as long as there’s still light. But the geiger counter is crackling faintly, and the temperatures are still close enough to zero that getting wet is not a good option.

It’s Bishop who points out the house up on the hill, a little apart from the rest, half hidden by trees. It’s boarded up, the wood blackened by age, and as Nate circles it with Hanco*ck and Bishop, he notices some kind of tag smeared on the front door with chalk. Not a good sign. His suspicions seem to be confirmed when they try the door and it opens with barely a creak. The inside of the house looks much less moldy and rotten, with signs of human habitation not too long ago - the oven has been dragged into the living room as a makeshift fireplace, a mattress clear of filth next to it, a few empty tins and used-up stimpaks on a dresser. Nate takes point, going from room to room with the sword in hand, ready to be jumped by a raider at every corner. But the only living thing he finds are some radroaches in the basem*nt and a sluggish, slow-moving bloodbug clinging to a wall in one of the bedrooms, easily squashed by the blade. Whoever stayed here before them seems to have left a while ago.

“Let’s go get the others,” he says when he comes down the stairs again.

Stopping early turns out to have been a good choice, because the rain starts falling heavy and hard not soon after they’ve brought everyone into the house. Boots are taken off and clothes hung up to dry while Sturges smashes a kitchen cabinet for firewood and Codsworth butchers the radroaches for dinner.

They haven’t come far today, but everyone made it, and aside from a few blisters, there have been no losses. They eat hungrily as the rain rattles against the boarded windows, tired but more confident than they were this morning. Even Jun’s hands have stopped shaking. Jake, Nate notes, has accepted the pistol from Preston, and when Preston says he’s going to take first watch out on the porch, Jake jumps up from where he’s sitting on the floor and volunteers to do it instead.

“Take Dogmeat with you,” Preston says. Jake nods, more eagerly than Nate thought possible. For the first time since they’ve freed him, he walks with his shoulders squared and his back straight as he whistles to the dog and goes outside.

Nate smiles to himself, happy at how well this has worked out, and catches Hanco*ck’s eyes across the room. The others are beginning to bed down, a few of them are already curled up in their sleeping bags, but the hooded gaze Hanco*ck returns, the slowly widening half-smile, chases away any thoughts of sleep. He’s toying with his mentat tin, turning it lazily between his fingers, and after a moment of holding Nate’s gaze gives a very slight jerk of his chin in the direction of the stairs.

Nate waits for a moment when no one seems to be watching him before he leaves the room. He isn’t sneaking, exactly, but his legs are a little stiff with excitement, and he feels a flush of heat spreading on his skin even as he climbs the ancient wooden stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible.

He waits on the first floor landing. There are peeling numbers on the doors along the hallway. This must have been a hotel once upon a time, perhaps an upscale bed and breakfast. Nate passes the time imaginging what it would have been like to come here before the war, him and Hanco*ck, whatever Hanco*ck would look like if he weren’t a ghoul. He tries to picture him, in a greaser jacket, a cigarette dangling from his lips, or a gangster’s sharp suit and a sleek, fat wallet, but fails at reconstructing the human face to go with it. What he can picture clearly is the look the receptionist would give them as they order a room for two, the extra cash passing hands, smoothing away her suspicions...

Hanco*ck makes less of an effort to move softly on the stairs than Nate did, strolling up like he owns the place. “Lookin’ good tonight, brother,” he says in a low rumble as he crowds into Nate's personal space, cornering him against the wall.

“Yeah?” Nate asks, a little short of breath. “You like dressing me up?”

Hanco*ck’s gaze dips down to the leather jacket, and he tugs at the lapel, patting it down. “Mmm, now that ya mention it, I do. The blue looks great on you, but there’s something ‘bout seeing you in my stuff…” His hand sneaks down Nate’s back, cupping the curve of his ass through the leather of the pants and squeezing.

Nate’s breath hitches, and he swallows a moan. Leaning against the wall, he lets Hanco*ck’s hands roam over his body, slipping under his shirt and around his neck, confidently staking his claim. Hanco*ck’s kisses start out teasing and quick, but then they grow hungrier, a slow, deep grind like the distant echo of thunder that rolls through the night.

“First time I seen that smile. Happy's a good look on ya,” Hanco*ck adds, in between kisses and then resumes his quest to leave Nate’s dizzy and bruised and achingy hard. He bucks his hips forward, but Hanco*ck pushes a knee between his legs, trapping him there, the hint of friction against his crotch not enough.

“Can’t wait, huh?” Hanco*ck chuckles at his frustrated groan.

“Hanco*ck.” He ruts against Hanco*ck’s thigh impatiently. He wants it, right here, but they need to be quick and quiet, and the thought of that turns him on even more. “Let me - “

Hanco*ck pins him back against the wall, eyeing him smugly. “Going to let you suck me off,” he promises. “Later.”

“We need,” Nate gasps as Hanco*ck kisses his neck, “we need to get back -”

“Why? You think they haven't guessed what we're doing?”

“It’s not that obvious a conclusion,” Nate insists, and gives him a friendly push, which Hanco*ck seems to take as an invitation to wrestle him for control. They’re both holding back, keeping their strength in check, but Hanco*ck is more insistent and eventually Nate relents, letting himself slip into the breathless rush of groping and teasing. He could do this all night, he thinks, and then he doesn’t think at all, and he’s so caught up in ecstasy that he moans when Hanco*ck steps back to shake the jar of rad-X from his coat.

He feeds one of the little pills to Nate, pushing them past his lips with two fingers, and when Nate swallows, Hanco*ck keeps his fingers there, rubbing his lips, pinching them a little, then prying open his mouth, grinning in obvious anticipation. Nate stares at him through a haze of lust, his heart thumping wildlly in his neck - he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he wants it.

“Knees,” Hanco*ck tells him, and he doesn’t care about the creaking of the wooden boards as he drops down. The leather pulls taut over his knees, a painful squeeze around his erection, and Nate feels no trepidation, only need washing over him as he stares, his mouth wet and open, as Hanco*ck pops the buttons of his pants. No underwear. He pulls out his dick and strokes it, slowly, for Nate’s benefit, and his dark eyes rake over Nate’s body.

“Christ, I wanna wreck you,” he growls. “You done this before?”

Nate wasn’t clear until now whether Hanco*ck was aware of his inexperience, but it seems he has some idea. There’s no point in lying, even though a part of Nate badly wants Hanco*ck to not hold back, to just take what he wants, to give it to him as rough and wild as he likes.

"No."

Hanco*ck’s dick twitches at the admission, swelling even harder. Perhaps Nate was wrong to think that this will make Hanco*ck hold back. It has a curve to it, and Nate can clearly see the ridges of scars, and up close there’s no way of gauging the size - it seems big and agressive and daunting and Nate wants nothing more than to choke on it. But Hanco*ck touches him gently, cards a hand through his hair and dips back his head, and murmurs a promise to go slow on him, easy.

Hanco*ck teases his lips with it first, lets him have a taste of the head, of the smooth dry heat of his hard, naked flesh, telling him how good he looks with a co*ck in his mouth, grinning at Nate’s wild flush, at his attempt to hide from Hanco*ck’s hungry gaze by swallowing even more of it. Nate manages to stuff himself full of co*ck, so far that he gags and his eyes water, but Hanco*ck pulls back, forcing him gently to ease the pace. “We got all night,” he hums. “Imma teach ya how.”

He moves his hips, rolling them in slow shallow thrusts and tells Nate to breathe, to change the angle, to use his tongue, again tells him how good he looks, how good it feels to have him like this. Hanco*ck lasts much, much longer than Nate did the night before, and he doesn’t lose control until the very end, with his voice grows ragged and short and his hips jerk, and he sinks himself deep into Nate and spills with a harsh grunt.

“Spit,” he rasps a moment later, breathless, pulling Nate back by his hair. But it’s too late, Nate’s still too caught up in it to think, he’s already swallowing, and if it were possible to come from this, from just the thick, salty taste of it sticking to his tongue, the looseness of his jaw, the way Hanco*ck looks at him now, eyes narrowing as if he likes what he sees too much to be exasperated, Nate would.

It would probably take him all of five seconds to get off after this if he got the chance to get his hands on himself, but he doesn’t, because that’s when a loud crack rips through the building. His first, startled though is lightning, a bolt of lightning must have hit the roof, but then there are shouts and cries of distress from downstairs, and Hanco*ck stuffs himself back into his pants hastily, pulling Nate to his feet.

“sh*t!”

They scramble down the stairs. Even before Nate gets to the bottom of them he smells smoke, not gunpowder or wood but the acrid burn of plastic. The first thing Nate sees is Jake, in the doorway, the gun shaking in his hands - facing inside, as if that’s where the trouble is. Nate reels past him, into the living room where the others settled down to sleep, and immediately sees the fire.

The kitchen is ablaze, flames licking hot and angry up the walls and wooden cabinets from floor to ceiling, melting plastic and linoleum. The doorframe has already caught fire as well, and there’s wind blowing in through the broken windows, making the flames soar along the ceiling.

Preston is up and shouting for people to get up and out of the house, to grab their things, their boots. Nate freezes, locked in a blind panic, but Hanco*ck grabs his elbow and shoves him towards the door. “Make sure no one’s trying to smoke us out!” before lunging deeper into the acrid heat.

The order is what Nate needs. He bolts down the hall, pushing Jake out of the way to make space for the others, and dives for cover on the porch. It’s hard to see anything. The rain has turned into a storm, black sheeting rain and hail, and only when lightning flashes does he see the faint outline of the other houses down the hill, of the toppled fence and the trees lashed by the brutal wind coming in from the sea. The geiger counter in his pip boy bursts into staccato crackles, but there are no gunshots, no attackers moving around the house - all the danger is inside, it seems.

The others come stumbling out of the door, first Sturges and Judy, then Hanco*ck, dragging Mama Murphy along before running back inside, and just as Nate tries to follow, Codsworth barrels into him. He pushes the robot aside, ignoring his worried protest, and pulls up his jacket to cover his mouth.

The smoke is thick inside, obscuring everything but the red maw of fire where the kitchen used to be. He sees a figure standing close to the flames, bent and coughing, but then he notices Marcy and Jun on the ground. Jun is curled up into a whimpering ball of terror, and she’s screaming, trying to drag him to his feet.

When Nate tries to grab her, she kicks him hard in the shin and tears at his hair, trying to claw out his eyes with her blunt, bitten nails. He wins the struggle by brute force, throws her over his shoulder, grabs Jun by the scruff of his neck, and shoulders back towards the entrance, trying to hold his breath.

His eyes are streaming as he stumbles outside, tossing them both into the mud, except that Marcy now clings to his arm, crying, and when he turns back towards the house, he sees Hanco*ck running out with two of their packs slung over his shoulders, followed a second later by Bishop. They don’t stop, racing past them at full tilt, and Hanco*ck yells, “Cover!” just as something inside the house explodes, blowing out all the boarded windows on the ground floor and collapsing half of the house into a flaming wreckage. Sparks fly up into the black sky, swallowed by the pouring rain.

Nate stands, coughing and panting, Marcy a heavy weight on his arm, and stares at the conflagration. Very slowly, his brain makes sense of what happened. Something must have caught fire in the kitchen, and that last explosion was probably some kitchen appliance with an internal fusion reactor blowing up from the heat. There was no attack, just a terrible accident.

He turns around. Everyone seems to be there, shocked, trying to sort out their clothing and packs, and quickly getting soaked by the icy rain. The rain. Nate glances down at his pip boy. They’re still in the middle of a storm, soaking up rads. This is bad.

“We need to find cover,” he yells at Preston.

“We need to get away from here,” Preston shouts back. “That fire is visible from a mile away!”

Nate looks down the road, to the row of dark, abandoned houses, each a shelter from the radiation, but Preston is right. There are raiders and ferals in Concord, and there might be even bigger predators roaming the wasteland who will be attracted by the noise and the light, creatures that won’t mind the rads pouring down on them from the sky.

Still, Nate keeps sneaking glances at the pip boy as they hurry down the soggy, streaming hill. The first couple of minutes, his own rad count stays low, but that’s probably still the rad-X he swallowed earlier tonight doing its work. The others can’t be so lucky. He worries about it for another ten, fifteen minutes, then the cold becomes a more immediate concern. The rain is soaking through his jacket, through the scarf, even his boots are growing damp. Whenever an icy gale blasts his face its feel as though it’s going to flash freeze his skin. They can’t stop unless they find another place sheltered enough to light a campfire, because if they stop moving, the cold will kill them before the rads do. Mama Murphy is already slowing down, even though Sturges is all but carrying her, shaking her head at him as if she wants him to let go.

“Idiots,” Hanco*ck snarls under his breath, and picks up his pace until he’s next to her. Nate sees him slipping something into her hand, and there’s a brief, tense exchange with Sturges before the engineer turns away as Mama Murphy swallows whatever Hanco*ck gave her. A moment later, she straightens, letting go of Sturges’ arm, and resumes walking.

“Don’t,” Hanco*ck warns when Nate joins them, but Nate shakes his head - he’s not going to argue with whatever saves their lives now.

They all start shivering, then the first people begin to slip in the mud, missing their steps, too exhausted to watch where they put their feet. Even Dogmeat makes a miserable noise now and then, whining at the cold. Morning is still hours away, and even if it does come, it will only turn them into more visible targets.

When they crest a hill and see the parking lot below, it seems like a gift from heaven. There are several large shipping containers, some of them broken open, and in the mouth of one of these there’s a campfire, a beacon of light and warmth in the night.

“We need to ask these people for shelter,” Preston says. “Maybe they’ll trade - “

“Raiders,” Bishop interrupts him in a flat, laconic voice, putting down the pair of binoculars he’s pulled out from somewhere and slipping his sunglasses back on. For a split second, Nate gets a glimpse of his eyes. They look normal, unremarkable - Nate thought that maybe he had some sort of disease or disfigurement, because he wears his sunglasses even in the dark of night, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Hanco*ck grunts. “Suits me. I’m in the mood for some senseless violence.”

Nate isn’t in the mood for anything except maybe curling up under a hundred blankets and dying, but he tells Preston to stay behind with the others, and follows Hanco*ck into the night.

It’s quick, and it’s brutal. They veer off the road into the coarse Commonwealth underbrush, slipping through a hole in the rusting chainlink fence around the parking lot, and stick to the shadows cast by the campfire until they’re almost upon the raiders. There are five of them and a dog, and thirty seconds later, there are none.

Nate would feel guilty as he drags the bodies aside to make room, but he’s too numb from the cold to be anything but nakedly glad to be alive and near a fire.

*

The damage, however, is done. In the morning, half of them are retching and feverish. It’s radiation sickness, paired with the beginnings of a cold. Nate looks around the grey faces, the skinny, underfed bodies, the dark bruises under everyone’s eyes, and knows they won’t make it, not like this, not everyone.

They need to at least deal with the radiation poisoning. Enough Rad-Away to cure everyone would be more than a thousand caps at any trader. Nate feels bad about asking this much of Hanco*ck, but he still does.

“Only one dose,” the ghoul says, shaking his head. “Keeping that for emergencies. Rad-X is low, too.” That’s no surprise - they’ve been using it a lot. Squandering it. Nate feels a sickly stab of guilt.

“Gotta make do with this,” Hanco*ck says, shaking a bottle of buffout pills at the bedraggled settlers. “’s on the house, folks.”

There a few wary looks, but also murmurs of thanks from the others as the pill bottle is passed around. The only one who refuses is Preston. He sits hunched over the map on his knees, shaking his head without even looking up. Nate has seen the map before. It’s not paper, but parchment, real animal skin, and the ink doesn’t fade in the sun. It’s slightly outdated, showing some Commonwealth settlements that no longer exist, but it was made by a true craftsman, and it must be one of Preston’s most precious possessions.

Hanco*ck throws a glance at it in passing as he goes to take the pills back from Sturges and says, “Bet that old rag was up to date around when the Minutement fell apart, huh?”

“It got us this far,” Preston responds in a tight, scratchy voice. He clearly has a sore throat, possibly a fever, but the sniff he gives isn’t just a runny nose. “We need to figure out a better route to Goodneighbor. One that has more safe stops along the way. If we take this route around Lexington, we can pass through Greygarden, Oberland Station, Diamond City.”

Hanco*ck gestures dismissively. “Diamond City? They won’t let us in.”

“Because of you?” Preston bristles.

“Because it’s almost November and you’re a bunch of capless drifters. Diamond City ain’t big on hospitality, this time of year, and I ain’t payin’ those jerks to get you in.”

“We’re not drifters,” Preston says stiffly.

Hanco*ck laughs in his face. “You can put up your nose all you like, Minuteman, but take a look around and tell me again it ain’t exactly what you are.”

Preston gets up, stuffing the map into his coat. He’s unsteady on his feet, his eyes rimmed red. “I suppose seeing honest folk brought low makes you feel better about the way you earn your caps. At least now we know what you get out of helping us.”

“Oh, that’s just a bonus,” Hanco*ck says, nastily, and Preston’s face drops, his frown turning into a blank, sickened grimace. His hands twitch at his side, as if he’s going to try and throw a punch. Hanco*ck gives him a co*cky, come-at-me stare, but Preston turns, walking out of the container.

When Nate tries to stop him Preston brushes him off with a headshake. “Not now,” he mutters. “I wish you didn’t have to - I know it’s - “ He shakes his head again, swallowing the rest of what he was going to say.

Nate feels his empty stomach drop. He’s suddenly certain that Preston knows. Preston knows Nate is sleeping with Hanco*ck, and he doesn’t understand that how Nate could want to, he thinks it’s some big sacrifice, the way he’s paying for their lives.

He needs to rectify this, to tell Preston the truth, but for some reason, he’s rooted to the spot and the words won’t leave his mouth. Nate just stands there while the others around him get up and grab their things. He’s the last to leave the container, his tongue still tied and his insides twisted around an ugly feeling he can’t quite name. It shouldn’t be so hard. All he needs to do is say it out loud. He’s been honest enough with Hanco*ck, he doesn’t pretend not to want it when they f*ck, so why can’t he do this?

The rain has stopped overnight, but everything is still dark and dripping. Little murky streams run along the cracked pavement as they hit the road again, and fog is rising thickly from the hills. They walk in grim silence, everyone clinging on to whatever reserves of strength they have, pacing their steps, conserving energy.

They only get as far as the outskirts of Lexington that day, and the only halfway suitable place to camp that they find is a dry spot under the overpass behind an old retirement home. The building looks solid and quiet, a better shelter from the cold than the drafty spot behind it, but when Sturges makes a move to investigate one of the entrances, Hanco*ck shakes his head.

“Reeks of ferals,” he says, and while Nate isn’t sure whether he can actually smell other ghouls, or is speaking figuratively, no one seems to want to find out.

They’re too exposed, too close to Lexington to light a campfire, so they huddle close together with their bedrolls. Nate volunteers for first watch even though his head is spinning and his eyes are dry. He’s in much better shape than the others. Surely they need their rest even more than he does. And besides, staying up gives him an excuse to stay away from Hanco*ck.

The hours pass slowly. The more tired he grows, the less he’s able to fight the sense of misery and hopelessness that crawls into his bones along with the cold. It’s a desolate feeling, sitting up here in the dead of night, the silence giving far too much room to the thoughts eating him up from the inside. Again and again, he pictures how that conversation with Preston will go. It’s not what you think. Yes, I’m sleeping with him, but I like it. I guess I just never told anyone that I’m queer, that I’ve always been that. He has no idea how Preston will react to that, except that Preston is a guy who, inexplicably, always expects Nate to be better than he really is. The guy Preston thinks he is probably doesn’t have life-shattering secrets like that. He definitely doesn’t get a thrill out of taking it from a shady wasteland chem czar in his once picture perfect home.

Even if Preston does accept that this has always been who Nate is, that Hanco*ck didn’t need to corrupt him, only give him a tiny little push, there’s still the rest of it.

No, I don’t have to do it. He never forced me to do anything I didn’t end up enjoying in some fashion. He made it clear that the sex doesn’t have to be part of our arrangement, that it isn’t a condition. It’s just… a mutual benefit. A bonus.

The fight between Preston and Hanco*ck this morning echoes in his mind. The way Hanco*ck spoke, the hard, ugly edge to his voice. Oh, that’s just a bonus. He was talking about humiliating the last of the Minutemen, but he might as well have been talking about the other side benefits of their arrangement. Is that how he sees it?

What does Hanco*ck really get out of it? Is sleeping with Nate just a little fun on the side? Nate knows he’s a good-looking guy, by most people’s standards - movie star looks, girls have said to him, even though the only kind of role he could have landed with his ethnic background would probably have been that of a bad guy. In the wasteland, he turns heads with his healthy skin and straight teeth, so there’s no reason why someone who likes men shouldn’t sleep with him. But there’s more to it, isn’t there? Hanco*ck said so himself, when he talked about his history with guys like Nate.

Although Nate doesn’t know the full story of why Hanco*ck dislikes the Minutemen so much, it’s not hard to piece together the bits of information he does have. Hanco*ck wasn’t always the powerful man he is now. Before he was mayor, before he turned ghoul, he was just a drifter, homeless, capsless, an addict, one of those people everyone in the Commonwealth looks down on, even the Minutemen. Even though Hanco*ck insists that he’s proud of belonging to this class of people, he clearly relishes the chance to turn tables now. And it’s the same with Nate, isn’t it? Hanco*ck said so himself - Nate looks the kind of guy who used to push him around, who used to take advantage of him, and that’s why he gets a kick out of Nate’s readiness to submit.

A part of Nate balks at this realisation. He doesn’t want it to be true. Hanco*ck can be ruthless and arrogant and the way he treats those he doesn’t respect, like Preston and Jake Finch, is irreverent, even cruel, but Nate has seen another side to him. A Hanco*ck who is magnanimous, who’d risk his life for others without asking for anything in return, who would die rather than become someone who abuses his power. Nate likes him. In fact, there are moments when he’s quietly terrified by how much he likes Hanco*ck, how much he trusts him, how much he wishes, very badly, that he had even a fraction of Hanco*ck’s courage and conviction.

That’s why Preston’s false assumptions hurt so much. That’s what he would really say to Preston, if he wasn’t so afraid of saying it out loud:

I don’t know what I’m doing. I may be in love with him.

In love. God, no, that’s not what it is. Nate’s insides twist at the thought, but now that it’s there, naked in the cold, dark night, he can’t unthink it. He’s not in love with Hanco*ck. He likes him, admires him, the sex is a revelation. That’s not love. But it could be, very easily. If it wasn’t so clearly hopeless. If he managed to pick up the pieces of himself, shattered from losing Nora and Shaun. If Hanco*ck gave any sign that he wants those shattered pieces, and not just someone convenient, someone to entertain him for a season.

This is what he’ll tell Preston, tomorrow, or whenever he gets the chance. He’s sleeping with Hanco*ck and Nate is a willing participant. It’s part of their arrangement, and it may count towards covering his debt, and he doesn’t mind if it does.

It won’t be the biggest lie he’s ever told.

Judy rouses around 3 am, and mutters something about needing to piss. “I’ll take the next watch when I’m back,” she promises, and shuffles out into the bushes.

Five minutes later, Dogmeat suddenly lifts his head and gives a little huff of warning, and then Nate hears hurried footsteps coming down the slope. Judy bursts into their camp, frantic, stepping on someone’s leg or arm in a panicked attempt to get past them, screams as she falls down and another figure lurches after her.

Dogmeat is up before Nate, throwing himself at the feral with a snarl. The dog sinks his fangs into the creature’s throat, pulling it down. But it isn’t alone. There are more coming down what was once the lawn behind the retirement home, moaning and grunting, drawn to Judy’s screams like moths to a flame. The other settlers are waking up quickly, scrambling to get to their feet and their weapons, and as Nate clashes with the next feral, he hears the boom of Hanco*ck’s sawed-off shotgun behind him, Marcy’s furious yell as she whacks one of them with her rifle.

In the red flash of Preston’s laser musket he sees the whole grisly horde, at least twenty ferals staggering towards them with wide open mouths and melting faces. They should never have camped so close to a nest of them, they should at least have checked that the entrances to the building are securely locked -

“Fall back!” Nate shouts, swinging and slashing at them, trying to not let them get close enough to grab him, but there’s too much open space, no way to block them all.

He hears it when it happens, a man’s terrified animal scream, the crack of bone and the tearing of flesh, the feral’s triumphant gurgle, but he doesn’t have time to turn and look. He kills six, seven more ferals before they finally stop coming, and every single one of them is a close call.

He shakes all over when it’s done, his eyes cramping around the hilt of the blade.

The one they got to was Stan. A feral tore out his jugular, but only after mauling his face. Elise sits down by dead body, her eyes dry. Nate doesn’t know if they were together, or just friends. “He always said that’d be the worst way to go,” she says.

All the other corpses littering their campside are pale and bloated. It doesn’t seem like a waste of amunition when Hanco*ck goes around, putting a bullet into each rotting brain for safety. He’s silent and grim as he does it, the only one not frozen by shock, and afterwards everyone keeps their distance from him, as if they’ve suddenly remembered what he is.

Although it’s still dark and everyone is shaken, they gather their things and move on. Nate helps Sturges drag Stan’s bloody corpse away from the pile of ferals, but they’ve got no shovel to dig a grave and so they leave him under some wild mutfruit trees. Sturges mutters a few silent words that may be a prayer or an apology, and they move on, staggering down the muddy ravine after the others.

The sky slowly begins to grey in the East as they pick their way around the lake at the bottom of the ravine. Their stores of purified water are mostly used up, and since it doesn’t seem as badly polluted as some bodies of water in the Commonwealth, Nate kneels at the edge of the water, cupping some in his palm to drink, and then fills up his canteen. There’s an odd metallic taste to it, but after a moment, he realizes it’s blood - his gums are bleeding, and the dizziness he feels isn’t just lack of sleep.

A rad storm, and now an attack by a horde of ferals. The radiation poisoning has finally gotten to him. The others look no better. As they stop for a short rest, no one appears to be hungry - just a lot of grey, queasy faces. In the thin light of dawn, they look scarcely any different from the walking corpses.

However, dawn reveals something else. Not too far away from them, some ways around the lakeshore, there’s a fenced-in, sturdy looking settlement with a plume of white smoke rising from the center - a cooking fire, by the looks of it.

“I’ve heard good things about this place,” Judy perks up. “Covenant. It’s supposedly a proper settlement, no raiders.”

“If that’s true, we should try to trade with them,” Preston sighs. He looks worse than anyone else in their group, having refused another round of buffout from Hanco*ck. There’s a gash on his cheek from a feral that got too close. The bruises under his eyes have grown even blacker and his lips are dry and cracked.

“Last time I checked, you ain’t got nothing to trade,” Hanco*ck mutters, and shoulders past him. “I’ll handle this.”

It appears that Preston is too exhausted to pick a fight, but he gives Nate wretched look, a silent protest against adding this to the tally of their debt, and hands a small leather purse to Jake with some muttered directions. Still, they don’t have much of a choice. The purse looks light, there’s no way it contains a thousand caps. And while Nate isn’t certain whether Hanco*ck is going to pay for meds out of charity or simply because of his petty grudge against the Minutemen, he’s at least reasonably sure that he isn’t doing it so they’ll owe him more.

He goes with Hanco*ck and Jake, keeping a wary eye on the lake as they approach the settlement. It turns out to be a good thing that Hanco*ck didn’t go alone, because as they get within thirty yards, a warning shot sprays the sand in front of their feet and someone appears on the wall, hands cupped to shout, “Halt! Is that a ghoul?”

Hanco*ck mutters a string of curses, and yells back, “Damn right that’s a ghoul! Do you want my caps or not, cowards?”

There’s no reply. Nate wonders if there’s a tactful way to suggest to Hanco*ck that he should go back to the others, since they might have more luck without him. There probably isn’t, and honestly, there shouldn’t have to be, but on the other hand, they really need a break after the last two nights. These settlers are sitting pretty inside their walls, by the looks of it they’re well-prepared for winter - caps are probably their least concern. But their little ragtag band needs the meds badly.

Suddenly, Jake takes a step forward, right into the spot where the bullets hit before. He raises both hands, the gun Preston gave him dangling from one, and shouts, “We’re with the Minutemen!”

“Say what?” Hanco*ck hisses.

“The Minutemen?” the voice behind the wall asks, sounding confused. “The Minutemen don’t exist anymore!”

Jake casts a nervous look over his shoulder, then takes another step forward. “Well, they’re - we’re bringing them back!”

There’s a pause, then the voice tells him to approach. He does so slowly, hands still up in the air. The conversation he has at the gate is too low to be heard, especially with Hanco*ck muttering angrily next to Nate, but someone passes down a sheet of paper to Jake, who stares at for a moment before calling out, “Uh, Mr Hale?”

“Stay here,” Nate says to Hanco*ck, who gives him a look that is a mix of outrage and sheer bullheadedness. Through some miracle, possibly the force of his ego repelling bullets, no one shoots him as they approach the gate.

“They say they need me to pass a test to get in,” Jake reports, nervously handing Nate the papers.

Nate skims through the questionaire. There are a lot of questions, one crazier than the next. He shakes his head silently at Jake and whispers, “I don’t think we want to get in.” To the person up on the wall, he calls, “We only want to trade. We need rad-Away, if you’ve got any.”

The Covenant settlers are only willing to part with three doses, but that’s something at least. Nate accepts the steep price they name without trying to haggle. They’ve got no grounds for negotiation here. Preston’s money is enough to cover about a third of it, and Hanco*ck, who is reading through the test and scoffing at each question, hands over the rest as though it’s nothing.

Only when they return to the group, Jake striding ahead of them, does he say, “With the Minutemen, huh? When did that happen?”

He sounds pissed.

“I suggested it to Preston,” Nate admits. “Look how well the kid takes to it.”

Hanco*ck makes a contemptuous noise. “Next time, ask me before you pull somethin’ like that.”

Bristling a little at Hanco*ck’s tone, Nate huffs, “I didn’t expect you to get all territorial about it. You didn’t even want to take him with us, remember?”

“Seems I was right about that, seeing as he’ll join any gun-toting gang of hoodlums that crosses his path. But you’re right, I don’t give a damn.”

It stings, but it is what it is. Nate keeps his head down, leaving Hanco*ck to his foul mood, and tries to focus on what matters here. They’re a little less close to dying, and that’s what counts.

Administering and distributing the rad-Away takes a while. They unanimously decide to give it to those affected the most by the radiation. Nate pretends to be better off than he is and insists that one of the doses goes to Preston, who is barely able to stand. Preston tries to pass it on to Mama Murphy, but she won’t have it.

“Oh, I’m fine,” the old woman chides him. Nate suspects it’s largely because Hanco*ck has been slipping her a steady supply of chems on the side, but he isn’t going to argue, because she pulls Preston’s arm to her with surprising strength, baring his vein and slipping the IV into it. “Besides, this is about the least fun a gal can have a with a needle.”

It’s almost noon when they get going again, still slow and exhausted. According to the map, they’re close to the Mystic river now. The only question is which bridge to take. Judy, whose tip about Covenant turned out to be right, suggests Tucker Memorial Bridge, and the others agree.

As they hit the road again, heading east, Bishop falls in step with Nate.

“Got a moment?”

His face behind the mirrored shades is inscrutable, and so is the smile he wears. Aside from Hanco*ck, he seems the least affected by their lack of sleep, as though he, too, is living off fumes and radiation. He’s a difficult one to figure out, friendly and easy-going on the surface, but there’s a glibness to him that rubs Nate the wrong way, as if everytime Bishop talks, there’s a joke waiting for a punchline.

“A safe route isn’t the only thing you should worry about,” Bishop says lightly. “We’ve got other trouble.”

Nate slows down, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“The first night. The kitchen fire. That wasn’t an accident.” Bishop smiles, and now, for some reason, it looks real, almost happy. Perhaps he’s not just a little off, but actually unhinged. “I got a look at it before the mayor dragged me out. Smelled like gasoline. Someone threw a molotov co*cktail in there.”

Although his first reaction is disbelief, Nate thinks back to that night. He was distracted to say the least, fooling around with Hanco*ck, and it all happened very fast, but that first loud noise almost did sound like an explosion. “You think someone threw it in through the window?”

Bishop gives a shrug. “That, or one of us got up and felt like a drink, huh? It’s possible. The window was cracked, but the kid swears up and down he didn’t hear a thing. Trust him or not, the dog didn’t notice anything either.”

Neither did Nate, when he ran out to clear the path for them. If someone attacked them to smoke them out, why didn’t they make a move after? Maybe they expected fewer people inside the house, an easier target? Bishop, however, seems to suggest that wasn’t the case.

“And last night,” he adds. “Mystic Pines. I went around, checked the doors, better safe than sorry. They were all locked when we bedded down. Ferals picking locks, that’s a neat trick.”

When did he do that? Nate never noticed him leaving the group. But then again, he isn’t certain. Did anyone really pay attention, exhausted as they were? If Bishop did what he said, it was clever of him, something Nate should have done, too, but if he’s right, that also means someone opened the doors.

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Nothing,” Bishop says. “Just something I thought you should know.”

This stinks of someone trying to make trouble, sowing fear. Nate looks him up and down and moves a half-step closer, putting his height into play, a hint of threat into his voice. “Why are you telling me and not Preston?”

If anything, Bishop looks amused. “Maybe I trust you? You’ve got a face like that, a real good one. If there’s someone infiltrating this group, it makes sense to keep it on the down low. Or, here’s an idea, maybe I don’t trust you, and I’m trying to get a reaction out of you? That’d be pretty devious of me.” He gives Nate friendly clap on the arm. “Think about it, big guy. Do you have any enemies? Any shadowy secret cabals maybe, out to get you?”

He quickens his pace, then, leaving Nate behind to close the distance to the others, and staring at his back, Nate has the sudden urge to turn around. It feels as though something is walking behind him, something huge and silent, something that has followed him here all the way from Sanctuary - or even longer than that. The feeling stays with him as he continues walking, and after an hour, it doesn't fade, it only grows stronger.

Shadowy secret cabals, that’s crazy talk. Except it isn’t. There’s one lurking right under the Commonwealth, and who is to say that they don’t want him dead? But how in the world could Bishop have guessed? He can’t have. Only Preston and Sturges and Nick know about Nate’s connection to the Institute, and even they don’t know the whole story. They don’t know about the offer Shaun made, the one Nate refused.

Actually, he didn’t exactly refuse it. He just left, too shell-shocked to even say no to his son. And Shaun let him leave, but maybe he has grown tired of waiting.

Nate rubs his face tiredly. He’s fallen back from the rest of the group, trying to get his thoughts into order. He wishes he could just sit down for a moment, drink something to soothe his parched lips, his sore throat. Rest his head, close his eyes, maybe sleep for another century. Then it would all make sense.

It can’t be the Insitute. If the Insitute wanted him dead, they wouldn’t bother with kitchen fires and ferals, would they? They’d send a courser or ten and be done with it. Unless they don’t want him to know it’s them… unless this isn't an assassination, but an attempt to win him back by taking away the only people he has left in the world besides Shaun?

“Oh, no,” Nate whispers. “No, no, no, no.”

He starts running, ignoring the thundering headache that grips him as soon as his pulse picks up. The road is a gentle slope down to the river, so even in the haze of the mist, he can see everyone ahead of him. Their little group has stretched out thinly, walking in little groups of two and three, Hanco*ck ranging ahead of them, almost at the bridge now. He’s maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards ahead. Nate counts, then counts again. Two are missing. Stan, of course, and -

“Judy?” he calls to the first people he overtakes, Preston and Jake. “Have you seen her?”

They turn, too startled to give him an answer, but Nate doesn’t need to hear it, he already knows. Judy left the campsite just minutes before the feral attack and then she led the monsters right back to everyone. She’s always seemed capable, more so than the rest, and she’s new to the group. No one knows her very well. No one would know if she were a synth.

It was Judy who sent them towards the unhinged settlers of Covenant, Judy who suggested they take Tucker Memorial Bridge.

There’s a sudden sharp pain clipping him in the calf and he’s too panicked, too dizzy to understand what is happening until his leg gives out under him and he skids face first onto the concrete, badly bruising his cheek. The pain blooms and flares, in his head and then his leg. He twists, groaning, scrabbling for his leg, and there’s wetness, hot blood on his fingers.

A bullet, clean through. He didn’t even hear the shot. Sniper, he thinks, and a pretty damn good one.

Preston rushes towards him, shouting. “Are you okay? Where - “

Nate shakes his head, teeth gritted around the pain, and grabs Preston’s arm to pull himself back to his feet. The shot wasn’t meant to kill him, it was meant to slow him down. He isn't the target, the others are. “The bridge,” he gasps. “Trap.”

A booming roar cuts through the mist ahead of them. They watch, in horror, as four large figures emerge from behind the piled up cars around the road. Mutants, armed with bladed boards and clubs, one of them firing a machine gun wildly into the air without aim or purpose other than to terrify. This wasn’t the sniper. There’s someone else, maybe up on the ridge to their right, or even on the overpass, although that would be an almost impossible distance… it doesn’t matter. Nate pushes off Preston, stumbling onward inspite of the pain. He drags his bleeding leg after him.

The next shot just barely misses him, ricocheting off the asphalt - he throws himself behind a rusting car, sucking in a large gulp of cold, wet air. “Get down!” he yells at Preston and Jake, “Find cover!” and hurls himself back onto his feet, toward the bridge.

He pulls a stimpak from his coat as he stumbles on, the last one he has, and jams it into his thigh. It hurts like a motherf*cker, but it’ll close the wound in a moment. He picks up speed as the pain eases a little and he runs, ducking from car to car to evade the sniper. The first mutant he reaches is trying to get past Codsworth’s valiant attempt at defending Sturges and Mama Murphy. The brute doesn’t see him coming. Nate gets in close, and gritting his teeth against the shooting agony in his calf, he puts his whole weight into a thrust of the sword that drives it right through the mutant’s kidney. It triest to turn with an enraged howl to try and grab him, but Nate jerks it back around with the sword with all his might and Codsworth slashes his buzzsaw across its face, once, twice, until the creature’s legs buckle and it goes down, gurgling blood.

“Sir, please, let me assist!” Codsworth exclaims when he sees the blood, but Nate ignores him, yanking the sword free and sprinting on.

There are three more mutants. One is chasing Jun and Elise, the other is struggling with Dogmeat and the third is swinging and slashing at Hanco*ck with its bladed board, frustrated by the nimble grace. Hanco*ck is dodging and weaving, mocking the brute, but the only thing in his hand is his switchknife and each step back takes him closer to the bridge.

He can’t help all of them at once. Preston and Jake are behind him, but with their guns they’re more likely to hit someone with friendly fire than to disable a mutant. Whoever he gets to first has the greatest chance of surviving. And then there’s bridge. The mutants, Nate thinks, are only a distraction, a way to drive them onto the bridge quickly, and then -

That’s when he hears the beeping.

The mutant kicking at Dogmeat is holding a bomb as big as a football, and the timer is already speeding up. Time narrows to a dark tunnel in that moment, and in that stretched-out, heart-rending stillness, Nate knows what he has to do. There’s only one way to get everyone else out of this trap alive: spring it.

He yells at the top of his lungs, so loud it hurts his throat, as he throws himself at the suicider, clocking the brute in the head with the flat of the sword. That gets the creature’s attention off Dogmeat - it roars, spittle flying in Nate’s face, and tries to grab him with one hand, the bomb still cradled against its chest. He dodges low and dashes off towards the bridge, sprinting. The pain in his leg grows transcendent with each leg, almost a high, he flies on it as the suicider lumbers after him. Mutants aren’t nimble, but they’re huge, and running at full rage-fuelled speed they cover ground much more quickly than a human. It’s going to catch him, but outrunning it isn’t the plan, he just needs it to get on the bridge, away from the others.

He hears its labored breath, the beeping of the bomb, the sound of the mines as the mutant’s heavy footfall sets of their proximity triggers, and he counts the seconds, one, two, three, and then veers left, throwing himself over the railing just as the first mine goes off.

He knows that his chances of survival are low. The explosion was too close. He feels the hot air licking his back, the cold water rushing towards him like a wall and there’s a moment of terror, of pure, naked fear, before he crashes into the water.

Chapter 10: Trust

Chapter Text

It’s the pain that brings Nate back to consciousness. He’s caught in the slowing moment of going under, of sinking below the light, of the cold clawing into his bones. This is the moment that comes to him in his nightmares, always now, the second time the ice took him. Nora is dying in the other pod, and he is unable to move, to even lift his arm, unable to scream, to breathe, to think. And then that other moment of coming back, unfreezing, sludge turning into blood again, the hammering of his pulse as his body fought the stillness, the tight walls of the pod around him. Caught at brink of consciousness, he oscillates between these moments, falling and waking, waking and falling.

Then a twitch in his muscles as he tries to move in a moment of terror sends a shooting pain all through his side and that pulls him back from the brink, back into the stark reality of his damaged body.

Bruised. Every inch of skin on his back and his right side is tender and hurting. There are other sensations as well, none of them good. The blunt throbbing of a headache. Burns - his right hand, his leg, all feel hot, inflamed, swollen. His throat is parched and his whole chest is constricted by a cage of pain.

There’s a flash of a half-remembered sensations, coming back to him all at one. His body dragging against cold, slick rocks, then grass, wiry and dry. A very warm hand, slapping his cheek hard. The taste of brackish water and blood. Bile rises in his throat at the memory, and he tries to lift his head to retch, but all he manages is a groan and a twitch.

He opens his eyes, or tries to, but sees nothing but blurred darkness. He knows that he’s lying down, on something soft, a blanket on top of him.

Something moves to his side. There’s a voice, low and gentle. “Hey. Don’t move.”

A hand, pressing down very lightly against Nate’s forehead, prevents him from trying to get up. The fingers are calloused, not as warm as the ones he remembers. The hand withdraws when Nate stills, and then slips under the back of his head, helping him up just enough that he doesn’t choke on the water being poured very cautiously into his mouth. Swallowing hurts, too, his throat is sore. But he laps it up greedily, and the cold, fresh trickle of water tastes like being reborn.

He’s not dead. That is a surprise. He remembers now that he should be. The fight by the bridge seems to consist only of jagged moments of terror, blurred and quick, like pictures taken from a moving train. The mutants jumping from the ambush. The bullet punching through his calf. Running ahead of the suicider, straight into the mines on the bridge. The explosions going off as he jumped into the river. He shouldn’t have survived that.

“What,” he manages to croak

The person at his side somehow parses his meaning. “You nearly got yourself killed.” It’s Preston, his voice thick with some kind of emotion. Not anger. “But you’ll be fine.”

Maybe Nate will be fine, but now that his brain is slowly coming back online, he remembers the rest of it. Judy. The Insitute. Preston is here and alive, but it’s too quiet, almost as if they’re alone.

He grits his teeth, forcing out the words, and tries again to see. They’re in a building, somewhere that smells cold and damp and dusty, like a basem*nt. “Where - others?”

“Resting,” Preston says. “Alive, mostly. They wouldn’t be, if you hadn’t gotten that suicider away from us.”

Mostly. That means not everyone made it. Every possibility is terrible, but Nate remembers who was closest to the explosions, closest to the mines. His breath hitches, and his throat clenches around the pain as he chokes out, “Hanco*ck?”

There’s a moment of silence from Preston. Nate feels that sensation of falling again, hears the blood rushing in his ears. It’s followed by a wild, desperate anger. Why does it always have to be him who survives? Why can’t he save anyone, just this once?

Then Preston says, in a voice so quiet that Nate almost isn’t sure he’s heard him right, “He saved your life.”

No, Nate thinks, no. It was supposed to be the other way round.

“When the bomb went off… you didn’t come up again. I didn’t think anyone could have made it. But Hanco*ck jumped in after you. Dragged you out of the water.” Preston sounds almost angry, maybe not at Hanco*ck, but at himself, for not being the one who went after Nate. “He’s gone to get more stimpaks and rad-Away.”

It takes a while for Nate to make sense of this, to sort out the relief and confusion and terror. He isn’t even sure what terrifies him so - that Hanco*ck could just as easily have been caught in the explosion or felled by a mutant, or that Hanco*ck would jump after him on the off chance that he might have made it, or that Hanco*ck is out there, alone, with the Insitute still lying in wait. He doesn’t know if Bishop has survived the ambush, whether he at least tried to warn Hanco*ck, or whether Hanco*ck would even believe Bishop’s crazy talk about a saboteur.

“He went alone?” Nate asks, struggling to get up. It’s a fight that he loses, overwhelmed by the pain and his own dizzy weakness. The realization that he’s too weak, that he can’t do anything, hits him hard.

It’s the worst feeling. It’s been with him all his life, in some shape or other, but since the bombs fell, since he watched Nora being murdered, since he found Shaun again, it’s become something unbearably horrible.

“You’re worried about him,” Preston says, as if he has a hard time believing it. But then his voice drops, and there’s a rueful tone to it. “Jesus. You are, aren’t you?” He sighs. “I think he’ll be fine. Aside from you, I’ve never met anyone this certain he’s invincible.”

Invincible? Where did Preston get that idea? It sounds about right for Hanco*ck, but Nate never thought he was invincible. All he does is lose, he keeps losing and losing and losing. Maybe what Preston means is desperate, death-defying, reckless. From a certain angle, invincible and nothing left to lose might look the same.

Nate’s eyelids droop, even though he’s still only a hair’s breadth from panic. The world is tilting sideways, sending him slipping into the dark. He tries to remember something he needed to tell Preston, something important, but just before he gets there, the thought is gone and sleep takes him again.

Some unknown time later, he’s disturbed by a strange sensation, something brushing his face, a fleeting, cold touch, up along the line of his jaw, down the bridge of his nose.

Then a voice that Nate can’t place, but that is nevertheless unsettlingly familiar, says, “I’d go off drinking altogether, if I had swallowed half the Mystic, but you look thirsty.”

Nate blinks, trying to clear his blurred vision. They’re inside a building, something that looks pretty solid. The room they’re in is narrow, no windows. All around them there are shelves, some empty, some stacked with ancient cardboard boxes. It’s vaguely familiar. After a moment, Nate recalls that he was here only a few days ago. They’re in the evidence locker at the BADTFL building.

There’s not a lot of light, just an oil lamp sitting on the floor, but he catches a faint reflection off a pair of glasses on the face of the person watching over him. Bishop, he realizes. That must be why the voice seemed so strangely familiar. Bishop is holding the canteen, offering it to Nate. He drinks until holding up his head and swallowing becomes too taxing. Then, with a jolt, he remembers the thing he needed to tell Preston.

“Judy,” Nate says, grabbing Bishop’s arm.

Bishop twists out of his grip without great effort. “Oh, Judy? She was just taking a leak, missed the whole fight. Real upset about it, too.”

“What?” Nate croaks.

He hears more than sees Bishop’s grin. “Nah, just kidding, of course she was the synth. She’s long gone.”

Which means she’s still out there. And so is Hanco*ck, alone. Nate has no idea how much time has passed since he spoke to Preston, how long Hanco*ck has been gone.

“He knows to watch out,” Bishop says, as if he’s reading Nate’s mind. “This wouldn’t be the first attempt at assassination he’s dealth with.” The smile Bishop gives him as he bends close is clearly meant to be reassuring. It isn’t. “Hey. Look at the bright side.”

A cold sweat breaks out on Nate’s back. He shivers, a queasy feeling in his empty stomach, and for the first time realizes that under the blanket, he’s naked except for a few bandages. “Bright side?” he rasps.

“Hanco*ck wasn’t wearing his fancy coat when he took his little dive in the river. Imagine how pissed he would have been if it got ruined. End of his political career, probably.”

Bishop says it in such a deadpan voice that it takes Nate a long moment to figure out he’s joking. He closes his eyes, trying to focus, but his head is spinning. The pounding of his pulse is painful, erratic. He has a fever, and maybe a concussion. He wishes he could see the wound in his leg to check if it is infected. But even as he tries to hold on to that thought, exhaustion pulls him under once more.

The next time he wakes, it’s to the sound of footsteps on concrete and unfamiliar voices. A lamp shines into his face, shockingly bright after the long time of lying in the dark. Bishop seems to be gone, but there are other people in the room with Nate. He sees a woman in spike armor, a shotgun slung over her shoulders, and then, heart-stoppingly, a man in a lab coat.

As sick and weak as he is, Nate manages to twist, to grab the only thing within reach to try and defend himself - a dusty bottle of whiskey on the lowest board of one of the shelves around him. He tries to smash it against the floor, but his feeble strength isn’t enough to even crack the glass. All it does is slip from his grasp, rolling away on the concrete floor.

“We’re here to help,” the man in the labcoat says in a slightly offended tone. That’s when Nate finally notices the stains on the white cotton, the frayed hem. This man isn’t from the Institute.

A familiar figure pushes past the armored woman. Nate sags back against his bedding at the sight of Hanco*ck, relief cutting through the panic. Hanco*ck is still wearing road leathers and his tricorn, and aside from a few scuffs here and there he doesn’t look any worse for the wear. “Easy,” he says, crouching at Nate’s side. “Doc Weathers is one of Stockton’s best. He’s gonna patch you up good as new.”

“We’ll see about that,” Weathers says a with a sniff. He mutters to himself as he checks Nate’s pulse and his bleeding gums, takes his temperature, lifts the blanket and scrutinizes his bruises. His touches are brisk and far from gentle. Nate sucks in a sharp breath as Weathers palpates his ribs, but Hanco*ck, crouching by his head, squeezes his shoulder hard enough to distract him from the pain.

Weathers concludes his examination with a small, critical hum. “He’ll live. Not sure how long, seeing the kind of antics you get up to, but the rads won’t kill him this time.” He pulls disinfectant and fresh bandages from his satchel, cleans Nate wounds, and then makes him swallow a couple of pills along with some purified water. Finally, he slips a needle into his arm, hooking a pack of rad-Away to one of the shelves, and tells Hanco*ck, “I know you want to move out quickly, but you need to give him two hours at least. Let this flush the rads from his system so the stims can actually do their work.”

Hanco*ck squeezes Nate’s shoulder again, more gently this time. “You heard the man,” he says, then rises to leave with the doctor and the woman, who must be one of Stockton’s caravan guards.

“Hanco*ck,” Nate rasps.

The ghoul pauses, waiting until the others have filed out of the door before he pulls up the wooden crate that Bishop and Preston sat on earlier. Nate is about to say something when he notices the scowl Hanco*ck gives him. “If you’re awake enough to talk, I’ve got a few words for you, brother.”

His tone would have worried Nate a week ago, when he didn’t know him and thought Hanco*ck might change his mind about their deal at every turn. Now, he’s just glad Hanco*ck is alive. It’s possible that he even gives him a dopey smile, because Hanco*ck narrows his eyes at his failure to be intimidated and mutters, “Hopped up on painkillers, huh?”

“Not high. Just tired.”

“Right.” Hanco*ck’s face pinches again as he tries for stern. “So, listen. Here’s an order for ya. A f*cking executive one. Don’t pull a stunt like that again.”

Nate has wondered, in between waking and sleeping, in the brief scraps of confused consciousness, why Hanco*ck jumped after him into the river. His mind feels clearer now, with Hanco*ck right there in front of him. Maybe it’s just the drugs the doctor gave him doing their work. Maybe it’s that focus that Hanco*ck gives to the world, whenever he’s around, distracting Nate from all the bad stuff.

He’s clear-headed enough to see that Hanco*ck sounds angry, but he doesn’t look angry. His face is serious. Nate has guessed that Hanco*ck likes him, in some fashion. It’s not hard to tell. But it’s a long way between liking someone enough to get in bed with them and jumping into an irradiated river that’s probably full of sea monsters and poison to save them. Hanco*ck isn’t ordering him not to risk his life like that again because Nate is an asset to him, an investment. This isn’t about the deal.

He actually cares whether Nate lives or dies.

“You hear me?” Hanco*ck demands. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

Nate still smiles at him. “No.” It’s not a protest, just a fact. It’s sweet of Hanco*ck to try, but he must know it won’t work. “You can’t order me not to save my friends.”

After a moment of silence, staring at Nate with those inscrutable ghoul eyes, Hanco*ck huffs a warm, rueful laugh. “Yeah, I know. That’s how you got yourself into this mess in the first place.”

Nate is still sick and exhausted and in pain, and the rad-Away feels like someone’s bulldozing his liver in slow motion, but looking at Hanco*ck, knowing that Hanco*ck cares, feels like sunshine warming his face. He’s glad to be alive and not dead, and that’s a first in… perhaps as long as he’s been out of the vault.

“Working for you isn’t a mess.”

Hanco*ck looks away at that, reaching for something in his jacket. “Hey, how about some Med-X? I’ve got the good stuff.”

“Not what the doctor ordered.”

“He’s just stingy. Caravan docs always are.”

Nate shakes his head. Something for the pain would be really good right now, but he doesn’t want the sleepiness that comes with Med-X. Doesn’t want to dilute the sudden clarity in his mind with it. Hanco*ck shrugs in a your-loss kind of way and moves to rise, but Nate makes the effort of moving his hand, touching Hanco*ck’s boot. He squeezes the ancient, scuffed leather. “Thank you.”

Hanco*ck says nothing at first, looking more uncomfortable than Nate has ever seen him, almost embarrassed. Then he tucks that look away behind a fierce grin. “Damn right. I hope you appreciate this for the f*cking heroic gesture it was. Taking a dip when it wasn’t even my bath day.”

Nate chuckles, his eyes drooping close for a moment. He’s in too much pain from the rad-Away churning through his system to fall asleep, but he allows himself to drift for a few minutes, thinking about Hanco*ck. More and more, he’s beginning to see what sort of person the mayor really is. Someone who’ll risk his life for others without a second thought, and mask his embarrassment at being thanked by bragging about it. In the beginning, Nate thought Hanco*ck didn’t care about the risks, that he took them like another hit, another high, a casual game of Russian roulette with the wasteland. That helping people was almost an excuse for him to get the action he craves.

But that’s not true. A man like that would have taken the slow, miserable trek through the Commonwealth with a bunch of badly prepared settlers. A man like that wouldn’t have walked to Bunker Hill just to get a doctor for a hurt employee. A man like that wouldn’t have been so afraid of responsibility that he needed safeguards to stop himself from trying to run from it. Hanco*ck does care about it all, about righting wrongs, about helping the helpless and taking down the bad guys.

Jumping into the river, though, that seems like more than just a good deed Hanco*ck might have done for anyone else. Not just because the water was icy and polluted enough to harm even a ghoul and probably home to far worse horrors than mirelurks. He went after Nate when everyone else, even Preston, had already given up hope.

Nate prefers not knowing Hanco*ck’s exact reasons for doing it. That way he can allow himself to imagine that it means something, that Hanco*ck cares about him as more than an employee with benefits, more than just another lost soul needing a break.

Gradually, as the medicine does its work, Nate starts to feel less like he’s rotting from the inside. The next time he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see that Hanco*ck is still there, sitting at the desk outside the evidence room and toying with the ancient police terminal. The others must be somewhere down the hall, because Nate can hear the muffled sound of conversation. How long have they been here now? He has no idea. Long enough for Hanco*ck to walk to Bunker Hill and back, at least.

He calls to him, and the ghoul comes over, offering Nate the canteen of water again.

“Judy,” Nate says, when he sags back down onto the bedding after drinking. “She led us into that ambush.”

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck grunts. “Our friend Bishop mentioned it. A f*cking synth.”

His tone makes Nate blink, even more than the fact that he already knows. It’s dark and cold, more vicious than anything he has said. He didn’t sound like this when he talked about the Forged, or the raiders preying on Stockton’s caravans - his grudge against the Minutemen seems almost friendly in comparison. Hanco*ck hates the Institute.

Is this just the mayor’s general disdain for those who abuse their power? The Institute certainly runs contrary to everything Hanco*ck believes in - freedom, fairness, facing your enemies head-on. It would make sense that he dislikes the idea of such a huge, shadowy force operating in the Commonwealth, but that alone doesn’t seem enough to elicit such hatred.

The urge to tell him about Shaun, right then and there, is so strong it chokes Nate. But he holds back. How would he have reacted to someone telling him their own son runs the Institute, back before he found Shaun? He’d never have trusted them fully again. Before he found Shaun, he would have done anything to get information out of anyone who knew anything about the Institute, and he wouldn’t have felt too bad about it. Nate still doesn’t feel remorse for killing Kellogg, even after finding out about the man’s whole life, and Hanco*ck is a good deal more violent and hotheaded than he is.

The silence has stretched too long, and anything Nate might say seems awkward. He closes his eyes and pretends to fall asleep and eventually, pretense becomes reality.

The next time he wakes up, Preston is there. With his help Nate is able to sit up against the bare concrete wall and drink until the canteen is empty. He’s starting to feel a lot better. As his fever is fading, so is the ache in his throat and the sense that his organs are liquefying. He almost feels ready to eat something.

He asks Preston for his clothes, and Preston returns a minute later with Hanco*ck and Sturges in tow. Dogmeats pads ahead of them, nosing at Nate’s naked feet with a curious whine before he sits down at his side. Nate sinks his fingers into the dog’s thick winter coat, scratching his ruff until Dogmeat tries to lick his face. Sturges pulls him away before he can get dog slobber all over his cuts and bruises.

“I’ve seen you disintegrated at the molecular level and come back whole, but man, that was something else,” Sturges says. “Was the doc able to put you back together?”

“I’ll be okay.” Nate darts a look at Hanco*ck, who is leaning against the door jamb, an impassive look on his face. Maybe he’ll think Sturges is joking about molecular disintegration. Still, apprehension curls in Nate’s belly. How many more of these little slip ups and clues until Hanco*ck guesses that there’s more to Nate’s story than he has told him?

Nate truly has no idea how Hanco*ck will react to the revelation that the leader of the Institute is his son. What he does know is that Hanco*ck hates being lied to. Finding out that Nate has kept a secret this large from him might shake his trust beyond repair. And he does have every right to be angry - harboring Nate in his town might cost him a lot more than he’s aware.

But before Nate puts his cards on the table, he needs to make sure the Institute doesn’t finish what they started. The best way to ensure that is to get everyone to a proper settlement with guards and walls and people.

“We should get to Bunker Hill,” Nate says, plucking the infusion needle from his arm. “It’s safer there.”

Sturges turns away as Nate tries to struggle back into his clothing, petting Dogmeat so as not to stare at Nate, but Preston and Hanco*ck both watch him, eyeing his battered body. Nate wishes he could hide from them how weak he still is, but he has to hold onto a shelf just to keep from falling down again, and his movements are slow and uncoordinated. The leather of the pants resists him, it’s stiff and warm from being hung up to dry by a fire. The shirt still smells slightly singed. As soon as he lets go of the shelf, he’s holding onto to get the shirt over his head, his right leg buckles under him. Preston is there in an instant, grabbing Nate’s arm to support him.

“No way. You’re in no shape to walk.” He sends Hanco*ck a stern glare, as if he’s at fault here. “He’s not ready.”

“I’ll be fine with some buffout and med-X,” Nate argues.

Hanco*ck snorts softly, shaking his head. “Ain’t no rest for the wicked, huh. Sure you’re up for it?”

Nate nods at him with his teeth gritted around the dizziness threatening to pull him down again, and Hanco*ck, after a short, thoughtful pause, shrugs and slips a handful of pills and a dose of med-X out of his pocket.

Preston’s grip on Nate’s arm tightens enough to be painful. “It’s a miracle he survived that explosion. Are you going to throw that way like this?”

“I ain’t making him do anything,” Hanco*ck tells him over Nate’s head. He notices Nate fumbling around with the med-X syringe and takes it from his hands, helping him to administer it without even looking away from Preston. “Doc said two hours, it’s been more than that. He don’t look like he’s gonna keel over any second, and we’re safer if we get a move on now.”

The shot enters Nate’s bloodstream like a warm blossoming of gold after the heavy drag of the rad-Away. He feels the pain ease in its wake. Then the buffout kicks in, like a friendly shove in the back, bolstering his resolve. He’s good to go. Nothing can really get at him now, not even the argument unfolding around him.

“I’m fine,” he tells Preston, pushing out of his hold to pick up his shirt. His limbs feel a little loose and numb now, and it’s something of a challenge to get into his boots, especially once Dogmeat gets underfoot, excitedly thumping his tail against the shelves as he circles Nate. But he hardly even feels his cracked ribs when he bends over. He’s wrapped in a thick, pleasant layer of chems. Good to go.

“There was no need for this,” Preston still argues.

Hanco*ck hands Nate his jacket. “What would you have done, Straight Edge? Sat around twiddling your thumbs for another week? Yeah, I remember, ‘Minutemen’ always was a misnomer.”

“I’m fine,” Nate repeats. It’s a little difficult still to walk through the door without bumping into it, but he manages to navigate both the office on the other side and the hall. The others are camped out in the lobby, huddled around a small fire in a metal trash can. There are some cheers from Elise and Jun and Mama Murphy when he enters the room, and Codsworth floats up to Nate admonishing him not to be so cavalier with his well-being in the future. Bishop, Nate notes, is nowhere to be seen.

When he asks after him, Hanco*ck responds with a dismissive grunt. “Sneaky bastard. I’ve stopped trying to keep track of him. He’ll turn up again sooner or later.”

At the entrance to the BADTFL, they’re joined by Jake and Marcy, who have been sitting on the stoop, keeping watch. Marcy takes in Nate, shakes her head, mutters something about having more luck than sense, and then joins her husband, but Jake, Nate notices even in his drugged up state, is staring at him with something akin to admiration.

The mix of buffout and painkillers makes Nate feel as strong and as dull as a brahmin as he trudges along amidst them. Hanco*ck takes point, leading them through the maze of Charlestown backyards and alleys along a path that safely avoids mutants and raiders. Soon, the white obelisk rises between the roofs, bright against the grey sky. It beckons to them like a beacon, tantalizingly near, but for a long time they don’t seem to get any closer. With each corner they turn that does not reveal the settlement’s wall, Nate’s borrowed strength fades. It becomes difficult not to drag his feet and stumble over the cracks in the pavement. Breathing is starting to hurt his ribs again. When Preston comes to walk at his side, he sighs internally, steeling himself for an argument for which he has no energy to spare. Preston, however, only offers his shoulder to lean on.

“Preston,” Nate says after a while. His voice is scratchy again, his throat dry. Preston asks if he needs to take a break, but Nate shakes his head. He needs to talk, to distract himself.

“When the Minutemen were still around… what was their stance on ghouls?”

This may not be the best place or time to have this discussion. Judging by the look Preston gives him, he certainly thinks so. But he does respond after a moment, albeit cautiously. “The Minutemen were never supposed to take sides,” he says. “If a settlement joined, they joined, if you attacked one of our settlements, the Minutemen fought back. Everyone else was a neutral party as far as we were concerned.”

“Were there any ghoul members?”

Preston rubs at something behind his ear. “I don’t know. Not in Quincy, but that doesn’t mean… we never had a rule against it, that I know. It’s probably just that ghouls tend to keep to themselves.”

Nate recognizes that as the excuse it is. Maybe Preston does, too, because he sounds uncomfortable saying it, and falls silent after, his brow knitting into a troubled frown. It’s the kind of thing you say when you’re too polite to admit you don’t trust certain people, that you don’t really want any contact with them, that you’d rather not have to think about them at all. It’s the kind of thing Nate is sure some of the folks in Sanctuary said about him and Nora, at least the ones who looked closely enough to see that he wasn’t as proudly patriotic as a veteran should be and she wasn’t the sweet young mother and housewife she looked like.

That’s the past, though. Whatever the Minutemen were, whatever the reasons for Hanco*ck’s grudge against them, they’re effectively gone from the Commonwealth. Preston is all that remains of them. If he manages to rebuild them, then he’ll be the one setting the tone. Ultimately, it’s his stance on ghouls that matters.

“There’s a settlement up north,” Nate says. “Tarberry farmers. We visited it a couple of days ago. Good folks. I think they’d like to join, if you asked.”

“That’s great,” Preston isn’t stupid - Nate can tell by the way he sighs that he knows where this is going.

Nate lets go of his shoulder, tries walking on his own power again. His right leg feels stiff, every step knotting the muscles around the wound even further. “There’s just one problem,” he grunts. “They don’t think they’d be welcome, as ghouls.”

Preston sighs again, ruefully this time, but there’s no hesitation in his reply, no reservation. “They would be,” he promises. “They will. I’ll go up there in person, if that’s what it takes.”

Nate misses his next step, and without Preston there to catch him, he’d fall flat on his face. It hurts like a motherf*cker, but once he stops grimacing, he manages a crooked smile. This was as easy as he hoped it would be. He wishes Hanco*ck had been there to hear it, because then he’d know that although he might be right about the Minutemen, he’s wrong about Preston.

“I might come with you,” he tells Preston.

Might. If they make it that far, is the unspoken condition. If they survive the winter, if Nate is still with them. If the Institute is after him, Nate has other things to worry about than just getting them safely to Goodneighbor. If worst comes to worst, he might even have to leave in order to protect them.

*

When they finally walk through the gates of Bunker Hill, their reception is warm. Nate limps towards a row of airplane seats propped up against the compound wall and collapses onto it with a shudder of relief, then watches as Hanco*ck introduces Preston and the others. Kessler shakes Preston’s hand warmly. By the way he self-consciously touches his sash and coat as he answers her, she must be asking him about his uniform.

The others are given warm drinks and food, blankets to drape around their shoulders, space inside the compound to put down their burdens and rest. All out of Hanco*ck’s pocket, Nate suspects. Mama Murphy is offered a seat near one of the fires, and dozes off almost instantly, Dogmeat stretched out at her feet. Nate isn’t far from doing the same when Hanco*ck comes strolling up to him.

“Time to hit the sack, huh?”

He must be exhausted, too, Nate realizes. His damaged ghoul face hides a lot of it, but Hanco*ck has probably been awake for more than twenty-four hours, probably closer to forty-eight - ever since the feral attack. He has fought super mutants and pulled Nate out of the river and walked to Bunker Hill and back and there again. Whatever energy he still has is all mentats and attitude.

He offers Nate a hand, pulling him to his feet, and leads them to the same little room where they spend their first night here. It’s still no more than a closet, but it’s warm and dry and as safe as anywhere is going to get, with the Institute on his tail. Nate sinks onto the mattress as soon as he has kicked off his shoes and dropped his jacket onto the folding chair in the corner.

As soon as he closes his eyes, however, he realizes he won’t be able to sleep. The world around him seems to spin and a surge of nausea well up from his stomach. His heart races. This time, it’s not radiation poisoning but the jittery, unpleasant end of the chems, all the pain returning with a vengeance.

He curls up on his side, shivering even under the warm blanket. To keep the dizziness at bay he tries to focus on Hanco*ck in the dim lamplight, watching him pulls off his boots and put aside his hat before tilting back his head to take a quick, perfunctory hit of jet.

Hanco*ck takes a lot of chems, and he takes them casually a lot of the time, more like a tic than addiction, but this time, Nate thinks he glimpsed a moment of actual need. He feels it, too, the temptation, his body demanding another dose of Med-X, or the sweet release of jet, even though he knows that’ll ultimately make it worse.

“Does it ever mess you up?” Nate asks, just a little plaintive.

He gets no reply for half a minute, as though Hanco*ck is lost in his own little world of chems, then the ghoul lifts a hand in a vague, swimming gesture. “f*cked me up so badly that most of it don’t register now.”

He lowers himself onto his back next to Nate, humming something tuneless. On the surface, he seems content, relaxed, but there’s still a remainder of tension underneath. Or perhaps, Nate is projecting the weight of his own unease onto Hanco*ck.

He waits for a while, for either his nausea or the peak of Hanco*ck’s high to pass, and when Hanco*ck stirs again to peel himself out of his leathers, Nate says, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Why aren’t ya sleeping?” Hanco*ck complains, but then he relents, sprawling propped on his elbow next to Nate. “Whaddya wanna know?”

“What’s your problem with Preston?”

“Other than him being a buzz-killing bore obsessed with a boy’s club that went down the drain years ago? Not much.”

“Really? I had the impression your problem was with the Minutemen, not with him personally.”

“Right.” Hanco*ck heaves an annoyed sigh. Then after a while, he rubs his eyes and says,“Christ. Here goes the story, okay. Told you about how Diamond City threw out the ghouls, didn’t I? Mankind for McDonough and all that. McDonough ran against the guy who was mayor before him, some old fart named Jenkins whose platform was basically ‘you want more of the same, I’ll give ya that’. Was mayor for ages, so of course people were getting restless. Like tinder, waiting for a spark. I tried to talk to him when he first started that racist crap. Thought maybe he’d listen to… he didn’t, though. Like talking to a wall.”

Hanco*ck pauses for a moment, staring up into the air, as if he sees that wall right there before him, as if he’s still running up against it. Then he shakes his head.

“So I went to anyone else who would listen, anyone with clout in the city. Aside from the mayor, in those days the biggest name was Joe Becker. General of the Minutemen. Becker was this tough, no nonsense old soldier type. Big grizzled wasteland warrior. Everyone respected him, and he never publicly endorsed the ghoul hatin’ crap, so I thought I stood a chance. The Minutemen were supposed to be the good guys, right? Asked him if he’d consider running as a third candidate. Thought I was really clever for thinking up that one, too. Becker was so popular, he’d have knocked both of the others out of the race straight away.”

There’s something about this story, something about what Hanco*ck just said that tickles Nate’s memory, that makes him feel like he’s missing some piece of a large puzzle. He blinks his tired eyes, trying to get it sorted out in his head, but Hanco*ck continues in that same tight, far-away voice that he always gets when he speaks of Diamond City.

“Becker listened to what I had to say and then he said, ‘Son, I can tell you’re passionate about this. We could make a Minuteman out of you yet, if you were willing to turn around your life...’ Yadda yadda, you’ve heard the spiel before from Garvey, I bet.”

“He made that a condition for helping the ghouls?” That seems calculating, but Becker probably thought he was helping Hanco*ck. It’s more or less the same reasoning that led Nate to tell Preston to try and recruit Jake. Maybe that’s why Hanco*ck was so upset about that?

However, Hanco*ck snorts at Nate’s guess. “Hell, no. Might’ve done it, if that had been all. They’d have changed their mind about wantin’ me soon enough, I bet. No, Becker told me I should join up and run for the post myself. Be my own Minuteman mayor.”

He isn’t wearing the uniform now, and he’s mayor of another town, so Hanco*ck must have said no. It’s not hard to see why - a man who never wanted power, never liked Diamond City’s tight rules, who by his own admission was little more than a drifter and addict back then. Becker must have been a real smart guy, to look beyond all that and see the potential of him. Real smart, or -

And that’s when something clicks in Nate’s brain, half-asleep as he is, and he remembers what Deirdre said to him at the Slog, just before they left. If you ever grow tired of Johnny McDonough’s bullsh*t -

Nate’s breath catches, and he lifts his head abruptly, making Hanco*ck turn towards him with an inquisitive noise.

“What’s the matter?”

“Your real name is John, isn’t it?” It comes out a little choked, because Nate feels as though he has been sucker punched with the realization.

Hanco*ck expels his own breath in a great gust, dropping back down onto the mattress, an arm over his face. “Aw, damn,” he mutters, as if he knows exactly where this is going.

“John McDonough? You and the mayor - ”

“Yeah.” Hanco*ck doesn’t lift his arm. “Bastard is my brother.”

He sounds bitter about it, bitter and angry. But there’s something else to it, something quieter and darker. Shame. He’s ashamed of the connection. Hanco*ck, who always seems completely, utterly shameless, is ashamed of who he is.

It shouldn’t make sense, but it does. A lot of things make sense now. Why Hanco*ck seems to think the expulsion of the Diamond City ghouls was his responsibility, why Becker would see him as a likely candidate. Why Hanco*ck didn’t want to run against McDonough.

“He wasn’t always like that,” Hanco*ck says, as though after all these years he still can’t reconcile the brother he knew and the man he turned out to be. “I never saw it coming.”

Nate doesn’t say anything at first. What is there to say? It wasn’t your fault? Of course it wasn’t, but it’s clear Hanco*ck thinks otherwise. Nate knows how that feels. He knows that ‘I’m sorry’ won’t cut it, either.

Then he remembers what Hanco*ck said when he told him about watching Shaun being taken away. How good it felt to have him offer revenge, even if Nate is never going to take him up on that.

“You know, if you want to take him down, you only need to give the order. Unlike you, I can walk straight into Diamond City.”

It’s a joke, sort of, because assassinating McDonough would probably be almost as suicidal as trying to take down the Institute, and also, it doesn’t sound as if Hanco*ck wants his brother dead. But Nate tries to make clear that it’s not just a joke. He means it, in some ways.

He might do it, if Hanco*ck really, truly asked.

The ghoul laughs, quiet and rough at first, then more genuinely. He lifts his arm from his face, and drops it between them, bumping his knuckles against the back of Nate’s hand, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like, “Thanks, brother.”

Nate lets that percolate in his head for a moment. How many times has Hanco*ck called him ‘brother’? He always thought it was just a figure of speech, the local idiom of Goodneighbor, but now it’s clear that there’s a deeper layer of meaning.

Obviously, Hanco*ck’s feelings towards him are anything but brotherly, but there is some truth to it, some depth of emotion Nate didn’t even guess at before.

The spot where their hands still touch feels like the center of the world. He thinks about taking Hanco*ck’s bony, scarred hand into his, about pulling him closer, kissing him. But the few inches between them might as well be years. Hanco*ck isn’t finished with the story, he’s still staring up at the ceiling, eyes distant, his voice a raw whisper.

“When they threw the ghouls out of the city, Becker was out of town. Some big Minutemen shindig down at the Castle. By the time he got back, most of them were dead or gone, but there were still some ghouls hiding out in the ruins around Diamond City, begging to be let back in. The Minutemen defend nice, upstanding citizens of the Commonwealth. Guess what that means, when it comes down to it? You’ve seen the way Garvey reacts to being called a drifter. Those ghouls had no home, no property, no ties to any settlement. Becker and his people didn’t do sh*t to help them.”

Even though Nate isn’t formally a member of the Minutemen, the bitter disappointment in Hanco*ck’s voice hurts. He wishes he could make it right, wishes he could promise that it won’t be that way in the future. He’s on the verge of opening his mouth and making a foolish promise. Instead, he reaches out to touch Hanco*ck. He’s nervous about it, but as soon as his hand settles on Hanco*ck’s bare stomach under the blankets, the tension seems to flow out of the other man, and he grows soft under Nate’s touch, almost pliant. It’s an incredible feeling, knowing that he’s allowed to do this, that he has that effect on Hanco*ck.

He lets his hand rest there for a moment, just basking in that feeling. Then Hanco*ck moves, rolling onto his side, pushing closer to Nate. It’s natural and terrifying both when Nate ends up curled around Hanco*ck, an arm around his waist, holding him, their bodies slotting together easily, warmth pooling between them. He tightens his hold on him as much as he dares to, as much as he can without coming apart at the seams.

If he could have this forever, night after night after night, everything would be alright.

*

He wakes up again very early in the morning, still wrapped around Hanco*ck, who barely even stirs, snoring softly in Nate’s arms. Under the blankets, it’s so warm and comfortable that getting up feels like pulling a tooth. His injuries and bruises have healed almost completely - there’s still a slight twinge in his leg and his ribs as he extricates himself from their tangle, but the fever and light-headedness are gone.

He puts on his boots and road leathers and Deirdre’s scarf, and walks through the common area. The others are still asleep, curled up in their bedrolls on the floor. Only Dogmeat lifts his head, thumping his tail against the floor. “Down boy,” Nate says softly as he passes by.

The sky outside is just turning from a faint grey to pink in the east. It’s a frosty morning, his breath condensing in the air, the puddles between the shacks frozen solid. The guards on the walls are bundled up thickly and looking sleepy as they make their rounds.

Katherine Kessler is up already, a steaming cup in her hand, discussing something with one of Stockton’s caravan traders by their brahmin pen. When she notices that Nate is waiting to speak to her, she shakes hands with the other woman and turns to him with a friendly, “Good morning.”

Kessler asks him about their journey down from Sanctuary, about his companions. She seems to have spoken to Preston about it a little, but apparently she wants to hear it again from Nate. As they talk, she takes him on her patrol around the settlement, checking up on the guards, greeting the first settlers to rouse. Finally, she says, “All right, out with it. There’s something you want, and I’ve had my fill of your charming company.”

It’s not all sarcasm, which Nate takes a positive sign. Nora always said he could wrap any girl around his little finger if he tried, though Nate has never consciously done that.

“If my friends had nowhere else to go,” he says, “if they needed a place for the winter, would you consider letting them join Bunker Hill?”

She doesn’t immediately say yes or no. “We’re a small settlement,” she points out. “Not a lot of space, and barely any work, in winter. On the other hand, we could use someone like your friend Sturges.” She purses her lips. “I’ll tell you what, if they’re willing to sell that Mr Handy, I’d consider it.”

Nate doesn’t like the idea of selling Codsworth. He isn’t even sure it would work - the old bot has developed a pretty strong personality over the centuries, and he might have his own ideas about who he will and won’t obey. But Codsworth is still only a robot, and he’s programmed to serve. There’ll be a way to talk him into it, if it comes to that. Meanwhile, it’s enough to know that Kessler would consider such an arrangement if it becomes necessary.

“Let me think about it,” he tells her, gratefully.

Hanco*ck is mostly awake by the time Nate returns. He watches the mayor get dressed - not in the road leathers, but in his frilled shirt and the red coat, shaking out the creases. If everything goes well, they’ll be in Goodneighbor tonight. Nate understands what this means. Hanco*ck is putting his uniform on again, turning back into the mayor of his town. It’s who he is, it’s also a mask. Nate has glimpsed behind it, and he has seen a man who has secrets, just like him. Aside from the ghouls up at the Slog and maybe Nick Valentine, how many people know that Hanco*ck is really John McDonough?

Bobbi talked about finding dirt on Hanco*ck as they broke into his strong room. Is this what she was talking about? It’s not something Hanco*ck has done, not his fault, but nonetheless, he seems to have done everything in his power to transform himself, to cut the ties to his old life.

Until last night, Nate would never have thought it possible. Hanco*ck seemed like someone utterly devoid of shame, utterly confident in who and what he is. It seems strange that this, the need to hide, to put on a mask, is something that they share.

There’s a small chance that he’ll understand why Nate has not been honest with him.

As Hanco*ck finishes tying the flag around his waist, Nate says, “I need to tell you something.”

“It’s not mine,” Hanco*ck quips, not even looking up from the sash. “Told you ghouls can’t breed.”

Under any other circ*mstances, Nate would laugh at the dumb joke. After a moment of silence, Hanco*ck does turn around. What he sees on Nate’s face makes him utter a soft curse.

“Not gonna like this, am I?”

Nate takes a deep, slow breath. “The Institute attacked because of me.”

Hanco*ck’s eyes narrow, he doesn’t look convinced. “That so? The way I see it, I’m a much bigger target.”

Here it goes, then. The moment of truth. “They’re the people who took my son.”

“Aw, sh*t,” Hanco*ck breathes, and takes a step towards him, all solidarity, but Nate puts up a hand, shaking his head.

“No, listen. Shaun was just a baby when they took him. I went back to cryosleep, and when I got out of the vault, I had no idea how much time had passed. When I finally figured out it was the Institute that took him, I thought I could go there and save him, but when I got there -”

“Got there? You went to the Insitute? Are you delirious?”

Hanco*ck tries to feel his temperature, but Nate bats him away, seizing his hand, holding onto it far harder than he should. “Yes, I know, no one knows where they are. Except me. I’ve been there. I had help, Nick and Amari and some guy who used to be one of their scientists. We captured a gen 3 synth, got the codes, and Sturges helped me build this machine, this teleportation device. It took everything we had. That’s why we’re so badly prepared for the winter. But the thing worked. I teleported to the Institute. I… I found Shaun.”

Hanco*ck stares at him. “You found your kid and you didn’t bring him back?”

“They took him sixty years ago,” Nate says. It still sounds unreal, impossible. “He’s an old man now.” He can tell that Hanco*ck is about to say something else, that he still can’t accept the idea that Nate would just abandon his son to the Institute, and Nate can’t bear to hear him say it, because it’s true, he did give up on Shaun.

So he forces out the next words as quickly as he can. “They’re not keeping him locked up there. Not anymore. Shaun is the leader of the Institute.”

Nate knows that Hanco*ck has a knife in his boot, another tucked into his belt. His shotgun rests against the wall by the door, within easy reach. Nate, on the other hand, is unarmed. He has even taken off his jacket, thrown it on top of his gear. He stands before Hanco*ck empty-handed, very much on purpose. Still, Hanco*ck doesn’t make a move.

“Your son,” the ghoul repeats slowly, his voice a rough grind, “is the leader of the Institute. The Institute. Boogeyman of the Commonwealth.”

Nate nods.

Seeing this, Hanco*ck sucks in sharp breath. “Well, f*ck me.” Nate says nothing. He can tell that Hanco*ck is still grappling with the idea. “Did you see me take anything this morning?”

“You’re sober. I think.”

A moment passes. He can see Hanco*ck’s expression slowly turning from incredulous into something hard, all the openness vanishing as he accepts that this is real. His tone is flat and cool when he asks, “So. If you’re family, why would they be trying to kill ya?”

“They aren’t,” Nate says. “They want me to work for them. Shaun is… he said he was looking for a successor. I left and didn’t come back, but… it’s possible that they believe that they can change my mind.”

Now Hanco*ck’s gaze wanders to the shotgun, then back to Nate, almost expectantly.

“They can’t,” Nate says. This part, this is not hard. Nate is never going to change his mind. “They murdered my wife. They kidnapped my son and raised him to be the kind of man who thinks that her life was… collateral damage. An acceptable price to pay.” He takes a step towards Hanco*ck, aware that he must look and sound like a madman, that he’s going to end up with a knife in his guts, but he needs him to know this, “I’d put a bullet through my brain before I’d go back there.”

Hanco*ck, though, does not flinch from him. He meets him with an even, considering look, chin tilted up to look Nate in the face, and then, very slowly, he nods.

“Hell of a secret to share,” he murmurs. “What made you think I wasn’t gonna shoot you?”

Nate wonders if Hanco*ck can tell that he’s shaking. “You aren’t, then?”

“Apparently not,” Hanco*ck huffs. “For some reason, I still trust ya.”

The breath he’s been holding leaves Nate in a long, stuttering exhale. His shoulders drop in relief. But it’s not surprise, he realizes. He couldn’t admit it to himself before, but this was how he hoped it would go. He didn’t tell Hanco*ck the truth because he’s a honest person: he’s not, he spent his whole life lying. It’s second nature by now. He didn’t tell him because it was the right thing to do, either. He told him because deep down, he trusts Hanco*ck. Trusted him to accept this, like he has accepted everything else about Nate, so far.

“I may be dangerous to be around,” Nate says. “I don’t want to be a danger to you and the others.”

“Shut it, right there,” Hanco*ck tells him. “You’re coming with me to Goodneighbor. We have a deal, remember?”

Nate isn’t going to argue with that. He’s far, far to grateful.

*

In the common area, they others have already finished eating and packed up their things, ready to go. Bishop is there, as though he never left, greeting them with a small, ironic salute. Preston has his map out on the table, tracing the different possible routes to Goodneighbor. None of them even suggests staying here instead.

Nevetheless, Nate clears his throat. It surprises him how everyone instantly turns to him, expectant, attentive.

“I talked to Katherine Kessler,” he says, looking straight at Preston. “If you’d prefer Bunker Hill over Goodneighbor, she’d be glad to have you.”

“A-all of us?” Jun asks, as though he expects the answer to be No, not you, Jun.

“All of you,” Nate tells him. He glances at Hanco*ck, catching his frown. “I’ll be going to Goodneighbor no matter what.”

There’s a moment of stunned silence. Then Preston says, “Look, I’m not telling anyone what to do, but I think we should stick together.”

There are nods all around, followed by more silence. No one seems to want to be the first to cast their vote. Then suddenly Marcy gives an impatient snort, hefting up her gun. “You want to be rid of us, huh?” she accuses Nate. “Well, it’s not working. I’m going to Goodneighbor. It has to be safer than Quincy, with this guy in charge.”

No one argues with her, although Sturges and Elise both smirk, stifling laughter at Marcy’s belligerent tone. Finally, Preston looks to Nate, then to Hanco*ck.

“We’re coming with you,” he says. “If the offer still stands.”

“Ha! Who wouldn’t pick Goodneighbor,” Hanco*ck smirks, but there’s a brief instant where his face betrays something far more complicated than petty triumph. Perhaps he and Preston both realize that they’ve misjudged each other. For Preston, it must have been their whole journey down from Sanctuary that made the difference, Hanco*ck proving himself over and over to be courageous and reliable. But for Hanco*ck, it’s this one choice, the fact that Preston would pick his town of ragtag drifters and ghouls over a place like Bunker Hill.

Marcy might be wrong - it’s very possible that they’d be safer here than with Nate. But he is glad that they’re coming. There has never been a group of people this big that felt as though Nate belongs to it, and they to him. It feels different when they move out this time, taking to the streets - like they’re a unit, one big, cohesive body. It’s almost the same feeling that Nate had at the Slog, watching the ghoul settlers, except this time it’s not something that could be, but something that is.

Chapter 11: Revels

Chapter Text

“Home sweet home,” Hanco*ck announces as soon as the neon sign of Goodneighbor comes into view.

Not two seconds later, there’s a loud clang as a bullet ricochets off a rusty road sign only a few feet to his left. The others scatter instantly, diving for cover behind the heaps of trash and rubble that turn the road into something more like a canyon, but Hanco*ck merely curses, leaps up on the nearest peak of rubble and fires his shotgun into the air, shouting at the top of his lungs, “It’s me you sh*tfaced idiots!”

There’s a brief pause, in which Nate inches closer to Hanco*ck’s position in a ducked run, and then the answering shout comes from inside the wall, “The mayor is back!”

Hanco*ck cracks a smile, giving Nate a quick thumbs up before he jumps down from the rubble heap. “No coup, then. We’re good to go.”

“Did you expect there to be a coup?”

Hanco*ck shrugs with a co*cky grin. “Folks get a little antsy when I’m not around. Nothing to worry about.”

Nate wonders about that as they walk towards the gate. If Hanco*ck thought there might have been a coup in his absence, why didn’t he approach more cautiously?

There has been a notable change in Hanco*ck as they’ve gotten closer to his town, a restive energy like the charged-up air before a thunderstorm. Now Nate watches as it coils up even tighter and then releases explosively as Hanco*ck meets the gathering crowd beyond the gate. There are some people that all but carry him on their shoulders, and a few that just seem happy for an excuse to act out - banging trash can lids and howling like wolves, raising hell just to show they’re not afraid to call attention to themselves and their settlement. But Nate catches sight of a few others, lingering in the doorways and the back alleys, watching Hanco*ck’s return with keen, cautious expressions, taking in the little group of settlers filing in after the mayor. Perhaps these silent watchers are the people who do not love him, or the ones who would have staged a coup if Hanco*ck had stayed away any longer. But even from the ones that cheer loudest, Nate senses a tension that only seems to ratchet up higher, something that will have to crest before it breaks.

The Sanctuary bunch looks startled by the noise and commotion, crowding closely together at the gate and staring at the locals with wide eyes. Luckily, no one tries to approach them, and Hanco*ck remains the center of attention. He greets everyone like they’re an old friend, often by name or by some established, affectionately insulting nickname, and when his pockets run empty of chems, which he keeps tossing to people like candy at a parade, he shouts, “To the Third Rail - drinks are on me!”

He pauses only briefly before the crowd sweeps him away, speaking to one of the guys in the suits and fedoras that make up Goodneighbor’s neighborhood watch, a mountain of a ghoul. The big guy wades through the rush towards Nate and the others. Nate isn’t entirely sure, but he thinks this is one of the men who dragged him into the State House after Bobbi’s failed heist.

“So you made it back in one piece,” he says in a gruff ghoul rumble, fixing Nate with a stare. “Not bad, for a vault boy.”

Belatedly, Nate realizes Hanco*ck hasn’t given him any instructions on how to act once they get back to Goodneighbor. Does he want to keep up the appearance that he has humbled and subdued one of his enemies, a man who tried to rob him blind? Or is Nate supposed to impress people, to scare off any potential rivals who might have gotten the wrong idea during the mayor’s absence?

It’s hard to tell. This guy, in any case, has already seen Nate on his knees and begging for his life, and he doesn’t seem like someone to be won over by more of that. Nate gives him a blank smile, not quite brash but not simply polite, either. “I don’t think I caught your name last time. Nate Hale.”

The ghoul gives him a slow once-over. “That attitude might work for the boss, but don’t expect it to work on everyone in this town. The name’s Dutch. I’m supposed to get these folks settled in and to tell you to get your ass down to the Rail when that’s done.”

Dutch takes them to a place Nate is already quite familiar it - the old brownstone that Bobbi used as her base of operations for the dig. It seems to have passed hands quickly; the ground floor is already inhabited by the looks of it, although no one appears to be home. The first floor, Dutch says, is theirs. It’s more than enough room for their meagre belongings, and there’s some wood stacked against the walls as well as an old cast iron fireplace in the largest of the rooms. The windows are all boarded up, keeping out the cold as well as the light. It’s not exactly comfy, but Codsworth, after a brief twirl through the place, announces, “Well, Sir, it’s a bit of a rough place, but I dare say we’ll have it shipshape in no time!”

“All right,” Dutch says. “You folks are new to Goodneighbor. I’m only going to say this once. Everyone’s welcome here, no exceptions, so long as you keep to a few simple rules. No violence unless the other guy is asking for it. No stealing from the community and you better not be caught stealing from the stores, because KL-E0 will rip you into tiny little pieces. You got trouble, you take it to me and my friends, or to the mayor. You bring trouble here in the form of raiders or mutants or what have you, and you better be up in the f*cking frontlines fighting them off. What else? Oh, yeah. Live and let live. People come here to have fun and be themselves. Don’t harsh anyone’s buzz or we’ll harsh yours. Also, there’s a soup kitchen in front of the Rex every second day at dawn, run by Rufus Rubins.”

He leaves without waiting for Nate to follow, so Nate figures he can take a minute before going down to the bar. Besides, Hanco*ck didn’t really seem like he would notice the difference, caught up in the excitement as he was.

He helps the others find an old recliner in one of the rooms and drag it close to the fireplace for Mama Murphy, who sinks into with a wistful sigh. “Oh, what Mama wouldn’t give to be forty years younger. I’d be dancing on the tables down at the Third Rail, you believe me.”

Preston seems scandalized that she has been here before, and a little put out that she hasn’t mentioned it once during all of the arguments they had on the way down here. She calls him a fool for thinking old women weren’t young women once upon a a time. Elise, who appears to have grown quite fond of their oracle, comes to sit with her and quizzes her about her youthful indiscretions.

After two hours, Nate leaves, deciding that it’s time to head down to the bar. He wouldn’t mind turning in, although it’s not long past sundown. The walk from Bunker Hill wasn’t eventful, but they had to take more detours with their group of civilians, and his body could still use the rest. What he’s really apprehensive about is the crowd, though, probably a lot drunker now after an hour of partying. If Dutch was any indication, he’s not popular with the Goodneighbor residents, at least those that know he tried to rob their mayor.

When he enters the old underground station, the din that rises up the stairwell sounds distorted, almost aquatic, echoing off the tiled walls in a tinny, hollow fashion. A ghoul in a tuxedo stops him and gives him a long look before silently allowing him to proceed.

The bar itself is packed with people - everyone who isn’t on duty guarding the wall or too out of it to walk seems to be down here tonight. There are even people sitting on the stairs, casting supicious looks up at Nate as he steps over them. He’s only been down here once, briefly, with Nick, but that was during the day, when this place was quiet and almost deserted.

The moving crowd, the vibrant laughter and shouting, the jazz singer on the stage, the smell of cigarettes and alcohol, the suspicion and hostility in the looks Nate draws, all of this reminds him instantly of the place where he first met Nora. He’s less obviously visible as a stranger here, no buzzcut to set him apart from the locals, and there’s actually a fairly even mix of ghouls and non-ghoul patrons, but he still feels out of place.

Finding Hanco*ck isn’t hard - he’s lounging at the bar, sprawling on a stool in a precarious manner, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and gesturing wildly, regaling the people around him with a story, probably of their recent exploits. He looks keyed-up and drunk and invitingly dissolute. It only takes one look at the people around him for Nate to realize that there are probably at least five of them who would climb Hanco*ck right there and then if he so much as waggled a brow in their direction. There’s a young thing with a dark bobcut, androgynous in a red co*cktail dress, flirting shamelessly, and a ghoul lady in a silver wig who is practically trying to sit on his lap, and a broad-shouldered fellow with a shaved head who leans against the bar, smirking at Hanco*ck’s louche sprawl and his half-unbuttoned shirt as if he thinks he’s already won the race.

Nate doesn’t feel jealous, but there’s a stab of something - disappointment, maybe loneliness. It’s sobering to know that here in Goodneighbor he’ll have to share Hanco*ck with all these people who love him and want him. That Hanco*ck would pull him out of a poisonous river means less here, because he’d probably do the same for each and every one of his people.

But Hanco*ck wanted him down here for something, so Nate squares his shoulders and steps into the ring of admirers. “Quite the welcome party.”

Hanco*ck pushes off the chair as soon as he sees Nate, clearly a little unsteady on his feet already, swaying towards him. He shoves his glass into Nate’s hands and slaps the bar, calling for another. “You,” he says, a little too loudly even for the level of noise around them, “you missed most of it.”

“Most of it?” Nate takes a sip. It’s mostly vodka, apparently, with some chemical after-taste that makes him wonder if it’s safe to drink for a regular human - Hanco*ck wouldn’t poison him intentionally, but he might not be sober enough to realize it. “Looks like you only just started.”

“Who’s your friend, Hanco*ck?” the ghoul lady asks, giving Nate a highly interested look.

Hanco*ck throws an arm around Nate’s shoulders, making him slosh the drink over his boots. “This here’s the hired gun Bobbi brought along to take me down,” he announces, loudly, and plants a messy, rough kiss on Nate’s mouth.

Nate freezes half-way into it. Hanco*ck doesn’t even seem to notice, breaking the kiss only to reach for the second drink the Mr Handy barman has slid down the bar. He downs it one one go as Nate stares at the people around them. The ghoul lady cackles, clearly delighted, and the person in the red dress pouts prettily.

“He’s working for me now,” Hanco*ck says, wiping his mouth and slamming down the empty glass.

He’s not just drunk and flying high on chems, Nate realizes. There’s something wild about his eyes, something brittle, as if at any moment his energy could turn in on itself. And although that should be worrying, it’s mostly intoxicating, watching him burn so brightly and so dangerously.

“So, are you gonna share him?” the ghoul lady demands.

Hanco*ck meets her leer with a wolfish grin of his own, and turns to Nate, but after one brief glance at his expression shakes his head without taking his eyes off him, “Not tonight, sister.”

Then he’s sweeping Nate away, the crowd parting for them as if by magic. He steers Nate into a back room which must have been one of the public bathrooms back when the station was still a station. The stalls and toilets have been cleared out and replaced with eclectic furniture - a leather couch, a large oval dining room table, a mismatched set of chairs, even a dusty plastic palm-tree. At the table, people are playing a high stakes game of cards. Hanco*ck says something to the players about buying out all of them if they get out right now and let him have the room. They do so, a few of them grumbling, a few of them smirking and jeering, telling Hanco*ck he won’t remember he said that in the morning.

As soon as the door falls shut behind the players, Hanco*ck is on him, kissing, pushing the jacket off Nate and wiggling out of his own coat.

“Are you okay?” Nate asks, trying to slow down, although he’s already flushed and panting.

Hanco*ck squeezes him through his pants, does something with a flick of his wrist that has Nate grabbing his shoulder for support.

“Yeah, I’m great. I want you to f*ck me,” he says in a low, raunchy murmur. “Against the wall, on the table, wherever. Now.”

Nate has a few objections to this, good, reasonable ones like the fact that he has never done this, and that anyone might come in, and Hanco*ck is maybe not quite in his right mind, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t want to. Seeing Hanco*ck like this, seeing his admirers gather around him like moths to a flame, like a pack of wolves smelling blood, it’s like a switch has been thrown in his head. He wants to be the one to have this wanton, dangerous, vulnerable wildfire of man, and if right here is how Hanco*ck wants it, then that’s fine.

There’s a lot of rough fumbling involved in getting Hanco*ck out of his pants and then Hanco*ck makes him sit on the couch and climbs into his lap, slicks up his hand and jerks him off until Nate almost comes. He’s incredibly tight and hot as he sinks down onto Nate, hissing in pleasure until he bucks his narrow hips and shoves himself all the way onto Nate’s co*ck with a look of rapture.

At first he sets a wild pace, riding Nate with a manic, relentless energy, right until Nate gets it back together and seizes his hips, starting to thrust up into him. That’s when Hanco*ck groans and his rhythm falters. He seems to lose track, slumping forward against Nate, fisting his hands into Nate’s hair and demanding, “Come on, put your back into it, I need - “

It seems he doesn’t exactly know what he needs, but when Nate turns them around, tossing Hanco*ck onto his back, he wraps his legs around Nate’s waist and eggs him on to go faster, harder. There is seemingly no limit to how much Hanco*ck can take, and after a moment or two, Nate stops holding back. It feels good, like he’s pouring all of the tension, all of the danger of their journey into it, like he’s f*cking just to celebrate that they’re alive.

Afterwards, Hanco*ck is quiet for a few minutes, allowing Nate to catch his breath on top of him, then he pushes him off and stretches, cracking a bone in his shoulder as if this was no more than a light workout for him. The little wince as he bends down to search for his clothes betrays that he does feel it, but it’s accompanied by a pleased grimace, a too-bright, toothy grin. “That took the edge off. For now.”

Only then does Nate realize that this is different from the other times they had sex. Then, Hanco*ck was in control, but now, he isn’t, not entirely. Or he’s trying to lose control, flooring the gas and heading straight for a wall only he sees.

Hanco*ck doesn’t make any great effort to clean up, slipping back into his pants and foregoing his shirt entirely, throwing on the coat bare-chested. He doesn’t even look at Nate, but somehow, he still seems to notice the way Nate frowns at his back.

“It’s how we roll in Goodneighbor,” he says, already heading for the door. “Takes a while to get used to - if it ain’t your speed, don’t wait up for me.”

Nate follows him a minute later, still feeling the whiplash. It’s not so much that he’s hurt by Hanco*ck’s behaviour. It would be easy to feel like he’s been used the way Hanco*ck uses chems, but mostly, he feels stunned.

He could do as Hanco*ck said and go back to the others to catch some sleep. Getting drunk doesn’t seem any more appealing now than it did before, although the looks people give him are slightly less hostile now, slightly more intrigued.

Hanco*ck has found the group of card players, who have moved their game to one of the coffee tables in the corner furthest from the stage, and he’s already getting dealt a hand, though he barely seems to pay attention to the cards. Nate realizes that in spite of the way Hanco*ck just left, despite his total disregard now, he’s worried about him, about where this is going. There’s something driven about Hanco*ck tonight, something manic, like he’s a vessel for the tension of the crowd.

He finds a seat a the bar and turns to face the room and the table where Hanco*ck, by the looks of it, is losing hard and laughing it off. Nate only has a handful of caps, just enough to order the cheapest drink available when Whitechapel Charlie turns his attention to him for a second - a shot of lukewarm mutfruit liquor that tastes like tomorrow’s headache.

Three songs later, the person on the stool next to him staggers off to the bathroom, and a ghoul woman in a man’s three piece suit cut to fit her petite form sits down next to him. She wears a tie and a wig and an amused smile, following Nate’s gaze with a knowing look. “Oh my,” she says. “Can’t blame you. Second-best show in town, that man, after Magnolia. Some would say the best. And what a snake-charmer he is, when he turns his mind to it. Turned you around pretty quickly, hasn’t he?”

Her familiar tone is a little startling, but Nate realizes he knows her, or has at least spoken to her before. “Daisy, isn’t it? From Daisy’s Discounts?”

She nods. “I remember you, too. You came into town with Nick Valentine a few months ago. No wonder Hanco*ck went easy on you, he’s got a soft spot for Nick - but then, who doesn’t? That old synth is a sweetheart.”

“Nathan Hale,” Nate introduces himself, and then, with a slight wince as he remembers, adds, “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”

“To me?” Daisy asks with exaggerated surprise. “Well, it’s always nice to be wanted!”

“A friend of yours asked me to deliver a package to you. Wiseman, of the Slog.”

Daisy’s smirk drops and turns into genuine surprise and delight. “Wiseman? Oh, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while! Now you have me on the edge of my seat, what’s the package?”

“I don’t know,” Nate admits. It was in his pack when he jumped into the Mystic because he didn’t think to drop it before he charged the mutant suicider. “I lost it. It was a book, that’s all I know. I’m very sorry.”

Daisy looks cross with him for a moment, but then she shakes her head, patting his hand. “There, there, it’s fine. It’s sweet of you to be so upset about it, but I think I know what it is. Just a little private joke between me and him, that’s all. If he gave it to you, you can’t be such a bad guy. Maybe that was Wiseman’s point.”

There’s a little lull in the conversation where she watches him over the rim of her glass with an expression that makes him slightly nervous. Daisy is good-looking, for a ghoul, much like Hanco*ck. His attention strays for a moment, to the card table, but he tries not to be rude to a lady and forces himself to turn back to Daisy. Nate recalls that Hanco*ck mentioned she was one of the pre-war ghouls. Maybe she’ll want to talk about it, like Arlen Glass. He decides to drop a little hint to see if she will bite. “It was probably pretty valuable, wasn’t it? Books used to be so cheap when we were young, but I’ve only seen a handful that survived the war.”

Her eyes crinkle a little as she narrows them. “Listen to you, making it sound as if you’re my age. You’re either the most well-preserved ghoul I’ve ever seen, or you’re trying to flirt with me.”

Nate shakes his head. “I’m actually that old. I was frozen in a vault the day the bombs fell.”

She looks a little incredulous, but amused enough to tell him to go on. “So what do you remember, from before, other than cheap books?”

“Good teeth,” Nate says, flashing his own as proof. “Hot showers. Traffic jams on the I-95. Police raids on places like this.”

She leans forward, her eyes lighting up. “Don’t tell me you were part of the scene. I’d remember a face that handsome, even if you didn’t swing my way.”

“I wasn’t,” Nate says. “I just met my wife in a place like this. I think it was called The Cave?”

Daisy croons, delighted, and demands that he tell her everything about Nora. It’s surprisingly easy to talk about her to this woman, who could have been Nora’s older sister, and says she thinks she knew some people Nora knew, maybe heard about her defending someone pro bono. He understands why it feels so easy when Daisy talks about her husband.

“Ray just blew into my life one day, upsetting all my plans - I was going to grow old as a confirmed bachelorette, you know?” Daisy winks at him, and then saddens. “And then he was gone, just like that, and they wouldn’t even tell me how he died. They buried a flag, not him. I didn’t go to the funeral.”

It’s like they’re mirror images, two parallel lives. Nate glances across the room, at Hanco*ck, who is talking to a man at the card table, some tall guy with a yellow beard and a tattoo of a claw on the back of his neck, giving the guy a knife-edged smile over his hand of cards. If Nate hadn’t met him, if things were just a little different, he thinks he might fall for Daisy. Or perhaps not fall for her… perhaps she’d simply be comfortable, an echo of the way things were, with him and Nora. Another haven from the storm, a sister in spirit.

“It’s always like that, when he goes on a walkabout,” Daisy says, smiling at Nate as if she’s a little sorry for him for choosing this road. “He flies high and then he comes down hard. Fahrenheit is usually the one who deals with it.”

“How does she do that?” It’d be good to know. Before tonight, Nate thought he had Hanco*ck figured out. After telling him the full truth about Shaun, all the hard parts seemed to be done. It’s clear that’s not the case.

“By not taking his bullsh*t, mostly.” She shakes his head. “But he needs this, I think. The town needs it, too.”

He talks with Daisy a little longer, until she gets up, telling him she’s a little too old for an all-nighter. “Especially this type of party,” she adds, mysteriously, and leaves. It’s late by then, well past midnight. The beautiful singer has vacated the stage a while ago, and her follow-up acts have been increasingly loud and cacophonous. The crowd has thinned a little, and a few hang on the bar little more animate than corpses, but the ones who remain awake seem to make up for it with a feverish, volatile energy, like a canister full of fumes.

The commotion at the card table, when it happens, comes suddenly, without warning. Hanco*ck’s luck seems to have turned, he’s raking in the winnings from the last round, when the guy with the claw tattoo suddenly jumps up, toppling his chair, and draws a submachine gun from under the table, firing it at the ceiling.

“This used to be a place,” he shouts, putting his boot on the card table, “this used to be a f*cking place where a man could make it -”

Nate moves before he can think, knocking aside the drunks in his path. The tattooed man doesn’t see him coming. He’s shouting at Hanco*ck, spittle flying, enraged by the mayor’s widening, sh*t-eating grin, and fires his gun again to make some kind of point about what sort of place Goodneighbor used to be. Nate grabs him as he has the gun up in the air, punching him in the kidneys as he twists back the man’s arm with a sharp crack. With a howl of rage and pain, the man tries to twist around to kick Nate, but he already has him in a choke-hold, an arm around his throat, squeezing tight.

The others at the table scrambled away at the first sign of trouble, their caps spilling everywhere on the floor, but Hanco*ck has remained seated, not even trying to get away. Now he rises slowly. He gets up on the table with a dancer’s light step, barely even swaying as he turns on his heels, giving the room a wide, open-armed gesture. It’s sudddenly silent, everyone listening, paying attention with bated breath.

“Seems that while I was away, the mice came out to play. Brick here seems to have made ton of caps overnight, shaking down folks who didn’t owe him no money, asking for rent for houses that belong to the people.”

There are some mutters of agreement from the shabby edges of the crowd. Hanco*ck nods in grim satisfaction, and suddenly there’s a knife in his hand. “Now Brick thinks we ain’t had a vote in too long. Thinks we oughta have a new mayor. A real tough guy like him. So let’s have a vote!”

A clamor rises from the crowd, deafening and incomprehensible, pure anarchy, no rhyme or reason to it. Hanco*ck basks in it, laughing, turning, the knife dangling from his hand like a toy.
Brick, hearing the noise, starts to struggle in earnest. He’s a big man, younger and heavier than Nate, and holding onto him is like riding a wild horse. He kicks over the table in an attempt to push them both over, but Hanco*ck, quick and graceful in a way that shouldn’t be possible for a man this drunk, jumps off at the last second, landing on his feet.

Brick bucks and twitches against Nate as the knife goes into his belly and Hanco*ck rakes it up, gutting him like a fish. He leans into the dying man, his face inches from Nate’s, twisted into a mad grin. Nate stares at him, unable to let go, until Brick finally turns into dead weight, slumping in his arms. Slowly easing his hold, he lets him slide to the floor.

Around them, the crowd is exploding, more like a riot than a celebration. This appears to be the moment this whole night has been hurtling towards, the lancing of the boil that was the tension built up by Hanco*ck’s absence. Nate gets jostled and shoved; there are people clapping his back, trying to make him drink with them, hanging off his arms to shout at him over the noise. He stands there, frozen, still trying to wrap his mind around what just happened. Nate just watched Hanco*ck kill a man in cold blood, looking him in the eye as he did it. No, he didn’t just watch, Nate helped him do it. They did it together, murdered a person together in front of almost two hundred people. A part of Nate reels close to nausea, but a larger part is stuck on the fact that Hanco*ck made no move to defend himself until Nate intervened, that he might have let Brick shoot him if no one had come to his aid.

He just witnessed a Goodneighbor vote.

He unfreezes when he sees Hanco*ck heading up the stairs. Letting him out how his sight is unnacceptable now. Nate shakes off the revelers and forges his way to the exit, keeping his eyes locked on the receding red coat.

Hanco*ck doesn’t acknowledge him until they’re up in the State House proper. The place is dark and deafeningly quite after the pandemonium downstairs. Moonlight pours in through the gaps in the boarded up windows, falling on cracked display cases and dusty floorboards. Hanco*ck pauses at the top of the stairs, leaning heavily against the railing, and with a breathy chuckle says, “No place like home, huh?”

He’s not very coherent, but Nate manages to get him to his den and to close the door behind them. Hanco*ck tries to make a beeline for his desk, probably to look for something else to add to the insane co*cktail of chemicals he’s already consumed. When Nate pulls him away, he says, “Still here?” in a surprised tone. He looks pleased for a moment, clinging to Nate with most of his weight, then he frowns. “Why are you still here?”

“I heard it’s part of the job,” Nate tells him. Probably even Hanco*ck isn’t high enough to believe that. The truth is, Nate couldn’t be anywhere else right now. His body is thrumming with adrenaline still, and he can’t take his eyes off the ghoul, can’t even feel the cool air around him for the flush of excitement.

His attempt to steer Hanco*ck towards the couch is met with little resistance. It’s just long enough for Hanco*ck to stretch out on it. Nate has a vague idea of making sure that he does, to wait until Hanco*ck crashes, which he’ll probably do within the next few minutes, and then leave, but Hanco*ck has other ideas, and in truth, so does Nate.

Hanco*ck’s kisses are messy, aimless, stuttering. He pulls Nate on top of him, clinging to his shirt as Nate tugs at his sash. A soft, needy noise escapes him as Nate manhandles him into the right position and sinks into him a second time. He’s still loose from before but probably also tender; not quite ready, but willing, eager to take it. Nate keeps it slow this time, watching Hanco*ck come undone underneath him, trying to meet each thrust, clawing at his back.

Nate can’t remember having wanted anyone like this - this intensely, or in this fashion. Even as he he spends himself in Hanco*ck for the second time that night, it still feels as though he could do it again, over and over, no diminishing returns. It’s a strange sort of intoxicated revelation: he suddenly understands what Hanco*ck meant when he talked about how exciting it was to have another man, a man like Nate, submit to him. He never thought he’d see Hanco*ck, king of swagger, so completely overwhelmed and pliant - for him, only for him. He never thought he could feel this possessive, that lust and tenderness could exist so simultaneously.

The manic energy seems to have drained from Hanco*ck afterwards, and he lies still under Nate, but just to be certain, Nate stays where he is, using his weight to pin him down until they both fall asleep.

*

They’re woken up rudely by the door bursting open. Nate scrambles to his feet, groping blindly for a weapon, but it’s only Fahrenheit, framed by bright morning light. She’s leaning on a wooden crutch, and it appears she used the other one to knock open the door, causing it to clatter noisily against the wall. She looks down at Hanco*ck, who is pulling the blanket over his head with a groan, burrowing deeper into the couch, then at Nate, pantsless and blinking at the light from the stairwell. Fahrenheit smirks.

“Want to hear my report, boss?” she asks, loudly and cheerfully.

Hanco*ck curses her, sounding absolutely wrecked and pitiful, then turns away, muttering something into the crook of his own elbow, incomprehensible except for, “ - next week.”

Nate, meanwhile, hurries to get dressed. He’s become used to everyone knowing about him and Hanco*ck surprisingly quickly, but he shot this woman in the leg not two weeks ago, and now he has her job, and she has something about her, a clearness and sharpness, that makes him feel instantly outmatched. By the time he is wearing pants and boots again, she is already limping away. Nate stares after her for a moment, then follows her to the staircase.

“Hey, uh, Fahrenheit. Can we talk?”

She has an inch or two on him, he notices when she turns. Her eyes are a steely blue, like freshly polished metal. “Do you play chess?”

“I… know the moves,” Nate says, confused by the question. There was a set in the rec room at the base in Fairbanks where he was stationed for a few weeks, and not much else to do but watch the same drivel over and over again on the television.

“Let’s see if you do.”

She leads him to the room on the other side of the stairwell, the one that leads to the balcony, and pulls a wooden box from one of the cabinets. The box unfolds into a chessboard, definitely of pre-war make, but the pieces she sets up are more recent, carved from wood and rock and plastic and bone, a whole wasteland set. The knights aren’t horses, but little pieces made out of dented and twisted tin, vaguely resembling power armor.

“You’re playing white,” she tells him, and after a moment, he remembers that white is supposed to make the first move.

He only just woke up, after what feels like no more than three hours of sleep, and he’s thirsty and slightly hung-over. He wants breakfast, a wash, a shave. But Nate does his best to remember how this works.

“I’m sorry about that,” he says after making his move, indicating the plaster cast around her leg. “I wasn’t aiming for the bone.”

“You weren’t aiming for my head, either,” she says and moves her piece with barely a glance at the board. “I underestimated you. You could have done me in if you’d tried.”

It sounds as though giving him an opening upsets her more than the fact that he used it. Nate picks a pawn at random, moves it in a way that is legal but probably idiotic.

“I also didn’t intend to take your job.”

She turns those piercing eyes on him. “You aren’t taking my job. Hanco*ck gave you a job, but not mine. He doesn’t have enough of an idea what I do. And it seems there a few things you do that I don’t.”

She is essentially calling him a whor*, and for an instant, Nate wants to say something truly stupid, like, I was the one who gave it to him last night, as if that makes any difference. Then he realizes she probably doesn’t care one whit. To her, it means they’re not actually rivals, and that’s it.

He decides to pretend this is normal, a normal conversation between colleagues. “What do you do?”

“Numbers,” Fahrenheit says, taking his bishop. “Book-keeping. Management. Things he gets bored with.”

She’s young, Nate thinks, not that much older than Jake, but that’s where the similarities stop. Everything about Fahrenheit is cool, collected, in control. She won’t let herself be challenged by Nate’s presence.

Well, there is one more similarity. Nate hesitates for a moment, uncertain that this is the right time to play this card, but on the board, he’s losing fast, and he suspects he’ll lose her interest once the game is over.

“Hanco*ck and I ran into some old acquaintances of yours. The Forged.”

The reaction this gets isn’t as strong as he anticipated. “I’ve heard a rumor come down the trade routes,” she says. “Figured it was the boss.” But then her facade cracks a little, showing her interest in the demise of her former comrades. “Tell me how you did it.”

Nate tells her, in as much detail as he remembers from the fog of psycho and violence that covers that night. When he’s finished, there’s a faint grin on her face. “Good,” she says. “Picking them off from afar, taking the power armor. Smart.”

It seems he has her approval, even though this is probably going to be the last time she asks him to play, given how little effort he has put into the game. “I think I ought to concede,” he says.

She snorts, suddenly sounding her age. “Yeah, you should. You’re lousy. Good job on taking down Brick, though. I hate it when the boss gets into a gambling mood.”

Nate knows what she means. It seems this wasn’t the first time Hanco*ck watched a man come at him and simply let it happen, waiting for the crowd or for his dazzling personality to stop the attacker. Watching him do that was exciting for some stupid, animal part of Nate’s brain, but in the light of day, he’d rather not see it again, ever.

“Hey,” he says, as she puts away the chess set. “You and I. We should work together. Keep stuff like that to the minimum.”

She quirks a brow. “You think I need you for that?”

“I take orders pretty well,” Nate tells her. “When the right person gives them. So if there’s anything you want me to do, for him, just say so.”

“Yeah,” she says. “That might work. Just know that if you ever turn on him like you did on Bobbi, I’ll be aiming for the head.”

She isn’t joking. Neither is Nate, when he meets her eyes and nods. “I hope so.”

Chapter 12: Office Hours

Chapter Text

By the end of their second day in Goodneighbor, Nate can tell that winter is going to be a long drag for the Sanctuary settlers if they stay cooped up in their new home for the rest of the season. After returning from the State House the morning after Hanco*ck’s welcome back party, he dozes on his bedroll for a couple of hours to catch up on his lost sleep, then he watches Sturges bring down some junk he found in the attic of the house, tinkering with the ancient electronics. Their mechanic seems happy enough, but the others drift through the apartment or sit in twitchy silence. Marcy snaps at Jun for biting his nails, Jake keeps pacing, stopping now and then to stare at Codsworth’s jet flame and Preston sits with his map as if it might turn back time if he pores over it long enough.

They’re not used to not having to struggle for their survival, Nate realizes. The good thing about the wasteland is that it rarely gives you time to think and remember. You live in the present, from moment to moment, and even the bleak hour before sleep holds no demons when you’re exhausted enough. Maybe that is why there were so many ways to distract yourself before the war, TVs and games and a hundred different radio stations, shops and amusem*nts parks and the theatre - noise to fill the empty hours between coming home from the commute and going to bed, time too short to do anything about the narrowing margin on the doomsday clock.

The first tinny noise Sturges manages to tease from the old radio he’s tinkering with makes them all jump in alarm, but soon they crowd eagerly around it. The speakers are weak, and the voices broken and faint, but they listen like soldiers getting a letter from home. To Nate’s astonishment, it isn’t one of the usual two frequencies, but a completely different station, and one that plays a quite familiar program: an old Silver Shroud serial, as perfectly preserved as the songs on Diamond City Radio.

It’s always funny to him what has and hasn’t survived of pre-war culture. It turns out that everyone in the room has heard of the Unstoppables and the Silver Shroud. But the context has been lost to history - Jake asks Nate if he was alive when the Silver Shroud prowled the streets of Boston, and when Nate mentions later that his favorite Unstoppable was Manta Man, Bishop claims, in all seriousness, that he has a cousin who was blown out onto the ocean during a storm and ended up in Atlantis.

Late in the afternoon, Codsworth woefully looks over the last of the rations they brought down from Sanctuary and says something about stricter rationing. Preston reminds them that Dutch mentioned a soup kitchen. “It might be worth checking out,” he says. “But it’s probably safer if we all go together.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about taking a walk,” Nate tells him. “It’s not that rough a neighborhood.”

Preston gives him a look. “I heard last night’s party ended with a stabbing. Jake told me it was a rough night.”

“I didn’t say that at all,” Jake mutters from across the room with a glare. “I said it was awesome and you should have seen it. Mr Hale just grabbed the guy and then wham, bam -“

“I’m certain the moment called for action and the other fellow deserved it,” Codsworth interjects primly on Nate’s behalf, but Preston’s expression clearly says that he doesn’t believe that.

Nate tries to ignore his disapproval, turning to Jake. “You went to the Third Rail?”

Jake glowers at him. “Are you going to give me sh*t about it? You’re not my pa.”

“I just didn’t see you there, that’s all.”

The kid rolls his eyes. “Of course you didn’t. You were too busy getting with the mayor to notice anything else, weren’t you?”

Time seems to come to a screeching halt. Nate doesn’t know why, he thought he had made his peace with what he is, what he does, but the sudden silence that drops after Jake’s comment feels like a hook run through his guts, like every feeling of doubt and shame he has ever had has been dragged out into the light and dropped on the floor like a pile of soiled rags.

Last night, when Hanco*ck kissed him in front of a crowd, Nate was stunned for a second, but then he forgot about it. Going down into the Third Rail felt like a passage into a kind of underworld moving to a different rhythm. A place where the normal rules held no sway. But this is different. This talk about Hanco*ck and him doesn’t belong here. It feels crass, in front of the others - Nate feels crass, for having been part of whatever last night was, for bringing it to this place. In the background, the Silver Shroud is still playing, and the others have spent much of the day cleaning the place, making it comfortable, giving it a sense of order and homeliness. Mama Murphy is sitting on the recliner, listening, and even though she’s the least conventional old woman Nate has ever known, she’s still an old woman. It’s not that hard imagining Preston in a tie, or Elise and Marcy in Sunday dresses, bringing tuna casseroles and molded salads to a housewarming party.

It’s not true, he knows that. They’ve probably never even heard of tuna casseroles, and that extinct world would seem stranger to them than anything going on in Goodneighbor now, anything he did last night. And yet it still feels like bringing that stuff home to his family’s dinner table: he pictures his mother, his father, their faces if they had heard what Jake just said, if they had seen him last night.

His mother would look at him like Preston does now, like he’s breaking her heart, like she blames herself for what is happening.

Into the awkward silence, Sturges asks, “So, are we going to check out the soup kitchen or not?”

It startles Nate from his shock, but he still feels the flush on his face as he turns away.

Preston is quiet for a couple of seconds before responding to Sturges. “Right. Let’s go.”

Another blizzard went through the city during the early morning hours, bringing a fresh cover of snow. It’s growing dark already as they leave the brownstone, and the white streets reflect the red and blue of the neon lights. Most of the settlement looks deserted, asleep except for the haggard crowd of drifters, men and women milling about in front of Hotel Rexford, waiting for a hot meal. A black man in his sixties wearing overalls and a newsboy cap stirs a very large pot of stew over a fire, and speaks a few words to each person before filling their bowls with the brown slop - this must be Rufus Rubins.

The crowd is quiet, resisting the cold with hunched shoulders, wrapped in as many rags as they own, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands to keep warm. There’s more snow drifting down from the dark evening sky, slowly covering the soggy six inches of slush in front of the hotel in a new layer of white.

Their arrival causes no stir, only a slight shifting in the crowd. To Nate’s surprise, the people who were here before them don’t move closer to the pot to stake their claim. There’s no ordered line, but they make room, giving them space to stand and wait like everyone else. It seems that although they’re destitute, they know this is a reliable source of food, one they don’t have to fight for.

“It’s free for everyone?” Preston asks, before handing Rubins his bowl.

“You’re new in town, aren’t ya? Got anything to pay with?”

Nate knows Preston gave most of his savings in their deal with the Covenant settlers. He still searches his pockets, and tries to hand over some caps. The old man shakes his head. “Eh, keep it. It’s pay what you want, and you don’t wanna waste those if that’s all ya got. All I ask is that if you’re a regular here, and you can work, you pitch in for the community, now and then. Any of you got any skills?” He squints at Preston. “Some of you lads and lasses look like you’d do well in the neighborhood watch, or on the wall.”

Preston seems surprised, but he recovers quickly.

“We’ll try to help out as best as we can,” he promises earnestly. He takes his bowl full of stew, and then, after a moment of hesitation, introduces himself and the others, casually mentioning the Minutemen. Rubins makes a vague noise of welcome and gives the kind of nod old men give when you tell them something that is surprising but not that surprising. He seems more interested when Sturges mentions he’s a mechanic. Soon the two men are in deep conversation, swapping jargon and stories.

Nate eats his stew without really tasting it, hovering at the edge of the crowd. He lets Dogmeat lick out the bowl before scrubbing it clean with some fresh snow. At least the crisp air has calmed his nerves a little, clearing his mind of the earlier panic. He finally realizes what is up with that look Preston keeps giving him, like Nate is ruining himself, and Preston can’t stop him.

He never had that talk with Preston. Between almost dying and having to tell Hanco*ck about the Institute, Nate forgot all about that… conveniently forgot it, because he really wishes he didn’t have to. He thought maybe Hanco*ck’s noble gesture of pulling him out of the river took care of it, but apparently Preston still thinks Nate is sleeping with Hanco*ck as part of the deal.

It’s time to set him straight, no matter how much Nate would like to avoid this conversation.

He follows the others as they return home, but at the door to the brownstone, he stops Preston. “Hey. Let’s go take the dog for a walk.”

Preston looks as though he’d love to avoid having this talk, too, but he nods. They trudge quietly through the snow for a few minutes, watching Dogmeat sniff at the back alley walls. Judging by the smell of some corners in Goodneighbor, Dogmeat isn’t the first to take a leak there.

“I know you have a problem with me and Hanco*ck.”

“A problem?” Preston shakes his head. “sh*t, man,” he says softly. “Yes, I’ve got a problem with you… doing that, for us. I knew… when you told me about your deal, I knew there was a catch. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have agreed to it if I had, because you don’t… f*ck.” This is all wrong. He needs to start over again. He needs to make Preston see what this is about. “Okay. So, ever since Concord, you’ve got this idea in your head that I’m… like you, I guess.”

Preston laughs, soft and incredulous. “I could never do half the things you’ve done.”

“But you don’t know me,” Nate says, a little more fiercely than he intended. He sees the hurt darken Preston’s expression, and quickly adds, “Yeah, it’s my fault. I’ve… kept secrets. It’s not you, it’s just… what I did my whole life. I fought for my country, but I didn’t believe in it, not the way you believe in the Minutemen. I married, and I loved my wife, but… I’m not sleeping with Hanco*ck because of the deal. I’ve always liked guys more than girls, it was just easier to pretend that I was normal.”

He pauses, a little out of breath, his pulse going quick and hard, like a jackhammer in his throat. Preston’s expression is one of complete astonishment. He tries a few times to say something, and then settles on a baffled, “But… he’s a ghoul.”

“Yeah, he’s a ghoul.” Nate laughs, because, okay, that’s not the thing he’s hung up about, but any sane person would probably be bothered by that. And not just by that. “He is… who he is. I mean, it’s not like I can’t tell what it looks like from your perspective.” From a sane person’s perspective, Nate means. “The stabbing, the chems, I know I shouldn’t like it, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.”

It seems to take a moment for Preston to process this. He looks as though he still doesn’t quite understand, but eventually he relaxes a little, blowing a big cloud of misting breath into the cold air. “Okay.”

“So, you believe me? That I’m not… selling myself? Because that’s really not what is happening here.”

“The way you’ve been acting around Hanco*ck… it was pretty obvious,” Preston admits, a little embarrassed. “I guess I should have seen it, I just couldn’t believe it.”

Nate begins to nod, but then he stops. “The way I’ve been acting around Hanco*ck?” he asks. He was pretty certain until now that Preston hasn’t even seen them touching, except in fairly non-compromising ways. What is he talking about?

“This is more than just a fling, isn’t it?” Preston looks at him searchingly. “It’s something serious.”

Nate’s first instinct is an almost violent urge to deny it, to lie, to say it’s just sex. He doesn’t know how Preston got there so quickly, why he would think… except it’s Preston. Of course he’s the kind of guy who finds it easier to accept romance than whatever it is Hanco*ck and Nate are doing.

He exhales, a little shakily. “I wouldn’t call it serious.”

Preston sighs. “Look, man… I’m not the most experienced guy. But you don’t act like it’s casual.”

Nate wonders, suddenly, how transparent he is. It feels like he was always so good at hiding his true feelings, but now that he’s let himself cross that threshold, now that he’s opened himself up to it, he wears it right on his sleeve. Preston sees it. Daisy saw it, last night.

Does Hanco*ck also know how Nate feels?

Not what he feels, necessarily, because Nate isn’t sure about that himself. It might be love. It might be a desire to throw himself at the man’s feet and swear his undying loyalty. It might be madness. He doesn’t know what he feels. But he does know how strongly he feels it. How much of himself he would give to this… this thing that they maybe have.

Does Hanco*ck know? If he does, why hasn’t he said something?

Maybe the answer is pretty simple. Hanco*ck is a smart guy, and used to people admiring him. Of course he knows what’s up. If he felt the same way, he’d probably have mentioned it.

“I’m pretty sure Hanco*ck only does casual,” Nate says, tired of this conversation. He has said what he came here to say. “It’s good the way it is. You get that, right? It’s good. We’re having fun. Hell, I don’t even know what I’d do if it was anything more than that, but it isn’t.”

“Okay, man,” Preston says, putting up his hands. “I hear you.”

Nate wants a glass of bourbon, or maybe something stronger. Jet would be great to calm him the f*ck down. Fortunately, Preston doesn’t say anything when Nate tells him he’s going to drop by the State House.

*

Half an hour later, the door to the State House opens and Dutch steps outside to light a smoke, looking surprised to find Nate lingering on the steps, hands in his pockets and shivering.

“What are you freezin’ your balls off for?” the ghoul demands.

Nate doesn’t know. He wanted to drop by for a quick visit, to see how Hanco*ck is doing after last night’s excesses, maybe have a drink, and then he changed his mind. Somehow he just got stuck here, on the doorstep, like an idiot unable to make up his mind.

“I was just leaving,” Nate mutters, but Dutch won’t have it.

“I’ve got a pretty simple job description, brother. Dealing with bullsh*t ain’t in it. The mayor’s up and at it, and judging by the way things are going with Marowski right now, he’s gonna want you around. Go on up.”

Dutch’s face doesn’t give Nate the slightest hint whether he is implying that Hanco*ck is going to need backup against this Marowski, whoever that is, or just someone to cheer him up later, but the possibility that it’s the former gives Nate the kick he needs, and he steps through the door Dutch holds open. If there’s trouble, he’s going to be there. Last night was too close, and he doesn’t know whether Hanco*ck is any more ready for it now.

As he goes up the winding staircase, taking two steps at a time, he tries to knead the stiffness from his fingers, just in case he needs to be fast on the trigger. He stops at the top, listening to the conversation inside Hanco*ck’s office. Through the half-open door, he can see Fahrenheit sitting on one of the couches, her cast leg stretched out in front of her, a blank, hard look on her face.

The conversation doesn’t sound like it’s going to devolve into a fight at any minute. Hanco*ck is talking to another man. On the surface, it sounds almost like the kind of conversation he had with Old Man Stockton, all business. But when Nate enters the office, he can tell that’s entirely wrong. Hanco*ck is leaning against a desk, arms crossed, listening to the other man with an expression every bit as blank as Fahrenheit’s. He smiles when he says something about chem prizes in Diamond City, but the smile is blank and cold, too.

With Stockton, Hanco*ck was talking to an equal, someone he respects and trusts. Hanco*ck takes this Marowski seriously, too, Nate senses. As a threat.

Before Nate can get a good look at Marowski, he notices there’s another man in the room, standing in the corner, hands behind his back and projecting professional menace - a bodyguard, by the looks of it. Like the man on the couch, he’s human. He’s sharply dressed, clean-cut, and he’s sizing Nate up with barely hidden contempt.

Marowski himself is equally well-groomed. There’s no grey yet in his dark hair and he has a handsome face, but a few lines in his face hint of age and arrogance. At Nate’s entrance, he glances up, then brushes imaginary creases from his pants before he rises. “It was good talking to you, Hanco*ck. We should do it more often, if we weren’t both so busy.” He smiles, a little derisive, without quite acknowledging Nate. “It appears you have plans for tonight.”

Marowski’s bodyguard, on the other hand, smirks at Nate openly. These two are sharks wearing people suits, Nate thinks. The kind of man he avoided most of his life, in school, in his decision to stay in the military rather than looking for a real job. Nora had to deal with this kind of person all the time, and that’s what she called them. Sharks.

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says to Marowski. “Must be busy, if you can’t even take time off for a little celebration.”

“You mean the Third Rail? I prefer less crowded venues.” The way Marowski says ‘crowded’ speaks volumes. Hanco*ck nods slowly and watches the two men head for the door.

Just before they step through the door, Hanco*ck says, “Take some time off, now and then, Marowski. Life is too short to waste it all on work.”

Marowski pauses and turns around again, giving the mayor a low-lidded half-smile. “We never had a boss who took of time from work before you. It’s certainly been… interesting.”

With that, he leaves. Hanco*ck doesn’t wait long enough for their steps to recede down the staircase before he says to Fahrenheit, “You know what to do.”

She nods and closes the door after herself. As soon as it falls shut, Hanco*ck pinches his brow, rubbing his eyes with an annoyed sigh. The calm amusem*nt he projected at Marowski is dropped in an instant, just a mask worn to impress a rival. Underneath it, Hanco*ck looks tired and frazzled.

“Did you just order a hit on this guy?” Nate asks. He probably shouldn’t be so surprised - Hanco*ck on the road might be a dashing adventurer, but in his own element, he’s something more akin to a mob boss.

“Let him think I might,” Hanco*ck shrugs. “Gotta lean on him now and then to curb his ambitions. Marowski switched sides at the last moment when we took over from Vic. I’ve got no love for him, but that ain’t a reason to go to war.”

“What’s his problem with you?”

“He ain’t getting any younger and I ain’t getting any older. One day Marowski is gonna have to decide if he’s going to make his move or give up on becoming top dog. Oh, yeah, and Brick was one of his guys. You remember Brick, right?”

“Hard not to,” Nate says with a crooked smile. “I was still pretty much sober.”

Hanco*ck narrows his dark eyes at him, as if trying to see behind the smile. When he doesn’t find what he is looking for, he turns away with a shrug. “Marowski doesn’t give a sh*t about the thugs in his operation, but he loves an opportunity to make like I’m oppressing him.” Hanco*ck waves hand. “Forget about Marowski. This is just the kind of sh*t I have to deal with everytime I take a little break.”

Hanco*ck appears to be sober tonight, and he doesn’t seem to be enjoying it. A foul mood hangs about him like a dark cloud, and despite his ghoul scarring, he does show some of the wear and tear of last night. His eyes look more sunken, and he moves slowly, without any of the manic grace animating him at last night’s celebration. He winces as he lets himself plop down onto the couch.

“I’m warnin’ ya,” he groans, “I might not be great company tonight. My head feels like a brahmin stampede went through and Fahrenheit made me work all afternoon.”

Nate takes in the office. The last time he was here, he was too concerned with staying alive to really pay attention. There’s a terminal at one of the desks, still switched on, and an open ledger on the table, filled with numbers and an impenetrable short-hand. Next to it, there’s a tall glass of water and plate of wasteland delicacies - charred, juicy meat and fresh mutfruit slices, all untouched and gone cold. It seems someone’s failed attempt to get Hanco*ck to consume something healthy for once.

“Bad time?” Nate asks. “I can leave.”

Hanco*ck shrugs again. “Just sayin’ I don’t have any work for ya right now, and I ain’t down to get down, if that’s what you’re here for. Be my guest, though. It’s a free town.”

It doesn’t sound like an invitation, and Nate would be glad for an excuse to leave and nurse his doubts about their relationship. But there’s something about Hanco*ck’s tone that gives Nate pause. This is new territory for them. On the road, there wasn’t any way to avoid each other, and in a way that precluded any question of boundaries. If Nate stays now, then that’s something else, something that has nothing to do with their deal. Something a friend might do, perhaps. It’s clear that Hanco*ck doesn’t expect him to stick around. There’s a pre-emptive indifference in the way he said it, as though he wants to make it very clear that this isn’t something Nate has to do.

When Nate sits down on the other couch, across from him, Hanco*ck glances up in surprise, his dark eyes widening for just a second. It’s the way he looked when Nate thanked him for saving his life. Like he doesn’t quite know what to do with him.

Then he slides down onto full length of the couch like his strings have been cut, and stretches out on his back. He gestures at the plate. “You hungry? Have some radstag.”

“We went to Rubins’ soup kitchen earlier,” Nate says, but he picks up a cut of meat. It’s an explosion of flavor - grease, and actual salt, which there’s never enough of in wasteland cuisine because it costs too much to refine it, even this close to the sea. The meat is only slightly gamy, so it must have been a fawn or a very young doe. There’s no cutlery, so Nate ends up licking his fingers after the first couple of pieces, feeling a little guilty for enjoying it so much when it’s probably Hanco*ck’s dinner. “Are you sure don’t want this?”

Hanco*ck groans slightly, kneading his belly through his shirt. “No. I’m thinkin’ hair of the dog maybe, when my stomach settles.”

“Regretting last night?”

Hanco*ck turns his head. “Did I do anything I should regret?”

It sounds, for a moment, as if Hanco*ck is going to pretend he doesn’t remember. But he already admitted that he does, so it must be a serious question. Nate hesitates for a moment. By all rights, Nate should have been more pissed about the way Hanco*ck acted last night than he was. He also should have enjoyed himself a lot less than he did.

Well, this is Hanco*ck. He’s at least as much of a deviant as Nate.

He takes a bite of crunchy mutfruit, playing it cool. “You were bit of an ass. But you’ve got a nice one, so...”

Hanco*ck huffs something that isn’t quite a laugh, the movement making him wince. Then he sobers again. “Sorry ‘bout putting one on you in front of everyone. I mean, it’s not as though anyone around here minds ghoulf*ckers, and some probably like you better for it, but it should’ve been your choice whether you want to be known as one or not. Now you’ve gotta deal with everyone pegging you as my new squeeze, and that ain’t going to make it easy earning some respect.”

“Maybe not from guys like Brick,” Nate says. “But he’s dead. I had a nice chat with Daisy last night, and I think Fahrenheit isn’t going to shoot me in the leg in retaliation. It’s okay.” He could stop there, but he doesn’t. The words just come tumbling out, one after another. “Jake was there. Last night. He told the others all about it. I had a whole discussion with Preston earlier. Had to convince him you’re not taking advantage. Now he thinks I’m in love with you, or something.”

Nate laughs. It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it, when he puts it like that. Hanco*ck laughs, too, even though it still still clearly pains his stomach. They’re both laughing, at Preston, at themselves, at the absurdity of this.

“Oh brother. I hope Garvey wasn’t clutching his pearls too badly,” Hanco*ck says once he stops snickering. “Ya know, I think he has a bit of a crush on you himself. That’s why he’s so crabby about me.”

“Preston?” Nate snorts. “Come on, he’s not…”

“Have you seen the way he looks at you? Don’t know which way he swings, but I’m pretty sure it don’t matter, when it comes to you.”

“You’re trying to mess with me.”

Hanco*ck is serious, suddenly. “I ain’t. And hey - I don’t go for nice and steady, but you? We’re having fun now, and I intend to have some more, but I seen the way you got when we visited the Slog. You’ll want to settle down again someday, once you’ve dealt with all your anger ‘n grief ‘n sh*t. I know I’ve said some nasty things about the Minutemen, but you could do worse than Garvey.”

The idea is still totally absurd, a joke, but this time, Nate doesn’t laugh. This doesn’t actually sound like some spur of the moment thing, like Hanco*ck came up with it while he was high: it sounds as if he’s spent some time thinking about it. Nate never realized Hanco*ck watched him this closely all this time, but he must have, if he noticed how seeing the community of the settlers at the Slog affected him.

Is Hanco*ck right? Is all of this, the chems, the sex, killing raiders together and throwing himself off bridges and going along with Hanco*ck’s wild ride, is it all just a way to drown out his grief over losing Nora and Shaun? Maybe that’s why it’s intense, so out of his control.

It’s not how Nate usually deals with pain and anger. He bottles it up, works through until it’s better, until there’s something else to do. Even as a kid, he never really acted out, even when he felt like it. It’s something he learned from his mother, he thinks. Life goes on, she used to say, if God wills it. Inshallah, Nathan. But maybe she was wrong. If this is him coping with grief, then it’s working out. The last couple of days have made him feel alive again. A month ago, he didn’t even want to look a day ahead. There was nothing there, all of him was in the past. Now, the future still looks blank, but there are moments when he’s in the present, and it doesn’t hurt.

What if it’s true that time heals all wounds? What if by the end of winter, he really will be thinking about the kind of happy ending Hanco*ck seems to envision for him?

“Yeah, right,” Nate says, but he has to swallow. He tries to chase away the lump in his throat with a joke. “You think I should buy him some flowers?”

Hanco*ck snorts. “Put on a Minuteman uniform. They’re ugly as hell, but you know it’s gonna do the trick.”

That’s trash talk, but there’s just enough truth in it to make it funny. This is fine, Nate thinks as he groans at the joke. Easier than he thought, talking to Hanco*ck like he’s just a guy, like they’re friends. Staying was the right call. Hanco*ck may not be the ‘nice and steady’ kind of guy, but it’s clear that he could use a friend. It must be hard to be this larger than life figure for an entire town twenty-four seven. Last night, he saw Hanco*ck become a lightning rod for the town’s energy, letting it pour through him without coming up to breathe. He knows how to be the man in the coat and hat, how to cast a long shadow and live up to his fame. Maybe Daisy is right, and he even needs to offer himself up like that, enjoys losing himself in the limelight.

Seeing him now, sore and tired, hearing that rough, rasping laugh, Nate no longer minds having to share him with the crowd. This, at least for now, is something only he gets to see.

Hanco*ck is talkative, even when he’s down. Right now he’s imagining Nate’s shiny future as Mrs Garvey in the most sardonic way possible. It could be hurtful, maybe, if Nate wasn’t sure that he and Preston are never going to happen. He laughs, and Hanco*ck laughs, and he watches him thinking that maybe no one will ever get more of Hanco*ck than this, that if this is all Hanco*ck is willing or able to give, it’s enough.

*

In the days that follow, life does go on, just as his mother used to say. Sturges takes on some jobs from various people around town, bringing in some caps and making friends. On the third day, Mama Murphy asks Nate to help her down to the Third Rail during the slow daylight hours, when it doesn’t get too noisy and crowded. She says she likes the atmosphere, but the next day she wants to go again, and when he helps her back home in the evening, her pockets are bulging slightly - not with chems, as Nate suspects, or not only with chems, but with other little gifts: a pair of warm socks, a package of old bubblegum, a gold flip-lighter. “A town as big as this, there’s always someone believing in the Sight,” she tells him.

Preston stays true to his promise to Rufus Rubins, and takes on shifts on the wall, guarding the town. He’s reluctant to make friends with the Neighborhood Watch, at first, calling them triggermen, but a few nights in, he mentions having gone for a drink with Dutch and another guy called Ellis after his shift, and that’s the last time he says anything bad about them.

Hanco*ck’s mood remains unpredictable, wavering between gloomy sobriety and episodes of chem-fuelled intensity. Nate sticks around sometimes during Hanco*ck’s office hours, which seem to follow no clear schedule and are just as likely to be held out in the street or in the Third Rail as in his actual office. But through some unspoken signal, people seem to know when to come to him with their problems. It’s mostly people asking for a loan, or a free hit, or more time to pay back some money they owe him, and Hanco*ck rarely denies them what they ask for, although sometimes he adds a condition - you’ll go talk to so-and-so about this-and-that, or you won’t get involved with such-and-such anymore. Sometimes there are disputes, people coming to Hanco*ck with their quarrels, asking him to play arbiter, and his brand of justice is Solomonic, in that it tends to be quick and effective and occasionally brutal.

Bishop leaves on the fourth day, saying he has business to take care of, and Nate doesn’t wonder about it until a day later, when he’s already long gone. Nate realizes he never really talked to him about how he knows so much about the Insitute. But by the time he sees Hanco*ck again that night, he has already forgotten about it. It’s the strange, lazy rhythm he has fallen into, drifting back and forth between the State House and their apartment in Bobbi’s brownstone. He spends his mornings with the settlers, and his evenings and nights with Hanco*ck. He sees a lot of Hanco*ck’s bed and various other surfaces in the State House, but he sleeps on his bedroll in the brownstone. It feels lazy and decadent to walk back home at dawn, to eat breakfast and then nap for a few hours, catching up on lost sleep while the radio drones on in the background, doing nothing all day until evening rolls around. Decadent, but easy, almost hypnotic, like a dream.

He's starting to lose count of the days they have been in Goodneighbor. One morning, Nate is woken up from his nap by Jun, who is kneeling by his bedroll, anxiously prodding Nate’s elbow.

“H-hey. Can you come listen for a moment?”

Nate rises blearily, yawning and scratching his stomach as he follows Jun to the radio. Most of the others have grown tired of the endless re-runs, but Jun has remained glued to the radio, refusing to tune it to one of the music stations. This, however, isn’t a regular serial. Nate has heard the announcer’s voice before. It’s a ghoul’s voice, by the sound of it, and because of that, Nate assumes that the station is based here in Goodneighbor. Today, the ghoul voice sounds more agitated than usual. “I’ve got an urgent mission. If you’re a true fan, stop by the M-Memory Den and talk to Kent Connolly.” There’s some static, a sharp, breathy sound, and the announcer adds, “The Silver Shroud needs you!”

“Sounds like a commercial to me,” Nate says, although he isn’t sure. Jun shakes his head.

“He’s been playing it all m-morning. On repeat.”

Nate tries to convince Jun that the Memory Den is just around the corner - if he wants to check it out, he can do it himself. But Jun won’t budge. He’s as stubborn as he is scared, and in the end, Nate gets dressed and goes with him.

“I can’t believe you’re humoring this nonsense!” Marcy says from the other room. “Isn’t it enough that he acts like one of those chem fiends in the street?”

Personally, Nate thinks it won’t hurt Jun to go out and do something other than wallowing in his own anxiety, even if it turns out to be a fool’s errand. At the Memory Den, he asks if there’s a Kent Conolly around. Irma points him to a side door. It leads to a little alcove, maybe a former dressing room or storage. The cramped, windowless space is decorated with moth-eaten Silver Shroud posters, and bent over a radio set, there’s a ghoul in a trilby and a patched suit, looking about as unthreatening as any of his kind Nate has ever met. He startles a little at their entrance, and then his whole face lights up with he recognizes Nate.

“You’re - him. The new guy. Oh boy! You helped Bobbi No-Nose rob Hanco*ck, but then you unexpectedly turned on her and switched sides and now you’re working for him! A classic redemption arc! The whole town’s abuzz about you and the mayor.”

Nate opens his mouth and then closes it again because he just doesn’t know what to say - Connolly sounds like he’s a fan. He had no idea people were talking about him this much.

“Are you K-Kent Connolly?” Jun asks, though it’s somewhat obvious - the voice is the same, and so is the breathless excitement. “From the radio?”

“Oh, you’re here because of the mission?” Connolly smiles like a little kid at Christmas. “I can’t believe it worked!”

Connolly’s enthusiasm is so infectious that even Jun manages a wobbly smile, but Nate hangs back, a little uncomfortable. He remembers a few kids like Kent from highschool, nerds who either couldn’t change the way they were or didn’t care about the ridicule it earned them. Sometimes it annoyed him, the thick-skinned obliviousness with which they wore their difference. In sixth grade, he was friends with Lennard Simkins because they lived on the same street and Lennard had his own terminal and all the newest games, but a few years later, just around the time all the boys started to talk about girls in the locker room, Nate said things to them about Lennard, and a few even to Lenny's face, that in hindsight make him cringe.

Jun can’t match Connolly’s truly encyclopaedic knowledge of the Silver Shroud, but it’s the first time Nate has heard him string more than three sentences together.

“And you?” Connolly asks after a couple of minutes of geeking out, looking hopefully at Nate. “Are you a fan of the Silver Shroud, too?”

“I read the comics as a kid,” Nate tells him, trying not to feel guilty about Lennard, who is two hundred years in his grave, and will never know that the things he cared about survived all this time. “I was really more into Manta Man than the Shroud.”

Connolly politely tries to hide his feelings about Manta Man versus the Silver Shroud. “Oh, well, Manta Man is pretty cool, too. But the Silver Shroud is Boston’s own hero! Imagine what it would be like, if the Shroud were real, and prowling the streets of Boston today, shielding the innocent, judging the guilty!”

“He’d have his work cut out for him,” Nate jokes, but Connolly remains entirely serious. He opens a cabinet, and reverently takes out a shiny silver-painted tommy-gun. It looks like a movie prop to Nate, but when Connolly hands it over, it’s surprisingly heavy and solid.

“That’s a nice gun. Where did you get it?”

“I made it myself,” Connolly says, beaming at the praise. “It’s based on the specs from the Silver Shroud source book, an exact replica with just a few small improvements. But to make this work, we still need the most important piece. The genuine Silver Shroud costume herself! And I know just where to get one. Remember the TV show they were shooting just around when the bombs fell? The studio was right here in Boston, at Hubris Comics. I just need someone to get it for me!”

Nate has a rough idea where the Hubris Comics building is - he thinks he ran past it once trying to get away from Boston Commons. The area is anything but safe, and the walk there from Goodneighbor is going to be tougher than it would be in summer, with the snow slowing them down and making them even more visible. Maybe if he went alone, without Jun and Connolly, under the cover of night...

“It’s a stupid risk to take for a costume,” he says.

Their faces fall. Jun looks crushed, but on Connolly’s face there’s some genuine hurt that almost makes Nate relent. He doesn’t, because it really would be a stupid risk, but he makes an excuse to leave not much later, glad that Jun stays behind to leaf through Connolly’s holy grail, the original Silver Shroud Source Book. At least he’s made a friend, so the whole thing wasn’t a total disappointment.

*

“It’s probably for the best,” he says that night, lying in Hanco*ck’s bed. “Connolly just wouldn’t cut it as the Silver Shroud. He’s too nice to scare anyone.”

Hanco*ck sits sprawled against the headboard, less mellow than he ought to be after an hour of sex and his second hubflower cigarette. “Might do him some good, getting out there and having an adventure,” he opines with a critical squint. “Kent’s a good guy, not as dotty as some pre-war folks, but what’s the use of dreaming about justice when you ain’t gonna do something about it?”

Thanks to the wood stove, the room is toasty. The sweat has dried on Nate’s body, leaving behind a slightly sticky feeling. He rolls onto his back, idly scratching his belly and thinks that he ought to find a bucket of fresh snow and a rag, at least, to wash off the smell of sex before he goes back to the brownstone. Then he glances up at Hanco*ck, who is frowning at the cigarette butt in his hand with genuine discontent, as if Connolly’s obsession with a fictional hero really bothers him.

“He is doing something,” Nate points out. “Playing those old serials. Most people don’t go to school these days, right? They don’t even go to church. But they turn on the radio and there’s someone telling them that corruption is bad, that the innocent deserve protection. It’s not the worst thing that could have survived the bombs.”

Hanco*ck’s hairless brows climb in surprise. He stubs out the cigarette against the wall, adding another stain to the wallpaper, and gives Nate a small kick with his naked heel. “You get into my stash or something?” He looks slightly freaked out, as if Nate just performed a magic trick. “That’s some berry mentats level of thinking. Never looked at it that way, but you know what, I used ta listen to his program when I was a kid.”

It wasn’t that smart, Nate thinks. Hanco*ck is probably just stoned enough that anything sounds like a revelation to him. But it’s interesting that he listened to Kent’s station as a kid.

“I didn’t know you could pick up the signal all the way over in Diamond City.”

He wonders how long ago this was, realizing for the first time that he has no idea how old Hanco*ck actually is. It doesn’t show, with a ghoul. He might be as old as Mayor McDonough, which is another strange idea.

Maybe mentioning Diamond City was a mistake, because Hanco*ck’s expression darkens. “Nah, you can’t pick it up over there. Kent’s new radio gear is crap. He used to run Diamond City radio, back before he was thrown out. Apprenticed that kid Travis - you ever run into him? Squirrelly guy, he’d fit right in here, though I can’t blame him for stayin’. Kent had a real rough time those first couple of years in Goodneighbor. Vic and his guys just loved toying with him. Maybe he cracked a little, and that’s how he got obsessed with making the Shroud real.”

Nate glances at the red coat thrown over one of the dusty old display cases still around from when the State House was a museum. “Why hasn’t Kent come to you with this crazy scheme?” he asks, trying to lighten the mood. “You could pull it off.”

It works, at least for a moment. “Swinging from the rooftops, throwing smoke bombs at triggermen?” Hanco*ck puffs up his gaunt chest. “Hell yeah, I could!” He chuckles. “But old Kent’s not a big fan of parody. He wants someone who’ll take the silent, brooding vigilante act seriously. There just ain’t many folks with that mix of straight-laced and batsh*t crazy, more’s the pity.”

Nate lets his attention drift for a while, breathing in the smell of hubflower smoke still wafting through the air. He took a few pulls from Hanco*ck’s first joint earlier, just enough for a pleasant buzz. He feels lazy and turned on at the same time, relaxed but not sleepy. Hanco*ck’s lap is right there next to his face, and when he lifts himself up on an elbow and runs his fingertips over Hanco*ck’s flank, enjoying the tingle of rough-textured skin, he finds Hanco*ck meeting his gaze with a smirk. His mouth waters. Until a moment ago, he wasn’t sure either of them was up for another round, but he’s willing to try.

By now, Nate has gathered enough experience to know that he loves sucking dick. He loves having his mouth full of it, loves Hanco*ck’s fingers fisting in his hair, loves pulling back to tease him until Hanco*ck gets the hint and takes charge.

“Hey,” he says, mouthing the shaft, pumping it with his fist, slower than Hanco*ck likes. “You’re older than me, right?”

Hanco*ck humors him, even though his hand presses down on the back of Nate’s neck a little more heavily. “You’re what, thirty-five going on two-hundred?”

Nate resists Hanco*ck’s attempt to push him down again, pretending he doesn’t notice. “Thirty-four, not counting cryosleep.”

“Sure, I ain’t counting anything since I turned ghoul, either. So we’re the same age, more or less. Hope that don’t crush any sugar daddy fantasies you’ve been harboring.”

Nate almost says that he has never dated anyone older than him, but he catches himself at the last moment. “Just thinking your stamina’s pretty impressive for a man your age.”

“Ghoul endurance,” Hanco*ck drawls. “So, you gonna do anything about it anytime soon?”

“Not sure if I can keep up,” Nate says, deadpan, and has the breath knocked out of him happily when Hanco*ck shoves him over onto his back, straddling his shoulders and finally forcing him to stop teasing. He opens up, taking it deep, and Hanco*ck gives it to him with deep, steady thrusts, pausing only briefly to pat Nate’s hollowed cheek with a warning. “Tap out before you pass out, champ.”

He blinks his assent and offers himself greedily, chokes on Hanco*ck’s dick until the world grows small and hazy. Finally he does tap Hanco*ck’s knee. He comes up sucking in air, breathless and dizzy, his jaw aching and his throat raw and loose, and is still blinking away the tears when Hanco*ck's thighs tense and he paints Nate's face and lips with thick, warm spatters of cum. Hanco*ck presses a hard kiss against his neck as he slides down to curl against his back, and whispers, “I’m impressed.”

Nate wipes the mess from his face, and resists the urge to lick his fingers clean. He can't keep wasting so much rad-Away just because he's a filthy creature.

This is the kind of thing they’ve been doing, night after night, after Hanco*ck is through with his mayoral duties and has enough chems in his system to get over his black mood. Nate has been watching himself for any sign of being sated, of getting over it, any sign that he’s finished working through his grief with wild sex and chems. All it seems to do is whet his appetite for more.

At least Hanco*ck seems to feel the same. “That’s why I ain’t cut out to be the Shroud,” he murmurs against Nate’s ear. “I look at a fine upstanding citizen like you, and I think, one of these days I’m gonna take some psychobuff and wreck him all night like he clearly wants me to.”

“Yeah,” Nate says with a choking laugh. f*ck, he wants that, he's an inch away from asking Hanco*ck to do it now. “That doesn’t sound much like the Shroud.”

*

A couple of days later, Nate is hanging around Hanco*ck’s office, watching a string of visitors come up the stairs. An old med-X addict with long, stringy white hair down his back asks for a place to stay, and Hanco*ck sends him up to the attic, where a dozen such sad figures are already housed. Next, one of the watchmen comes to return some caps he owes Hanco*ck. A scavenger wants to sell them some information about Marowski’s chem deals with Diamond City, haggling about the price until Hanco*ck’s patience runs thin and he tells Nate to throw her out.

The last person to come into the office is a skinny slip of a girl, mouse-brown hair in a tight pony-tail, fifteen if she’s a day. She lets the stained, fraying letter jacket she wears slip from her shoulders, exposing a nightmare of scratches and bruises along her pale arms. Her voice is thin and brittle as she says, “They say you help people, sometimes. I need to borrow a gun.”

If Hanco*ck is as shocked by the bruises as Nate, he doesn’t show it. He reaches for his shotgun, but before he hands it to the girl, he asks, “Do you want me to send one of my boys with you?”

She is silent for a moment, staring at him fixedly. It’s clear that she doesn’t want that, but she’s thinking, calculating, and eventually she gives him a strained nod.

Nate exhales in relief, because he suspects that if her answer had been no, Hanco*ck would still have let her go, presumably to her doom. He takes a step forward. “Let me do it.”

Hanco*ck flashes him a smile, sharp and pleased. “Will he do?” he asks the girl.

She shrugs, staring at something past Nate’s shoulder.

Hanco*ck hands her the gun. “You bring it back in one piece.”

The girl leads Nate out of the settlement and through a few blocks of downtown Boston. A sharp wind is blowing through the streets, and the drifts of snow are almost as high as her waist in some places, but Nate is feeling alive and alert, wired in a way he hasn’t been, those last few days in Goodneighbor. He’s surprised to find that he missed the action.

When she pauses to catch her breath, he asks what her name is. She doesn’t reply, almost as if she hasn’t heard him. After a few minutes of staring at the shotgun in her hands, she admits, “I don’t know how to shoot.”

Nate wonders what sort of parent wouldn’t teach their child, in this world.

“Don’t tell them that,” he says, trying to make it sound light. “That’s the first rule. You’ve got a big gun. Let them think you know how to use it.”

But then he takes it from her hands and shows her. She’s wary about it, following his hands with her eyes like she expects him to hurt her, but he tries not to let it distract him. He shows her the safety, models the way to hold the gun, lets her take a shot at an old Pulowski shelter, tells her to brace against the recoil.

He hands back the gun. “Now you know.”

She bites her lips, staring intently at Nate. Finally, she jerks her head in a small nod of thanks.

She leads him to a building near Boston Commons that Nate vaguely remembers. He thinks it used to be a bank. The ground floor is completely trashed, but there are can-chimes and trip-wires on the staircase. The girl seems tense, staring ahead without seeing, so Nate takes point, disarming them as they go along.

They find their mark on the second floor. He’s alone, playing Nuka Tapper on an old terminal, a scruffy guy in his twenties wearing a squirrel fur coat that goes down to his ankles. Nate has a clear line of sight from the door, he could put a bullet through his brain and be done with it, but he doesn’t want to play this safe.

He throws a handful of tin cans down on the floor. The guy jumps like a startled cat, scrambling for his gun, and fires blindly, wasting his bullets. Nate pushes the girl back into the hall and then rushes the guy while he reloads. Disarming him is easy, so is getting him down on his knees for her, arms twisted behind his back. She comes into the room, the gun huge in her skinny arms, and stands there, shaking.

When he recognizes her, he starts babbling, more furious than frightened, calling her a little whor*, accusing her of robbing him blind. “I bought her fair an’ square,” he rants, “paid more than she was worth -”

Nate pulls his knife and puts it to the guy’s throat. “Shut up,” he tells him, “or I’ll do it myself.”

He feels the man’s grimy throat bob against the knife as he goes silent. She stares, and stares, then she dips the barrel of the gun down and shoots him in the groin.

It’s a nasty, horrid way to go, but that’s not why Nate cuts the bastard’s throat - the screams are too loud, too likely to attract mutants or raiders. The body falls to the floor, convulsing for a few seconds before it goes still in a puddle of blood and piss.

Nate wipes the knife on a rag, then he gives it to the girl in exchange for Hanco*ck’s gun. “Keep it,” he tells her.

Her hands are trembling, but she takes the knife. Her face is white, like she’s the one who lost all her blood. Nate leads her down the stairs, out of the building, walking silently beside her for a while, giving her some space.

Finally, when her breathing grows less shallow and some of the color returns to her cheeks, he asks something that’s been troubling him. “What did he mean, he bought you?”

“There was this man,” she says, haltingly. She sucks in a breath, but then the rest of the story spills out of her as if she can’t hold it inside any longer. “His name was Bullet, because he was with the Gunners. He came to our settlement. Told my folks he’d take bad children, and find work for them. He had another kid with him, a little ghoul. Did you know there are ghoul kids? I didn’t. Bullet said Billy had been a bad boy, too, until he taught him manners. He said hard work’s better than starving, or running off to join the raiders, the way bad kids do. My parents always said the farm’s too small for all of us, too many mouths to feed. Someone ought to find other work, so it might as well be me, because I could use someone teaching me some manners. Bullet gave them caps, I don’t know how many. But he got more when he sold me.” She hesitates, then adds, “My parents are going to be angry if I come back. They’ll say it’s my fault for not wanting to work.”

On the one hand, Nate is glad that it wasn’t her parents who sold her to the asshole they just executed, but on the other hand, this is hardly any better. Maybe they believed the gunner’s bullsh*t about finding the children honest work, maybe they were desperate. But there’s a buzz in Nate’s mind like he just took a dose of psycho when he thinks about it. When he pictures Bullet, the face he sees belongs to Kellogg.

He tries to keep his voice even so he won’t scare her. “I don’t think you should go back.
What about Goodneighbor? I know some people there who’ll take care of you.”

She looks down at the knife, as if it’s a decision, as if she can’t have both safety and her freedom. But she’s smart, or she’d have gone on her own. She knows she can’t make it, not in winter. Perhaps, after today, she knows there are people who aren’t like her parents, like Bullet, like the bastard who bought her.

“Okay.” She tilts up her chin. “My name is Benny. Short for Bernice.”

The last, crimson rays of sunlight are slanting through the roads of Boston, their buildings dark against a violent sunset. They pick up their pace, trying to get back to safety before darkness, and over their labored breaths, Nate doesn’t hear the familiar chopping sound until it suddenly fills the sky above them with a dull roar. A dark shadow blots out the sky, rising like an echo of the past, a lumbering beast breathing down on their necks. Benny throws herself into the snow with a scream of pure terror and Nate freezes.

The vertibird sweeps over them with a blast of cold air and snow, veering off to the east.

Nate has seen a few of them since the Brotherhood of Steel arrived in the Commonwealth, but never this close. They must be utterly terrifying for people who have never seen a plane, but despite the Brotherhood’s big announcement about cleaning up the Commonwealth, they only seem to patrol the skies now and then.

He goes and helps Benny back to her feet. “It’s okay. They only shoot at mutants.”

“Why?” she asks, still spooked.

He doesn’t really have an answer for her. Most of the time, when he doesn’t see the big airship moored at the old airport, Nate forgets they even exist.

There are more guards than usual at the gate when they reach Goodneighbor, Fahrenheit among them, clearly alarmed by the vertibird’s close flyby. Even KL-E-O is stalking across the yard, the red pin-prick of her laser pointed upward. Nate makes a beeline for Fahrenheit, asks if anything happened, but apparently the vertibird changed course just before it crossed the settlement’s airspace.

He takes Benny to the brownstone. Tomorrow, he’s going to introduce her to Fahrenheit, and get her a job in the watch, but tonight, he’ll leave her to be mothered by Codsworth. She is already yawning by the time he leaves, looking overwhelmed and exhausted. She might run, Nate thinks, but not tonight.

He has to pause when he gets back outside. The vertibird made him forget about Bullet for a moment, but now that he’s alone and has time to think about what happened to this girl, he feels the rage clenching in his chest like a fist. It’s a good thing the crowd at the wall has dispersed already. This way, no one sees him kicking a knee-high pile of snow so hard it flies apart into little pieces. He makes a noise, savage, not quite a scream.

But as he stands there panting, watching the snow dance in the neon lights like there’s nothing bad, nothing disturbing in this world, he realizes rage isn’t the only emotion he feels. He managed to bring Benny home safely. He got her the revenge she deserves. He thinks of the hot blood running over his hands after he slit the bastard’s throat, and he doesn’t even feel the small bit of doubt he felt over Brick’s death. He replays it again in his mind, how easy it was to do this, how steady Benny’s hands were on the gun, and it’s a rush to know that for once, he wasn’t powerless. It was easy, and good.

This is what killing Kellogg would have felt like if he’d been able to save Shaun that way.

Nate marvels at that golden feeling for a moment before he wipes the melting snowflakes from his flushed face. There’s still someone out there who needs to die. Another kid in danger. This isn’t over.

He takes the staircase at the State House two steps at a time. Hanco*ck has closed up his office for the night, but there’s light under the door leading to his private room. He’s on his balcony, smoking, and when Nate bursts in, he comes inside, prowling towards him with a grin tugging at his mouth.

“Look at you,” Hanco*ck purrs. “You’re on f*cking fire. I take it you got him?”

Nate tells him in as few words as he can, skipping straight to the chase. “She says Bullet’s got another kid with him that he plans to sell. I need to stop him.”

Hanco*ck’s eyes gleam. His agreement is instant and final, no argument about how this is risky, how it’ll interfere with Nate’s job as his bodyguard. “Oh yeah. It’s gonna be hella tough tracking him down, but I know just who to talk to about finding a gunner.”

Nate wants to kiss him. He needs something to occupy his tongue, because otherwise he’s going to say it out loud: I love you. But if he kisses Hanco*ck, he’s not going to stop there, and finding Bullet is going to be harder the longer they wait. They should get on it now.

Hanco*ck seems to agree. He’s already on his way to the door, taking his shotgun back and patting Nate’s ass affectionately as he passes. “Meet me down in the Third Rail. Gotta give Fahrenheit a quick heads up, she’s still on edge about the big bird. Be there in five minutes.”

Nate tries to slow down a little as he walks around the State House to the bar’s entrance. It won’t do if he comes down on Hanco*ck’s contact guns blazing, and they’re probably not going to chase after Bullet tonight. He might as well wait for Hanco*ck out here, taking a moment to cool down.

As he loiters in front of the doors, he notices a flash of lights to his right. He turns and looks. At first, he sees nothing except the bright signs of the Memory Den and the Rex, but then the lights flash again and he catches the figure waving at him from a side alley. The lights are reflecting off a pair of mirrored glasses. It’s Bishop, apparently back from whatever he has been doing these last few days, and it looks like he’s trying to catch Nate’s attention.

Nate crosses the square briskly, more focused on not slipping on some frozen puddle than anything else. He doesn’t know what this is about, but he wants to get it over quickly so he can get back to tracking down Bullet. Only when he enters the dark alley does he suddenly grow wary, remembering the strange feeling he had when talking to Bishop the last time they were alone, when Nate was recovering from his wounds. That sense that something isn’t right, that Bishop is toying with him, playing some kind of game.

He appears to be alone, unarmed, but that isn’t reassuring. “What’s going on?” Nate asks.

“Sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff,” Bishop says. “It’s kind of our thing.”

They come at him from both sides, two attackers melting from the shadows, too quick - one of them grabs his arm, and the other clamps a folded cloth over his mouth. Nate reaches for his knife, realizing too late that he gave it away earlier. In his last confused moment of consciousness, he sees Bishop stepping towards him, the mirrored lenses of his glasses leaving bright trails in Nate’s blurring vision before being swallowed by darkness.

Chapter 13: The Bottom of the Well

Chapter Text

Light sears Nate’s eyes. Even as he shies away from it, closing his eyes, it burns dark spots into his vision that linger painfully. Trying to lift his arms to shield himself from the brightness he finds metal cutting into his wrists, keeping them chained behind his back.

He’s no longer in the alley. Beyond the light, there’s a dull, cavernous darkness that stinks of sewer and decay. His mouth feels like cotton, and his face is numb, but it doesn’t seem as though his attackers have otherwise hurt him.

As the first jumbled impressions come together, a jolt of cold terror flashes through him. Underground spaces, bright lights, kidnappings. He jerks forward, flailing against the cuffs like a fish on the hook, and almost dislocates his shoulders trying to get out of the chair. Hands clamp onto his shoulders to force him upright again with what feels like superhuman strength. “Stay,” a female voice behind him commands.

He doesn’t listen. He can’t do this again. They brought him down here and this time, they aren’t going to let him leave, they’re going to keep him here, and Shaun will be there, asking him to join them, asking him until the last of Nate’s sanity shatters and he gives in, he becomes one of them just to see his son smile at him one more time -

Another female voice, this time in front of him, in the direction of the lights, startles him out of his panic. “I assume that you remember us, if you are who you appear to be.”

It’s the familiarity of the voice that gives Nate pause, allowing him to breathe and blink at the brightness. His pulse is beating high and hard his his throat, almost loud enough to drown out that voice. It’s not young, almost cultured sounding. A thin layer of silk around a core of steel. When its owner takes a step forward, he glimpses the cloud of red hair limning her face, and that’s when recognition finally hits him.

This isn’t the Institute. He releases his breath in what almost becomes a sob of relief, only to feel the dread return a moment later.

It’s the other shadowy cabal favoring underground lairs that he’s encountered in the Commonwealth. He almost forgot about the Railroad. They were only a brief, strange station along the way to finding the Institute. Dr Amari pointed him in their direction, and as soon as Nate got the courser chip decoded by the Railroad’s technician, he moved on. By the time he teleported down to the Institute, he had almost forgotten about them and their strange obsession with synths.

It seems that they haven’t forgotten about him.

This is bad. He tries to recall their leader’s name. Something improbable, like everything else about the Railroad.

“As far as we can tell, you’re not a synth,” she is saying. “But there’s no absolutely certain way of telling. You might be one without even knowing it.”

A synth? Aren’t they the self-proclaimed experts? They should know he’s not a damn synth.

“If you are a synth, we’re doubly sorry about the cuffs. It’s really not what we’re about,” another voice cuts in, laconic in a way Nate recognizes instantly. Bishop. Why didn’t he pay more attention to Bishop and his strange behavior? It was glaringly obvious there was something wrong with the man, he wasn’t even trying to hide it, and still Nate kept forgetting about him.

The woman turns to Bishop in annoyance. Nate catches a glimpse of her profile, and suddenly her name comes back to him: Desdemona. His head echoes and rumbles with it, the past stretching to the present like a rubber band: there’s something wrong with his head.

“Stay out of this, Deacon,” Desdemona says sharply. “Your opinions have been heard. I’m conducting this interrogation.”

Nate’s gaze lurches from her to the figure at her side, everything tilting. Deacon? f*ck.The voice, the damn sunglasses, the weird attitude, the name, how could he not have realized it? It’s undoubtedly the same guy who vouched for him when he first stumbled into the Railroad’s lair with the courser chip - but the face isn’t the same, it’s a completely different face.

“How the hell - “ he starts, but before he can freak out further, Desdemona adjusts the lights, blinding him again, and the person holding him down tightens their grip on his shoulders. Their hands are freakishly strong. Nate suspects it’s the mohawked amazon with the minigun he saw with them last time.

It should hurt more, the way she forces him down. He’s definitely on something, something that feels like jet without any of the pleasure and warmth, more like free fall than floating.

“I’m asking the questions here,” Desdemona says, commanding his attention again. What did he ask her? Oh yeah, Deacon. The face.

“You’re the first person we know, other than their own agents, who went to the Institute and returned. So either you have a hell of a story to tell, or you’re one of them.”

Nate grits his teeth, stubbornly facing the glare of the lights. His eyes hurt, and everything is blurry around the edges, but he’s starting to see more details - a metal table in front of him, the outline of the floodlights, an arching ceiling of bricks and pipes. It looks vaguely like the Railroad’s hideout under the Old North Church, but it smells of stale water and the fishy stench of mirelurk.

His stomach turns. He bites the inside of his cheek, forcing himself to focus.

“Let me go.”

Desdemona answers with an impatient sigh. “I cannot do that. You understand that, don’t you? It’s too dangerous. We already moved our HQ to a new location, but you still know too much about us. And you’re starting to get involved with too many important people in the Commonwealth “ She pauses a moment, and when he does nothing but stare at her angrily, she says, “This isn’t a negotiation. I’m giving you one last chance to convince me you’re not an Institute agent.”

“Just give her something, big guy,” Bishop - Deacon - says. “I know you hate the Institute as much as we do.”

“You can all go f*ck yourselves,” Nate snarls, feeling a wave of unnatural heat roll through him, followed by cold sweat. “You spied on me, lied to me, kidnapped me and now you’re going for torture? Why should I trust you any more than the Institute!”

“Last time we met, you claimed we had a common enemy. If that is still true, there’s no reason not to exchange information,” Desdemona retorts. “This isn’t torture. We’ll give you some time to think about it. When I come back, you’ll either explain to me how you got out of the Institute, or I’ll have to order Glory to shoot you.”

Nate watches her walk away, followed by the other two. He hears Deacon argue softly, and Desdemona’s curt reply. Then a heavy metal door slams shut, and a moment later the floodlights go out one by one, leaving him in total darkness. The silence that follows is a yawning chasm of nothing, but not as bad as the sounds that he begins to hear in its wake. The dripping of a leaking pipe, inexorable. A very faint rustle and skitter in the distance. Cold begins creeping up his legs, followed by another shiver.

They drugged him. He’s almost sure about that. But the things his imagination dredges up from the dark might be real nonetheless. It’s hard to know what is what. The righteous indignation he felt a moment ago is turning into a queasy anxiety. He needs to think, to come up with a plan, but he can’t. He doesn’t even know how much time has passed since he left the State House - his right hand twitches instinctively with the need to check his pip boy, coming short against the cuffs.

He never realized before how dependent he has become on the thing. It’s the first thing he does when he wakes, an anchor against the disorienting dreams of centuries of sleep: check the date, the year. Even the green glow of the display would be enough, but his fingers are sweaty, stiff with mounting panic, and he can’t quite reach the switch.

He takes a big gasp of the stinking air, but it feels like breathing water. The chain rattles against the metal of the chair as he pulls against them uselessly, now with brute strength. The noise is good, solid, real, and the pain brings him back from the edge for a second even though his pulse is still hammering.

Out. He needs to get out. There’s nothing he can tell Desdemona to satisfy her - if she learns that the leader of the Institute is his son, they’ll either kill him instantly, or try to use him as a weapon in their war. But he’s got no way to pick the lock of the cuffs, no weapons on him, they even took his boots, his jacket. Trying to make him feel vulnerable, psychological warfare -

“You f*cking liars,” he screams, at the top of his lungs, frightening himself with the noise, “No torture? You think I’m stupid?”

No answer. They didn’t say when they were returning, but it’s not going to be soon. They’ll let him stew, they’ll let the dark and the silence and the cold do their work for them, and even though Nate knows that’s what they’re doing, it doesn’t help.

He rocks forward, trying to curl in on himself, tries to pull up his knees. Calm, he needs to calm down. What would a sane, smart person do? Nora, Hanco*ck, they’d talk their way out of this, they’d come up with something to say to the Railroad, a rational argument, a threat, a convincing lie, but Nate, who kept the truth bottled up his whole life, is actually a sh*tty liar. No creativity, he just let people’s assumptions about him do the work, and he’s even stupider now, with his mind swept blank and narrowing into a funnel of panic, looping in on itself, blending reality with his worst nightmares.

He tries to count. Too late, he realizes that’s a mistake, because when he loses track, a new wave of dread overwhelms him. This time he ends up screaming, throwing himself forward until his lands on his feet, the chair on his back. The momentum sends him crashing into the table, where he loses his balance, falling face first against the rough, dirty stone floor, unable to catch himself with his bound hands.

He lies there, dizzy and bleeding from his cheek, panting harshly in the dark. The flush of rage dissipates into the cold air and stone, and as the sweat dries on his skin, he begins to shiver uncontrollably. It’s like they’re trying to force him to go back to the vault, to feel the ice eating into his skin again, to hear his fists pounding against the pod. He stares blindly at the memory for a while, until it fills his whole mind, hypnotic, an endless well to sink into.

He’s got no strength left to pull back. Somewhere at the bottom of that well, he’ll hit rock bottom, the end of the line. So he lets it happen, finally.

It feels like the decision to throw himself at the suicider on the bridge, like the moment he chose to offer himself to Hanco*ck in exchange for his help, like the moment he decided to leave the Institute and Shaun and never come back.

Nate’s panicked breath stutters and slows. He feels the weight of the chair on his back, the hard floor underneath him. Rock bottom, he realizes, is surprisingly solid.

All of those moments he just thought of, he’s been thinking of those as him giving up, as being driven into a corner, breaking under the strain, as defeats. But each of them was a choice. He wasn’t powerless, he made a choice, every time. He chose to say No to Shaun. He chose to go on living after. He did what he needed to do, to protect his friends, to stay alive.

He did save one person, in all of this. Himself.

He remembers, suddenly, another moment. Practising the speech he wanted to give at the Veteran’s Hall the day the bombs fell. He wrote it on his own, without Nora’s help, tearing up at least half a dozen drafts, faltering each time he imagined the crowd, the stage. It wouldn’t change anything, he knew. The speech should be more angry, more defiant, but he didn’t have her gift for words, her courage. That morning, it was hard to look at himself in the mirror as he spoke and not feel like a coward, like a cog in the wheel, unable to change a thing.

It’s like he can look back through the centuries now, into that mirror, and wipe away the fog, finally facing himself. One Nate Hale, clean and sober and afraid, and another, down in the dirt, drugged out of his mind, tasting blood and grit and laughing softly to himself.

This is what John McDonough must have felt like, he thinks, when he woke up a ghoul and found himself looking at the coat of John Hanco*ck.

Perhaps he’s quiet for long enough to convince Desdemona that she has broken him, because eventually, the waiting ends. She returns along with Glory, who picks up the chair and Nate, shoving him back into a sitting position at the table.

This time, they don’t point the floodlights at him. He can see Desdemona’s face more clearly. She looks worn and tight-lipped, as if she’s upset that he’s making her do this. He realizes suddenly that she’s sensing her defeat, that she can already see her plan to make him talk has failed.

“Well?” she asks nevertheless. “You’ve had time to think.”

“Yeah,” Nate tells her. He spits out a little dirt more and blood, and smiles. “Thanks for that. It really cleared up some things for me.”

“This is pointless,” Glory huffs. “We should abort now and get out of here.”

Desdemona shakes her head, and is about to say something when the door flies open, startling all three of them.

Hanco*ck sails in like a captain taking command of his ship. His coat flies, the red of it magnificent, and the flag around his waist shines more brightly than it ever did when it waved from a pole. Nate feels in instant pang of relief, and, strangely, pride. He knows he is safe now, even though the only weapon Hanco*ck carries appears to be his mantle of power and pure, palpable readiness to f*ck sh*t up.

“We really need to have a talk about abusing my hospitality, sister,” Hanco*ck says to Desdemona.

After a frozen moment of shock, Desdemona raises her hand and quietly says, “Stand down, Glory.”

“Smart,” Hanco*ck nods. His smile is a violent slash of white. “You really, really don’t want to f*ck with me right now.”

Another figure slips into the room after him. Nate is surprised to see that it’s not a watchman or Fahrenheit, but Deacon. He strolls up beside Hanco*ck and despite the sunglasses hiding his eyes, it looks almost like he’s giving Nate a wink.

“You,” Desdemona says with a sigh of disappointment.

“This freakshow here,” Hanco*ck drawls, “has half a brain cell left, so he realized what a damn f*cking mistake he made betraying my trust and came to me to apologize. A good move, unlike whatever the hell it is you think you’re doing. I let you operate out of my town, I give you supplies and support for your crazy little operation and you pay me back by kidnapping my friend? What gives, Desdemona?”

Nate has never seen him like this. Hanco*ck’s fury has coalesced into something smooth and black and elegant, almost languid, like the reason he came down here alone and unarmed is that he knows that he owns this place and everything in it.

He can see Desdemona’s hesitation, the effort it takes her not to back down. “We’re doing you a favor, Mayor Hanco*ck,” she says. “You don’t know this man.”

For the first time since he came in, Hanco*ck looks down at Nate. He takes in the scrapes and the blood and the dirt, Nate’s wild and slightly unhinged expression, and his ghoul face doesn’t betray anything. A coil of unease winds its way through Nate’s chest at this cool, aloof examination. What if Hanco*ck hasn’t yet fully made up his mind about Nate?

“Amaze me,” Hanco*ck says to Desdemona, sounding bored. “What don’t I know about him?”

She steps forward a little, putting herself between them. “The Railroad has been trying to find a way to get in and out of the Institute for years. This man comes along out of nowhere and manages it in the span of two months. And according to Deacon, he returned from the Institute after a week, unharmed and without the child he claimed to be looking for. We’ve kept a very close eye on him since. There have been synths and Institute agents in his vicinity the whole time. I have no doubt that they know where he is at all times, but their attempts at retrieval appear to have curiously targeted at other people.”

“So the Institute hasn’t managed to kill him yet,” Hanco*ck shrugs. “Half the Commonwealth can say the same.”

“They have almost managed to kill you,” Desdemona points out, taking another small step forward. “Recently. Do you think it’s an accident that the Brotherhood of Steel is taking an interest in Goodneighbor after two months of inactivity? Or that their foray happened just as Mr Hale left the town, and was aborted when he returned? I know you don’t take the Railroad’s mission very seriously, mayor, but I have no doubt that the Institute considers you enough of a threat to infiltrate the Brotherhood.”

This is so many levels of twisted and crazy, and yet Hanco*ck looks taken aback at the mention of the Brotherhood. Still, he shakes his head. “Partying hard and keeping it real isn’t gonna put me on top of their sh*tlist any time soon, especially while you guys are around making targets of yourselves.”

Desdemona doesn’t give up easily. The damned thing is that she sounds perfectly reasonable, even as she’s saying all this insane stuff. “You’re the only major power in the Commonwealth who openly and vocally opposes them,” she tells Hanco*ck. “You’ve given the Railroad your support, and now you’ve allied yourself with the last remaining Minutemen. You know what the Institute did the last time we had alliance like this in the Commonwealth.”

Hanco*ck scoffs as if she has finally said something ridiculous, but Nate catches a sliver of unease in him, that look Hanco*ck gets when people give him too much credit. “Two and a half Minutemen and a ghoul in a fancy frock don’t make a second CPG. And even it was that big - Nate’s the one who made it happen.”

Nate has no idea what the CPG was, or whether making it happen would be a good thing, but he can see that Desdemona’s comments have somehow wormed their way behind Hanco*ck’s aloof attitude. There’s a small frown knitting his brows. He’s thinking about what she said, and he doesn’t stop her when she goes on.

“And what else has your mysterious friend done?” Desdemona asks. “As far as we know, ghoul synths are still beyond them, so they cannot easily replace you. But they have other ways to assert their influence. Look at this man. He has gained your confidence remarkably quickly, as he has apparently done with Deacon, and while you may act open and welcoming, Hanco*ck, I know that neither of you trust easily. Ask yourself, doesn’t he seem a little too good to be true?”

Hanco*ck doesn’t say anything, but something in him falters. It’s shocking to see the dimming of his eyes, the way his gaze strays toward some distant spot in the shadows. Nate didn’t think anything could hurt him like this, not after losing so much, but here it is, the crack of doubt forming in Hanco*ck’s trust in him, like he’s suddenly questioning everything they’ve done.

It feels like he’s about to watch the whole world go up in flames a second time.

“Too good to be true? That’s a f*cking stupid argument and you know it,” Nate bursts out, looking straight at Hanco*ck. “If I’m too good to be true, then what are you?” His voice cracks a little, because this is a little too close to his heart, a little to true for comfort. But he has to speak. This one time he has to bare his soul. There can be no holding back, or it’s his own fault if Hanco*ck doesn’t believe him.

“I’ve never met anyone like you. I’ve never been to a place like Goodneighbor, and I don’t just mean in the Commonwealth, I mean anywhere, my whole life. Do you even realize how incredible it is? People are free, no one’s starving, no one’s afraid to be who they are, to say what they think, and you’re the reason why. You did what I’ve been told my whole life couldn’t be done: you led a revolution and you didn’t let it turn into a nightmare afterwards.”

He’s breathing quickly, harshly, but he isn’t done. He tries to calm his voice, tries to forget there are other people in the room: this is just between them. “And that’s just the man in the coat, John. I’m here for the rest of it, too. Not just for a season. I… I’d follow you to the end of the earth, do you get that?”

Hanco*ck does. It’s clear to see in the way he has grown still, like he isn’t even breathing anymore, rooted to the spot. Nate wants to stop, but he can’t. It comes out a whisper, barely a breath on his lips. “I love you.”

A staggered expression blooms on Hanco*ck’s face. He looks like a man gradually realizing he has been dealt a mortal wound. His eyes are round and wide, all the imposing confidence fled from his features. Then he blinks, a crooked, painful smile flickering over his features. He pushes it away when he turns to Desdemona.

“See,” he says, his voice rough. “I wouldn’t call him too perfect to be true, because this guy clearly has screw loose.” He shakes his head again, recovering some of his earlier drive. His gaze hardens as it flicks from Nate to Desdemona and Deacon. “You lay hand on him again, and I’ll run your operation so deep into the ground you’ll be neighbors to the Institute.”

At last, Desdemona backs down, knowing that she has lost. She gives an order to Glory, who undoes the cuffs. Nate staggers up from the chair on stiff legs, clinging to the table for support, and limps to Hanco*ck’s side. The ghoul touches his shoulder with a gentle, warm squeeze and for a moment, looks at him as if there’s something else he wants to do. His hand stays on Nate’s shoulder, even as he says to the three Railroad members, “Either think of a damn good reason for me to keep you around, or get the hell out of Dodge and never show your faces again.”

“I can always get a new one, if this one has lost its charm,” Deacon says, stepping into the light to slide a big bundle across the table: Nate’s jacket, wrapped around his guns and boots. It’s Nate’s first good look at him since knowing that Bishop and Deacon are the same guy. The face really is different, down to the bone structure. It can’t just be the drugs. Deacon smiles at them, like this was all just a hilarious misunderstanding. “Sorry about the ambush. Boss’s orders, you know how it is.”

Nate grabs his stuff and pulls on boots in a hurry as Hanco*ck says, “f*ck off, Deacon.”

Deacon gives a mock salute. “Sure thing. Take your man home, Hanco*ck. I’ll be around when we’ve all had a chance to cool down.”

*

Nate could walk on his down. But Hanco*ck still hasn’t said anything about Nate’s confession, other than calling him crazy, and being offered his shoulder to lean on as they make their ways out of the sewers feels like something, at least.

“They drugged me,” he says by way of apology. “It still feels weird.”

“I got ya,” Hanco*ck says, patting the small of his back.

They emerge through a manhole in a Goodneighbor back alley, not too far from where the Railroad ambushed Nate. It’s morning, judging by the position of the sun over the warehouses, and Nate takes a grateful breath of the brisk, clean air, dispelling the stench of mirelurk and decay. Hanco*ck gives him a moment to recover.

“You knew about Deacon, this whole time?” Nate asks, before the silence grows too long.

Hanco*ck lifts his shoulder in an awkward shrug under Nate’s weight and slashes the air with his other hand. “The face changing thing throws ya off the first time, but he’s pretty damn obvious about the rest. Knew him as soon as we got to Sanctuary, just never guessed the Railroad business he was taking care of up there was you.”

“Even when I told you about…” Nate doesn’t finish the sentence, not now that he knows that there might be spies everywhere. It’s hard not to feel a little upset that Hanco*ck didn’t tell him about Bishop, even when Nate revealed his own, much bigger secret.

“Got kinda distracted,” Hanco*ck mutters with a grimace of genuine shame. “Coming back after a sabbatical always f*cks me up a little. You’ve seen how I deal with that - not exactly conducive to straight thinkin’.”

“It’s okay,” he sighs, patting Hanco*ck’s shoulder. After all, he got just as distracted as Hanco*ck. He know something was up with Bishop, he knew he needed to deal with the Institute at some point, but he let this strange new rhythm of life in Goodneighbor lull him in until reality came back to bite him.

Hanco*ck makes a noise in the back of his throat as though maybe he wants to argue with Nate’s easy forgiveness, but then he shakes his head and leads him to the State House. There, he gives orders to one of the guards before he takes Nate to his private room. Although the bed looks tempting, Nate slumps down in one of the antique desk chairs instead. His pants are filthy from rolling around in the sewer, they probably shouldn’t get anywhere near the sheets. Besides, after what he just said to Hanco*ck, maybe he should wait for a reaction before he gets into his bed again.

Hanco*ck takes a long, narrow look at him, taking in the scrapes and bruises, and something simmers in that gaze. For a moment, Nate is taken aback by that look, but then he realizes it’s the expression of someone regretting not committing murder.

“I did this to myself,” Nate tells him, mostly because he wants Hanco*ck to stay. Also, as much as the Railroad messed with him tonight, he doesn’t actually want Hanco*ck to seek bloody vengeance on his behalf. “Like I said. They drugged me and left me alone for a couple of hours. I lost it a little.”

He means to make it sound like maybe he got angry instead of scared, but judging by the way Hanco*ck’s glower darkens, it doesn’t quite work. “Like hell you did it to yourself,” he growls.

Luckily, he’s interrupted by the watchman, who knocks at the door with a whole steaming bowl of hot water, soap and several clean rags. Nate takes them in with a rush of gratitude and strips as soon as the door closes, tossing his dirty clothes to the floor and scrubbing himself from head to toe before dunking his head into the still warm water and washing the grime and sewer smell from his hair. Only when he comes up again with a happy groan does he realize this might make things awkward.

He recalls the last time Hanco*ck watched him clean up, up in the showers at the Slog, the unabashed, possessive hunger in his gaze then, tearing down all the walls of privacy and propriety. When he looks up now with his hair dripping and water running down his bare back, he finds Hanco*ck watching him, too, but there’s no heat in it, no prurient interest. There’s a small, almost worried look on Hanco*ck’s face, a faint frown, like Nate is a strange alien creature who Hanco*ck can’t quite figure out.

The watchman returns, not even blinking at Nate’s lack of clothes. He just puts a plate of breakfast and two bottles of nuka cola down on one of the antique desks and leaves again. Nate hesitates for a moment, casting a doubtful look at his dirty clothes on the floor, and Hanco*ck finally seems to stop woolgathering.

“Don’t even think about it,” he tells Nate and gathers up his clothes, tossing them outside into the hall, where, presumably, someone will take care of them.

Staring at his back, Nate allows himself a moment of honesty, a rush of feeling too tangled and intense to make sense of. Gratitude, relief, worry, hope. Love, so intense it hurts. He turns away before Hanco*ck can see it, wrapping himself in one of the blankets and sitting on the bed with the plate of food on his knees.

Hanco*ck nods to himself when he sees this, apparently satisfied, and takes the two bottles, snapping off the caps with his knife and handing one to Nate before he kicks off his boots and climbs over him into bed, settling in his favored spot against the headboard.

The co*ke is bubbly and sweet, a perfect counterweight to the salty, greasy fried bacon and eggs. It could be delightful, if Nate wasn’t still feeling the flutter of nerves in his stomach. He offers the plate to Hanco*ck, who snatches up one slice of bacon and pushes it back. “Eat.”

He does, trying not to think about Hanco*ck watching him and failing miserably. When Nate finally looks up from the empty plate, he catches a glimpse of some fleeting emotion on the ghoul’s face, something Hanco*ck tucks away quickly as he tips back his bottle to take a sip.

“So,” Nate says, when there’s nothing more to do, his throat tight with anticipation.

“Anything else you need?” Hanco*ck asks, a little too eagerly, ready to jump to action again. “Uppers, downers? Or I can let you catch some Zs - “

“Hanco*ck.”

Hanco*ck winces. He looks away, down at his hands, his gnarled fingers tensely intertwined. “No, I get it. You’re high, you didn’t - “

“I meant it.”

A long moment passes in which Hanco*ck won’t look at him. He looks small, his shoulders taut with tension. The silence goes on too long, until Nate feels it wrap around his heart like a chain.

“I can go,” he offers. “I get that what I said was… pretty heavy stuff.”

He moves to get up, but Hanco*ck seizes his arm, pulling him down again. He gets in close as he tugs Nate down onto the straw pillows and for a second, Nate thinks Hanco*ck is going to kiss him. But above him, Hanco*ck still looks torn up, like he can’t bear to look at Nate.

“Stay, you madman,” he rasps. “Don’t know why you would want to – but – “

Nate wraps a hand around the back of Hanco*ck’s neck and pulls him down. They’ve kissed, but never like this, slow, trembling, intense. At last, Hanco*ck makes a small, startled noise at the back of his throat and throws himself into, and the kiss turns into something like a highway chase, quick and breakneck and desperate. It’s surprising that it ends not with a fiery crash but with them pulling apart almost hesitantly.

“Do you believe me now?” Nate asks.

Hanco*ck sounds wrecked, his voice gone all soft. “Yeah.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

Extricating himself from Nate, Hanco*ck sits up. He lifts the hat from his head, baring his scarred scalp. The way he runs his hand over it looks wretched, like he wishes he could be anywhere else. “I’ve been telling myself it ain’t gonna last, you and I. That wasn’t a problem, I mean, f*ck, fight and be merry while ye may, right? I’m great at that.” He flashes a crooked grimace, pointing at himself. “You were gonna wake up one day and look at this ugly mug, or realize life with a junkie just ain’t all that, or I was going to do something sh*tty, and that’s that. Fantastic, thanks for all the fun. I knew it was gonna be painful as hell, watching you walk away, but give me enough chems and I could handle it. This… we do this and it’s going to kill me.”

“It will,” Nate agrees, and he sees the moment of surprise as Hanco*ck remembers that Nate is no stranger to loss. “It’s still worth it.”

He watches the slow change wash over Hanco*ck’s features, the even slower bloom of a smile. “Yeah,” he says, looking at Nate with warmth in his eyes and his voice. “Yeah, it is.”

The way they hold each other, kiss each other, is tender and raw, joyful and terrified. Nate has never seen Hanco*ck this humbled, this amazed by anything. It’s a sight that etches itself into his heart, a mirror of his own feelings, a testimony to the truth of what Hanco*ck just said. This could kill them. But it would still be worth it. Even if it does end, he will carry these moments to his grave, he thinks, he will take this love down to every dark well life ever plunges him into.

Chapter 14: Look To Windward

Chapter Text

It’s dark except for a few beams of golden afternoon light filtering through the gaps between the boards nailed over the windows. Strangely, Nate has spent hours like this, too happy to fall asleep. Hanco*ck seems to be the same - now and then, he shifts a little, kissing the crown of Nate’s head or lifting a hand to run his fingers slowly down Nate’s back and up again in a lazy caress. His touches are unexpectedly tender, like a man moving through a dream, trying not to wake.

They must have spent hours like this by the time Hanco*ck starts to grow a little restless. “Don’t mind me, sunshine,” he murmurs as leans over Nate to fish for his coat, which lies on the floor next to the bed.

Sunshine. The pet name is so odd that Nate laughs, because he feels so far from sunshine normally that it should sound like irony, but right now, right here, it fits. He watches Hanco*ck dangle over the edge of the bed rifling through his own pockets. It’s a little undignified for the mayor of a town, and it makes Nate smile even more. It shouldn’t, perhaps, he’s seeing Hanco*ck’s addiction at work, but even that is endearing at the moment. He watches him squint at the variety of mentats in his tin, and asks, “Do any of those work against chem hangovers?”

“Do they ever,” Hanco*ck says, and drops one of the little pills onto Nate’s bare stomach.

He doesn’t feel too bad, but whatever drugs the Railroad used on his last night have left behind a faint, insistent headache, and his eyes burn a little, though maybe that’s just the effect of having been awake for more than a day. The mentat tastes faintly fruity as it dissolves on his tongue, but it doesn’t have the instant kick of psycho or jet. It comes slowly, like the first coffee in the morning, and then it just keeps going, until Nate feels as though everything about himself is growing sharp, his vision, his mind, even his skin feels hypersensitive. The headache is blown away, along with the fog that lies over some part of last night’s memory, and it seems as though he can remember every word that was said with perfect definition.

Next to him, Hanco*ck chuckles. “First time? Feels like you just found the light switch for your brain, right?”

Nate takes a slow, pensive breath, trying to feel his way through the sudden lucidity. A thought emerges, more insistent than the rest.

“What’s the CPG?” he asks.

Hanco*ck looks baffled for a moment, maybe the mentats work slower for ghouls, or his consistent use has dulled their effects. Then he, too, seems to remember the conversation with Desdemona. Once he understands the context of Nate’s question, he gives him a fond look.

“Keep forgetting you’re not from around here,” he says. “This was forty years ago, even a bit before my time. You oughta ask Daisy about it, really, she was fan. Or, hell, ask Garvey - the CPG was the Minutemen’s baby. Commonwealth Provisional Government. They wanted to get all the settlements and factions together, elect representatives democratically so they could agree on laws, courts, governing, the whole shebang.”

Nate wondered about something like that before, at least vaguely. He knows it’s the first thing Nora would have asked Preston, if she’d been here in his stead, something like, And where does your organisation derive it’s legitimacy from? Big words. Now Nate sees it, too, the importance of something like that. Without it, the Minutemen would be little better than first responders - assuring some folks’ survival, but never improvement of how people in the Commonwealth live. And that explains why the Institute would want to prevent it from ever happening. A Commonwealth able to lift itself out of the dirt and the infighting would eventually develop to the point where the Institute could no longer control and manipulate them easily.

“How did the Institute interfere?”

This is odd pillow talk, but Hanco*ck doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, he looks amused by Nate’s sudden intense interest. “Word is, they sent a synth assassin. Gunned down all the major players at one of their negotiations, killed the whole thing before it ever took off.”

Nate wonders why they were so obvious about it that even now, years later, it’s common knowledge that it was sabotage. In their place, he would have made it look like betrayal, the Commonwealth’s leaders turning against each other - and then he shies back from that thought, appalled by his own cold calculations. This isn’t him. It’s the chems making him think like the Institute.

But even knowing that, he can’t simply turn off his brain. It churns on, like a fusion core at full capacity. “Do you think there’s something to Desdemona’s conspiracy theories?”

Hanco*ck grins, as though he enjoys Nate on his favorite chems far more than Nate does. “You tell me,” he says, like this is a game and not deadly serious.

“The Railroad obviously doesn’t know about Shaun,” Nate says. “Or she would see that what the Institute is doing makes sense even if I’m not one of their agents.”

It’s strange: he has never before been able to think this calmly and rationally about the Institute. The mentats are giving him the detachment necessary to do so, and maybe also a valuable glimpse into his son’s mind, without grief and guilt muddying the waters. This must be how Shaun is all the time, seeing the world in such clear, cold definition, everything neat and straight.

“I don’t think Shaun cares about me… or anyone at all, after the way he’s lived. But he has to believe that there’s something special to being born before the war, something that justifies what the Institute did to him to make him their leader. They believe they’re better than the people up here because they’re clean and educated and they’ve got all this technology… they’re obsessed with the idea of making themselves even better, even further apart from everyone else, and he’s the most obsessed of all. To him, everything up here on the surface is an infection, a disease that needs to be cured. He thinks no one in their right mind would choose this kind of life over the Institute. That’s why he can’t accept that I said No to him, but he can’t kill me, either. He thinks I’m the only other human being like him, not because I’m his father, but because I’m… clean, uncorrupted. And he’s too far gone to see that’s madness.”

Nate doesn’t realize how tense he has grown until Hanco*ck squeezes his shoulder in sympathy, murmuring, “Christ, that’s rough, knowing they did that to your kid.”

It’s difficult to accept sympathy in the kind of mental space Nate is in right now. He has to take a deep breath, to let the feelings he pushed down well up for a moment before he can take Hanco*ck’s hand and squeeze it in return. “It nearly broke me,” he admits. “I stayed with him for a week. At first I thought… maybe the Institute isn’t all bad. They kept him alive, at least. But once I got to know him, when I saw how proud he was of all the terrible things they’re doing… I almost wished he had died. And then I felt so horrible for even thinking that, I almost agreed to stay.”

The first time, when he lived through it, during those terrible days underground and afterwards, in Sanctuary, all Nate felt was pain and despair. It hurt to think of Shaun, but he couldn’t stop doing it. The memories of him he had seen in Kellogg’s mind, the traces of him in that house in Diamond City, that little synth version of him in his plexiglass cage in the Institute, dead-eyed and hollow. His son had died over years and years, a slow death of the soul, never quite finished. Even in Father, some remnant of the child he had been, the person he could have become, had to still be there, hurting, frightened, abandoned by mother and father, left to be raised by monsters.

But now, looking at the savage glitter of fury in Hanco*ck’s eyes, Nate realizes that there’s an answering cry of rage inside him. All this time, deep down, it felt like Shaun’s fate was his fault, his responsibility. If he hadn’t taken them to the vault, if he hadn’t let them put him and Nora and Shaun into the pods, if he had been strong enough to get out, if he had woken up sooner... It never was his fault, though. The game was always rigged against him.

He finally feels the guilt recede, but in its place, there’s something else. Something powerful and dangerous.

He thinks, suddenly, of Benny, the girl who was sold by her parents. How good it felt to kill the asshole who bought her, and how much he still wants to kill the gunner who enslaved her.

Doing the same to the Institute, though… it’s madness. It’s impossible. Or is it?

He looks at Hanco*ck, frowning thoughtfully. “When you led the coup here in Goodneighbor, did you think you would succeed?”

Hanco*ck answers with a chuckle from the back of his throat, rasping and dark. “Not in a million years. Well, maybe, once or twice when I got too sober I might’ve…”

“Too sober?” Nate feels his eyes crinkle in a smile despite the anger still roiling inside.

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says, with the airy tone of someone about to delve into his last high’s deepest revelations. “Most people, when they’re clean, they’re nice and predictable and rational, right? Just going about their lives. But me, I always felt like, to be that complacent and calm, I need at least a hit of jet, you know? You make me go a week without, and I start seeing everything to clearly and I get too angry and then it’s all Eat the Rich all the time. Too sober. You wouldn’t like that guy, he’s really f*cking high maintenance.”

He sounds a little like he’s joking, but only a little. He’s probably right - Nate likes him like this, mellow and relaxed and playful, but he has seen glimpses of that other side of Hanco*ck, this morning, when he came sweeping in to brow-beat the Railroad into submission, or a week ago, when he spoke to Marowski, or the night they returned to Goodneighbor.

“Maybe I would like that guy,” Nate says, calmly, seriously, in a way that makes Hanco*ck’s breath hitch slightly, as though he finds it simultaneously delightful and terrifying.

“Would you, now?” he growls, and Nate, feeling a rush of confidence knowing that he can just do this now, that this is his, no holds barred, slides his hand around Hanco*ck’s neck and tugs him into a kiss that is as rough as it is tender, giving him his answer.

They get distracted for a while, until suddenly the steely focus of the mentats snaps back into place, and Nate breaks the kiss - half on top of Hanco*ck, his knees between the man’s eagerly splayed legs, he asks, “So you took over Goodneighbor by letting sober Hanco*ck loose?”

Hanco*ck gives him a very soft, mutinous snarl of protest, bucking his hips, but when he sees Nate won’t budge, he relents. “Sure, who knows.” He pushes up on his elbows, sitting up next to Nate. “Might have been that, might have been luck on our side. Though I always thought it just came down to numbers. There’s more good folks in the world than bad. All it takes is something to rally them. Sometimes that’s a handsome guy in a fancy coat. But mostly, it’s the assholes digging their own graves. I lit the fire, maybe, but it was Vic pouring out the gasoline.”

Nate is silent for a while, sitting in bed and staring at a gloomy corner of the room, his thoughts still hyper-charged and quick, like a swarm of birds, wheeling and turning and somehow never crashing into each other.

“Hey,” Hanco*ck says after while. “You spacing out on me?”

“Just thinking,” Nate replies. “The Institute will keep coming for you until either they succeed or Shaun realizes I’m a lost cause. And if he does, the Institute is going to want me gone, like Desdemona, because I know to much. They’ll just wipe us off the map, another crater. Same thing with the Brotherhood. Whether they’ve been infiltrated by the Institute or not, if Diamond City allies with them and they secure a foothold in the Commonwealth, it’s only a matter of time until they decide to clean up the neighborhood. We can’t just hole up here and hope for the best. I’ve done that once, and it ended badly.”

“So, what, you wanna fight them?”

It’s a tall order, Nate knows that. It’s like he sat down at the kitchen table one morning and told Nora they had to go an end the nuclear stockpiling. She’d probably have kissed him, like Hanco*ck does now, when he realizes Nate isn’t joking, pulling him across the bed to crush their lips together. Though probably she would have been gentler, sadder - Hanco*ck kisses him like a victory march, jubilant, proud, like he wants to drag Nate out to the balcony and shout to everyone who will hear it that Nate is his.

“I love you,” Hanco*ck declares, putting their foreheads together, both of them breathing harshly. “Let’s go light a fire.”

*

Nate’s clothes have been laundered and dried. He ties his hair back after he puts them on and then goes out onto the balcony to scoop up a handful of clean snow from the railing, scrubbing his face with it. It’s a shock, almost too cold to bear, and as he sucks in a deep breath and expels it in a rough grunt, he feels more alive, more awake than he can ever remember being.

This feeling doesnt come from the chems, he thinks. It’s the hours he spent alone in the dark last night, and it’s the hours he spent in Hanco*ck’s arms. It’s Hanco*ck’s declaration just now, echoing through Nate’s body and mind. All of this has swept away the sludge of guilt and fear, and filled him with this rock solid purpose, with confidence, with vibrant, giddy energy. It feels like he could do anything, achieve anything, like there are no odds in the world he couldn’t beat.

A hour later, they meet in Daisy’s small flat above her shop - it’s a random location, less likely to be bugged by the Institute than most, according to Deacon, who they find lingering on the State House’s doorsteps dressed as a drifter. Nate takes a hard look at him, wondering if he’d feel better after knocking out a few of the man’s teeth. No one, unless you count Vault Tec, has ever played and betrayed him like that. But Deacon seems to almost expect it, judging by the sly, co*cky grin he gives Nate, and besides, there are other things his anger will be good for.

Daisy’s flat is small, barely more than a bedsit because the first floor appears to be mostly taken up by storage and at least one room has a cracked, unstable floor. But there’s a junkyard coziness to it, every piece of ancient furniture carefully restored, scavenged pictures on the walls and an eclectic assortment of chipped vases and wasteland pottery. There’s a bead curtain made of tiny pebbles of glass, charred brick and molten stone that Daisy warns Nate not to touch too long as it’s the most radioactive thing in the room besides her and Hanco*ck.

“Tea, anyone?” she asks, and Preston looks like he might say yes out of politeness, but then he reads the room and shakes his head. No one is here for tea. Daisy smiles one of her surprisingly pretty ghoul smiles and says, “Oh, well, I’ll be at the Third Rail then. Don’t stay too long, darlings, a girl my age needs her beauty sleep.”

She turns to go, but Nate glances at Hanco*ck, exchanging a look and a small nod, and then says, “Stay. We could use your input.”

Daisy is a ghoul, and thus, according to Deacon and Nate’s own impression of the Institute, very unlikely to be a synth replacement, but more importantly, she has lived through all of the Commonwealth’s history, and according to Hanco*ck’s comments, took a strong interest in the CPG. And Nate remembers the conversation he had with her at the bar. She knew the same people Nora knew, academics and intellectuals, lawyers, reporters, people whose expertise was mostly lost in the fire.

“Oh my,” Daisy says, though the surprise appears to be mostly a show. There’s an impish gleam of delight in her eyes. “Are we getting political? I’ll do what I can, sweetie.”

With her, there are six people in the room: Hanco*ck and Nate, Deacon, Fahrenheit, Preston, and now Daisy. Hanco*ck, who has been leaning against the window sill, flows into motion as soon as she’s taken a seat on the edge of her bed.

“What we’re going to do, sister, is political all right,” he says, a wolfish grin in his tone. “We’re going to take back the Commonwealth. If any of you wanna play it safe, I suggest you get out now.”

Fahrenheit barely even blinks, and Daisy whistles softly, but stays right where she is. Preston, realizing that all eyes are turning to him, raises his brows a little with a questioning look at Nate, but then says in a surprisingly firm tone, “I’m listening.”

It’s time for Nate to speak. He’s suddenly keenly aware that he doesn’t really have a coherent plan, just a notion in his head of how they’re going to take on the Brotherhood and the Institute and win, fuelled by revenge and a powerful sense that this is what he has been waiting for all his life, a chance to fight back, to change the world for the better.

It might seem insane when he’s sober, which is why he needs to get it out now, while he still feels like he can take on the world and win.

He fully expects at least one person in the room to get up and leave, telling him to his face that he’s lost it, but that never happens. They listen quietly, intensely. Even Preston, when he hears that the ultimate goal is to break the Institute’s hold on the Commonwealth, goes still for a moment and then gets a look on his face as if Nate just pitched the Minutemen flag. “Good,” he says, softly.

It’s worse when Nate throws the words “new CPG” into the room - both Preston and Daisy get all emotional, and Preston excuses himself for a moment, walking out into the hall, and when he returns, grips Nate’s shoulder tightly to give it a gentle shake.

“I knew you’d come through,” he murmurs, and sits back down again.

Fahrenheit is the first one who gets practical about it, starting to hammer out details and logistics as soon as Nate has formulated his vague outline. She never gives a hint of whether she thinks this plan is going to work. It appears she only needs to look at Hanco*ck to know that there’s no point in debate, that her boss is all in no matter what - but to Nate, she looks like she’s enjoying herself, stretching her formidable mind with this impossible task.

Emboldened, Nate throws in the craziest part of his plan. There is a moment of silence then, everyone looking taken aback.

Hanco*ck is the first to break the silence with a snigg*ring, hooting laugh, clapping his thigh in glee. “Oh, you kept that beautiful brainwave as a surprise, didn’t ya, love? The Silver Shroud? Oh yeah, I feel it.”

“Look, I understand the need for an… icon to inspire the Commonwealth,” Preston says cautiously, “and I agree that Hanco*ck is too controversial to be it, no offense.”

“You kidding? The day I’m not controversial is the day I hang up this hat.”

“But aren’t there less outlandish options?” Preston touches his sash a little self-consciously. “The general of the Minutemen used to have a uniform that anyone in the Commonwealth would recognize.”

“True,” Daisy with a dreamy smile, “and a fine looking uniform that was.”

Nate smiles at Preston, who gets what this means even before Nate speaks - he shakes his head mutely in an ‘oh no, please don’t’ kind of way. “If that uniform is still around, the obvious person to wear it is you, Preston.”

“He’s right,” Deacon pipes up from his corner. “Someone needs to be the public face of this campaign and Nate needs plausible deniability. Make him general of the Minutemen, and it’s clear to the Institute he’s taking sides. They might just decide he’s not worth the trouble. The Silver Shroud, though? They won’t realize it’s more than just fun and games until it’s too late. Besides, this guy here is seriously suggesting putting on a superhero costume to fight the Institute - please, for the love of god, nobody stop him.”

*

It’s well past midnight when they all leave Daisy’s apartment, but Hanco*ck heads towards the Third Rail instead of the State House. Nate follows him. Over the course of the last two weeks, people have stopped staring at him the way they did in the beginning. He’s no longer a stranger, and normally no one pays any attention to him, coasting the wake of Hanco*ck’s magnetic personality. Tonight though, he gets looks that last a moment longer than usual, raised brows, even a few people sitting up straighter, seeming to sense the change in him.

Nate tries to tone it down, to look at the ground and stop smiling, to blend into Hanco*ck’s shadow again. They should think of him as they have done before, as their mayor’s companion, accessory, loyal dog - his new squeeze, as Hanco*ck put it, whatever makes sense in this place of crooks and freaks.

Hanco*ck is far better at acting normal than Nate. He chats with a few people, gets drinks at the bar from Whitechapel Charlie and then heads for one of the back rooms - the same place where they so rudely interrupted the card players on their first night back. For a moment, Nate thinks that’s what Hanco*ck is up to now, and the idea sends a tingle down his belly that has nothing to do with the excellent bourbon is his glass, but instead of shooing anyone out, Hanco*ck claims a seat at the table next to a scruffy, youngish fellow in green cap and an extremely ratty duster. At his belt, Nate glimpses a pair of shiny binoculars, the least scuffed thing about him apart from the long-barelled rifle leaning against his chair. At the sight of Hanco*ck approaching him, a mild alarm lights up his narrow face and immediately shifts into a friendly grin.

“Hey, Hanco*ck! To what do I owe the honor?”

Nate doesn’t know if he likes the guy - there’s something a little squirrely about him, but Hanco*ck looks almost fond as he says, “Don’t panic, MacCready. We’re still cool. Got some work for you.”

MacCready’s smile grows wider in a sort of innocent greed, but then dims as he glances at Nate. “Thought you had most of your bases covered, these days.”

Hanco*ck gives him a rasping chuckle from the back of his throat, amused and playful. “Ain’t your manual labor I’m in need of today.” He taps his temple. “We need someone who knows the gunners.”

Immediately, MacCready’s smile turns into a scowl. “Please tell me you’ve got a score to settle.”

“You ever run into a guy called Bullet?” Hanco*ck asks, instead of an answer.

MacCready scratches his goatee, the scowl deepening. “The name rings a bell. Now I really hope you’re here because he pissed you off somehow. That guy is one of the worst, and that’s saying something with that crew.”

“Let’s say someone would like to pay him a visit. One that’s been coming a long time. Where would they find him?”

It looks as though the answer is on the tip of MacCready’s tongue, but then he holds back slyly. “How much?”

“The bastard is selling kids,” Hanco*ck says sternly.

MacCready squirms a little in his seat. “Yeah, I know,” he says, a slight whine in his tone. “Hey, I’m not asking for a fortune here… just a little tip? Come on, Hanco*ck, you’re loaded.”

Surprisingly, the wheedling seems to work on Hanco*ck, who makes an annoyed noise but then digs in his pockets - not for caps or chems, but for a tattered slip of paper that might once have been a bank note and now bears a sprawling signature. MacCready’s eyes light up at the sight of it, and he snatches it from Hanco*ck’s fingers with a soft, “Wow, thanks,” before palming it with the quick fingers of a street magician or a pickpocket.

Then he smirks at Hanco*ck. “Ha, I’d have done it for free - but never hurts to ask, right? Bullet’s a regular at the Ticker Tape Lounge, you know, at the Mass Bay Medical Center? That’s the most likely place to find him, especially in this weather. Um, hey, you don’t happen to need another gun for this?”

“Not this time,” Hanco*ck replies. “There might be other jobs for you if this pays off, though.” MacCready dips back in his chair at the dismissal, giving them a sloppy, two-fingered salute, clearly thinking that’s it.

He startles when Hanco*ck rises and leans over the table, his tone suddenly changing from casual to serious. “Word gets out about this, MacCready, and whatever anyone pays you for the information won’t be worth the trouble you’re in, you feel me?”

MacCready pales visibly, his breath leaving him a little gust. “Jeez, sure,” he mutters. “No need to lay on the menace.”

Nate throws back the last of his drink and follows Hanco*ck up the stairs and to the State House. It’s snowing again, and the temperature has dropped noticably, with a harsh wind blowing from the sea. It’s not going to be a comfortable night to take a walk, and yet, he still feels like he can’t stop, like he shouldn’t, like he’s on a tight-rope, and the only way to keep his balance is to keep moving.

“Let’s do it now,” he says to Hanco*ck.

“Sure, whatever you like, babe,” Hanco*ck agrees easily, even though he has no idea what’s going on in Nate’s head.

“The costume,” Nate clarifies. “It’s not far. We can go there and back before the sun comes up.”

“You’re a menace on mentats, you know that?”

“It’s not the chems,” Nate tells him, looking straight into Hanco*ck’s eyes. “This is one of the best days of my life.”

Hanco*ck looks stunned, but his stillness melts. He takes Nate’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “I know,” he says in a rough whisper.

They agreed during their planning sessions that from now on, Nate should only leave Goodneighbor via one of the several secret exits the town has. One of them, conveniently, is underneath the State House. As they step inside, Hanco*ck crowds Nate against the banister. There’s a hint of a mischievous grin in his eyes just before he lays a rough, filthy kiss on him, licking deep into Nate’s mouth and groping him through his pants, right in front of Dutch, who endures for a moment before clearing his throat pointedly.

“Take the night off,” Hanco*ck says in a low, throaty voice like he intends to have Nate right here and now. He doesn’t let off until Dutch is gone, and then just goes on for another minute, leaving Nate flushed and panting.

They didn’t discuss this beforehand, but Nate thinks he knows what Hanco*ck is doing. Deacon warned them that the Institute has spies in Goodneighbor, and even though Dutch is a ghoul and thus probably not a synth, it doesn’t hurt to be safe. Besides, if Dutch gossips to anyone, it’s going to give them an alibi for a few hours, enough time, hopefully, to slip out of the settlement unnoticed.

It’s a show, but one that Hanco*ck shamelessly enjoys. That is less of a surprise than the reckless joy Nate takes in the display.

“Wanna head out straight away?” Hanco*ck asks, his teeth grazing Nate’s neck. When he doesn’t get an immediate reply, he straightens to look at him. It takes a moment, but then he understands, his face lighting up in a silent, amplified mirror image of the giddy, weightless desire coursing through Nate.

This morning, they were almost chaste with each other, kisses that were all tenderness, golden warmth instead of heat. Now, they fall on each other like wolves, like they every hour since they left bed was too much. When he’s got his hand on Nate’s dick, Hanco*ck asks him if he wants to go upstairs, and Nate bucks his hips and shakes his head, so Hanco*ck turns him around and tugs down his pants. He has two fingers inside Nate as he brushes the hair from the back of his head and kisses him there and growls, “Say it again,” as he crooks them, hitting just the right spot.

Nate groans and grips the banister with both hands so hard he thinks the ancient wood is going to splinter. He shudders, pushing back. “I love you.”

Hanco*ck makes him turn his head, kissing him while his hand never stops moving. “Never gonna grow tired of hearing that,” he says, his voice rough, almost choked with emotion. Nate presses back against him, seeking his mouth, but in between kisses, Hanco*ck won’t stop talking. “Love you too. You know that, right? Never - never felt this way about anyone.”

“Yeah,” Nate gasps as Hanco*ck pushes into him, “I know,” and then their voices grow incoherent, harsh breaths and grunts echoing up the empty stairwell. Nate is as noisy as he wants to be, clinging to the wood for balance as he meets Hanco*ck’s thrusts, inviting him to go faster, deeper, not to hold anything back.

He comes in a sweet rush of ecstasy, Hanco*ck following an instant later, and then allows his knees to buckle, collapsing against the banister in a sweaty heap of boneles satisfaction. Hanco*ck catches his breath, draped over Nate’s back and leaning against the wood, pulling out very gently as he softens. “You still wanna do this?”

Nate thinks about it for a moment. The idea of going up and falling into bed does have some appeal. But the restless energy is still there. He nods.

“Stay,” Hanco*ck says, kissing Nate’s shoulder, and staggers up the stairs.

He returns a moment later with his shotgun, a backpack, a rag for Nate to clean up and what looks like a biggers pile of rags - it turns out to be the advanced version of the classic hobo blanket, sown into a kind of hooded cloak. Nate throws it on over his coat and wraps his scarf around his face for good measure, hiding most of himself but his eyes. Not a great disguise, but at least it’s some added protection against the cold.

He’s not very sore, just enough for a pleasant reminder. Hanco*ck offers him a bufftat along with the rad-X he makes Nate take, but Nate declines - the longer it lasts, the more he’s certain that the energy coursing through him has nothing to do with chems.

Once they’ve geared up, they take the stairs down to the basem*nt. Nate hasn’t explored this part of the building before - he’s a little surprised that there’s a cell down here, although it isn’t occupied. Further down the hall, there’s what appareas to be a pile of trashed furniture, but Hanco*ck lifts one of the bigger boards on the floor, revealing a hidden manhole. Through a narrow shaft and down a cold iron ladder they drop into a section of sewer, and from there, through a barely noticeable crack in the wall, enter one of the old subway tunnels. Very, very faintly, Nate hears the thudding and warbling of music from the Third Rail.

Hanco*ck appears to have no trouble picking his way along the tracks in the faint light from Nate’s pip boy. “State secret,” he says, “only Fahrenheit and a couple of the boys now about this.”

“Your emergency escape?” Nate guesses.

“Supposed to be. Not planning on using it, though. If push comes to shove, I intend to go down with the ship.”

Nate, walking a step behind him, feels a sharp tug of painful love at the thought, but he doesn’t protest. Hanco*ck glances over his shoulder with an inquisitive noise. “No arguments? Should I be hurt?” he asks.

“I’ll be there,” Nate says. “Right at your side. So there’s no point in arguing.”

*

Hubris Comics turns out to be full of ferals. They lie dormant on the floor, and slumped against the wall, barely stirring when the door opens. Hanco*ck moves back, pulling Nate out with him. He says he might be able to sneak through unmolested because he doesn’t smell like prey, but Nate isn’t willing to take the chance, and besides, compared to the cold outside, putting down a few of the walking dead actually seems preferable. They ready their guns, silently counting to three, then Hanco*ck calls out, “Wakey, wakey, brothers,” with black humor dripping from his voice and they go in together, back to back, guns blazing.

In the hail of bullets, Nate remembers that he’s been awake for more than forty hours now, forty hours and a roller-coaster of emotions. The gunshots sound fuzzy to him, almost muffled, the recoil feels slow, gentle, smooth. There’s a flow to everything, perfect, unbroken, until the last of the ferals who attacked them drops to the ground.

“Tch,” Hanco*ck says, reloading his shotgun. “They ain’t even tryin’.”

It’s the same on every floor. Nate isn’t sure if he’s only feeling awake and alert now, and is actually slipping into a fugue of violence, but he feels safe, in tune with the world, with Hanco*ck at his side.

Even when they come up the stairs to the top floor and there’s a Glowing One as bright as a floodlight, Nate doesn’t really startle. He allows Hanco*ck to shove him back and watches serenely as Hanco*ck throws himself at the thing with a snarl that’s more joyful than afraid, braining it with the barrel of his gun and then firing the entire magazine into it until it goes still. Even when he drags it aside into a corner, it still lights up the room.

In the wan, poisonous light, the silver trenchcoat displayed on a mannequin in front of the tattered canvas skyline of Boston does look almost like a shroud. For a moment, Nate is afraid to touch it, fearing that the ancient fabric will crumble under his touch, but it’s surprisingly heavy and solid. He runs his hand down over the sleeves, barely gathering a residue of dust. It feels like he’s touching something more than fabric, as though this coat hasn’t just outlasted decay but slowly become imbued with the lingering ghosts of the past in the same way that the flag, even tied around Hanco*ck’s waist, is more than the sum of its threads and dyes. The world has become so small, so physical, everything hewn down to the struggle for daily survival. The airbrushed magazine covers, the hyperreal, glossy worlds of commercials and afternoon serials, of movie posters and red carpet fashions is gone, like a glamour dispelled from reality. But in this costume, it seems almost to have become condensed and purified, the old dreams distilled into solid form.

Perhaps only Nate thinks so, because he remembers what the world used to be like. For the people of the wasteland, it will mean something else, if it means anything to them at all. Hanco*ck, after inspecting it briefly, has already wandered off, going through the rest of the room to pick at the cameras and curios, the lockers and costume racks.

“Hello,” he snigg*rs, holding up a furry loincloth on a studded leather belt. “How ‘bout we put you in this instead?”

“In summer, maybe,” Nate snorts, gently taking the coat off the mannequin. “If you’re lucky.”

He folds it with military precision so it won’t crease and puts it into the backpack. Hanco*ck puts the zany Grognak belt on top of it with a smirk. Nate glances at the clock on his pip boy. “Three hours till sunrise,” he says. “Let’s see what else we find that Kent might be able to use.”

They return to Goodneighbor with a pack stuffed full of goods just before sunrise. Nate is briefly afraid of the crash that he feels coming, the drop when he finally lets go of this manic rush of a day. But when they crawl into bed and the grey wave of exhaustion is about to crash over him, he finds himself curled around Hanco*ck, who doesn’t protest at being the small spoon - actually, he sighs in contentment, almost purring, pushing back against Nate.

Nate closes his eyes and holds him tightly and sleeps the sleep of the just.

*

Kent’s smile when he holds the costume is beatific, his blue eyes misty with joy.

“You really did it,” he says softly, and then, to Nate’s surprise, puts the coat down reverently to rise and wipe the corner of his eyes, seizing Nate’s arms in something like an awkard hug. “Thank you. You have no idea how wonderful it is to finally see it in person.”

Hanco*ck steps forward, clapping Kent on the back. The look in his dark eyes is fond but also slightly mischievous. “Hold your horses, buddy. You ain’t heard the best part yet.”

Kent gives the other ghoul an owlish blink. It’s the look of a shy, timid person being forced to speak to an extrovert they admire, simultaneously terrified of mockery and slightly star-struck. “The b-best part?”

“You said you wanted to make the Shroud real,” Nate says. “So do we.”

The Memory Den, Deacon revealed during their planning session, is part of the Railroad’s operation, and according to them, very closely guarded from Institute interference. They can speak openly here. As for Kent himself, Nate isn’t certain how reliable the ghoul normally would be, but he can see the fire of fierce loyalty kindling in him as he slowly comes to the realization that they aren’t kidding.

“You?” he says, eyes wide. “Both of you?”

“Oh, I’m just the sponsor,” Hanco*ck says. “Patron of the arts, me. Nate’s the one who’ll judge the guilty.”

*

Four days later, Nate creeps along the walkway connection the Mass Bay Medical Center to the building that houses the Gunners’ favorite hangout, trying to keep his eyes on from straying towards the steep drop into howling darkness between the two sky-scrapers. The metal of the structure creaks ominously at each gust of wind, and Nate is hard-pressed to find purchase on the slightly slanted, icy roof of the walkway.

He’s glad he asked Kent to add a mask to the outfit - it covers the upper part of his face and protects his eyes from the sharp wind. The other additions, the lining of the coat, the gloves, the wider cuff on his right arm, hiding the pip boy, are equally useful.

And still this plan is completely crazy. Four days ago, riding on a sky high wave of endorphins and mentats, it had seemed possible, but out here, alone, Nate seriously questions his sanity.

He pauses, trying to recover from a sudden upwelling of vertigo, and after a few, harsh breaths, his gaze is drawn irresistably to the side, to the road far below.

If he falls to his death now, someone will find him dressed like this, smoke bombs and a grappling hook on his belt, and they’ll laugh at his corpse. It will be entirely deserved. The idea, morbid as it is, sets off his mild panic into a muffled fit of laughter.

Like a cat that’s climbed halfway up a tree and doesn’t know how to get down, Nate moves forward. Finally he reaches the end of the walkway. There’s a wide window a few feet above him, and a little further up, there’s another balcony ledge. The window faces east, towards the sea, so it hasn’t been shattered by the shockwaves of the bombs. The lights are on inside, so Nate rises from his crouching position very slowly, keeping his hands on the side of the building for balance, ready to duck again at any moment.

He remembers the Ticker Tape Lounge by name. It used to be an upscale club, famous mainly for its exclusivity, and someone like Nate would never have been allowed inside unless dressed as waiter. Now, the bankers and managers in their fine suits wouldn’t recognize their old hunting grounds, he thinks. The plush carpets are stained, the walls smeared with gunner skulls and other tags, there are crates of contraband piled up in the corners and a fire roars in a once gold-plated trash-can next to the bar. The patrons are toughs in military gear, men and women smoking heavily. It isn’t as packed as the Third Rail after sundown, and not as noisy, but Nate counts fifteen people in total.

His gaze his drawn to a group of men around a table in the corner. One of them is in the process of pushing the young woman sitting on his lap to get up on the table and the others goad her on as well, clearly demanding she take off her clothes. She doesn’t look like a gunner, more like a scavver out of her depth, but she tries her best to play along and keep them entertained.

Just as Nate is about to look away, disgusted by the way the gunners grope at her legs, he spots the man and the boy two tables down. The man is smoking a cigar, the boy just sits at his feet, staring at the dancing woman. There’s a dog collar around his neck, the leash attached to it draped over the man’s chair.

It’s a little ghoul, no older than ten by the looks of him. This is the image that haunted Nate waking and dreaming while he hunted down Kellogg, but this time it’s real.

Nate feels world tilt and right itself at the sight, and suddenly, he’s steady on his feet, his heart beat slowing, his sight sharpening, his grip firm. A moment ago, he wasn’t sure how to get in, and whether he could take so many hostiles at once, but now, deep down in his guts, he knows that he can. He tugs the grappling hook from his belt, takes a step back on the icy roof of the walkway, judges the distance, and throws it up to the balcony ledge. It arcs over, falling softly onto fresh snow, and when he pulls, the line snaps tight - it has found purchase somewhere.

He tests it once more, and then leaps, pulling himself up to the ledge with the rope, the trenchcoat flaping in the wind like leathery wings. He swings a leg over, dropping to a crouch on the empty balcony.

After a brief pause, waiting for any sign that he has been noticed, Nate reaches for the pouch on his belt, and pulls out a frag grenade. Leaning over the edge, he judges the angle and distance, and then pulls the pin, counting one, two, three and hurling the grenade down before dropping behind the ledge for cover.

The explosion, so close, is shatteringly loud, but Nate gives himself no more than a heartbeat before he grabs the rope, jumping off the edge of the building in a whirling arc, feet first into the cloud of smoke. His boots graze the remaining shards of the window pane, shattering them and driving them ahead of him into the lounge. Inside, there are shouts, coughing, the agonized screams of the injured, someone firing their gun randomly, bullets ricocheting off the metal panelling on the walls. Nate skids on the shattered glass, allowing the momentum to carry him into forward roll, and comes up in a crouch, hurling a second bomb straight into the pandemonium.

Smoke erupts from the little container, acrid and black, and Nate, ready for it, covers his mouth with the scarf and slips away from the spot people are attacking, towards the back table where Bullet sat with the boy.

He melts from the smoke, silver machine gun in hand, and mows down everyone at the first table except for the half-naked scavver cowering on the table. She looks up, still screaming, and suddenly stops, eyes wide as saucers at the sight of him as he slips past.

Bullet, the total asshole, yanks the boy towards himself with the leash, trying to use him as a shield as he draws his pistol. The kid’s little hands go up to the collar that chokes him, his blood-shot ghoul eyes bulging as he’s lifted off the floor. That proves to be Bullet’s downfall, because the torn, bloody heel of one of the kid’s bare feet connect’s with the gunner’s crotch, and he drops his gun and the child with a groan.

“Death has come for you,” Nate bellows, going for volume instead of acting, “and I am its shroud!”

Bullet’s brain splatters red and slick against the wall of the lounge, and in the split second after the rattling of the machine gun subsides, there’s a sudden lull in the noise, a shocked taking of breath all around, faces turned towards Nate, gawking and shocked.

They recognize him, and it makes so sense to them, a story suddenly made flesh.

He uses the moment of respite to let one of the calling cards Kent made for him slip from his sleeve and grabs the kid under his arm like a gangly football. The little ghoul scarcely weighs more than that, and curiously, does not resist - he clings to Nate like a monkey, making it easier to carry him.

At the card players’ table, Nate stops again, and lifts his voice as he readies a second smoke bomb. “Beware, evil-doers, or justice will come for you as well!”

He throws the bomb, and bends down to grab the scavver by one of her scrawny arms, dragging her along with him. “Come with me if you want to get out of here!” he hisses at a much lower volume.

Like the kid, she comes willingly at first, balking only when he tries to push her out of the broken window. He pushes the rope into her hands. “Take this! Rappel down the side or get on the walkway!”

She doesn’t do it, clinging to him in terror, so Nate has no choice but to do it himself, to hold the rope and jump, both of them screaming as they cling to him. The rope slips through his fingers for a second as they fall, burning him even through the gloves, before he finally manages to grip hard enough to stop them and they slam against the side of the building.

It knocks the hair out of his lungs and almost tears his arms from their sockets. “f*ck!” he screams through his teeth.

“That’s a swear!” the kid shouts, at nearly the same volume.

The woman just sucks in a huge breath and starts yelling again.

They’re dangling from the rope, four stories above ground, and it takes every ounce of strength and willpower for Nate to pull them up again enough that he can get his legs between himself and the building to push off and actually rappel. The glass facade is too slippery, and each time he nearly uses balance or his grip on the rope, but they make it until it’s not more than ten feet down and then the rope runs out and they drop, only the snow breaking their fall preventing any bones from breaking.

Nate’s palms are bloody and his ankle is bruised, but there’s a jubilant shout bubbling up inside his chest, drowning out the pain as he pulls the kid and the scavver along with him, down the road, under the overpass and back into the maze of Boston streets.

He allows them to catch their breath for a moment at the second corner they pass. To be honest, he needs it more than they do, because that was the single most crazy thing he has ever done in his life and nothing in his army training or his experience in the wasteland prepared him for any of that. It feels like he just had a heart-attack and barrelled right through it, not even stopping.

The kid, though, has barely gotten in one big gasp of icy air before he rushes out, “You’re the Silver Shroud!” in a tone of absolute awe and admiration.

Nate stares at him, glad for the mask that hides his features. This child should be weeping, shaking, screaming, not smiling at him like it’s Christmas. Something is very, very wrong with this little boy.

“You’re crazy!” the scavver cuts in, far more to the point. She actually is weeping, but also trying to cover herself, buttoning up her tatty shirt with shaking hands.

“Did you want to stay there?” Nate asks her. He feels suddenly out of his depth - maybe she did want to be there, maybe he just kidnapped a person.

“No! Yes!” she screams. “I don’t know, oh god, what am I going to do? It’s so cold! Who are you? Why did you - why are you - “

Nate takes off the coat, slipping it around her shoulders to silence her. He wears only a T-shirt underneath, but he’s running so hot he barely feels the biting cold. “Carry the boy,” he tells her.

She takes a step back, shaking her head as if this is the thing that’ll make her run. “That’s a ghoul!”

He scowls down at her, hoping the mask doesn’t hide that. “He’s a kid. The ice is going to cut up his feet even more.” When that doesn’t help, he physically pushes her towards the boy. “Ghouls are warm.”

She obeys, more out of fear he thinks than out of mercy, and carries the child until they finally reach the lights of Goodneighbor, a warm glowing welcome over the junk fence.

The scavver stumbles to a halt, looking exhausted and torn. She drops the kid to the ground, refusing to go on. “That’s… I’ve heard things about this place. Why are you taking us here?”

“You’ll be safe there. Fed and clothed. Tell them the Shroud brought you here.”

“The Shroud,” she says, with a hollow, disbelieving laugh. But then she looks down at herself, at the coat hanging off her like a cloak, and bites her lip, a little shamefaced. She looks at the gate again, and then at him, and takes off the coat, handing it back to him. “Aren’t you… coming with us?”

Nate shakes his head, shrugging back into the coat. He picks up the boy, who looks exhausted as well, but blissfully so. “I must go elsewhere,” he says, as mysteriously as he can manage, and simply walks away, leaving her there, with no good options but to try her luck with the infamous denizens of Goodneighbor. He hopes she won’t be stupid.

The kid is quiet as Nate jogs around the outer walls of the settlement to the hidden back entrance Fahrenheit instructed him to take. He sets the child down to unlock the door to one of the warehouses, and the boy follows him into the dark without hesitation. “Is this where you keep your cars and stuff?” he asks hopefully.

Right. In the serial, the Shroud had a car. The Hearse. But to anyone living in the wasteland, it should be obvious that a car, no matter how great, is going to be absolutely no use to anyone. Something really is wrong with this kid.

Nate takes him to a small iron crate. There, he takes the coat off again, and switches on his pip boy light. He hopes the scavver didn’t notice it when she was wearing the trenchcoat, or his secret identity is going to be busted after the first outing. He kneels down so he’s face to face with the kid, and pulls off the fedora and the mask.

“This needs to be a secret,” he says to the little ghoul. “Okay?”

The kid mimes zipping his lips shut, nodding enthusiastically.

“What’s your name?”

“Billy,” the ghoul says. “Billy Peabody.”

“I’m Nate. Hey, let me take this off, okay?” Billy wiggles a little as Nate takes off the dog collar. Even in the dim light, his patchy skin is visibly chafed. “I’m sorry all of this happened, Billy. But you’re safe now.”

He wants to hug the kid, but he doesn’t want to scare him. Besides, this isn’t about Billy. It’s about Nate own losses, about everything this moment is bringing back. It’s bad enough that his voice his starting to become thick with emotion, not at all the unflappable, reassuring tone of the Shroud. Nate turns his head, trying not to let Billy see the rawness on his face, and puts away the Shroud costume in the trunk, putting on his own jacket and Deirdre’s scarf before leading Billy out of the warehouse and to the brownstone.

“You have a dog,” Billy says happily, upon meeting Dogmeat. “And a Mr Handy!”

Codsworth comes trundling up, wavering oddly in the air, all three eyes whirring as he takes them in. “Sir - “ he says, sounding choked up, “is that - it can’t be - young Shaun?”

Nate shakes his head silently at Codsworth, watching the robot droop and feeling the same grief seize him for a moment. Then there’s a small soft shout from one corner of the room and a sudden shuffling of blankets, and Benny rushes over, wrapping Billy into a big bear hug, screaming softly into his shoulder in amazement. “Billy!”

When she looks up at Nate, she wipes tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She looks almost angry that she’s crying. “You did it,” she whispers roughly. “You got him.”

“No,” Billy says, and gives Nate a wink that is, unfortunately, the total opposite of stealthy. “The Silver Shroud saved me.”

Chapter 15: The Breach (Part One)

Chapter Text

The bodies dangling from chains and hooks in the broken windowfronts of Trinity Towers are sheathed in ice, like glittering seasonal ornaments. A fire flickers behind the jagged edges of once mirrored glass, the flames tossed by the occasional blast of cold air, casting huge shadows against the walls of the foyer: two mutants, hunkering by the fire like mountains. A hound circles them, slavering hopefully in the direction of the lump of meat charring on a skewer.

This is the closest Nate has ever come to a nest of mutants unnoticed. Observing them like this gives him the strangest feeling, like he’s looking at some primal scene drawn in rough strokes and bold colors, something from an old science book about the history of mankind, a pair of cavemen, not yet visited by the first heralds of self-aware thought, creatures with no concept of their own mortality, mired in unconscious gloom.

He turns, wondering what his companion is making of the scene before them.

They’re hiding in the cover of an overturned truck, belly down in the snow. Hanco*ck is dressed in his road leathers, a bandolier of shotgun shells strapped around his chest, some armor underneath the jacket bulking out his narrow frame, a dark hood covering his bald head and a black bandana hiding his mouth and where his nose would be. Nate wishes he could see the rest of his face.

He’s worried, not sure if bringing Hanco*ck tonight was the right choice. After the last two weeks, he isn’t certain whether they’ll work together as smoothly as they’ll need to, if they want to survive this. And if he’s right about what’s been eating Hanco*ck, then the ghoul can’t be as calm as he appears. He was uncharacteristically silent on the way here, even when he watched Nate put on the Shroud costume, as though he shed his bold, mischievous personality along with his hat and coat. He seems to be sober, too, at least Nate hasn’t seen him handle any chems, and Nate doesn’t know what to make of that: whether up or down, angry or calm, Hanco*ck almost seems to have a poison of choice.

Despite the mask and the armor, it’s like he’s seeing his lover pared down, naked.

There’s still time to call this off, Nate thinks. This whole mission is a long shot. There are other ways to get better radio coverage for Kent’s show, easier targets than a skyscraper full of super mutants.

Better ways to deal with Hanco*ck’s issues than pouring salt into the wound.

Nate waits for a particularly powerful gust of wind, so the howling of the air between the tall buildings will swallow the sound of their voices, then shuffles closer to Hanco*ck. Hanco*ck lifts his brows, silently asking if this is the signal to go.

This may be their last moment of peace, the last chance to talk to Hanco*ck, the last time they look each other in the eyes. Nate glances at the tower and back at him, the breath catching in his throat.

*

A Week Earlier

Thirty-four is no age to jump out of the sixth floor of a building while being shot at, Nate thinks as he limps from the brownstone to the Memory Den. At twenty, his bruised ankle would have hurt just as bad, but the rest of him probably wouldn’t have felt like he’s been put through the wringer.

To his surprise, Kent isn’t alone - Deacon and Preston and Hanco*ck are all crowded into Kent’s little nook, and judging by the blue, hubflower-scented smoke and the cards on the table, they’ve been passing the time for a while, waiting for Nate’s return. Preston has hung up his coat and hat, and Kent is bare-headed as well, both of them looking more casual than Nate has ever seen them. No, not casual – undone, worn down and forged into a sudden friendship by having to wait for his return. Under any other circ*mstances, he can’t picture these four men sitting together like this, but it seems that their plan to unify the Commonwealth under a common myth has already had one small success.

“You’re back,” Kent exclaims excitedly, throwing down his cards as soon as Nate comes in and jumping to his feet.

Hanco*ck’s reaction, in comparison to Kent’s enthusiastic welcome, seems strangely restrained. He doesn’t even get up, just folds his cards and slowly exhales a lungful of smoke. Nate realizes he isn’t the only one noticing this - Preston’s gaze flicks between them, too, a small frown knitting his brows.

“How did it go?” Kent prods eagerly. “Did you find the miscreant?”

“I, uh, yeah. Bullet’s dead.” Nate rubs at a spot under his eye that still feels grimy from the mask. “I found the kid, too. He’s with the others now,” he adds with a nod to Preston, “Benny was really happy to see him.”

“It’s good for her to have someone,” Preston says, his frown smoothing into a wide smile. “Man, I wish I could’ve seen it. Always was a fan of the Silver Shroud.”

Hearing that the mission was a success, Kent’s face lights up in such breathless adoration that it almost looks as though he’s going to faint. “What was it like wearing the costume?”

Nate leans on the back of the one empty chair. “I think I got a few bruises, but it’s definitely bullet-proof.”

Deacon snickers, and Nate is confused until he notices the unintentional pun he just made. He gingerly feels his chest. Actually, it feels like his entire upper body is one big bruise, but Nate has had worse after vertibird jumps in power armor. “The coat’s really warm, too,” he says, focusing on the positive. “I need another rope and grappling hook, though.”

“You used them? Did it work? Perhaps I could make you a real grappling gun -”

“More smoke bombs and better gloves are probably a better investment,” Nate tells Kent, showing them the tattered remains of his gloves and the rope burns on his palms. Hanco*ck’s gaze narrows, and the corner’s of his lips twitch in what might be a smile or something else entirely.

Before Nate can figure it out, Hanco*ck rises, stubbing out his cigarette. “Enough for a cracking episode, huh, Kent? Give folks something to talk about. Now ‘scuse us, brothers, I gotta have a little... one-on-one with the Shroud.”

Now that is a familiar tone. Nate feels a shiver of run down his spine that must be plainly visible to everyone. It’s fascinating to see Kent blush - he didn’t know ghouls could do that.

Hanco*ck brushes against him as he walks by, shaking Nate out of his surprise.

“Right,” he says, tucking away a bashful smile of his own, his voice surprisingly even as he tells the others, “See you later.”

The twinge in his leg puts a small crimp in the mouth-watering anticipation coursing through him as he trails Hanco*ck, but he tries to push it aside, hurrying to keep up with Hanco*ck.

Nevertheless, Hanco*ck seems to have noticed. The first thing he says after kicking the door shut and crowding Nate against it is, “Looks like you cut it real close.”

Nate is actually taken aback. After all their previous adventures, he just didn’t expect Hanco*ck to suddenly fret at a few scratches. “Are you pissed at me for getting banged up?”

There’s a brief beat of silence, Hanco*ck just staring at him, then he breaks out a throaty laugh. “Yeah, I’m pissed. Sitting around twiddling my thumbs while you go off into action ain’t my style, okay? I wish I coulda seen it. As for… hell yeah, I’m turned on. Banged-up is a good look on you, especially when you got banged up dishing out justice to bad guys.”

Now that’s more like Hanco*ck. The first time he touched Nate was right after the first real fight they got in, with the raiders robbing Stockton’s caravans, and the memory of the way Hanco*ck laid into him after he watched Nate take down an entire factory full of Forged still leaves him feeling raw in a good way.

“I think I need a stimpak,” Nate says, his voice dropping as he feels those memories running under his skin like lightning. “But it can wait.”

Again, there’s a brief moment where Hanco*ck just stares at him, then he leans into a kiss, a deep, filthy lick into Nate’s mouth. He rucks up Nate’s shirt at the same time, raking his fingers over the mottled bruises like he’s claiming them.

For a brief second, Nate thinks he sees another flicker in Hanco*ck’s expression as he breaks the kiss to glance down, but it’s gone so quickly he might have imagined it in his haze of lust. “You don’t want me to take care of you, hm?” Hanco*ck rasps, sharp teeth grazing Nate’s collarbone.

His attempt to reply is incoherent, a soft, needy groan cut off by Hanco*ck crowding him closer against the door, his arm pressed against Nate’s collarbones, just shy of choking him. He looks up at Nate, his expression devious. “What would the Silver Shroud say if someone like me told him to get down on his knees and suck their dick?”

Nate snorts, even though his breath hitches slightly, making it hard to sound properly gruff. “Stop it. The Shroud’s too much of a G-rated fellow for this.”

“You sure?” Hanco*ck’s hand is wandering up the inside of Nate’s thigh, making a very clever argument to the contrary.

“Yes,” Nate says, firmly. “I’m the one who has to keep a straight face wearing - oh, f*ck.”

He nearly comes in his pants when Hanco*ck suddenly grips him tightly, almost painfully. Hanco*ck uses this moment of speechlessness to thread a hand through Nate’s hair and tug him down. Pain shoots up his leg as he goes to his knees, but somewhere in his confused brain it twists into pleasure, and his eyes flutter shut in an open-mouthed groan.

Above him, Hanco*ck murmurs something under his breath, something that sounds like a curse and a prayer at the same time. He hastily yanks at his sash and his pants, and when he offers his co*ck, jutting from his fist, Nate wrenches free of his grip and licks it hungrily.

It’s sloppy and noisy and quick. Nate’s practice has grown exponentially over the last few weeks, but this blowj*b isn’t skillful, it’s a meltdown, blind, greedy guzzling, and Hanco*ck is pushing in deep, seeking the choking tightness of his throat. Nate feels close, so close, to coming untouched still in the confines of his pants when Hanco*ck tries to haul him back to his feet. The pain that shoots up his side is unexpected and crippling, and Nate yelps as his leg just gives out under him, making him sag against Hanco*ck.

Still, in his cloud of lust, Nate is ready to let Hanco*ck drag him to the bed lame as he is and f*ck him until it blacks out the pain, but Hanco*ck freezes.

“Aw, hell,” the ghoul hisses. “Hey, hey, don’t -”

He does drag Nate over to the bed then, but it’s more rushed than passionate, Nate flopping back onto the tangled heap of blankets with a grimace, cold sweat on his face. Maybe the ankle isn’t just bruised, he thinks stupidly. f*ck, this wasn’t how he intended this to go.

“You total numbskull,” Hanco*ck growls above him, “playing along with my bullsh*t - “

In response, Nate utters a defensive whine but shuts up abruptly when Hanco*ck starts pulling off his right boot. He could try to be gentler, but Nate is grateful that Hanco*ck doesn’t - he bites the pillow next to him to stifle his yell, but at least it’s over in seconds. Or, it almost is, because Hanco*ck warns, “Ain’t done yet,” and starts tugging off Nate’s pants. This is probably smart, because if his ankle swells any further he’ll have to cut them off, but it’s another fifteen seconds of agony.

By the time he’s done, Nate just lies there, panting, his head full of white noise. He barely even feels the prick of a needle as Hanco*ck comes back and injects him with a stimpak and what feels like a generous dose of Med-X.

With each subsequent breath he draws a part of his body unwinds and relaxes, until it feels like a bad dream, like, really, the pain can’t have been that bad.

From a great distance, Nate hears Hanco*ck mutter, “Damn, love. Wish there was a way to turn you ghoul.”

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to Nate. Ghouls can twist their ankles just as well as regular humans, and besides, after all the scrapes they’ve been in together, a sprained ankle is a silly thing to get upset about. He gropes blindly until he finds a familiar coat sleeve and Hanco*ck’s bony wrist poking from his ruffled cuff, trying to tug him closer.

“‘s nothing. Already better. I jumped off a building, y’know? Sixth floor. Two… two people on my back. Look.”

He holds up his other hand, waving it around. Hanco*ck catches it in the air, stroking his puckered thumb over the already fading burns. The sensation, weirdly enough, isn’t dulled by the painkillers but somehow expanded, unfolded, a coruscating flutter of touch that makes Nate’s heart skip a beat.

“Yeah, I know,” Hanco*ck says. “You’re crazy alright, brother. If I weren’t already in love, you crashing a gunner party in a kid’s costume would have done it.”

The scratch of his voice makes Nate smile fondly, but he wishes it wasn’t so distant.

“Wanna finish what you started?” he asks. He licks his lips, chasing the taste of his lover. He isn’t up for much, but Hanco*ck can always be counted on to get creative.

However, there’s a silence from the ghoul so long that Nate finally cracks open his eyes, blinking at the brightness. The lights in the room have a glowing halo around them, slightly iridescent almost, telling him that there was more med-X in that shot than he thought.

It’s hard to focus. He feels punch drunk, easy. He barely even hears what Hanco*ck is saying. The low, rough sound of his murmur seems to speak only to the animal part of Nate’s brain.

“Bet your wife didn’t get her kicks seeing you hurt.”

“Oh.” Nate grins, sloppy, drawing up one knee and letting it drop to the side, spreading open his legs. “I don’t mind. I like - I like it like this…”

His eyes slip shut, so he isn’t sure if the brush of something soft against his knuckles is really Hanco*ck kissing them.

“You’re right, brother,” Nate hears him say. “That’s what you signed up for.”

Yeah, Nate thinks, exactly. He knew what he was getting into. No one thought dressing up as the Silver Shroud and trying to create a legend was going to be easy, or… or safe. And maybe, maybe Nate no longer flirts with death, but there’s still some part of him that’s a… glutton for punishment. He groans in wanton encouragement as Hanco*ck seizes his chin and tilts his head to the side to kiss the soft spot behind his ear. Hanco*ck goes slow at first, working him open gently with two fingers and spit, but his touches grow rougher and rougher, until it might be too brutal if not for the chems. But Nate keeps on encouraging him, feeling as though all his limits are broken. Above him, Hanco*ck’s breath grows ragged in Nate’s ear as he’s pushing himself to past his own limit. When he comes, it’s with a soft, almost painful sound, something Nate has never heard from him. He’s shaking like a marathon runner behind the finishing line.

Some time later, he vaguely notices Hanco*ck sitting up. Nate curls towards him, reaching out, but his body feels heavy and sluggish, too close to sleep to fully obey his mind. Hanco*ck sits still until Nate almost forgets that he’s there, and then, just as Nate slips away into sleep, he rises, quietly, and leaves the room.

*

It’s a knock on the door that wakes him, harshly. “Fahrenheit wants you in the office,” a gruff male voice outside the door calls.

Hanco*ck hasn’t come back, Nate realizes, and enough time has passed that his ankle feels good as new. There are some of other parts of him that feel sore, twinges that would be teasing, pleasant reminders of last night if Hanco*ck were here with him. Alone, Nate feels thin-skinned, unsteady. There’s an unpleasant, cottony taste in his mouth.

Fahrenheit is one of the last people he wants to face in this state. Her steel-blue gaze is too relentless, too incisive when he comes into the office, cutting right to the core. He’s sure that she knows she caught him in the wrong foot. It makes him glance down to check that he hasn’t put on his shirt the wrong way, or forgot to button his pants.

“You shot some gunners last night,” she says without preamble. “Other than your main target.”

Hanco*ck isn’t here, either. Nate looks around for him, then sits on the couch opposite Fahrenheit, wishing it wasn’t quite so sagging and shapeless, the leather less buttery soft. “I did,” he says. “Have you seen Hanco*ck?”

The longer he’s awake, the more he realizes that something went wrong. This morning, he was too high, to exhausted, too turned on to notice, but there must have been something he said, something he did...

Fahrenheit makes a note, making him feel like a kid in the school counselor’s office. “He’s doing the rounds, checking in with the watch. Describe the ones you shot. In as much detail as you can.”

Honestly, there’s not much he recalls. He’s distracted, trying to remember what he said to Hanco*ck. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up Nora… but he didn’t, did he? It was Hanco*ck who talked about her. Nate just didn’t realize it might have been more than a tease. Even now, sober, he isn’t sure.

On the table, a radio tuned to Kent’s station burbles away. The sound is turned low, irritatingly just too faint to be understood.

Fahrenheit asks about scars, about nose shapes and eye-colors, things he couldn’t tell her even if he had looks at these men for more than five seconds before painting the wall with their brains. Nate says he’s relatively certain that one guy had a moustache, and another was black, heavy-set, wearing a beret.

He’s frowning at the warbling radio, a second away from reaching over to turn it off, and doesn’t notice that they’re no longer alone.

“Ring a bell, sis?” Hanco*ck asks. He’s leaning against the doorjamb, hips co*cked, as if he’s been there all this time.

Nate isn’t sure whether it’s in his imagination or not, but there’s something too casual, too relaxed about this entrance, about the grin Hanco*ck flashes him.

“I’ll have to talk with your rat-faced friend,” Fahrenheit says, closing her notebook. “MacCready’s been waving around that note of favor you gave him. Time to collect.” Then she tilts her head at the tinny blare of the Galaxy News fanfare, and turns up the sound. “You want to listen to this. It’s so sweet even I’ve got a sticky feeling in my heart.”

Hanco*ck comes strolling over, sitting down next to Nate, his arm draped over the back of the couch, fingers brushing against Nate’s shoulder. Maybe he worried about nothing, Nate thinks as he leans in for a kiss and Hanco*ck kisses back readily, smiling as they part. “Morning, sunshine,” he murmurs, eyes crinkling.

But no, there’s something. Everything about this is too smooth, and it slips between Nate’s ribs like a knife, twisting.

Fans of the Silver Shroud, Kent’s ecstatic voice rings out from the radio, startling him. If you missed this morning’s blockbuster news, fear not! Here’s a re-broadcast of this morning’s tell-all exclusive report on the Silver Shroud’s triumphant return I repeat: the Silver Shroud is back! If you don’t believe me, listen for yourself. Here, live from Goodneighbor, is someone who has witnessed our hero himself. There’s a crackle, like tapes being switched, and then Kent’s voice again, slightly less bombastic. Oh boy, here we go. We’re on air. With me today is a very special guest. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Gosh! People are really listening to this? Hi, I’m Billy! Mom, Dad, if you’re listening, I’m on the radio!

Young Billy has had quite the adventure, Kent says, chuckling a little awkwardly. Gentle-hearted listeners, beware, and better sit down - but I promise our story today has a very happy ending. Billy, can you tell them what you just told me?

About the Shroud? Billy asks excitedly.

How about we start a little earlier. When the gunner found you.

Oh, right. The boy’s voice sounds a little quieter, more subdued. Well, I was stuck in a fridge. I went in there to hide, and then I couldn’t open it for a real long time. I think my parents left because they thought I was dead. I called out whenever I heard something, ‘cause I hoped someone would come and find me. And there was this man. He opened the fridge. At first he said he was going to help me find my parents, but then he said they were dead and I had to do what he told me. That I belonged to him now.

And he was…?

A bad man! His name was Bullet, and he was dressed like soldier, but he wasn’t in the army at all. He was a gunner, he said.

It’s a surprisingly gentle interview, with Kent being anything but sensational in the way he questions Billy, and audibly shaken by some of his replies. Nate bites his lips listening to it, distracted from his worries for a moment. Once again he finds that there’s something odd about Billy, something just a little unreal. He’s too innocent, almost too childlike.

Nate glances at Hanco*ck and finds him frowning, as if he has noticed the same thing, though perhaps this is just his usual anger at injustice going unchecked for far too long.

Now, tell me about last night, Kent finally says, and Billy bounces back to his perky enthusiasm almost immediately. He seems to move closer to the microphone, settling of a crackle of static and rustling.

Sure thing! We were in Mr Bullet’s favorite bar, the Ticker Tape Lounge. Everyone there is a gunner, like him, and they smoke a lot, and uh… can I say this on the radio? There are ladies sometimes, who take of their clothes and the gunners aren’t nice to them. They really aren’t nice to anyone. But then suddenly - wham! - this huge explosion and so much smoke, and the window broke and there was this shadow and it was so scary, even Mr Bullet was scared, but then I saw him! The Silver Shroud! He looks exactly like he does in the comic books - the coat and the hat and he even had the silver gun! And he said it - ‘Death has come and I am its shroud’ - just like on the radio. And then he shot Mr Bullet and took me and one of the ladies, and she screamed so loud as we jumped out of the window, but the Shroud was so strong! He held onto the rope real tight and we didn’t fall, only a little bit at the end, but no one got hurt except for the bad gunners.

After switching tapes, Kent’s excited voice rings out again. Boy, what a day! I know it’s hard to believe, listeners. The Silver Shroud become real? And he’s judging the guilty in our Commonwealth? Well, you better believe it, friends, because I, Kent Connolly, have seen him with my own eyes. Yes, the Silver Shroud is prowling the streets of Boston again, so evil-doers beware!

Fahrenheit switches off the radio. “This is going to draw fire from the gunners when they put two and two together and realize the Shroud must be a local.”

Hanco*ck grunts. “Let them come. Why leave all the fun to the Silver Shroud? I’m ready to kick some camouflaged ass.”

Nate sits back as they talk shop about Goodneighbor’s defenses. They both agree that if the gunners attack in force, they’ll try to do it from the overpass. Hanco*ck is gung-ho about it, suggesting they just blow up those parts of the structure that are too close to the settlement, but Fahrenheit cautions against it. She prefers to know where the attack will be coming from, and surprising the gunners with more elaborate traps.

Nate’s stomach growling puts an end to the discussion - Hanco*ck says, “Any louder, and folks are gonna think I’m keeping a pet ‘claw in here. Let’s get you fed.”

He takes Nate down to the Third Rail, which is still quiet, the stage empty and only a few determined lushes clinging to the bar, and a few drifters nursing stale drinks to stay out of the cold. Whitechapel Charlie, clearly pleased to finally have something to do, serves up nuka cola and fat squirrel on a stick with a side of fried tatos. Hanco*ck smokes, watching Nate eat, and looks content to do so until Nate cleans the last chunk of squirrel off the stick.

It’s easier to think with a full stomach, and easier to gather his courage. Nate takes a last sip of fizzy cola and a deep breath and finally asks, “Are we okay?”

“Never better,” Hanco*ck drawls, and then gently tips his boot against Nate’s healed ankle. “Ain’t I the one who should be asking that, after last night?”

“I’m fine,” Nate says, mentally wincing at the lie - maybe his foot is healed, but he’s feeling off in other ways.

In the absence of a napkin, he tries to clean his hands by rubbing them against each other. The only result is a more even spread of grease. This really isn’t his forte. It was always Nora who broached the tough topics, who found the right moment to talk. And here he is, thinking about her again.

He can’t just ask: are you jealous of my dead wife? It would sound like an accusation, and a sure way to hurt both of them.

Still, it feels cowardly when he chooses a less direct tack. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Hanco*ck is all confidence, almost amused. “You already know my one big secret.”

Damn, there really is no way to get to the point that isn’t awkward. “You’re pretty, uh, experienced. Right?”

Hanco*ck stares, perfectly still, then starts laughing so hard that Nate realizes his confidence must have been for show, because this is his tension breaking. “Jesus, love, you had me worried there, for a sec… yeah, sure, if it can be done for fun, I’ve done it. Why? Anything you’d like to try? Just say the word.”

“I don’t mean sex,” Nate sighs. “Although… you know you’re the first guy I… I never slept with a man before you.”

Hanco*ck sobers very quickly, sitting up straight. “Wait, really? You mean - ”

“Nothing. Never even kissed a guy.”

Hanco*ck makes a noise, in the back of his throat, like he can’t quite figure out what to say to that.

“You didn’t realize?” Nate lifts his brows. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“sh*t, I wouldn’t have kicked in the door like I did - “ Hanco*ck clears his throat, for once looking actually embarrassed. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m glad you did,” Nate reassures him, quickly. “If you hadn’t caught me off guard, I’d have… pretended I didn’t swing that way, or something.”

It seems to take Hanco*ck a long moment to process this information. There’s a slip-n-slide of emotions on his face, from shock, to a hint of a goofy smile, to a thoughtful expression as he looks Nate over as though reassessing a whole lot about him. Then he prods, “But this ain’t about that, huh?”

Nate shakes his head. “Before us. Was there anyone you… anyone serious?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention my five kids?” Hanco*ck asks with a laugh that sounds as humorous as a can chime rattling in the wind. “Nah. Free spirit, me. No crazy exes you’ll have to worry about.” He frowns for a moment, clearly trying to figure out what this is about, and then suddenly his eyes widen, and he slumps back into his seat. “Aw, hell. Messed something up, didn’t I? Look, I know sh*t all about romance, but I’ve heard it was kinda… elaborate, back in the day. Flowers and chocolates and… and phone numbers,” Hanco*ck says, like he’s desperately groping for scraps of knowledge about the pre-war world. From the way he says it, he isn’t actually sure what chocolates are or how phones figure into romance. “I get something wrong, it ain’t on purpose.”

Nate puts a hand on Hanco*ck’s arm, squeezing it through his coat. “Hey. Look, I don’t need you to do any of that. A lot of it was just… ways to get people to spend money. Yeah, it was nice, taking Nora out dancing, picnics in the park. But I don’t want… it doesn’t need to be like that, with us. I’m pretty okay with all of this,” he says, with a gentle jerk of his chin and a smile, encompassing the two of them, the town, the world as it is now, without chocolates and telephones.

“If I ever compare you to her, it’s because, well… actually, you kind of remind me of her.”

Hanco*ck’s expression is always hardest to read when he’s quiet, all emotion vanishing behind the pockmarked landscape of his slack face, making him look years older and barely alive. It makes Nate nervous, being unable to gauge his reaction while he tries to explain himself, and he grows more and more rushed, until Hanco*ck cuts him off, his easy grin slipping back into place.

“Got it, brother,” he says. “It ain’t a competition. Me trying that old school romance thing - it’d just get you down, right? Glad I didn’t try it.”

Nate breathes a sigh of relief. “Yeah, probably,” he admits.

It feels like a stone rolling off his heart. He’s both glad he didn’t let this matter fester and a little sorry that he thought it would be more of an issue. He should have known Hanco*ck is too confident to be inclined to jealousy. That’s really more Nate’s own thing. All of Nora’s friends were smart, educated, lawyers and academics with well-paying jobs and refined taste, and even though, rationally, he knew she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if she didn’t want him, he sometimes wondered why.

Looking back, he sees how pointless these insecurities were. If he’d gone to Harvard or CIT, if he’d known how to wear a suit, if he’d never enlisted and learned first-hand the ugly craft of war and the depth of human suffering, he wouldn’t be here now. He might have died before he ever got to Concord, or been too afraid to look for Shaun, or he might have made it all the way to the Institute only to decide that staying down there was comfortable and safe and civilized, and that it was right to let the poor, uneducated savages on the surface toil away while the Institute wrapped themselves and their synth slaves deeper and deeper into a cocoon of technology.

*

After the first broadcasts about the return of the Silver Shroud, Kent receives a flood of anonymous tips. A lot of them are jokes - folks asking the Shroud to find the pet molerat they had when they were ten, or to punish a friend who cheats at cards. But a few are genuine.

Fahrenheit confirms that Wayne Delancy fled town after his girlfriend was found dead. Nate doesn’t ask how he’d have been punished if he had stayed, because he remembers quite well the fate of the guy trying to shake him and Nick down for money when they came to town. But until now, no one knew where Delancy was hiding. The anonymous tipper claims he’s heard that Delancy is camping out in the ruins around Diamond City, robbing lone travellers braving the cold to get to the markets, so Nate puts on the costume again and walks through the subway tunnels as far as they’ll take him.

It’s a mistake, going down there alone. The shadows are darker, more voluminous without company, and he takes a wrong turn somewhere and suddenly finds himself in a train car full of dead. Some have rotted away and been gnawed on by rats, but a few were ghouls, their bodies preserved even in death - not ferals, but normal ghouls, dressed in pinstripes and armor, some of them with their guns still in their stiff hands. A massacre happened here, months ago, and they still stare ahead with blank, glazed eyes.

This was him, Nate suddenly realizes. This is Park Street station, these are Skinny Malone’s men. He was the one who massacred them.

He turns on his heels, the silence of the dead grasping at his silver coat tails.

Finding Delancy isn’t easy. Once he’s on the surface again, Nate spends the whole night combing through bombed out houses and searching for tracks in snow that is hip-deep in places, until even the armored trenchcoat doesn’t keep out the chill anymore. There’s a creeping grey of dawn behind the low-hanging clouds by the time he runs into his mark, almost by accident, as he observes settler leading a pack brahmin out of the stadium from the rooftops. Delancy is a weaving, ragged figure, who lurches out of one of the side alleys and stalks the lone traveller with his rifle trailing in the snow. It looks as though he has been drinking heavily, probably to stave off the cold. He doesn’t notice Nate darting after him from roof to roof, and when he swings down a fire escape, kicking Delancy in the back, he goes down face first like a sack of potatoes, dropping his gun.

Nate grabs him and pulls him up, punching him in the face before he can shout, and then drags him into a ransacked electronics store without the settler ever noticing.

Delancy clearly has no idea what is going on, and seems to think that Nate’s costume is some kind of delirious hallucination, but when Nate asks him about Clara Selmey, he is coherent enough for a confession: “Yeah, I bashed her head in, and her welp, too - “

There are things the Shroud would probably say, at this moment, about justice and retribution, about the innocent and the guilty, but Nate only pulls the trigger.

The shot rings out like a shockwave, and it feels like a crack torn into the peaceful morning silence, a rip that won’t quite close.

Delancy was guilty, but he was also pathetic. Look at his shattered face, the pieces of bone and meat, the clumps of hair, Nate tastes bile in the back of his throat. He feels as though Nora is standing behind him, silently, he thinks about court houses and juries, about how much she hated the death penalty.

He wants to leave, but the job isn’t finished. This isn’t about justice, after all, it’s about giving people something to talk about, a hero to celebrate. If he leaves Delancey here, only the roaches will celebrate his death.

So he drags him out of the building by his feet, as close to Diamond City as he dares without being noticed by the guard. Kent gave him calling cards to leave with the bodies, the way the Shroud is supposed to do, but remembering that Diamond City isn’t within range of Kent’s broadcast, he scrawls a few words on the back of the cards, a verdict that feels like a justification: Wayne Delancey, murdered Clara Selmey of Goodneighbor

Then he leaves, almost in a run, trying to make it back home before the sun gets too high.

This time, Kent is waiting for him with only Preston keeping him company. After a few minutes, even Kent seems to realize that Nate isn’t eager to share his exploits. He blames it on the time, saying that Nate must be tired, after such a long night.

“I’ll better let you get some sleep, Shroud,” he says, “There’s another mission for you tonight!”

Nate nods, although he feels like he needs to rest for a week. His feet drag as he climbs the stairs in the State House. He finds Hanco*ck in the office, discussing business with what looks like a delegation of the local triggermen, shadowy figures in pinstripes and fedoras, Marowski among them. For a flash of a second, Nate sees the dead in the train car again, the frozen death masks of the deal ghouls, before his gaze finds Hanco*ck, and he tilts back to the present. Hanco*ck looks sharp and awake, like Fahrenheit, more awake than all the people in the room put together, like he’s been keeping them on their toes for hours, and when Nate walks in, he is the first to notice.

The shark-eyed focus lingers in Hanco*ck’s expression for a second as he looks up, then it falls away, and he rises briskly, interrupting the man who is speaking, and comes over to tip Nate down into a kiss. He tastes of mentats and too many cigarettes, of buzzing energy.

“Hey. You look like sh*t. Hope the other guy looks worse.”

Nate tries to hide his wince, tries not to think about Delancy’s spattered brain. “He does. I’m going to bed.”

Hanco*ck nods, snappy, squeezing Nate’s arm a little too tightly. “I’m not done here. See you for breakfast.”

He turns back to his visitors with a joking, “Hope you appreciate what I’m missing out on, entertaining you folks all night.”

There’s some laughter, but other than a mild annoyance, and a wave of loneliness that brushes against him and recedes again, Nate isn’t bothered by it. His mind is still on Delancy, on the next mission, whatever it may be. Once he’s alone in Hanco*ck’s bedroom, he strips down to his underpants. He intends to fall into bed and sleep, but instead he only gets as far as sitting there, stewing in the steaming heat of the wood stove, unable to sleep. He switches on his pip boy, going through old log entries, suddenly needing to try and count how many people he has killed since he woke up again.

So many felt justified, right. Kellogg, Bullet, the Forged, the bastard who bought Benny. But the exuberant energy of the day he decided to take on the Institute is gone now, and in the cold light of morning, he sees the flaws in his plan and he wonders if he was acting on impulse, coasting on the first rush of love…

And he thinks about Hanco*ck, about the strangeness between them. Their talk didn’t resolve anything, it just drove it underground, made it harder to grasp, and the more frayed, the more tired he grows, the more Nate digs at his own foundation.

It’s been hours of this when Hanco*ck comes in, clearly surprised to find him awake.

He says he has visited Kent to ask about the next Shroud mission. Some dealer named AJ has been selling chems to kids here in Goodneighbor, breaking the town’s unspoken laws. There’s a grim, savage edge to Hanco*ck’s words, still laced with the dark energy of this morning. “Folks know I got no love for narcs, but this sh*t shouldn’t have slipped by me.”

Nate sighs. “Where do I find him?”

Hanco*ck seems to take a closer look at him for the first time, and scowls. “Nowhere. Leave him to me.”

Rubbing his sore eyes, Nate shakes his head. “We want to keep the Shroud on the news. Give people something to talk about. You know that’s the whole point of this.”

“You look like warmed up roach stew,” Hanco*ck huffs. “Be a sad ending to our folk hero if the Shroud got stabbed by a two-bit chem slinger like AJ ‘cause he couldn’t keep his eyes open.”

“If he’s as small-time as you say, I could probably take him with my eyes closed.”

He’s sounding like an asshole, but so what. On some level, Nate knows he’s steering this conversation into a needless fight, but this would be far less annoying if Hanco*ck actually acted like he cared about his well-being, instead of some kind of territorial pissing contest about who gets to deal with what passes for a criminal in Goodneighbor. A chem dealer - that’s another step down from Delancy, another step deeper into highly questionable moral territory. Selling drugs to children, sure, that’s wrong, but most Goodneighbor citizens are far from clean, and Nate doesn’t even know what Kent means by “kids” - teens? That calls for jail time, not a swift death.

Hanco*ck is still pacing, caged anger coiled in his narrow frame, cutting short his steps. “You got scruples about Wayne? That what’s eating you up?”

“Hard to understand, I know.”

Turning sharply on his heels, Hanco*ck answers in a low, frustrated growl. “Trust me, I know what it’s like, chasing the fire and hoping you’ll get burnt. But I ain’t gonna let you risk it all just ‘cause you’re hurting.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Nate sighs. “Sit me down and talk me out of it? Pat my hand and tell me I’m doing the right thing?”

Hanco*ck stops. “No,” he says, toneless. He’s toying with something in the pocket of his red coat, probably his mentats tin. He licks his marred lips. “We already agreed I ain’t your wife.”

Dull anger washing over him, Nate flicks on his pip boy, checking the time. Two p.m. He wishes it was later, so he could leave straight away and get this over with. He’s looking down, at his wrist, so he doesn’t see Hanco*ck coming. One moment, the mayor just stands there, a louche, rumpled scarecrow of a man, looking like a strong breeze would blow him over, and the next moment he’s on Nate, quick as a snake. Nate has seen Hanco*ck fight, and admired his vicious, drunken grace, but until that moment, he never realized how strong Hanco*ck is. The ghoul pushes him down and jumps on his back, his thighs clamping tight around Nate’s waist.

Nate’s attempt to push back is an opening for Hanco*ck to seize his arm and wrench it back. It hurts, but the shock is greater than the actual pain - he can’t believe this is happening, can’t process the attack. Only when he hears the snap of metal and feels the cuff closing around his wrist does he realize that Hanco*ck isn’t trying to break his arm. “What - ?”

Hanco*ck uses his second of confusion to loop the cuffs around the metal bedframe and grabs Nate’s other wrist, jerking it towards the cuffs and chaining him fully.

Too late, Nate manages to buck him off.

“Kent had them lying around,” Hanco*ck grunts as rolls off Nate’s back and onto his feet. “Some fancy metal, extra difficult lock to pick.”

He dangles the keys from one finger for Nate to see and then drops them onto a display case, firmly out of Nate’s reach. “Kent probably thinks you’re gonna use them on AJ.”

“You’re kidding me,” Nate says, rolling onto his back and tugging at the cuffs. The chain is short, and pulls tight with a hard, metallic clink.

“Sorry, love. You need to take that edge off,” Hanco*ck says. “I’m gonna help you - my way.”

“Give. Me. The keys.”

Hanco*ck looks down at him, absolutely unmoved. “No.”

He’s pulling at the cuffs so hard that they begin to cut off the blood to his hands, but nothing gives. The sensation of being trapped, caught, awakens something in Nate, a feeling that pools in his belly, short-circuiting his brain.

It isn’t fear. He still can’t believe this is happening, but when Hanco*ck returns to him, curling his hand around the side of Nate’s neck, his grip tightening as he bends down to kiss Nate, thumb pressing against his throat, it feels like he’s caught in an undertow, swept away by a tide of blind need.

“Yeah, thought so,” Hanco*ck rasps, looking down. “We can work with that. Your safeword is Sleep. Got it?”

Nate stares at him, his chest rising and falling quickly with harsh breaths, barely able to think. But he wants this, damn Hanco*ck for figuring that out, for cutting through the tension coiled around Nate’s heart and tapping right into this animal craving, for being able to reduce him to a wanton mess just by looking at him like that, like he’s got steel in his back and fire in his veins, more devil than man.

Hanco*ck slaps Nate’s dick through his underpants, hard enough to startle him. “Got it?” he repeats.

Nate feels like he’s going to shake apart as he nods, choking on his own voice. Hanco*ck nods, too. He rolls his shoulders, then shrugs off his coat, slinging it over the back of a chair. He’s being deliberately slow and meticulous about it, unbuttoning his cuffs, rolling them up, making Nate watch and wait. It gives him time to sink even deeper into that wordless, free-fall space where the only thing holding him above water is the metal around his wrists and Hanco*ck’s solid presence.

He exhales when Hanco*ck finally touches him, tipping up his chin. There’s a flicker of emotion in that dark ghoul gaze, a softness that breaks his otherwise perfect control, and it’s that, even more than the firmness of his grip that makes Nate turn his face and close his eyes.

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says. His voice sounds tight, far away.

Even with his eyes closed, Nate knows the slap is coming. Still, it hits his cheek dead center, as though his minute flinch was anticipated. It’s not a playful tap, not a warning like before. This one stings, leaves him breathless, but as the shock passes, he realizes that it was perfectly dosed to cause pain without damage.

Nate’s fingers clench into fists. He strains against the cuffs, opens his eyes but keeps his gaze low, unable to look at Hanco*ck as he breathes, “Harder.”

There’s no immediate response, and the silence feels like the sudden drop of a plane entering a turbulence. Need and arousal flip into a feeling like being exposed, ripped open, left dangling and alone over a mirror where he sees himself, pathetic, shivering, asking the man he loves to do this to him -

Hanco*ck speaks again, in that voice like he’s a thousand miles away. “You wanna get hurt, killer, no need to go looking for it elsewhere.”

Killer. The word feels like a second blow, but this one isn’t calculated and artful, it bludgeons Nate’s already plummeting self like a hammer. His eyes fly open, disoriented, desperate for something, anything steady, and he finds Hanco*ck looking at him not with that iron mask of control but with a twisted, wretched expression of dismay.

Nate feels his eyes burn, his throat constrict.

“f*ck,” Hanco*ck croaks, “I can’t do this. Sleep! Crap, I’m sorry.”

The thirty or so seconds it takes him to hurriedly snatch the key and fumble, hands shaking, with the lock are miserable and confusing. As his wrists are released from their bonds, Nate feels even worse, because he doesn’t know where to put himself, it’s almost as if his body isn’t quite his own.

What brings him back from the brink is the realization that Hanco*ck is just as bad a mess as he is - he’s fled to the far end of the bed, one hand closed so tightly around the cuffs that it looks like his gnarled skin is about to pop over his knuckles, and he’s using his other hand to frantically pat his pockets, like he’s desperate for an emergency hit. He finally pulls an inhaler from his breast pocket, immediately dropping it on the sheets in his haste, and startles when Nate moves.

He means to say something to Hanco*ck, an apology of his own perhaps, but words are too difficult, and Nate ends up crawling towards him and wrapping him in a tight, wordless hug, hiding his face against Hanco*ck’s wiry shoulder.

“Sorry,” he finally manages, with hysterical, gulping laughter, “We’re a mess -”

“Last time I checked, it was my f*cking terrible idea,” Hanco*ck retorts.

Easing his hold on him a little Nate shakes his head. No, this wasn’t all Hanco*ck. This is was him, too, this was both of them acting like idiots.

“Just wanted to distract you from immediately chasing after some loser who’ll be here all winter when you’re in no state to fight!” Hanco*ck goes on, sounding like he’s beating himself up with his own words. “You like it rough, so this cram brained idiot here thought this would be a great time for some kinky roleplay, let you work out your troubles that way…and then I was too chicken to go through with it.”

Too chicken? That’s what Hanco*ck’s upset about? That he could beat Nate up, like it’s something Nate demanded of him, something he owes him… Nate’s still too confused, too tired to figure this out. Instead he just clings him to him, shaking his head again and again.

He doesn’t realize he’s falling asleep until Hanco*ck disentangles them, letting him slip down onto the bed and throwing a blanket over him. “Guess your plan worked,” Nate murmurs into the sheets.

It feels like he has cried, like the aftermath of a panic attack, his limbs heavy and his head full of a leaden darkness.

*

There’s a cold breeze. The room is dark, the stove has burned down, and after blinking a few times, his eyes still feeling like sandpaper, Nate spots the open balcony door, and Hanco*ck sitting outside on an upturned crate, knees drawn to his chest, his back to the railing, the red pin-prick of a cigarette dangling from his hand.

Nate heaves himself out of the tangle of sweaty sheets, and pads over to the open door with the blanket draped over his shoulders.

There’s snow on the balcony, and his feet are bare, so he stays inside, just past the threshold. It must be late, because the street outside is empty, even the Third Rail can barely be heard.

“Hey,” Hanco*ck says. His voice sounds rawer than usual. “You’re gonna turn into a popsicle again, vault boy, if you stay there.”

Nate ignores him. He’s shivering, a little, but the bracing air feels good. Despite everything, a few hours of sleep have made him feel better. Everything isn’t okay. Whatever is going on between them is not getting better but worse, and Nate doesn’t know what to do about it - but he knows he wasn’t rational earlier, during their argument.

“In the comics, the Shroud doesn’t always kill the villains,” he says. “He ties them up, leaves them for the police to find and take them to jail. Is that an option for AJ?”

“The old Green Jewel has a jail,” Hanco*ck replies. “Never thought it did anyone any good. You throw in a drunk, a brawler, a hungry man stealing bread - he’s still gonna be that, when he gets out. Ain’t no deterrent, either, just a free roof and a meal a day.”

“So you just kill them. Like Finn.”

“Depends. Lesser offences, maybe they get off with a warning. Or thrown out the gates, but that’ll kill him almost as fast as a hanging, with this kind of weather.” Hanco*ck drags on his cigarette, then pushes the stub into the snow, letting it go out with a soft fizzle. “Ain’t my idea of fun, either. But someone’s gotta step up and make the tough calls.”

The cold is crawling up Nate’s legs, sinking into his back. He’s shivering in earnest now, and seeing Hanco*ck so unaffected by it drives home the fact that they’re not entirely made of the same stuff. But it’s Nate who is the stranger in this world, the outsider who doesn’t fully understand it.

He’s about to relent, to tell Hanco*ck that he should decide what happens to criminals in his town, when Hanco*ck does the same. “However you wanna do it, love,” he says, rising with a small grunt at the way his knee joints crack. “I ain’t standing in your way a second time. But if you wanna deliver AJ to me, I’m happy to do the dirty work.”

Nate doesn’t know what to say to him. He looks down at his feet, hugging himself tighter with the blanket.

All of this seemed sounded so much easier when they planned it.

*

Hanco*ck keeps his promise, and doesn’t go after AJ while Nate tries to make up his mind. But he keeps his distance, throwing himself into work, and Nate is left to brood over it on his own, unable to solve the conundrum.

At some point in the afternoon, as he’s sitting in the Third Rail, two familiar faces approach him. It’s Jake Finch and Benny, and it turns out she has a request.

Nate introduces her to Dutch, asking if he’s got a job for her in the neighborhood watch.

Dutch looks her up and down, putting on a gruff look, and says, “The watch ain’t some kid of baby-sitter’s club.”

“I know how to handle a gun,” Benny insists.

“She does,” Nate says. “I taught her.”

Dutch sighs deeply, shaking his head this way and that, but then he asks, “She the girl the lil’ kid talked about on Kent’s show? The one who told the Shroud where to find that asshole gunner?”

The look he’s giving Nate leaves no margin for pretense: Dutch knows. Nate wonders how - has someone in the watch talked about him coming and going at odd hours? And if Dutch knows, how many others already do?

But he nods. Dutch laughs, lifting his bottle. “Cheers man.” Then he looks at Benny again. “Be at the gate at sundown, gal. We’ll see if you can handle a night on your feet.”

Benny makes a surprised, delighted little noise, the most girlish thing Nate has heard from her yet, and turns to Jake, punching his arm in delight. Jake tries to evade her punch, but his sour expression twitches into a smile, too, and he mutters, “Yeah, great, congratulations,” into the collar of his parka.

*

Another night passes, and Nate still hasn’t made up his mind about AJ. He intends to check in on Benny the next morning, and see how she liked the night shift on the wall, but he’s still in bed when there’s a patter of small feet on the stairs and a rapid knock on the door. Apparently, security in the State House is lax that morning, and with Benny probably catching up on her sleep, no one is watching Billy, because a moment later, he pokes his bald head into the room.

“Hello?”

In that moment, there’s nothing rational about the panicked way Nate scrambles out of the bed. He’s not even naked, and Hanco*ck, fortunately, is already dressed, sitting on the other end of the bed picking at their breakfast of tough razorgrain bread and tarberry preserves. It’s completely chaste, but old, old, deeply ingrained ideas about propriety take hold of Nate and he feels like a corrupter of the innocent just for making Billy see this, the two of them together, sharing a bed.

It means he ends up scrambling in for his shirt in just his underpants - but Billy doesn’t scream, he just exclaims, “Oh, there you are, Mister! I thought Benny was being silly when she said you lived in the old museum. Is this really your room?”

Nate’s hand clenches around his shirt. He feels like a butterfly, pinned down by Billy’s innocent, wide-eyed gaze. His eyes dart to Hanco*ck, who has put down the food and is watching Billy with narrow eyes, taking in the kid’s appearance - still mostly dressed in rags, bare-foot, although at least someone has cleaned him up and given him a slightly less torn shirt that hangs from his small, skinny body like a night-gown.

Billy doesn’t seem to have noticed Hanco*ck yet. He’s craning his head at the old furniture and the display cases. Maybe if Nate distracts him and takes him outside quickly -

“Wow!” Billy says. “Everything looks so old! Even older than it looked when we visited on our school trip.”

There’s a small buzz, white noise in Nate’s brain, and then the meaning of those words registers. Finally, it clicks. Billy’s strangeness, his innocence, the way he’s so unlike other children of the Commonwealth Nate has met. A school trip to the State House. He must be… he must be as old as Nate.

But if he’s that old, how can he be so young?

“Christ,” Hanco*ck mutters, over on the bed. “A pre-war kiddie ghoul.”

Billy jumps a little at the unexpected voice, and turns, gaping at Hanco*ck. Nate feels a whirlwind of conflicting impulses - a stupid need to justify himself, to explain why Hanco*ck is there, in the same bad as him, and shock, confusion at Billy’s real age. Does he even need to explain? Is Billy actually a child?

“Oh, uh, hi,” Billy says. “I’m Billy! Are you a friend of Mr Nate?”

Hanco*ck doesn’t rise, but he has straightened, and his demeanor has shifted, from surprise to something alert, almost menacing. “I’m the mayor of this town,” he says, quietly. “The name’s Hanco*ck. Maybe you’ve heard of me, old timer.”

Nate has been around Hanco*ck for so long, and grown so used to him, that he has almost forgotten what a frightening first impression the ghoul once made on him. It appears to be the same for Billy, who takes a startled step back, almost stumbling over a chair, stammering an apology. “Oh, uh, I didn’t want to - Sir, I didn’t -”

Hanco*ck grins, unpleasantly. “No need for the act. You’re around friends.”

It clearly isn’t an act though. That’s a child, Nate thinks, no matter how that even works, that’s a child, and damn Hanco*ck for acting like some kind of Halloween special around a traumatized kid. He steps in, putting a steadying hand on Billy’s shoulder, and for lack of a better role model, drops into the cadence of the Silver Shroud.

“What the mayor is saying, Billy, is that it isn’t polite to walk into people’s rooms unannounced. Didn’t your parents teach you that?”

“They did!” Billy exclaims unhappily. “And I knocked! I’m sorry, Mr Shroud, Sir - oh!” He claps his hand over his mouth in a panic.

Nate glares at Hanco*ck over his head, silently telling him: See? A kid!

Apparently, Hanco*ck does come to the same conclusion, because he stops looking at Billy like he’s some kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing, and drops his head forward, pinching the spot between his brows, just above his missing nose. “Christ,” he says again. “God help him if he’s faking it - !”

So it’s up to him to salvage this. Nate huffs in annoyance, though really, he probably shouldn’t be surprised that dealing with children isn’t Hanco*ck’s strong suit. He squeezes Billy’s shoulder.

“It’s all right, Billy. Hanco*ck knows. But remember what we talked about, okay? It needs to be a secret.”

Billy nods, shame-faced. “Yes, Sir. I’m sorry. I - I won’t bother you any longer.”

He tries to slip away, but Nate holds onto him. “Hey. Billy.” He drops down to a crouch, to look him in the eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? Was there anything you needed?”

Shoes, Nate thinks, the kid needs a pair of shoes, and damn him for not making sure someone took care of that. Of course Benny doesn’t have any money to buy things, and neither do the others… “I just wanted to ask,” Billy starts, hesitantly. “I’ve been away from home for a really long time, and Mr Conolly says the radio signal doesn’t reach Quincy, so maybe my parents didn’t hear me on the radio. What if they’re looking for me? Could you take me there? Or, maybe, if we don’t find them, we could leave a message at the house! Benny says they’re dead because no one came looking for me until Mr Bullet found me in the fridge and it’s been two hundred years, but what does she know? I’m still alive!”

“Right,” Nate says. It feels like his voice is wrapped around barbed wire. Benny is right, of course. If Billy turned ghoul when the bombs fell, his parents probably died in the blast. Otherwise… if they had turned ghoul as well, they wouldn’t just have abandoned their child.

Or if they did… if for some godforsaken reason, these people did not want their ghoul son, they do not deserve to be found. Nate kneels, to look Billy in the eyes, even though it hurts. “Quincy is a really long way away,” he says, his voice husky. “You’ve seen how much snow there is. We could go there in spring, maybe. If your parents have been looking for you all this time, a few months won’t make a difference, trust me.”

Nate’s experience with children is very limited. He was never the type to hang out with his younger cousins at family events, or to play ball with the neighbors’ kids. But it seems that it doesn’t take much experience when the kid thinks that you’re an actual comic book hero. Billy looks at him as though his word is gospel and nods, relieved. “Yes, you’re right.”

Nate watches him go, then draws a deep shuddering breath. He turns around to face Hanco*ck. Before he can say anything, Hanco*ck shakes his head. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, real smooth, that ghoul sure as hell ain’t parent material, but you’re being green, too. Can’t blame ya - the old timers you’ve met are the cream of the crop. Arlen, Daisy, Kent, they’re a little whacky, but harmless. Not all of them are, though. And a kiddie ghoul… they’re really rare. Never met one in person before. Most of them don’t make it past twenty, from what I’ve heard, and life’s rough, when you’re that much of a freak. Now imagine two hundred years of that. You gotta develop a strategy to survive. Playing dumb and cute ain’t the worst, especially if they run into someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

Hanco*ck gives him a pointed look, his eyes glittering darkly under the brim of the tricorn. “A good man,” he says, like he’s daring Nate to think that he meant anything else.

Nate draws a rough breath. They’re teetering on the edge of another argument here, and for some reason, it feels like the same one that’s been boiling under the surface for days. He doesn’t get what this has to do with anything else, and maybe it isn’t connected, maybe Hanco*ck is just moody, maybe he doesn’t like kids, or maybe he is right, and Nate doesn’t know enough about ghouls to understand Hanco*ck’s reaction to Billy.

But he’d rather be soft than be as hard as Hanco*ck is right now. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, if anything, of course Hanco*ck isn’t soft, Nate knew that. It’s part of Hanco*ck’s job, something he has admired in him in the past, that unyielding commitment to his cause, to his town. It’s this hardness that allowed Hanco*ck to shake up his corner of the Commonwealth and make it better, and still it feels as though ever since Nate told him he loved him, Hanco*ck has only been getting harder, tougher, locking himself in that role.

Nate pulls on his pants, his jacket. He picks up Deirdre’s scarf, his fingers digging into the soft material, holding on tight. “I’m going for a walk,” he says.

As soon as he hits the street, he wishes he could go outside the gate without inviting an Institute attack. There are too many people in the settlement who know him, no anonymity. He misses the Boston of old, the busy inner city streets, the never-ending flood of shoppers, tourists, students, businessmen, the bustle and noise that would swallow up a stranger. Here, there’s a familiar face at every corner. Preston, on the wall, waving at him, Ham, having a smoke in front of the Third Rail, Rufus Rubins and Sturges, fixing some wiring outside the Rex, even the drifters nod to him or tip their rag hats.

After an hour, he ends up back at the area near the gate, and the sight of Daisy’s store reminds him of his thoughts earlier. Nate doesn’t have any more money than Preston or Benny, but Daisy likes him - she might actually give him a discount on a pair of children’s boots, or maybe allow him to open a tab. When he asks her, however, Daisy purses her lips, clearly amused.

“You’re half an hour too late,” she says. “Dutch just came by and bought the only pair.”

Does Dutch have kids? But he’s a ghoul, and Hanco*ck said… Dutch must have had the same thought when he saw Billy going barefoot. Or someone sent him to buy those boots. Oh, Nate thinks. Oh.

He stares at the counter, the wind taken out of his sails.

“You look like you could use a little pick me up, sweetie,” Daisy observes shrewdly. “Trouble on the home front?”

The home front. It’s what people used to say, during the war. Nate never liked it back then, the implication that marriage was a battle, that your wife was the enemy. But Daisy says it ironically, knowingly, and it reminds him painfully of the kinship he felt with her. She knows him, like no one else in the world knows him, even though they haven’t have another serious conversation since their first one.

“Yes,” he admits.

Daisy nods. “I was about to close up for the day anyway. Christmas sales aren’t what they used to be. Tea?”

He sits at her little round formica kitchen table upstairs, watching her putter with a battered steam kettle. There is a plate of cookies on the table, and at the surprised noise he makes when he eats one, Daisy chuckles. “Yes, there’s still honey. Just don’t ask where it’s coming from.”

“Mmm,” she says, when she joins him at the table, two steaming mugs between them. “This would be easier if we were girlfriends, wouldn’t it? I bet you’re the kind of fellow who likes to suffer in silence. Ray was just like that, used to drive me up the walls.”

“Nora too,” Nate admits, smiling into his cup. “She tried to sit down and argue me out of it, once. She had a big theory, and everything. Always got academic on me, when she was angry. Masculine something? Poisonous masculinity, that’s it.”

“Toxic,” Daisy corrects, also smiling. “She was a smart cookie, your wife. Did you listen to her?”

“Sometimes.” Not on this one, though. Not nearly often enough.

“They used to say men are from Mars and women from Venus. Stupidest idea of the century, if you ask me. Now, no one thinks that - we all crawl through the same rubble. But you and Hanco*ck… you actually are from pretty different worlds. A lot of room for misunderstandings, I’m sure, and I should know, because unlike you, I took the scenic route.”

He tells her about this morning, about Billy, about Hanco*ck’s harsh reaction. He tries to be fair about it, but his frustration shines through nevertheless. Daisy co*cks her head, nodding slowly, humming into her tea.

“Here’s a thing you might not know about us ghouls, sweetie. It’s Hanco*ck’s fault you don’t know better, actually, because he built this place where we can all be free and neighborly to each other. But it wasn’t always like that, and it still isn’t, in a lot of places. I’ve known a lot of ghouls in my time who wouldn’t trust each other as far as the tip of their noses, if you know what I mean. Sticking to your own kind was what got you in trouble with the smoothskins, and besides, it’s tough not to think the worst of people like you, when that’s what everyone else does. And, well, there are as ugly inside as out, after a few decades of hard living.”

“But Hanco*ck - “

“Built a better place, yes. Doesn’t make him immune to the occasional drop back to old thinking. Just, hmm… think about how many times you have to remind yourself that loving a man doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s so easy, here. But those old ghosts won’t stop rattling their chains, will they?”

Nate recalls, suddenly, the moment Billy poked his head into their room this morning, his instinctive reaction at being caught in bed with Hanco*ck - like he was a pervert, flaunting himself, corrupting a child just by existing. Even though nothing was actually going on, they were sitting five feet apart, Hanco*ck was dressed already, and Billy cared more about the museum furniture than what they might or might not be doing on it.

And she’s saying that that is how Hanco*ck feels about being a ghoul?

Daisy sips her tea. Her silence is welcoming, warm, allowing him space to think. Eventually, though, he feels selfish for being so caught up in his on mind. He gathers up the nerve for a smile, as charming and teasing as he can manage. “How come a woman like you doesn’t have someone?”

She laughs, a sound like the honey she spooned into their tea, and pats his hand. Then she sobers, looking as sad as he’s ever seen her.

“Usually when people ask me that I just tell them I’m too cultured for this day and age. But the truth is… well. I missed Ray for a long time, but there were others after him. Too many, perhaps. There was one… Gina. I always thought she’d tire of an old thing like me, set in my ways and she a young spitfire like that. She was so… alive. Barely twenty when I met her. It must be… oh, seventy years now since I buried her.”

“How did she die?” Nate asks.

Daisy lifts her wrinkled brows. “Old age. We survive you, honey. That’s how it goes.”

He drops his gaze, feeling rude for asking. And then, as he looks down into his empty cup, he remembers the morning after he killed Bullet. The odd way Hanco*ck looked at his bruises and burns. That was where it started, that strangeness between them. He never thought of their relationship that way. If anything, he was afraid of being the one left to mourn. Hanco*ck acts like someone who doesn’t expect or care to live past thirty - he even said he stopped counting, when Nate asked him how old he was. But he must be in his forties, at least, perhaps even in his early fifties, unless he’s a lot younger than his brother. How many of his generation has Hanco*ck already survived?

If they fail at this crazy attempt to save the Commonwealth, they’ll fail together and die together, but if they succeed, if they defeat the Institute and the Brotherhood, if they build a new CPG, then Hanco*ck might someday be able to pass on the reins of Goodneighbor to someone else. His chances of survival are going to sky-rocket, and he might indeed grow as old as Daisy or Kent.

Hanco*ck is far too smart not to have thought this through already. He must have known it the moment Nate declared his intentions of changing the world, right here in this room, at this table.

He even said it, when he thought Nate was too high on pain killers to notice.

Wish there was a way to turn you ghoul.

It didn’t make sense to Nate then, but it does now, and his chest constricts at the thought of Hanco*ck, in a hundred, two hundred years, talking about him like Daisy talks about her girl.

We survive you.

*

There’s nothing that Nate can do or say to change this. The sorrow ties up his tongue when he returns to the State House, and the silence hangs leaden and awkward between them, until he realizes that Hanco*ck probably thinks he’s still angry about Billy.

The longer Nate watches him, the more he’s certain that it was Hanco*ck who sent Dutch to buy the boots, and that Hanco*ck, for some godforsaken reason, won’t mention it. Perhaps he doesn’t want Nate to see it as a peace offering - bribes aren’t his style, and this, Nate suspects, isn’t really about him at all. Perhaps Hanco*ck really did just feel sorry for the kid and the way he acted.

He looks surprised when Nate catches his hand as he passes, and pulls him down to sit on the bed. Surprised, and wary. “This another talk?”

Nate shakes his head. He leans in and kisses him, unable to keep the slight tremble out of his touch. “Thank you,” he says. “For the boots.”

Hanco*ck’s eyes widen - guilty as charged, Nate thinks, and the love that wells up only adds to the sorrow.

“This ain’t a town to go barefoot. Too many broken bottles, and not everyone can rock a missing toe like I do,” Hanco*ck jokes.

“Uh-huh. You’ve got uniquely attractive missing body parts.”

“Sure, so long as you’re not hoping for a detachable dick.”

It’s surprisingly easy to laugh. Nate latches onto it like a lifeline, chuckling until he has to wipe his eyes. It’s the first time in days that Hanco*ck’s answering smile reaches his eyes. He thinks about what Daisy said, that Hanco*ck may not be as comfortable in his skin as he seems to be. It’s amazing that he can joke about it like this, even now.

He wonders if Hanco*ck will still smile like this, a hundred years from now. But Daisy does, and Kent does, and Wiseman, even Arlen Glass, when he talks about his toys. The best Nate can do, perhaps, is make sure that Hanco*ck still has reasons to smile.

The moment is too fragile, too beautiful for Nate to broach the subject of death. He doesn’t say anything the next day, either, and the next, and then regrets it deeply when Fahrenheit calls a meeting because Daisy has important news.

They meet in Daisy’s apartment, which has apparently become the unofficial CPG headquarters. Everyone is there except Deacon, who appears to be busy with something else.

“Not the library again,” Hanco*ck says, when Daisy announces she has a new mission for the Silver Shroud.

“Oh, hush, you,” she says. “A man does as many mentats as you do, John, he could stand to read a book once in a while.”

“Hey, I got no problem with reading books - it’s returning them that strikes me as crazy.”

“You’ll understand why when you’re my age,” she says, and her eyes flick to Nate, a question in them: have you talked about this? Hanco*ck rolls his eyes, and while he isn’t looking, Nate shakes his head quietly. Daisy sighs.

Then she says tells them about someone called Rex Goodman who has apparently been captured by the super mutants in Trinity Tower.

“Captured by super mutants?” Nate asks. “What makes you think he’s even still alive?”

“It’s Rex Goodman,” Hanco*ck snorts. “One time, a bunch of raiders crashed one of his productions while it was live on air. My Fair Lady. They shot his leading woman, and by the end of it he had one of them singing about the rain in Spain.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Daisy tells Nate. “Rex is a great man. He’s the brain behind WRVR radio - it’s been quiet lately, but it used to be as popular as Diamond City Radio. They put on these lovely radio plays, the only bit of culture in this day and age.”

“I remember them,” Preston nods. “There was one, about a King Henry, and a battle against impossible odds…”

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers?” Daisy asks, smiling at Preston, and he nods, pointing at her in surprised recognition.

“It would be a coup if the Silver Shroud saved Goodman,” Fahrenheit says. “Exactly the sort of attention we want to get. But it’s a dangerous gambit. You can’t win the game by sacrificing your king. “

“This isn’t a game! It’d be a tragedy to lose a soul like Rex,” Daisy cuts in vehemently, before Fahrenheit can extend that metaphor. “He never lost faith in humanity’s better nature! If we don’t care about that, then why are we even here?”

While they argue, Nate looks at Hanco*ck, trying to gauge his reaction. Maybe this is the point where Hanco*ck will finally break his silence and admit that he’s not as ready to send Nate into danger as the rest of them. But Hanco*ck is staring at the table with a tight-lipped, closed expression.

He’ll never say anything, Nate realizes. Not because he doesn’t care, but because this is Hanco*ck. He believes in freedom so much, he believes in this cause, he believes in laying down his own life for it, and he won’t stop Nate from doing the same.

He loves Nate for doing this, even though he might lose him because of it.

In that moment, he understands Hanco*ck more clearly than he has ever understood another human being. He wishes he could put into words the depth and beauty of this knowledge, the way it hurts like the cleanest of cuts.

What he says, instead, is, “If we’re doing this, I’m not doing it alone.”

Hanco*ck looks up in surprise. Nate smiles at him across the table, hoping that this is the right thing to do, the right offer to make in this impossible, terrible situation, that he isn’t making things even worse. “Want to come judge the guilty with me?”

Lifting his chin, Hanco*ck smiles back at him. “Thought you’d never ask.”

*

The wind whistles and howls around Trinity Tower, making the bodies swing on their chains with forlorn groans. Around their fire, the mutants sit, blinded by the light, unaware of the inferno that is about to start.

Outside, behind the cover of an old truck, Nate huddles closer to Hanco*ck. He wants to say something, and overcome with a last moment of doubt, is about to call the mission off.

But Hanco*ck, watching him wrestle with doubt and fear, tugs down the bandana covering his mouth, bringing their faces so close together he brushes against Nate’s hat, their breaths mingling, and kisses the knot from his heart.

“I know what you’re afraid of,” Nate whispers.

“Nothing,” Hanco*ck says. It’s no more than a brave lie, until he adds, “As long as we go together.”

Nate holds onto him, less gentle than he intends to. “Me too.”

There’s more that he wants to say, but the pip boy on his arm buzzes, startling them both. A voice comes onto the speaker, the signal so crackly it’s barely audible.

“Hey, uh, guys? Hate to interrupt your date, but that hound is moving towards you.”

Taking a sniper with them as to provide cover fire as much as possible was one of Fahrenheit’s conditions, but Nate almost forgot about the merc. Before he can answer, Hanco*ck kisses him a second time, ignoring the fact that their back-up clearly has them in his sights and their time is running out.

It’s a kiss so soft, so tender that Nate freezes. Hanco*ck has not touched him like this in a week – perhaps never. And he suddenly realizes what else has gone wrong in this last week, the thing he hasn’t seen even though it’s been literally hitting him in the face at one point.

Hanco*ck is kissing him like this because he thinks they might die, because now it doesn’t matter what he does or how he does it.

Nate wants to stop him, but it’s too late. He tugs on Nate’s arm and says to the radio, “Light them up, MacCready.”

A mere second later, the muffled whistle of a sniper rifle cuts through the storm and the hound drops dead on the ground.

Chapter 16: The Breach (Part Two)

Chapter Text

The sparking of the elevator button sends a flutter of nerves through Nate’s stomach as he presses it. Using one of these ancient pre-war contraptions always feels like entering a game of Russian roulette, but the stairs to the next floor are blocked with tons of scrap metal. They’ve reached the sixth floor of Trinity Tower, their way paved with dead mutants.

Nate is flushed with exertion and adrenaline, but as the elevator begins its slow, shaking ascent, he feels his skin crawl as though there’s a sudden draft, cooling the air. There isn’t - it’s actually hard to breathe inside the little metal cabin, even through his mouth. The whole building reeks of mutant, an ammonia stench like the big cat house at the zoo, and underneath that a thicker, more sickening layer of rotting meat.

He wipes his hands on his thighs, trying to get the blood and filth off his gloves. It’s hard to tell how many mutants they’ve killed between them to get to this point. After the two on the ground floor, it all started to blur, one hulking green body after another.

He sees that scene before his inner eye still: Hanco*ck, skidding out of the snow and into the foyer of Trinity Towers, firing his shotgun before he even came to a halt, the shots cracking through the silence like grenade explosions. The third shot felled one of the mutants, ripping open its big green gut, but by that time, the other mutant was on its feet, and in its hand a minigun, already powering up. Even the memory of that sight makes Nate’s chest constrict.

He sprinted the distance from their cover to the tower, tackling Hanco*ck to throw him out of the way of the rapid spray of bullets. His whole side still feels as though it has been pummeled by iron fists, but the Silver Shroud armor wasn’t pierced by the bullets.

He yelled at Hanco*ck, once the mutant with the minigun was dead, but Hanco*ck didn’t even stop - he darted up the stairs, two at a time, and almost collided with the sledgehammer-swinging mutant waiting for them.

But the mutant missed, and Hanco*ck didn’t.

It was a mistake, asking Hanco*ck to come along. If only Nate had realized it a moment sooner, in time to tell MacCready to abort the mission. Now it’s too late to talk it out, to explain to Hanco*ck that he wanted him to come along because he thought it would be easier on Hanco*ck than waiting at home and worrying. But Hanco*ck is – god, Hanco*ck is f*cking stupid, and so is Nate and this is gigantic clusterf*ck of miscommunication that is going to lead to one of them getting killed…

There’s a slow, rhythmic clanking noise as the elevator rises. Nate counts the clanks, one, two, three, trying to quiet the pounding of his pulse, the furious rush of blood in his ears. It only grows louder, until with a hiss of frustration, he slaps his hand onto the stop switch.

There’s a screech of metal cables, followed by a sudden jolt and a sickening lurch, before the elevator finally comes to a halt.

He turns around to his companion, maybe to yell at him again, about their carefully laid out plan, about all the caution that Hanco*ck threw into the wind, to ask him how hard it can be to just accept that someone worries about him - and chokes on the words when he sees Hanco*ck leaning against the tarnished mirror in the back of the elevator, teeth gritted, a stimpak jammed into his thigh. The leather around it is stained slick and dark with blood.

“Damn it!” Nate crosses the distance between them, seizing Hanco*ck’s upper arm to help prop him up. “How long - ?”

“Foyer,” Hanco*ck says through gritted teeth, not even looking up from the stimpak. “Ricochet from that damn minigun. I’m fine. Didn’t hit anything vital.”

Nate doesn’t listen to him. He flicks open the clasps of his pip boy, and snaps it around Hanco*ck’s scrawny wrist, pulling it as tight as it will go, holding on firmly to Hanco*ck’s hand as he tries to pull it away. It takes a moment to adjust to a new wearer, during which Nate stares fixedly at the monitor, which immediately flashes alerts all over because of the high radiation levels.

“Lemme guess,” Hanco*ck mutters in annoyance. “Technically dead? That thing ain’t wired for zombies.”

He’s right, infuriatingly so. The readings don’t adjust to anything that makes sense, even after another twenty seconds. Nate finally gives up on it, letting go of Hanco*ck’s hand in frustration. He watches him pluck the stimpak from his thigh.

“How many more do you think there are?” Hanco*ck asks, casually, as if Nate isn’t staring at him as though he’s losing his mind. “We put down at least fifteen of these suckers.”

He barely winces as Nate’s fist crushes the mirror next to his face, shattering his own reflection. Hanco*ck has nerve for miles, and somewhere in the gold-flecked depths of his dark ghoul eyes, there’s a hint of devil-may-care provocation. He bends sideways, glancing up at Nate’s shaking arm, and reaches up to gingerly pick a shard of glass from Nate’s armored glove.

“Come on, sunshine,” he rasps with dark humor. “Don’t pull your punches.”

Since they entered their agreement, Nate has always followed, yielded, waited for Hanco*ck to take the initiative. He pushed back a few times, but he never felt like this, boiling with impotent anger.

Why the hell would Hanco*ck think that he’d hurt him, here, now, when it’s them against an army of mutated freaks?

Growling, he seizes Hanco*ck’s face with both hands, his thumbs digging into the ghoul’s scarred cheeks, and kisses him. He wishes he could make it tender, wishes he could gently pluck the rough edges from both of their minds, but he can’t. It’s a kiss of desperation, just short of hurting them both.

He stays close even as breaks the kiss, pressing their foreheads together, speaking a jagged command. “Hanco*ck. I didn’t bring you for this. Stay alive.”

Not ‘stay safe’. There’s no safe in this, they both know that.

For once, there’s no clever quip, no tease from Hanco*ck. The ghoul looks stunned. He stares at Nate’s eyes - at his mask, Nate realizes. Perhaps he underestimated how inscrutable he looks with the costume. It takes Hanco*ck two tries to reply, and even then it’s with a scratchier voice than usual.

“I’ll do my best.”

Nate releases him, his hand sliding down Hanco*ck’s shoulder, unwilling to quite let him go. He squeezes his arm, finger’s shaking, then slips the pip boy off his lover’s wrist and puts it back on his own. Turning back to the elevator door, he hails MacCready on the radio.

“MacCready, do you copy?”

The radio crackles with static, and for a moment, Nate thinks the elevator car must be breaking the signal, but then MacCready’s voice answers him, tinny and distant, and slightly shrill, “Sh -- shucks, you’re still alive? Uh, yes, I mean, I copy.”

“What’s the situation on the roof?”

“Two of those big green knuckleheads are toting a missile launcher around, but they haven’t made my position yet. There’s some activity on the floor below that.”

“We’re going up,” Nate tells him. “Can you create a diversion?”

“Hey, you’re talking to a professional. Just give me a heads up before you run into my sights, I don’t wanna accidentally shoot my favorite cash cow. Or you.”

Nate tells him to wait for the signal before flipping the emergency stop switch and resuming their slow, bumpy ride to the top. He goes down on one knee by the door, gun at the ready - mentioning to Hanco*ck to do the same, so he’ll have Nate and his armor as cover in case they’re walking straight into an ambush. Hanco*ck, apparently still impressed by Nate’s outburst, follows Nate’s lead, grimacing as he bends his injured leg.

The elevator reaches the seventy-ninth floor and stops with a loud ding.

“Now,” Nate hisses to MacCready.

He hears the grunt of a mutant as the doors begin to slide open, the shuffling of heavy feet - and then clang, clang, clang the sounds of bullets hitting a wall outside, cries of surprise and anger from other mutants, a dull, “Huh - humans sneak around Grunt, no fair -”

Through the opening doors, they see a mutant running up the stairs, abandoning his post to join the fray on the roof.

There are other rooms on this floor, more trashed offices, but Nate doesn’t pause to investigate. He immediately darts up the stairs after the mutant, as quietly as he can. On top of the stairs, there’s another door, slammed shut by the mutant but not locked. He casts a glance over his shoulder, making sure that Hanco*ck is right behind him, then slowly nudges open the door.

A powerful, icy draft immediately cuts through the gap, and he hears the angry howl of the wind. They’ve reached the top floor of the tower, he realizes. The door at the end of the hall has been torn from the hinges, and there are icicles hanging down from the top, but most of them are broken off, as though something large regularly moves through. Mutants have left icy tracks leading from outside to the stairs. Beyond that broken door, they can just barely make out the windswept darkness of the section of open rooftop where the mutants are trying to get a good shot at MacCready’s position - he can hear them shouting threats and curses into the night, but he can’t see them yet.

Nate signals to Hanco*ck to keep watch, glaring at him for added emphasis: Don’t move before I say so. Then he ducks inside the thick lapels of the Silver Shroud coat, whispering into his radio. “Keep it up, MacCready.”

When he looks up from the folds of his coat, Hanco*ck is still crouched next to him, back against the door jamb, keeping both the stairs and the exit to the roof in his sights. His dark clothing makes it impossible to tell whether his leg is still bleeding, but at least there aren’t any visible signs of him going into shock - no shaking, no clammy skin, no shallow breathing.

A moment later, they both hear another ruckus breaking out on the room, followed by the bellow of machine gun fire. Nate nods, jerking his chin at the hallway, and moves out. There are two doors, one to the right and one to the left, but he can see immediately that the one to the left is dented and jammed in the doorway, probably long out of use, whereas the one to the right stands ajar.

He tips it open and finds the room behind it dark and reeking, despite the icy cold. Hanco*ck follows him, touching Nate’s back, and drawing the door softly closed behind him.

“Ugh,” Nate whispers. “What’s that smell...”

“Meat freezer,” Hanco*ck answers, and despite the grim humor in his voice, he might be right. This could be where the mutants keep their meat - and possibly their living prisoners, if there are any.

As if on cue, Hanco*ck stops, tugging at Nate’s arm. “We’re not alone.”

Nate’s vision takes longer than Hanco*ck’s ghoul eyes to adjust to the near dark, but after a moment, he, too, sees the cage and the hulking shape inside. A mutant, he realizes. Still alive, breathing with low, soft huffs like a brahmin, and at his side, a smaller, far less impressive form.

The smaller creature lifts its head, and now Nate can see that it’s a human, wearing a rumpled suit and at least a week’s worth of stubble, and sitting huddled and apparently unharmed against a living super mutant. “Who’s there?” the man asks sharply, with startling authority for someone trapped in a stinking cage.

“Mr Goodman?” Nate takes a step closer, feeling in the dark for the lock. “We’re here to help.”

Like a slow avalanche, the mountain of meat next to Goodman shifts and lifts a big, ugly head. “Stupid humans,” it growls. “No help. Walk into trap.”

Nate tenses immediately, gripping the silver gun tighter and glancing back at the door, but the man inside the cage turns to the mutant and in an indignant and far too loud voice asks, “A trap? What are you talking about?”

The mutant makes a dull, almost sheepish noise. “Strong thought Rex know. Rex make radio voices, voices bait to catch more humans. Trap work, see?”

“Just what the world needed,” Hanco*ck mutters. “Mutants getting smart.”

“Oh dear,” Goodman says with a put upon sigh. “This may be my fault. My sincerest apologies - as you see, these brutes are not without intelligence. I came here hoping to inspire the better angels of their nature, to lift them from savage ignorance by opening their hearts to the beauty of the bard’s works, and to what end?”

Nate feels his patience fizzle as he stares at Goodman. Hanco*ck warned him about this, he thinks, he said Goodman was crazy. But Nate just had to listen to Daisy, had to bring them here for a lunatic who thinks he can educate bloodthirsty monsters -

He’s startled by a loud bang - the sound of a slab of meat hitting corrugated metal. Hanco*ck jumps, too, pointing his gun at the noise as it repeats. Then Nate realizes that it’s someone hitting the wall with a large fist.

“Who there? What make noises?” a hoarse voice shouts from outside.

Nate takes a deep, slow breath, pushing down the adrenaline and his boiling temper, and readies his gun. Goodman and Hanco*ck hold their breaths as well, but Strong’s slack-jawed gaping turns into a cunning grin after a moment, and he moves to the wall, pounding against it with his own fist.

“Strong hear fight! Strong want to help!”

Nate feels his jaw drop. It’s not Shakespeare, certainly, but it is acting - and Strong is using it to help them. His gaze darts to Goodman, awed.

“Bah, you weak!” the mutant outside shouts. “Disgust me! Strong fight Fist for human, now Strong die like human!”

Strong huffs. “Better die like human than die stupid, like Fist!” he retorts. “Strong will learn from human, be strongest of all!”

Next to him, Nate hears a muffled noise from Hanco*ck, who is smothering laughter with his sleeve. “sh*t, I gotta try staying sober more often...”

Hanco*ck’s laughter cools Nate’s anger, leaving behind only a twinge of regret. He shouldn’t be angry with Goodman or Daisy or Hanco*ck. It was his idea to run this mission, and it wasn’t a bad idea, except for the part where he thought bringing Hanco*ck along would solve anything. He scrubs the lower half of his face, exhaling, and bends over the lock, just as another series of shots from MacCready distracts the mutants outside. Using bobby pins or wires to do this has never been his strong suit, but Deacon has given him a few lessons with actual lockpicks, and it seems they’ve paid off - after less than thirty seconds, the door springs open.

Goodman steps out as soon as he can, and gratefully accepts the pistol Hanco*ck hands him. The mutant follows after him, bending down to Nate and showing a row of huge, jagged teeth.

“Human kill many to get to top of tower, but human trust Strong. Maybe human not as smart as Rex.”

“Listen big guy,” Hanco*ck says, reloading his shotgun for emphasis. “You really wanna find out the hard way who’s smarter? Because the odds ain’t looking good for you. We just murdered two dozen of your friends, and they didn’t get any of us.”

Strong bends down and breathes out through his nose, straight into Hanco*ck’s face, growling softly. Then his grin stretches wider. “Ghoul no fear, talk big numbers. Fight good. This will be Strong, when Strong finds milk of human kindness.”

Hanco*ck, after another second of staring up at the brute, laughs again. “Better living through chemicals, eh? Welcome to the team, brother.”

“Yes, very droll,” Goodman says. “Now, how shall we escape this wretched tower? I do hope you gentlemen have a plan!”

It was probably only a matter of time until one of the mutants outside switched on their single brain cell and realized they were being duped. Just as Nate is about to ask Strong whether he knows how to operate the scaffolding elevator, the door bursts open, kicked in by a mutant.

“Humans! You can’t hide!”

All Nate sees is the bottle in the creature’s meaty hand, and the arc of flame as it hurls it into the room. Goodman is closest to him, so Nate grabs him and pulls him out of the line of fire. The molotov co*cktail smashes against the bars of the cage, fire and gasoline raining down on Strong, who barrels forward with a bellowing roar, smashing into the other mutant.

It’s a horrible sight - blue flames lick up Strong’s bare, gasoline-doused back, the muscles bulging even as boils form on the burning skin. Strong, ignoring the pain, locks the other mutant into a wrestling hold and tries to push him out of the door. It takes a second for Nate to recover his senses, but then he pulls his biggest knife from his utility belt and darts past the flames to ram it into the hostile mutant’s neck. Blood spurts forth from the wound in big, gushing sprays, and the mutant opens his mouth, more blood bubbling forth, as Strong holds onto it in a deadly bear hug, taking one lumbering step after the other out into the hallway.

He doesn’t let go, even as the mutant sags in his grasp, screaming without cease as the flames spread over his shoulders and down his thighs, and Nate is too horrified by the sight to think about the risk when he lunges after him and slaps Strong on the back of his head with his gloved hand, dunking him forward.

“Drop and roll in the snow! Now!” he shouts, channelling every drill sergeant he ever met.

Strong turns, his face a twisted grimace of pain and blind rage - and then lurches towards the exit to the roof, tumbling down into the snow like a very large tree toppling. There’s a loud hiss, steam billowing up, and Strong’s roar turns into a high-pitched screech as he begins flailing in the slush. Nate stops in the doorway, flinching back as the wind almost sweeps him off his feet - it’s whipping over the roof with the power and speed of a freight-train. Nate can barely hear his own shout, warning Hanco*ck and Goodman to take cover as he spots the other mutants by the edge of the roof that faces Trinity Church.

One of them does indeed hold a missile launcher, just as MacCready said. Another totes a machine gun like a child’s toy, and the third swings a huge sledge hammer. The one with the hammer is unusually well-equipped with armor for a mutant, wearing furs and metal plating and a roughly hammered helmet over its ugly head, making him look like a giant green parody of an iron age warrior. All three of them have just turned, their jaws hanging open at the sight of one of their own running screaming and burning onto the roof, but the one with the helmet recovers first, breaking into a big, guffawing laugh as he slams the hammer down onto the icy ground.

“My trap worked! You dinner for Fist now!”

Nate plucks the smoke bombs from his belt, two at once, and hurls them down onto the ground a few inches from Strong. He’s got the icy wind in his back, and the smoke that explodes forth is dragged immediately across the roof towards the three mutants, enveloping them in a shroud of grey.

He reaches for one of the grenades next, but before he can pull the pin he hears the hiss of the missile, and for a fraction of a second sees it pierce the smoke, terrifyingly close and huge and pointed straight at them.

Nate throws himself down onto Strong, arms over his head and his face pressed into reeking mutant skin. A shockwave of heat and noise sweeps over them from behind as the missile explodes inside the hallway, blasting rubble and splinters everywhere. Some of the heat seems to burrow straight into Nate’s ears, which buzz and scream at him as he lifts his head again, swaying, to see the ball of fire above them be swallowed up by the black sky.

He turns. Behind him, the door is a bent, charred opening into an inferno. Nothing could have survived - and yet, there, in the wreckage, a haggard black shape rises from the flames, propped up on a shotgun, dragging a second person along.

Hanco*ck. Nate exhales a sigh of relief, and for a second, everything is alright. Then something hits his side like a cannonball, throwing him off Strong.

The blow from the hammer sends him skidding across the icy roof like a ragdoll, the Silver Shroud’s hat tumbling ahead of him, carried by the wind across the edge into the abyss, and he comes to halt on his back, breathless, the mask askew on his face and blinding him.

Less than five feet to his left is the edge of the building. His head is ringing, his body stunned by the pain, none of his limbs obeying him as he tries to lift them to get away from the deadly plunge. He hears, more than sees, the armored mutant lumbering towards him, the ice popping and cracking under its heavy steps.

And then he realizes which edge of the building he’s at. The side that faces Trinity Church.

“Human can’t fly,” the mutant leader mocks him. “Give up and come to Fist, we eat you slow, feet first…”

Gritting his teeth, Nate rolls to the side, closer to the edge, and closer, bringing his wrist to his face. “Now!”

There’s nothing, no reply from MacCready, no shot. Fist looms over him, grinning, and slowly lifts the giant hammer high up above his head, all the green muscles in his arms and torso rippling with strength.

The last time Nate was this certain he would die was when he raced the suicider on Tucker Memorial Bridge. He was scared, then, throwing himself into the river, afraid of death, afraid of failure, and yet willing to give himself to save everyone else. Now, it’s not fear that he feels. It’s shock, heart-rending pain, disbelief, anger at the injustice. This can’t be it. He only just found a place for himself, he can see the future before him, bright and good and hopeful, he has things to do, a life worth living. He’s not ready.

Determination runs through him like a golden current, launching him back to his feet.

He sees the second of surprise on Fist’s face as his helpless prey surges up from the ground, tackling him just as he brings the hammer down. Nate manages to push Fist just far enough that the hammer hits the empty air on the other side of the edge. It drags him down with the force of its momentum. Unable to pull back, Fist is ripped into the black, snow-swept nothing of the night, screaming as he falls.

Just as Nate sways back from the edge, fighting against the wind, the mutant with the missile launcher appears right in front of him, and in the gibbering madness of its grin, Nate can clearly see no shock, no grief at the demise of its leader, only bloodlust. It plans to fire the weapon again to shoot him off the roof with a missile, with no regard to its own safety.

That’s when MacCready finally bothers to do his job. The shot he lands is beautiful, a perfect clean headshot that blows up the mutant’s head like a watermelon, spattering Nate with blood that feels searing hot compared to the numbness of his skin.

He drags down his mask, readjusting it so it finally doesn’t get into his eyes anymore, and picks up the missile launcher, ready to use it if necessary. But as he turns around, there’s nothing else left alive on the roof besides Hanco*ck, who is pulling his knife out of the third mutant’s guts and Goodman, clinging to Strong’s shoulder and panting, singed by the explosion.

“A damned fine show,” he says, “though I could have done without the front seats.”

Strong looks out into the night, then at Nate. His small eyes squint. “Fist dead,” he rumbles. “Mutants all dead. You kill Strong now?”

Goodman turns to him indignantly. “Absolutely not, Strong!” Then he sneaks a glance at Nate. There’s almost a plea in it, despite his pride. “There’s no need for more violence, surely.”

Nate hopes that Goodman is right. Still, he has to ask. “What are you going to do if we let you go?”

Strong shakes his big head. “Not go. Follow.”

It takes Nate’s dizzy brain a moment to understand that Strong means to follow him. A super mutant side-kick. The idea is absurd, but somehow it amuses him – for a giddy moment, he imagines Strong in that spare Grognak costume they found at Hubris along with the Silver Shroud coat, and he almost has to laugh.

“Okay,” he says.

Then he lifts his wrist to speak to the radio. “We’re clear. The roof is secure.”

The reply is quick, and a little panicked. “Yeah, uh, about that. You’re aware that the building is on fire?”

Nate casts a look around, and realizes that MacCready is right. The entire section of the tower that contained the cages and the hallway is burning, and the stairs leading down to the elevator are, too. Nate can see black smoke billowing up from one of the broken windows on the floor beneath them.

Nate feels a moment of blind defeat wash over him, then he remembers the scaffolding elevator. He drops the missile launcher, and hurries, meeting Hanco*ck halfway across the roof. The ice is already melting under their feet. Nate wraps him into a brief, hard hug, pressing his face into the smoking remains of Hanco*ck’s rag armor.

“Hey, woah, you okay, sunshine?”

“Alive,” Nate manages, and then tells him to get the others before running towards the scaffolding.

The mechanism is a simple as it is old. It looks sturdy, and it must be if it was used by mutants. But the building itself might collapse if it continues to burn, or the cables might tear or the engine might fail if it gets too hot. This could be a death trap, Nate thinks as Goodman, Strong and Hanco*ck crowd onto the narrow platform.

“Oh lord!” Goodman says faintly as the elevator lurches and begins its swaying, creaking descent, far too slow for Nate’s taste. Hanco*ck comes crawling towards him, staying low and clinging to the metal rigging. He pulls something from the folds of his rags - the silver gun.

Nate takes it, their fingers sliding over each other for a moment, and slings it over his shoulder, pulling out his grappling gun instead. He aims it at the building, watching the cables like a hawk and wraps an arm around Hanco*ck’s waist, ready to fire at the first sign of the elevator failing.

Hanco*ck stiffens, trying to push him off. “Let go,” he mutters. “If this thing breaks, I don’t want you -“

“I’ll carry us both,” Nate says.

“Take Goodman. I’m –“

Nate tears his gaze off the cables, turning to Hanco*ck. There’s a strange, strained look on Hanco*ck’s face, and his eyes won’t meet Nate. He can’t be serious. Does he really think Nate’s going to choose Goodman? How can Hanco*ck love him, how can he love life this much, and yet value his own so little?

“No,” Nate says, savagely, but before he can tell Hanco*ck to shut up, the elevator is suddenly hit by a series of bullets, each shaking the whole structure, sending it swaying precariously. It lurches to a stop, one end sagging down further than the other. Nate peeks over the edge, trying to find something that’ll hold the grappling hook, and sees that they’ve reached a big gap in the building’s façade, where two whole floors have been torn open like a broken anthill. There’s a glint of metal, moving, and he sees the outline of a mutant before another salve of shots hits them.

Nate is holding the grappling gun in one hand, Hanco*ck with the other, and he doesn’t want to let go of either. “Take a grenade from my belt,” he tells Hanco*ck.

Hanco*ck doesn’t respond. He has slumped against Nate’s arm, his head falling forward limply, face slack. “No,” Nate hisses, “no, no, sh*t, not now – “

The platform swings wide, away from the tower, throwing him forward so suddenly that Nate hits his head against the railing. With a roaring battle cry, Strong has launched himself out of the elevator and across the gap into the tower. He tears through the rubble, throwing huge chunks of concrete at the mutant shooter.

The platform swings back. “Go!” Nate shouts at Goodman, as he fires the grappling gun. “After him!”

The hook finds purchase on the floor above them and the steel wire pulls tight. Nate doesn’t wait to see if Goodman has dared to jump – he pushes out of the elevator, hoisting Hanco*ck’s unconscious form against his body, and swings on the wire into the rubble. The landing is rough, sending them both tumbling, but Nate doesn’t feel the impact. He’s too worried about Hanco*ck, to aware of the rusted steel bars poking out of the concrete, the sharp edges of metal plating, trying to curl around his lover like a shield.

There’s a wet crunch, followed by another and another as Strong beats his former compatriot to a pulp, laughing maniacally as he does so. Behind Nate, something crawls through the rubble. Goodman, looking as white as chalk.

“Oh lord! Is he dead?”

“No,” Nate says through his teeth. He tries to tug off his glove to feel Hanco*ck’s pulse, but his fingers are too tense, the leather too slick, so instead he just throws Hanco*ck over his shoulder, struggling back to his feet.

It doesn’t even surprise him, this time, when Strong follows his order to stop beating the dead mutant and go down the stairs.

*

MacCready meets them at the gate of Trinity Church. He takes a step back when he sees Strong, but then spots Hanco*ck slung over Nate’s shoulder, and his eyes widen in shock, making him look very young.

Nate staggers past him, Hanco*ck onto a pew. He looks very thin and very grey and dead. It’s impossible to tell if he’s still breathing.
The shot to the leg. He said it wasn’t bad, but he must have kept losing blood.

The others stand around Nate, staring as he empties his pockets. He drops the stimpak two times before he finally manages to inject into Hanco*ck’s neck. Nothing happens. Nate feels himself shaking, his shoulders, his arms – the injector cracks as his fingers clench around it.

At first, he barely sees it. His eyes are swimming with tears, blurring everything. But it’s there, a small, rattling breath lifting Hanco*ck’s narrow chest, and then another, turning into a cough. The ghoul twitches, gasping for air, and then suddenly curls to the side, puking bile over the edge of the pew. He draws a raw, shuddering breath, uttering a single word.

To Nate’s ear it sounds like ‘rats’, but behind him, MacCready exclaims, “Oh sh-shoot, right, he’s a ghoul!”

The merc runs off, the sound of his footsteps echoing in the huge, empty church. Nate doesn’t look where he’s going – he cradles Hanco*ck’s bald head in his hands, trying to keep him awake, praying that MacCready hasn’t just abandoned ship but is actually going to get something that will help.

It takes far too long for MacCready to return. In his hand he holds a bottle full of some piss yellow, glowing liquid, the glass smeared with strange symbols in what looks suspiciously like blood. “Children of Atom,” he gasps, out of breath. “Used the altar. Here. Make him drink that.”

Nate gags at the notion, because whatever that liquid is, it’s clearly poison, and the few Children of Atom he has met were usually on their way to dying of radiation sickness. But behind him, Goodman says, “Oh, very good, quick thinking, young man,” so there must be something they know that he doesn’t.

Rads, he realizes. Hanco*ck said ‘rads’, not ‘rats’. He pulls the stopper from the bottle, coughing at the strong chemical smell, and a little into Hanco*ck’s open mouth.

Hanco*ck sputters, but tries to swallow, and after a few moments, his movements grow less uncoordinated. He consumes almost half of the bottle’s contents before falling back onto the wooden pew with a grunt of exhaustion.

Nate feels it too, now, opening up inside him like a huge hollow chasm. He wants nothing more than to rest his head on the pew for a few moments, to close his eyes and let the buzzing in his ears die down. He can still hear the gunshots, the explosion, the mutants screaming. The wood creaks as Goodman sits down on the other end of the pew with a heavy sigh. His soot-smeared face is sweaty, his eyes glassy. Nate cranes his head, and sees Strong picking at his burned back, muttering at the pain.

“We should move,” MacCready says, looking skittish.

“You can go,” Nate tells him, too tired to argue. He realizes he should probably be grateful: MacCready’s quick thinking might well have saved Hanco*ck’s life. But he’s too tired for that, too. “The job’s done.”

MacCready puffs out his cheeks, blowing out a gust of misting breath. He looks torn between the chance to get out safely and something else – loyalty, perhaps. “Nah,” he says. “You need someone to keep watch.”

With the last of his energy, Nate carries Hanco*ck to the bell tower. They go up two flights of stairs until they reach a small windowless alcove just big enough for all of them. MacCready sits on the stone steps, his rifle across his knees, and Strong moves to the next flight of stairs, grumbling about small spaces. Nate hands Goodman the emergency blanket from their pack, and then sits against the cold stone wall, holding Hanco*ck inside the warm wing of the silver trench-coat.

He dozes, lulled to sleep by Strong’s rhythmic, snuffling snores, until he feels Hanco*ck stir in his embrace.

“Hey,” Nate says softly. “How are you?”

Hanco*ck makes a vague groaning noise and then answers from the folds of the coat, “Peachy. Nothing a lil chemical bandaid and another swig from that bottle won’t cure…”

Nate doesn’t even know what to say. It’s bullsh*t. Hanco*ck almost died, and he still acts like he’s fine.

He thinks back to the moment before MacCready fired the first shot, to that sudden epiphany he had as Hanco*ck kissed him. It was a goodbye kiss. Perhaps Hanco*ck didn’t plan to get shot, but he knew that he might, that they might not meet again. The way he kissed Nate was so different, so much more gentle and tender, almost sweet. Completely unlike him.

Nate feels shaky as he tries to return that kiss now, pressing his lips to the bald crown of Hanco*ck’s head. He almost has to imagine that he’s kissing someone else, someone softer, someone without all the bravado, someone who doesn’t fight and f*ck and rule the way Hanco*ck does, this wicked steel blade of a man that he wanted to build a future on, the biggest, baddest, most infamous ghoul in the Commonwealth.

Soft. Vulnerable. It’s hard to think of Hanco*ck that way – perhaps Hanco*ck himself doesn’t do it. He cares a lot, about the people he regards as his responsibility, about strangers even, but he doesn’t know how to extend the same care to himself.

Has he ever seen Hanco*ck truly vulnerable? That moment, after Hanco*ck came and freed him from Desdemona, and Nate confessed his love. When he said he was afraid of losing Nate, that it would break him. That might have been the only time.

Nate told him love would be worth it, regardless of loss.

But did Hanco*ck actually understand what Nate meant? He was thinking of Nora, how he didn’t regret loving her even though he lost her. He imagined Hanco*ck in his place, mourning him like he mourned her. But what if Hanco*ck heard something else? What if he thought not of death, then, but of other reasons why Nate might leave?

Nate makes a noise in the back of his throat that must sound like discomfort, because Hanco*ck says, “Hey, if I’m too heavy – “

“No,” Nate says, quickly, tightening his hold. “Stay.”

“There anything left in that bottle?”

“Hanco*ck.”

Hanco*ck stills, falling silent at the sound of Nate’s voice breaking.

“You know why I yelled at you, right? In the elevator.”

“Because I f*cked up the plan?”

“Because I’m in this for good, you stupid idiot. Do you get that? I want to make it through this winter. Both of us. I want us to grow old together.”

He knows this must feel like a knife to the back, like salt in the wound for Hanco*ck, but he can’t help himself. If it was possible to make something true just by wanting it, this would be their future.

Hanco*ck’s whisper is almost inaudible. “You know that ain’t likely, right?”

“Because you’re a ghoul and I’m not,” Nate acknowledges. “Yeah.”

The silence after that is so unbearable that Nate doesn’t manage to go back to sleep. He waits a while longer, but then he gets up, rousing the others. Hanco*ck can barely walk, and accepts Nate’s shoulder to lean on, but they barely look at each other.

*

Goodman looks a lot better when Daisy brings him to Hanco*ck’s office the next day. Nate told MacCready to take him and Strong to her before parting ways with them and dragging Hanco*ck up to the State House. Clearly, she’s not only pampered him with a bath and fresh clothes, but also fed him, because he looks a lot less pale now – his cheeks are almost rosy, if not exactly plump, and his beard has been trimmed.

Nate is wearing his own pants and a shirt, going barefoot, with his hair loose and falling down to his shoulders, as far from the Silver Shroud as he can. The plan here is for Hanco*ck to fill Goodman in on their grand vision, whereas Nate is supposed to stay quiet and keep his secret identity secret.

It’s not a great plan for two reasons. The first is Hanco*ck. When they finally got here, Nate peeled him out of his dark, blood-soaked rags and put him in bed, where he slept like the dead for almost the whole day until he staggered back to his feet, put on his red coat and the tricorn, and then filled the remainder of the irradiated liquid in the bottle up with whiskey.

This toxic mix he has been drinking for the last hour. Nate has tried to talk to him, but the most coherent thing Hanco*ck has said is praise for the Children of Atom – “A bunch of cuckoo crazies, but if they ever open a brewery, we’re in business.”

He looks pale and haggard, and slouches not out of disrespect but simply because he can’t manage to sit straight. His greeting to Goodman and Daisy is noticeably slurred. “Hey, Rex… looking good! Bet she’s been showing you some real appreciation, huh, buddy?”
It’s not a big surprise if Goodman doesn’t recognize him in this state, but maybe he does, and his distanced response is merely a sign of distaste. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, sir. You would be the infamous John Hanco*ck, I assume?”

“The very one.” Hanco*ck waves as the other couch. “You’re in my house, aren’t you? My town, my… feel right at home, friends.”

Daisy gives Nate rather prim look, prodding him into action. Perhaps it’s best of Hanco*ck doesn’t do the talking. He gets up, offering Goodman a handshake. “Nice to meet you. Nate Hale.”

Goodman’s brow pinches, and he glances down at Nate’s hand, then purses his lips. “Now, Mr Hale, I am a professional actor. Please do not insult me by implying that we haven’t met. Your costume is excellent craftsmanship, but your performance is a little… limited.”

Taken aback, Nate pulls away his hand. It’s not like Goodman was falling over himself to thank them last night, but Nate chalked it up to stress and exhaustion. This is just rude.

“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Nate asks. “I call that a pretty good performance.”

Clearing his throat delicately, Goodman sits down on the couch. “Of course. I do thank you from the bottom of my heart for the rescue. Please do not consider my critique a sign of ingratitude – quite the contrary, in fact. I was merely trying to help. If you hope to stay unrecognized, which is presumably the intent of this charade, you should work on the acting part of your performance. The Silver Shroud does have a rather distinct character voice, if I do recall…”

“Your time has come, evil-doer,” Hanco*ck intones, wildly off the mark, “and I am the hand of… the clock of… justice.”

With a sigh, Nate sits down next to him. Hanco*ck isn’t helping, but at least Goodman has given him a perfect opening. “If you’re that familiar with the Silver Shroud, Mr Goodman, you might help us in a different way.”

“I wouldn’t say familiar,” Goodman says. “As a boy, I did perhaps listen to the station a few times…”

“We’re trying to bring back the Shroud. As a real hero.”

Goodman smiles drily. “I noticed.”

“But we also want to spread the word. We want people to know that the Shroud is back. We want the bad guys to be afraid, but even more importantly, we want the good people of the Commonwealth to have hope.”

Goodman hums. “An admirable goal. And I see where this is going. You want me to endorse you on our station. I will certainly say a few words about your daring rescue – “

“You’ll say more than a few damn words,” Hanco*ck snarls, suddenly no longer grinning.

This sudden, volatile turn in mood is startling, but Nate tries to quell it by ignoring it. He says to Goodman, “We had something else in mind. The Silver Shroud radio station has been broadcasting the same handful of pre-war adventures for many decades. People like them, but maybe it’s time for a new series, set in present-day Boston. We thought you could star in the production, or write some of the scripts, or produce them…”

“My dear man! I create art, not epigonal tributes to third rate pulp fiction!”

Daisy clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “Honestly, Rex. Didn’t Shakespeare copy most of his plots from Plutarch and Holinshed? If it’s good enough for the bard, it’s good enough for you.”

Nate only understood about half of what they just said, but Goodman looks slightly humbled in the face of Daisy’s education, which must be a shock in this day and age. Nate uses his silence to add his own point. “You went to those mutants to educate them, didn’t you? We want to do the same thing.”

“You remember Kent Connolly, don’t you?” Daisy adds. “Wouldn’t it be nice to collaborate with him on this? I know you loved Diamond City Radio back in the day, just like the rest of us.”

Goodman holds up his hands in a dramatic gesture, uttering a great, long-suffering sigh. “All right, all right! I suppose it’s worth consideration. You want me to write the scripts, you say?” His expression shifts slowly from annoyance to inspiration. “Yes, I do suppose one could elevate the format…”

Daisy winks at Nate from across the table. “Well, then let’s visit Kent,” she says. Goodman, already lost in planning his grand oeuvre, nods absently, and lets her lead him out of the room.

Before they go out the door, she casts a significant look at Hanco*ck, and says to Nate, “You two take some time out, sweetie. It looks like you need it.”

“What I need,” Hanco*ck hiccups when she’s gone, “is another bottle of that fine rad liquor.”

Nate stops him from trying to get up to search for a drink, pulling him back down onto the couch. Hanco*ck’s gaze, despite his swaying and slurring, is clear, if a little furtive. He wants to be drunk, Nate thinks.

“I want you to drink something non-alcoholic,” he tells him, gently. “And eat something real, whether you need it nor not. And then I want you to take a bath.” He catches Hanco*ck trying to sniff his collar, and shakes his head. “Yes, you smell like dead mutant. But that’s not why. Someone’s got to take care of you, Hanco*ck, because it clearly isn’t going to be you.”

Nate surprises himself with how stern he sounds. Almost like his mother. Hanco*ck looks surprised, too, but after a moment, he sits up straight.

There’s an unexpected, mutinous gleam in his eyes, and he stabs Nate’s chest with his finger.

His voice is perfectly firm, not in the least bit slurred. He looks at Nate like a feral animal driven into a corner, and finally, he lashes out.

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”

Chapter 17: Family

Chapter Text

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”

Hanco*ck’s accusation feels like recoil from a gun Nate didn’t intend to fire. He sits back, mouth agape, as Hanco*ck totters to his feet, the empty bottle in hand. His balance is precarious as he limps and sways at the same time, but it’s obvious that there’s a burning core of anger keeping him on his feet.

“f*ck this,” the ghoul snarls through his teeth. “You think I ever, since I became this, worried about getting into a fight? Kill or be killed, I don’t f*cking care so long as the fight’s worth fighting. Now you - you - you put on that fancy coat and go dishing out justice and I should be - I should be f*cking chomping at the bit to join you, but I’m sitting at home, waiting for you to get back, like some kind of rich housewife in the stands, and it messes me up - “

Nate can’t take it any longer, he has to cut in. “Then why the hell didn’t you say something before you fainted? If I hadn’t already been holding you, you could have died on that elevator - do you think you’re the only one who worries?”

Hanco*ck barely even seems to register Nate’s interruption. He is staring at the bottle, at the swilling liquor inside or his blurry reflection in the glass. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, but no less angry. “I don’t know what you want, Nate.”

Hanco*ck is liberal with his use to endearments and nicknames, but he rarely ever simply uses people’s given names. It feels harsh, like he’s scraping off the varnish. Despite himself, Nate flinches, closing his mouth.

“You don’t want a romance,” Hanco*ck goes on, gaining more of that furious momentum, “you don't want us to be all touchy feely, fine. You want me to deal with my sh*t by killing mutants - peachy! Been sucking it up and hitting back harder since long before you came along. But then don’t go complaining when I come back with a few scrapes and bruises!”

“I <i>don’t</i> want a romance?” Nate shakes his head incredulously. “What in the world gave you that idea?”

Hanco*ck laughs darkly. “I dunno, maybe you saying so?”

“When did I - “ Nate stops, suddenly, his stomach dropping at the realization.

sh*t, sh*t, sh*t. He knows exactly what Hanco*ck is talking about. He thought they understood each other, then. He was so proud of himself for bringing up the elephant in the room and explaining that there’s no competition between his dead wife and Hanco*ck, so glad that Hanco*ck saw reason so quickly.

“Hanco*ck,” he says, helplessly.

But Hanco*ck shakes his head, shutting him up with a wave of his hand. He looks infinitely tired, eyes dead and dark, sunken in his disfigured face.

“Love ya,” he says, flatly. “Now leave me the f*ck alone and don’t give me grief for being sh*t at it.”

It feels like Nate is being torn up on the inside, pulled into all directions at once. He wants to hide, wants to run from this, wants to yell at Hanco*ck for being an idiot, wants to grab that bottle and smash it, he wants to hug him, tightly, fiercely, and tell him it’ll be okay.

All he manages to do, rather pathetically, is stand there and tell Hanco*ck, “I’m not leaving you alone -”

Hanco*ck snarls, wordless, and hurls the bottle. It flies past Nate’s head, faster than he can flinch, and shatters against the wall, adding another stain to the wallpaper.

Nate swallows, his nose stinging with the smell of hard liquor. He sees Hanco*ck coming towards him, his fingers twitching into fists, each knuckle a sharp, skeletal edge, and shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he warns, but it’s too late, Hanco*ck is already lunging at him. His movements are sloppy and obvious, the punch easy to block, but there’s real force behind it - if Nate didn’t grab Hanco*ck’s wrist and twist it sideways, the impact might have broken a few of his teeth. As it is, it knocks him back onto the couch, Hanco*ck on top of him like some murderous feral, trying to knee him in the stomach, then flailing to tear his wrist free of Nate’s grasp. It’s such a savage attempt that Nate gives in at the last second, afraid to break Hanco*ck’s wrist, and they both roll off the couch, crashing into the coffee table, which collapses underneath them into a pile of dusty plywood splinters.

Nate uses the momentum to turn them around, coming down on top of Hanco*ck, pinning him to the mess on the floor. The tricorn tips off Hanco*ck’s head, into the spilled contents of a full ashtray. Hanco*ck immediately tries to rear up for a headbutt, but Nate pushes himself up, just out of reach.

Hanco*ck struggles, hurling barely comprehensible insults at him, but in a contest of raw strength, he can’t compete, especially not drunk and injured. Nate tries to subdue him as best as he can without doing further damage.

“You’re right. Hanco*ck! Damn it - you’re right, okay? I’m sorry - what I said - how I acted after I killed Delancey - ”

He’s so focused on trying to get through to Hanco*ck that he doesn’t block him when he twists and knees him in the balls. Nate grunts in pain, every muscle in his back seizing up and it takes every ounce of willpower he has just to keep his hold on Hanco*ck. Through gritted teeth and watering eyes, he groans, “Stop it, f*ck, are you out of your mind?”

The snarl remains on Hanco*ck’s face for a moment, then it turns to frustration, then a blank surprise as he realize Nate isn’t going to retaliate, and finally defeat as he ceases to resist.

Nate exhales shakily. The way Hanco*ck looks up at him is not good. It’s very, very much not good, it’s hurt and ashamed and broken, like he’s shrinking under Nate’s gaze, like he wants to crawl away into the wreckage and hide.

He tries hard to push away the pain and the panic so he can say the right thing. This might be his only chance to stop this from becoming f*cked up beyond all repair.

“We’re both bad at this,” he tries, which of course completely fails to hit the mark. He’s just echoing Hanco*ck’s own self-destructive bullsh*t here, and Hanco*ck picks up on it immediately, joining the choir.

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck croaks. “You’re also a sh*tty nurse, so we got that in common, too. My leg’s bleeding again.”

Nate looks down, and there is a dark, wet-looking stain spreading on Hanco*ck’s thigh.

They need to stop this, but he’s afraid to let go. Although Hanco*ck seems to have given up the fight, he clearly still doesn’t get what Nate is saying. “Please, listen to me. I made a mess of it - ”

Hanco*ck turns his head, perhaps so he doesn’t have to look at Nate looking at him anymore. “Some mess,” he says, a little lost. “Ruined my table. I liked that table. It’s seen some sh*t.”

“You tried to take care of me, and I wouldn’t let you.”

Underneath him, Hanco*ck stills, almost as if he is holding his breath. No more rambling, no weak jokes. Nate feels a flutter of hope that he has finally hit the nail on the head. This is it, isn’t it? This is how Hanco*ck got it into his head that what Nate wants from his is love without kindness, fire without warmth.

“I wouldn’t let you take care of me because I was being a dick and scared, but doesn’t mean I don’t want you to. I love it when you… feed me healthy food, and make sure it’s warm enough in here even though you don’t need it, and all those other little things you think I won’t notice.”

The scar tissue on Hanco*ck’s cheek twists as he swallows. “Never thought you didn’t notice,” he murmurs. “But I weren’t sure… thought maybe it was a kinky thing for you. You know, some sorta power play. Me acting like your boss, staking my claim.”

Nate gives him a dumb-founded stare, and then drops his head between his shoulders, shaking it in disbelief, “After I told you I love you?”

Hanco*ck squirms, not quite able to shrug with Nate still holding him down. “It can mean more than one thing, can it? I was just… trying to figure out what you meant by that.”

More than one thing? Instinctively, Nate wants to argue with that idea. Being with Hanco*ck is very different from being with Nora in almost every way, but loving him feels the same. He means it the same way when he says it, and it feels like it’s the only way to truly love someone, like surely, everyone who says ‘I love you’ and means it must be experiencing the same emotion, down at its core…

But Nora wasn’t the only person he loved. He did love Shaun, maybe he still does, even Shaun as he is now, not just the image of the child that remains in his memory. He loved his parents, even though they never loved him knowing who he truly was, even though, if they could see him now, they might feel nothing but disgust and disappointment.

There’s love that is finite, that is mutable, conditional, painful and yet no less true than the love that feels like it’s none of those things. And Hanco*ck, by his own admission, has never been in a relationship like theirs.

He recalls Hanco*ck among his circle of admirers, down at the Third Rail - hungry for his power, for his dangerous charm and reputation, for a chance to get their piece of him while his fire burns bright. Maybe people like these have told him they love him. Hanco*ck loved his brother, probably… Nate remembers the way he talked about his older brother, and the betrayal in his voice was something deeply personal, something that still hasn’t healed. He never talks about the rest of his family, although Nate’s impression is that perhaps the parents died when John was still young, just old enough to remember the separation. And he remembers the way Hanco*ck looked just before they walked into the Slog, the fondness, the loneliness in his expression, how Nate’s first impression was that this was a prodigal son returning home - he loves Wiseman and the others, but that love is colored by guilt, and he carries it like a burden.

And of course Hanco*ck loves this town and it loves him back, but it’s a love that is red-handed and dangerous, highly conditional in every way.

It’s no wonder he doubts the meaning of those words, doubts what they mean when they’re directed at him.

He kisses Hanco*ck, gently on the forehead, and then on the lips. “I love you,” he murmurs, his throat tight from trying to dig so deep into his own heart. “Right now. Like this.”

Hanco*ck doesn’t say anything. He just stares mutely at Nate, and doesn’t fight him when he lets go of him and helps him to his feet, offering his shoulder for support. He leads Hanco*ck to the other room and makes him sit on the edge of the bed. Taking off his boots and pants is clearly a painful affair, but Hanco*ck doesn’t make any noise other than a small growl at the back of his throat.

The wound is still crusted with dry blood, and now there’s fresh blood oozing from it, but it already looks smaller, less inflamed than the night before.

“Fahrenheit must be really jealous she isn’t a ghoul,” Nate jokes to lighten the mood. Hanco*ck grunts, and pokes the wound in a way that probably isn’t helpful. Nate pulls away his hand. “You should probably go see Dr Amari. Get it stitched up. But first I’m going to get something to sober you up a little.”

“Got something right here,” Hanco*ck says, patting his coat pocket, but Nate shakes his head.

“Don’t? I’ve got some more things to say, and I want you to listen to me with just your own brain, okay?”

Hanco*ck shrugs, but it’s in agreement. Nate squeezes his shoulder, and tells him he’ll be back in a minute. It’s probably closer to ten, because down in the Third Rail, Whitechapel Charlie takes some convincing to dig up a very ancient, vacuum-sealed package of instant coffee and even then, he only measures out a single cup’s worth of it.

“Could be the last package in the entire Commonwealth,” the Mr Handy grouses, “bloody well worth a fortune, that is, and I’m handing it out to a freeloading bastard!”

When Nate returns, Hanco*ck has put his pants back on, but otherwise he hasn’t moved, still sitting on the bed, staring off into the distance. He could have used Nate’s brief absence to indulge in any number of chemical sins. But the numb, distracted expression goes away when Nate hands over the steaming cup, glancing skeptically at the murky brew.

“This your revenge for getting kicked in the nuts?”

Nate smiles. “No. I deserved that. This is payback for all the chems you’ve introduced me to. Coffee. Can’t promise it’ll taste good after two hundred years, but it’ll wake you up, no nastiness. Like mentats, but one hundred percent organic.”

Hanco*ck takes a sip, grimaces, but keeps going. “Organic, huh?” he asks, interested despite himself in the new substance.

“Made from plants,” Nate explains. “They used to grow where it’s hot - South America, Africa, those sorts of places.”

Cradling the warm cup, Hanco*ck listens as Nate explains what the beans looked like, and how coffee was made, the difference between instant and freshly brewed, the different styles of coffee. He closes his eyes at one point, the lines of exhaustion easing out of his features somewhat, and opens them again looking much more calm and in control.

“Been a while since I had something new,” he says with a faint, rueful grin. “I’m sober enough to listen to what you’ve got to say, if you’re ready.”

Nate hopes this’ll make sense to Hanco*ck. The pieces of this have been slowly coming together for him, but the full picture only formed during their fight, when he wondered why Hanco*ck got it all so wrong, and realized it was his own fault.

“I was on my school’s football team,” he says. “We had these locker rooms, communal showers, like the one up at the Slog. We were boys, there was always a lot of sh*t talking about jerking off and stuff. Nothing unusual. But I hated it. I already knew I wasn’t normal, and it felt like… anything I said could come out wrong. I had to watch every word, copy the things they said about each other - the insults, about people like me. By the time I joined the army, I was really good at it, but I still hated it. It never… I never thought about what went on in the other guys’ heads while they did that. Whether they were scared of tripping up, of saying the wrong thing, about someone saying the thing they were afraid of, like, hey, look at that guy’s dick, it’s tiny, or something.”

He pauses, struggling to explain himself, to find the meaning in all these ugly, distant memories.

“I think when you’re scared, you get so wrapped up in your own head that you lose touch. You see what you’re afraid of, not what’s really going on.”

Hanco*ck frowns. “You’re telling me I lost touch?”

“No, idiot,” Nate sighs. “I’m talking about both of us, here.”

“What the hell are you scared of?” Hanco*ck frowns. “Me, judging you? You realize I ain’t got a leg to stand on - “

“You do it all the time,” Nate cuts him off. “You judge people for being raiders and assholes, parasites on the community, abusers, tyrants - you judge them and heads roll, and you know what? You do have a leg to stand on, because I’ve never seen you break your own code. But that’s not what I’m afraid of. You remember that feral pact? It goes both ways. If I ever need you to stop me, I trust that you’ll do it and that I’d deserve it.”

When Hanco*ck brought up the feral pact, Nate never even considered that he might ever be in a situation where he needed someone to keep him in check. But things have changed so much since then. Even though Hanco*ck is still the mayor of this town, and Preston is the one who’ll be leading the Minutemen, and the Shroud is supposed to be no more than a story, a legend, an inspiration to the people, Nate feels the weight of power and responsibility.

“You know, the first time you told me you loved me, it felt so good I thought I’d never be afraid of anything again. That’s why I started all this. This whole insane campaign to save the Commonwealth. I felt invincible.”

He’s telling himself this, too, he realizes. Making sense of what’s been happening, even as he unpacks his feelings. “I keep thinking about that morning. When I put on the costume to do things I’d never normally do, I always go back to how it felt. But it’s… damn. I hope this doesn’t come as a disappointment, but this thing we’re doing? It’s scary. And tough. Worse than the war, because I… I actually want to win this, but if we do win, if we get past the Brotherhood and the Institute and we build a new Commonwealth government, then it’s still going to be scary. I’ll still have to make tough decisions, like killing Wayne Delancey, or letting Strong live. There’s Kent and Preston and Daisy and all these people looking up to me already, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s like… Nora and I didn’t plan to have Shaun. But if we had, if we’d made that decision to put a new life into the world, it would have felt like this. What if I’m not good enough? That’s what I’m scared of.”

“You and me both,” Hanco*ck murmurs, and then suddenly pulls Nate into a crushing hug, breathing deeply against his hair. “Damn, sunshine. I didn’t mean to pitch a fit about not being treated like a princess.”

Nate laughs, his chest still constrained by Hanco*ck’s tight hold on him. “Is that what you want?”

“Don’t know,” Hanco*ck admits. “Pillow princess, maybe. Mostly I wish I wasn’t such a mess.”

“You’re tired, you’re bleeding, we just had a fight and you’ve been trying to self-medicate with irradiated piss or whatever was in that bottle MacCready dug up. And there’s no one to stab to make you feel better.”

Hanco*ck snorts softly. “So, what, I’m bitching because I’m cranky?”

“You said that, not me.” More seriously, Nate adds, “I know there’s some stuff a stimpak won’t fix.”

He has seen Hanco*ck veer wildly between flying high as a kite on confidence and dropping into apathetic gloom the next moment, with all the dangerous, self-destructive stages in between. Nate has had his dark moments, dark years really, especially before the war. Even with Nora and Shaun, those few precious months they had, he wasn’t entirely happy. There was always a restless anxiety lurking in the quiet moments, because the ground on which they built their happiness was quicksand, and the world was on fire already, it was just a question whether it would be a long, slow slide into economic collapse or a sudden inferno. But if it hadn’t been like that, if he had grown up in a different world, if he had managed to change it before it was destroyed, he thinks he could have been truly happy.

Hanco*ck’s demons, he suspects, are far less external.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t deal with it,” Nate tells him. “And I still think you should go see Dr Amari.”

*

It’s later than Nate wanted it to be when he returns to the State House, and he climbs the stairs with some worry prickling under his skin. He left after dropping Hanco*ck off at the Memory Den, and told him he’d be back in a couple of hours. It took longer than that, and worries that Hanco*ck might have slipped back into his blues in the meantime. But other than the overflowing pile of cigarette stubs on the chipped saucer Hanco*ck uses as an ashtray, there are no signs in the office of Hanco*ck choosing to drown his sorrows. He’s dressed, except for his bare feet which he has propped up on one arm of the couch, and he’s awake and coordinated enough to be blowing smoke rings. The broken table has been swept into a corner.

His coat hangs in a crumpled heap over the back of the couch, next to a messy knot of thread, stuck to the upholstery with a small sewing needle.

“Hey, sunshine,” he rasps, and when Nate squeezes his gnarled, bare foot, a ghost of a smile edges over his features.

“What did Amari say?” Nate lifts Hanco*ck’s feet to make some space for himself on the couch, and sits with them in his lap. Hanco*ck has small feet for a guy, and perhaps before he turned ghoul they were slim and nice, but now they’re hardly his most attractive feature, what with the missing toe and the welts of scars pulled taut over jutting bones. But when he digs his thumb into the heel, kneading it gently, Hanco*ck utters a soft, startled grunt of pleasure, as if he had no idea this would feel good.

He lets his head drop back, purring his answer with closed eyes. “The doc could barely contain herself at the chance to handle this smoking hot bod, especially with that new bullet hole to complete my look. Asked me why I was going cold turkey.”

“She did?” Nate asks, trying to sound neutral. It’s hard to imagine Hanco*ck without chems, and except on days like today, he seems to manage his habits so well that they hardly bother Nate. But the fight this morning drove home how ugly and scary things can get when Hanco*ck isn’t in control, when his using and his inner demons turn into a vicious feedback loop.

Hanco*ck lifts his hands, and the tremor is hard to miss. There are a few marks where he pricked himself with the sewing needle, too. “I ain’t quitting,” he says, flatly. “Just so we’re clear. But you’re right. I weren’t using for fun only. Don’t wanna get too dependent, so I’m taking it slow.”

“Good,” Nate says, and then, on a whim, lifts Hanco*ck’s foot and presses a kiss to it like he’s kissing the back of his hand.

It startles Hanco*ck out of his serious mood, and he jerks his foot away with a wheezing laugh, kicking Nate’s elbow. “f*ck, that’s gross - “

Nate snatches his ankle, and bends over it to do it again, his whole body singing at the sound of Hanco*ck’s snickering. He’s suddenly glad that he stayed away this long, both because it seems to have given Hanco*ck some time to think over what he said, and because his plan for tonight is a good one, if this is the mood Hanco*ck is in.

“Put on your boots, twinkletoes,” he tells him. “I’m taking you out to dinner.”

Hanco*ck complains all the way down the stairs and out of the State House, saying that he’s sick, and they could have food brought up and eat it in bed if Nate insists on feeding him and that according to Amari, he’s not underweight for a ghoul, but then his grumbling ceases abruptly when instead of turning left to the Third Rail, Nate walks them towards the brownstone.

Hanco*ck is smart. Nate sees the moment when he guesses what this is.

“And here I was thinking you were gonna treat me to some of that old-school romance,” he says, flashing Nate a crooked smile.

“We’re gonna do candlelight and violins if you’re dead set on it,” Nate says, “I bet Preston knows someone who knows how to play a fiddle. But this more important.”

“Bit late for a meet the parents, though, isn’t it?”

“In more ways than one,” Nate agrees, with more humor than sadness. His actual family would probably have run screaming from Hanco*ck, even before Nate mentioned their relationship. “But the first time I brought you home was kind of…”

“Hey, nobody got shot,” Hanco*ck huffs. “That counts a flying success in my book.”

Nate opens the door. “Let’s see if we can do better.”

He really wanted it to just be a couple of folks, but somehow, over the course of the afternoon, as he organized things, it escalated. Daisy took one look at the shopping list Codsworth gave Nate and guessed what they were planning, and then wouldn’t let him open a tab at her shop, claiming that she’d have paid well over 500 caps if she had to hire a mercenary to save Rex. So instead, Nate invited her tonight. Kent is there, bent over a messy pile of scripts with Jun. Next to them, Rex Goodman is having what appears to be very polite conversation with Codsworth, looking both surprised and impressed at what sounds, through the curtain of noise, like the robot reciting some classical poetry. Nate hears him declaiming something about cannons to the left and right, theirs not to reason why, all very gung-ho and British. It seems Rex invited himself, but if he’s making friends with Codsworth, Nate doesn’t mind.

Besides, Goodman isn’t the only new face. When he went to buy some wine from Whitechapel Charlie, he ran into MacCready, looking bored and alone at the bar, and on a whim invited him. MacCready seemed a little suspicious, but he’s here now and looking perfectly happy straddling a chair and talking to Billy and Strong. Apparently the merc likes hanging out with people with the mental age of eight, because he seems to be right in his element.

Strong, who is squeezed rather uncomfortably into a corner between a dresser and Mama Murphy’s recliner, trying not to knock over either, seems more interested in Dogmeat than anything else, but that doesn’t tamper Billy’s enthusiasm for the grumpy green giant. The main reason Strong is here is that Nate asked Strong to get them some fresh radstag or mutt for the roast. Strong immediately agreed, stomping off into the cold, clearly glad to be out of the confines of Goodneighbor for a couple of hours. Since he returned a few hours later with a radstag doe and no dead people, Nate considers it a total success.

Mama Murphy is holding court among the women, with Daisy and Elise and a reluctantly social Marcy at her side. When he and Hanco*ck enter, Daisy leans close to Elise and says something that makes Elise flush and smile more brightly than she has since Stan was killed by the ferals near Lexington. Mama’s blind eyes seem to meet Nate’s gaze directly, and she smiles as though she can see him.

The only person looking somewhat stiff and out of place is Fahrenheit, standing alone near the stove. She nods at Nate, and he thinks by now he can interpret the blank look on her face: you’re lucky you managed to sort things out with the boss.

Codsworth floats up to greet them bobbing eagerly in the air. “Mayor Hanco*ck!” he exclaims. “Welcome, welcome to our humble abode! It’s terribly kind of you to grace these festivities with your presence. Somewhat late for a Thanksgiving dinner, I’m afraid, but I shan’t complain, not after such a long time without any joyful occasions at all. I say - will you do us the honor and cut the roast?”

When he suggested this dinner to Codsworth earlier, Nate had a moment of doubt. He thought he had an idea how to cheer Hanco*ck up and repair the damage they’ve done, but he was afraid to mess it up, to push too hard or not hard enough, but as soon as the words “Thanksgiving” and “family dinner” had left his mouth, Codsworth nearly shook apart with excitement, and became an unstoppable force of event planning.

His enthusiasm went into overdrive when Nate mentioned the mayor would be their guest. Hanco*ck casts him a sideways look now, as if to ask whether Nate told Codsworth to butter him up like this, but Nate shrugs, giving a silent headshake and a smile.

“I’m good. Not really the cutting ribbons and kissing babies’ kinda mayor here,” Hanco*ck says. “You do the honors, Codsworth, give those old buzzsaws a twirl, huh?”

Codsworth hems and haws a little, clearly embarrassed but also delighted to be entrusted with this important task and trundles off, recruiting Billy and Sturges to help him serve the food, and soon the tables are filling with pots and bowls and dishes. There aren’t enough tables to seat everyone around them, so the arrangement is looser, using what space there is. Some of the chairs must be a loan, and even so, a few people are sitting on crates and simple stools. The plates are chipped and mismatched, and instead of wine glasses, there are simple earthen mugs. But the food is almost perfect - creamed corn and mashed tatoes and tarberry preserve, steamed gourd and carrots, and given what Codsworth had to work with, he has truly put any homemaker of the past to shame.

Perhaps Codsworth is simply proud of his work, or perhaps he doesn’t trust how civilized his guests are, but he makes sure to name each dish as it’s served.

Preston, Jake and Benny arrive just as Codsworth presents the radstag roast, shaking snow off their boots and looking nonplussed at the unexpected crowd. They weren’t there for the preparations, and clearly didn’t expect to find a party upon their return. Nate is glad that they made it in time, because he wants Preston especially to be here tonight. Searching the room for an explanation, Preston’s gaze finds him. Nate salutes him quietly and Preston’s frown turns into a smile as he hangs up his coat and listens to Codsworth, who has started to cut the roast with great ceremony.

“Ladies, gentlemen, allow me to say a few words - it’s a great, truly a great pleasure to be celebrating in this fashion after, oh, so many years…so many… I quite often forget how long it has been and it seems strange, to think, that my existence before the war was so short, and the time after that so very… very long. I remember it as if it were yesterday, the world as it was… such splendor, such… magnificent order…”

Codsworth seems to be lost for a moment, rambling, and Nate is ready to jump in and stop him before he lapses into incoherence, but then the robot’s eyes re-focus, and he utters an apologetic chuckle.

“All the reason to be grateful to be present at its rebuilding, is what I meant to say! Oh dear, don’t mind me… just... getting a little sentimental.”

He floats a step back, from the roast, unable to cry and yet clearly moved to tears and after a moment, Sturges has the presence of mind to step forward, raising his glass, “To Codsworth,” he says, “and to rebuilding!”

There are cheers, after soon everyone is distracted by the copious, splendid amounts of food. Preston makes his way over to Nate and Hanco*ck, a plate in his hand. “Was this your idea?” he asks Nate in a tone that is both pleased and more than a little surprised.

“I realized we missed Thanksgiving,” Nate says, tapping his pip-boy. “And I thought we’ve all got reason to celebrate it.”

“He’s going native,” Hanco*ck tells Preston with a sly, teasing look. “Any excuse for a party.”

Winding up Preston is easy, but this time he doesn’t bite - he quirks his brow at Hanco*ck, and merely says, “Seems you’re having a positive influence on him,” which actually shuts Hanco*ck up for all of three seconds before he breaks into a grin, pointing at Preston as though ceding a point to him.

There’s a beat of silence, a moment where they both seem to recognize that they’re no longer at each other’s throats, that their difference have fallen into an almost friendly rivalry. Hanco*ck gives Preston a low-lidded, considering look, and then asks, laid-back as though nothing happened, “So what have you been up to, brother?”

Preston hesitates for a moment as he tries to gauge the sincerity of the question, but once he starts telling them about how he’s been taking Jake and Benny and sometimes Sturges and Rubins on little trips to the settlements within easy travelling distance - Bunker Hill and Country Crossing and Nordhagen Beach and Oberland Station, and a couple of scavenger winter camps that have cropped up here and there. These folks occupy a kind of grey area between raiders and settlers, spending much of the summer travelling and foraging, sometimes hunting or offering their services as tinkerers and farmhands at harvest time, and barely scrape by in the winter, biding their times in the ruins.

“It’s hard to convince them we’re only trying to help.”

“‘course it is,” Hanco*ck grunts. “Anyone who ever told them that was a liar. Used to run with a group of them, one summer before sh*t went down here in Goodneighbor.”

He talks about the drifter life, and although it’s an assortment of wild tales of chem abuse and trickery, Preston listens with a serious expression, almost as if he’s taking notes.

Hanco*ck is in the middle of a story about how some triggermen tried to press him and his drifter friends into service when they’re interrupted by Billy, who butts in with MacCready and Jake and Benny in tow.

“Mr MacCready says he helped the Shroud defeat a hundred mutants,” Billy says, pointing excitedly at Strong. “Is that true?”

“Uh,” Nate says, because technically, everyone here knows he’s the Shroud, but it’s still supposed to be a secret identity.

MacCready, who also seems to have guessed what’s going on, is game to play along.

“He was there,” he says, pointing at Hanco*ck.

“You were?” Clearly, Billy is still a little wary of Hanco*ck after their last encounter, but at the same time, he really wants to hear about the adventure. “Are you like… the Shroud’s sidekick, Mr Mayor?”

Hanco*ck grins in a way that shows most of his teeth and leans forward. “Do I look like anybody’s sidekick, kiddo?”

Nate is certain that this is going to be another disaster like the last time Hanco*ck talked to the boy, but Billy promptly says, “You look like a pirate. Or… like me, I guess.”

Hanco*ck hums in the back of his throat, a noise that sounds thoughtful, but that Nate knows that he’s surprised, even struck by the response. “Yeah, I do. I’m a ghoul, ain’t I? Old Kent didn’t give you the what’s what about us?”

“We mostly talk about important things,” Billy says, puffing up a little. “Like the Shroud.”

With a huff, Hanco*ck mutters something unflattering about pre-war ghouls, then says, “You come up to the State House some time. Not before noon, and you knock this time, understood? You and I are gonna have a chat, kiddo. Now, you wanna hear all about how the Shroud and I fought a hundred super mutants?”

“Yeah!” Billy flashes Nate a grin and a wink, and then sits down cross-legged on the floor, chin in hands.

Hanco*ck has a way with words, even though a good portion of them aren’t family friendly, and he focuses on the grisly details with enough gusto to completely fascinate Billy. Benny and Jake listen with just as much interest, although Jake rolls his eyes at a few of Hanco*ck’s more obvious exaggerations, and finally even Strong comes lumbering over, having heard the word mutant. He listens with his jaw hanging open, nodding enthusiastically every time Hanco*ck describes a kill, and even gives a low, guttural cheer when they get to the part where the Shroud threw his former leader off the roof.

“And then we got out,” Hanco*ck finishes, “me and the Shroud and the big guy and Rex, and we brought them back home.”

“Aw, you left out the best part,” MacCready complains. “The bit where you keeled over and I found the magical rad juice to save your ass. I should get a medal. Or a promotion.”

“You can get your ass kicked,” Hanco*ck says, though he doesn’t seem to be truly bothered by MacCready’s cheek until after he and the kids have wandered off to examine the jello monstrosity Codsworth has just presented as dessert.

Then Preston, who has been listening to the whole tale, looks down at Hanco*ck in concern, and asks, “You passed out?

The ghoul throws back his head with a groan. “Not you too! I really am going to kick that little narc’s ass.”

Preston lifts a hand, fending off Hanco*ck’s scowl. “I guess you already had a talk about this,” he says with a glance at Nate. “Just, you know. A lot of folks depend on you.”

And he walks off to join another conversation, leaving Hanco*ck to watch him go. “I think Garvey is starting to like me,” he says after a moment, shaking off the stunned silence.

“I think you’re starting to like him,” Nate counters.

“Yeah, sure,” Hanco*ck shrugs. “He’s legit.” He points at the jello. “Hey, I want some of that wobbly stuff, it looks like a chem lab accident.”

Snorting, Nate gets big helping of dessert for him, expecting to eat the left-overs, but after poking the jello pile with his spoon in fascination, Hanco*ck actually demolishes the whole serving. When he’s done, he pats the small bulge of his stomach in satisfaction. “Why didn’t anyone tell me you pre-war folks ate slime? First coffee, now this - you know, if your idea of a date is expanding my horizons with weird crap people used to eat, I don’t mind.”

“Without Codsworth, there won’t be a lot of that. I wouldn’t even know where to start cooking something like that with what’s available today.”

“Yeah? Well, he ain’t going anywhere, right?”

Across the room, Codsworth is cleaning up some of the dishes, aided by Marcy and Jun. Nate watches him for a moment, then he says, “Actually… I’ve been wondering. Do you own Charlie? And KL-E0?”

“Kleo’s her own thing,” Hanco*ck says. “Been part of Goodneighbor long before me. But Charlie, yeah. Inherited him from Vic.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird? Codsworth… when we were in Bunker Hill, Kessler said she’d let the others winter there if I sold Codsworth to her. I’d have done it, too, if they hadn’t all voted to come here. But it would’ve felt wrong. Like selling a person. I don’t know whether it’s because he was alone for so long, or whether there’s something different about him, but I don’t think a mere machine could… crack, the way he did.”

“Hmm. Have you been talking to Deacon and Des? Because that sounds like Railroad to me.”

The Railroad’s cause of freeing synths was never something Nate particularly cared about. He does find the Institute’s obsession with them disturbing, and he does think it’s probably morally wrong to build beings that are so much like humans and then treat them as things. If he understood correctly, all of them share some of Shaun’s DNA, so in a way, they’re his grandchildren, or the closest thing to grandchildren he’ll ever have. But up until today, Nate didn’t think that was the worst thing the Institute did, and he never understood why the Railroad burns so brightly for their cause - Desdemona, as far as he knows, is not a synth herself, and Deacon seems frankly too weird to be one.

But looking at Codsworth, he does see how he might have been wrong.

Nate has never been much of a public speaker. It’s not that he gets stage fright, but he does think he cuts an awkward figure. When he gets up though, he barely has to clear his throat for a hush to fall over the room, everyone turning to him with attention and interest.

Some of them might be looking at him like that because he’s the Silver Shroud, but the ones that don’t know still listen with the same kind of respect.

“There’s something I’d like to say,” Nate says, and to his surprise, there’s a smile on his face, nervous but happy. “Two things, actually. The first… well, I’m pretty sure most of you have guessed the first, because we haven’t exactly been subtle.”

He turns and sees that Hanco*ck is looking at him with a mix of shock and pride, like he knows exactly where this is going and what this sort of public acknowledgement means for Nate. He lets himself be pulled to his feet, grinning at the others. Nate means to kiss him briefly, just to make a statement, but when he pulls back, Hanco*ck grabs his face and claims him again, cheerfully, with no intention of keeping it family friendly.

Nate comes up the second time breathless, his heart pounding. Now, now, now, he thinks. He hopes his voice won’t break, not at this moment.

“I love this man,” he says, “and he loves me,” and yeah, there isn’t a lot of surprise. Daisy is dabbing her eyes, not even stealthily, and Preston, to Nate’s astonishment, looks almost as moved as she does, Elise is whispering to Mama Murphy, probably telling her what just happened, and Rex appears to be taking notes, while Billy exclaims, “Wow!” like this is the most exciting thing to happen since dessert. Which it probably is.

Only Codsworth appears genuinely nonplussed for a moment. His eyes whirl, focusing and unfocusing rapidly, and there’s a brief stutter in the whirring of his servos. Nate wonders, in that moment, what the worst thing is that a Mr Handy might say to an owner, who only half a year after losing his wife declares his love for another man - in public, in their home.

But the fact that he cares about what Codsworth thinks, that it would hurt him if Codsworth proved unable to overcome a programming that no doubt makes him think of a couple as being a man and a woman and nothing else - that means Codsworth is far more to him than an appliance.

“The other thing,” Nate says, raising his voice a little over the murmurs of his friends, “is that tonight has made me realize something. There was, uh, some talk about rebuilding, earlier. But not everything about the world as it was before the bombs should be rebuilt. I think there are some things we can do better. Codsworth. I should have done this months ago. You’re free to go where you want and do what you want. I’m not your owner, or your master. I couldn’t be, because you’re not a thing to be owned, by me or anyone. If anything, you’re… family.”

Codsworth stops moving altogether. Much of a Mr Handy’s semblance of life is in the way they move their eyes and arms, the way they tilt and hover, and without motion, he does look more machine than ever. Then suddenly, he becomes unstuck, floating forward a little, all three eyes raised towards Nate. He sounds surprisingly collected, dignified even, and if he were human, Nate thinks he would smile.

“I am honored, Sir. I, too, have come to consider you family. I suppose there can be no talk of ownership between family members… but I do hope it means that you won’t mind if I stay, and help where I can, for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Of course,” Nate says with a breath of relief at Codsworth’s easy acceptance, and as soon as he has said it, Mama Murphy calls, “Of course we’ll have you, you silly old bucket of bolts!” and the other Sanctuarians all join in, telling Codsworth how much they’d miss him if he were to go.

Even after the cheers die down, however, the mood remains joyful, and there’s a brief moment, standing at the center of it with his arm around Hanco*ck’s shoulder, when Nate feels warm and alive and in tune with everyone around him.

He can see it, that sense of homecoming, in Kent’s blissfully happy smile, in the way Marcy pets Billy’s bald head as they clean up the dishes together, as if she remembers tousling another boy’s hair in the same fashion, in the way Benny and Jake sit quietly together in a corner, watching everything, overwhelmed looks on their young faces, in the sad, soft expression on MacCready’s face, like he’s thinking of someone who isn’t here. They’ve all lost something, but those scars fit together like puzzle pieces here.

It’s a long evening. Rex is the first to leave, and Billy and Mama Murphy both fall asleep at some point, but everyone else sticks around, drinking mutfruit wine and sharing stories. Hanco*ck looks half asleep by the time they leave, a warm, pliable weight against Nate’s side, leaning against him, until he utters a little groan of protest as they walk up the couple of stairs to the entrance, about how he should have listened to Amari about putting up his leg and giving it some rest.

He makes a startled noise when Nate sweeps him off his feet but the indignation turns into giggles as Nate carries him up the winding stairs. It’s not as easy as he thought it would be. Hanco*ck is a featherweight of a man, but the stairs are steep and crooked and badly lit, and carrying him bride-style is much harder than throwing his unconscious body over his shoulder in Trinity Tower, when Nate was charged up with adrenaline rather than full of radstag and tatoes. Hanco*ck isn’t helping, shaking with laughter at Nate’s struggles, his face buried against the crook of Nate’s neck.

He’s still laughing when Nate dumps him on the bed. “Christ, sunshine, you’re being literal about the princess thing, huh?”

Nate, still catching his breath, snorts. “Looks like you do enjoy it, your majesty.”

“So far,” Hanco*ck says, grinning like he’s imagining what else Nate might come up with. “Just don’t call me that in public, don’t want folks to think I’m getting ideas.”

*

Billy comes to talk to Hanco*ck two days after their Thanksgiving celebration. He’s a little shy about it, like a kid being called to the principal’s office, and Nate wonders if he ought to stick a around, just in case - without his morning mentats, Hanco*ck has proven slow to wake and moody. But he watches Hanco*ck slip a packet of gum from his pocket, doling it out to Billy, and looks satisfied when the kid sits down chewing, as if he himself has taken a hit.

Nate leaves quietly, putting on his scarf and jacket to go for a walk. He doesn’t think they’d mind if he stayed. Perhaps he could use a remedial class in ghouls, too. But Billy always reminds him too much of the boy he chased up and down the Commonwealth, the version of Shaun he never got to meet.

He remembers the little synth in Father’s office, the dummy Shaun in his glass cage, dangled before him like a worm on a hook. When he was down there, he was too horrified by all of it, too wracked with guilt and despair to really think about why Shaun made this little double of himself, but now that he’s stable enough to face these memories without shying away from them, he realizes how strange it is.

Shaun didn’t need to create an elaborate scavenger hunt with obstacle after obstacle. He didn’t have to pull some bait and switch scam with a puppet version of himself just to lure Nate to the Institute. He knew Nate was there, in the vault - if all he wanted was a successor whose blood was as pure as he imagined his own to be, then the sensible thing would have been to fetch Nate straight from the cryo-pod, to never even expose him to the Wasteland.

But Shaun wanted to wind him up and watch him go. Was it a test? Did he want to see how capable his father was before offering his legacy to him? If so, then Shaun himself doesn’t fully believe in his own propaganda about the purity of pre-war DNA.

Perhaps he needed to expose Nate to all the horrors of the wasteland, to the ruins and monsters, to Kellogg, to the scared, ignorant people huddling in places like Diamond City, to see if Nate would judge them a lost cause, as he did.

Or maybe it wasn’t that complicated at all. Maybe Shaun, having been stolen as a child and raised by metaphorical wolves, felt some unconscious need to recreate a rescue that never happened, to watch his remaining parent struggle to find him and save him, to see proof of the love he never got to experience. Would he have given the little synth to Nate, if Nate had stayed, to watch them play house and get some vicarious sense of family out of it?

Or perhaps it was guilt that made him build a version of himself he could return to his parents. What if those things Shaun said, about Nora being collateral damage, were merely him parroting the party line? What if he, too, feels that sense of failure, of being responsible for her death, that Nate felt for so long? He couldn’t resurrect her, and he was too smart to simply build a replacement of her, but he could give back a mockup of himself, like a consolation prize.

This is the first time Nate considers these possibilities. Shaun seemed so certain, so detached and calm when he talked about the ends justifying the means. He sounded like Nate’s own dad, a little bit, if Nate’s dad had also had Nora’s sharp mind and a heart of silicon and steel.

Nate never thought to argue with him. Now, surrounded by Goodneighbor’s dark, solid brick walls, the faint aroma of smoke and chemicals and piss on the cold air, the bustle of people going about their daily lives around him, Nate realizes that were was a lot he could have said. A lot of questions he could have asked and didn’t. He spent those few days down in the Institute like someone caught in a nightmare, unable to run, like a dead man in purgatory, faced with all of his failures. What he said to Hanco*ck, about fear and blindness, applies just as much to how he acted then.

He returns to the State House still heavy with that realization, and finds Hanco*ck sitting on one of the couches, staring off into nothing as though he’s coasting on daytripper. There’s no sign of Billy other than some wadded up gum wrappers in the ash tray.

“How did it go?” Nate asks, worried.

Snapping out of his thousand mile stare, however, Hanco*ck looks sober. “You left me alone with the kid,” he says.

“Yeah. It looked like you were doing fine.”

“I was,” Hanco*ck says. “I did. Gave him the whole ghoul talk. Didn’t freak him out until we got to his parents. Wasn’t even… I was tactful and sh*t. Dunno what it was that I said that finally drove it home they’re dead, but the kid cried, so I panicked and… yeah.”

Nate feels his pulse quicken. “You did what exactly?”

It’s hard to picture Hanco*ck panicking, and at the same time disturbingly easy to come up with a number of terrible scenarios here… god, Nate hopes that he didn’t do something incredibly stupid like give chems to a kid, but no, he wouldn’t, Nate remembers Hanco*ck’s cold rage at hearing someone was doing that in his town. So it must have been something else.

“I told him there are folks in town who’ll be there for him. Ghouls who’ll live just as long as he does. Like, uh, Kent and Daisy… and me.”

Nate sits down next to him, exhaling. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, wow. You wanna know what the little devil said? Looked me straight in the face, snot still running, and asked, ‘You’re like, married to the Silver Shroud, aren’t you? So that means he’ll be my dad, too?’”

Under slightly different circ*mstances, Nate would find Hanco*ck’s expression funny - that mix of wonder and outrage and panic, as if he’s been completely outmaneuvered by a ten-year-old and internally screaming. It really says something about his resolve to curb his addiction that he isn’t high right now, Nate realizes, because Hanco*ck is freaking out.

But he doesn’t laugh as he sits down next to him because it’s funny. He laughs because he knows exactly where the panic comes from, feels it flutter in his stomach, too.

“You said yes, right?”

Hanco*ck glances up, brows lifting in confusion.

“When he asked you that, did you say yes?” Nate is serious now, looking Hanco*ck straight in the eye. “Because that’s the right answer.”

He can see understanding pierce through the agitation as Hanco*ck realizes that Nate means all of it. Yes to this new responsibility, yes to sharing it, yes to the part where they’re definitely more than just lovers. His smile, when it blooms, is something that Nate wants to seal away in his heart forever.

“It is, ain’t it,” Hanco*ck says.

Chapter 18: Reunions

Chapter Text

Nate has been lying awake for so long his eyes have adjusted to the faint red glow of the stove. He can make out Hanco*ck next to him, spread-eagled on his belly, bare naked and immune to the creeping chill. During the day, he was twitchy, hands always busy with his knife, with the frayed edges of his cuffs, with the tin of mentats he’s been rationing out stingily throughout the last two weeks. But he’s soft and relaxed now, dead to the world in a post-coital glow, the tension driven out of him.

He should be asleep, too, or at least drifting on a happy haze of satisfaction, but now that he’s cooled down, Nate feels awake again. He reaches for his pip boy on the floor next to the bed, examining the sturdy casing and the ancient, soft leather with his fingers before flicking it on. He dims the display to its lowest setting with a flick of the dial, then lowers the volume to a bare whisper, and replays the recording he made today.

Again, the long dead Galaxy News announcer is followed by Kent’s excited voice, both muted to a whisper. Again, Nate marvels at the strange effect of hearing the Commonwealth’s sounds on a radio. He has come to think of the radio as distant echoes of the world that was, like the ancient billboards with their peeling ads and faded colors, monuments to past glory, mocking the present for being no more than a haunting of the ruins. People now play the old songs, over and over, rather than recording anything new, as though they believe what those billboards are saying: that nothing of value has been created in two hundred years.

But this, this is all brand new, just as Kent promises the listeners in his intro. Through sound effects and clever foley work, Rex and Kent have brought the Commonwealth to life - the rustle of ancient waste being blown across a silent street, the skitter of mirelurk claws, the creaking of rusted metal from old buildings, the electric crackle of a radstorm rolling in. It’s striking even to Nate, who isn’t native to this time - he can only wonder what it feels like to people born here to recognize themselves and their world on the radio for the first time.

The adventure unfolds, familiar voices in new roles. Rex Goodman as the Silver Shroud and Kent Connolly as himself, Jun and Sturges as a pair of caravaneers in peril, Magnolia and Irma as husky-voiced triggerwomen. Strong voices the mutants threatening the caravaneers with the labored sincerety of a third grader reciting a poem, and Preston plays a Minuteman, himself in all but name.

Hanco*ck rouses next to him at the sound of whispering voices and gunshots, curling closer with a soft snuffle. His hand sneaks under the blanket, stroking up the length of Nate’s shin. He listens in for a moment before he murmurs, “You like it?”

Nate turns the recording off. They’re almost at the point where the Shroud reveals that yes, he is the same man who prowled the streets of Boston in the past, asleep for two hundred years and woken up by the city’s need, where he speaks of the past and the present, anger mixing with pride at the city’s survival. There’s just enough fantasy, mixed with just enough of himself, of the truth, to make Nate’s skin tingle with the strangest sensation of looking into a mirror and seeing something truer than a reflection, something more condensed and meaningful than his own helpless, senseless struggles.

“It’s different,” he admits to Hanco*ck. “Not what I expected.”

“Not enough action?” Hanco*ck puts a lewd stress on the word action that makes Nate smile despite his pensive mood.

“I didn’t think Rex would make it so… personal. I hardly even talked to him.”

“He did his homework,” Hanco*ck says. “Listened. Talked to folks. Daisy, Garvey. Me.”

And that makes sense, Nate thinks. There’s surprisingly much of himself in this story of a man displaced in history, but it’s not just his story. There’s a bit of Daisy in Rex’s Shroud, her clear vision of the past, of what went wrong before the war, insight mixed with melancholy, the sort of insight honed by experience that Nate doesn’t really have. A bit of Preston, his faith in humanity despite all his losses, his sense of responsibility, of duty even towards strangers. A bit of Hanco*ck’s keen sense of justice, a hard, uncompromising edge that Nate doesn’t really have, a willingess to judge the guilty with lethal force.

The episode is not an open manifesto to their cause. At no point does the Shroud proclaim the need for a new Commonwealth government, or pledge himself to Goodneighbor or the Minutemen. The Railroad isn’t even mentioned, and neither is the Brotherhood of Steel. But the Shroud does talk about the war. About how he couldn’t prevent it, about how none of the crimes he solved and the crooks he brought to justice made a difference, because he was one man, only one man, alone against the flood. Throughout the episodes the Shroud is forced to trust strangers, to make allies in order to survive in this new, unfamiliar territory, to find reasons to go on defending his city.

The story is quieter than the ones that used to blare from the radio, the action peppered with softer moments. ‘A Christmas special’ Kent said with a bashful look before he and Rex presented it to them.

“Yeah, I like it,” Nate says. Maybe that’s why it keeps him up at night. He didn’t expect to like it so much, to share something so private with the world.

Hanco*ck huffs, rolling onto his back. He stares at the ceiling silently for a while, but Nate can just see the dark glitter of his eyes, telling him Hanco*ck also hasn’t gone back to sleep.

“What about you?” he asks him.

“Me? Sure, it’s alright. Bit sappy.”

Nate sighs. He knows Hanco*ck is acting dense on purpose. “And taking it to Diamond City? That doesn’t bother you at all?”

It was Rex’s idea. With Sturges’ help, Kent has been able to improve the reach of his broadcast a little, but Rex believes their creation should be accessible to a far wider audience, and Preston is also eager to reach the scattered farmsteads, the backbone of the Commonwealth as he calls them.

The obvious solution is to take the recording to Diamond City, which has the most powerful radio equipment in the Commonwealth. But Diamond City’s station is under the thumb of a ghoul-hating mayor with very dim views on freedom of speech.

Kent looked real torn when Rex suggested they do it anyway. “Travis will get into trouble for that.”

Hanco*ck’s response was quick and contemptuous. “He damn well better. It’s the least he owes you.”

Kent didn’t look happy about it. He glanced at Nate beseechingly, as if to say, ‘please don’t let him talk to Travis like that?’ but he didn’t dare argue with Hanco*ck any further. The rest of the discussion turned to logistics - whether they could finish the production in time for a Christmas broadcast, and who would go to Diamond City to make contact with Travis. Hanco*ck surprise”d Nate by being the first to volunteer, after fighting them tooth and nail when Preston suggested they make Diamond City a pit stop on their journey to Goodneighbor.

Hanco*ck shrugs. “Someone’s got to watch that little rat’s back. Hold his hand, probably. Make sure he doesn’t end up with a bullet in his brain.”

“I thought you didn’t like Travis?”

“Yeah, but I ain’t letting him hang, either. Not if he finally picks a side. ‘sides, you’re gonna traipse into Diamond City to thumb your nose at my dickhe*d brother? I ain’t missing that sh*t.”

“Even if you haven’t got a nose to thumb?” Nate teases, earning himself a not so gentle swat on the head. He laughs, accepting the challenge, and only when he’s got him pinned down to the mattress after a fierce tussle does Hanco*ck grin turn serious.

“Been running from Diamond City for too long,” he rasps. “If we’re gonna incite a coup, I gotta be there in person.”

*

Nate has made sure to drop by the brownstone at least once a day since Hanco*ck accidentally adopted Billy. The kid hasn’t asked to move in with them, and clearly he’s comfortable living with the others, where Marcy and Jun and Codsworth dote on him and where he can be the annoying little brother to Benny and Jake, but Nate nevertheless feels a responsibility to be there and spend time with him.

Hanco*ck never seems all that interested in the kid when he tags along, spending most of their time with the others hanging out with Mama Murphy, but Billy very quickly figures out that Hanco*ck is the kind of uncle who always has a wild story or a gift if you pester him for attention - sometimes it’s a pack of gum drops, sometimes a Deathclaw tooth on a string, sometimes a hunting knife or a brahmin bladder kick ball. It’s cheating, but Nate doesn’t mind, because it puts smiles on both of their faces.

Today, Hanco*ck is busy shaking hands in town and distributing ‘seasonal’ gifts to his constituency, making sure they don’t forget him during their trip to Diamond City. It’s three days to Christmas Eve, and they’re planning to leave the next day.

Billy doesn’t seem to be bothered by the news that they’ll be away for a couple of days, he only wants to know who the Shroud is going to fight this time, and is a little disappointed when Nate says, “Hopefully no one.”

He leaves Billy with a present wrapped in pre-war money that isn’t worth anything but nevertheless fascinates Billy, who picks at the faded dollar bills but promises not to open it until Christmas Eve. Nate hasn’t asked Hanco*ck what’s in it, but it’s suspiciously knife-sized.

The stairwell of the brownstone is gloomy and with covered with trash by the upstairs neighbours, ‘riff raff and layabouts of the worst sort’, according to Codsworth, who fights a losing battle against them over the house’s public areas. As Nate carefully navigates this minefield of litter, he hears a rustle behind him in the dark, the furtive movements of someone trying to follow him unnoticed.

He left the State House without his guns or even a knife, perhaps feeling safer in Goodneighbor than he should be. If it’s just a mugger or some psycho fiend spoiling for a fight, Nate can probably take them unarmed, but as Nate moves down the stairs, pretend to be unaware that he’s being trailed, his imagination offers up other possibilities – an assassin sent by the Institute, or one of Hanco*ck’s political enemies, or perhaps someone who knows that he is the Shroud, a gunner looking for revenge… he steps out into the cold evening, swiveling on legs stiff with tension, and flattens himself against the side of the building next to the door, holding his breath as he waits for his pursuer.

The metal door creaks open slowly, and a short, slight figure slips out, furtively peeking into the alley. Nate exhales when he catches a glimpse of a patched letter jacket and mousy hair pulled back into a ponytail.

Nate peels off the wall, trying not to scare Benny. “Sorry. I didn’t realize that was you.”

She flinches back. Her cheeks have filled a little in the time she’s been with them, her face no longer quite as sharp-edged, but in this moment, it slips back into that pale, hard mask she wore when she first came to Hanco*ck’s office.

For a second, she doesn’t even seem to recognize him. Then her whole stance shifts, relaxing forcibly, like a soldier being told to stand at ease. “No, I’m sorry.”

“Did you want something?” Nate asks, smiling at her to make it clear that it’s all right, that he isn’t angry.

The girl hesitates, on the cusp of shaking her hear. She casts a glance at the empty alleyway, and up at the scrap of night sky above them, then draws a short, sharp breath and nods. “Can we talk?”

“Of course?” Nate waits for her to speak, and for a long moment, she says nothing, but then she dips her hand into her jacket and pulls out a little white and orange plastic cartridge. She holds it out to him, just long enough for him to glimpse the words scratched into the casing of the holotape, then stuffs it back into her pocket like it’s a dirty secret.

He relaxes once he realizes that it’s one of those Join the Railroad manifestos. So this isn’t something as personal and dramatic as she made it seem.

“Where did you find that?” he asks her, smiling.

“The State House.”

Now that is a little alarming, for more than one reason. “You know stealing will get you in trouble, don’t you? I won’t tell Hanco*ck, but if he had caught you going through his stuff…”

Benny looks him straight in the eyes with a look that says, ‘you’re one to talk’ until Nate feels himself flush. And then she throws him another curveball by asking, “So it’s his? He’s a member of this group?”

“No!” Nate denies quickly. It isn’t a lie - Hanco*ck is tolerating them, working together with some of them on their project, but he’s definitely not a member.

The sharply curious look on Benny’s face dims. It turns blank again, unreadable. She’s quiet for a long moment, staring past Nate, then she asks, “Are you?”

Nate frowns. He wishes he could tell what she wants the answer to be, whether she likes or dislikes the idea of them being members of the Railroad, why she’s so suspicious all of a sudden. “Benny… why are you so interested in this?”

She seems about to say something, but then her expression suddenly changes. “Bishop,” she says. For a moment, Nate thinks that’s her answer but then he turns around following her gaze and finds Deacon melting from the shadows of the alley, the sound of his footsteps muffled by the snow, his shades gleaming obliquely in the night.

“Hey, kid,” Deacon says to Benny.

Nate wants to hold her back, but she flashes him a blank smile, nods at Deacon, and slips away into the alley faster than he can say something.

Nate gives Deacon an annoyed look. “I didn’t know you were back.”

The timing is not only bad, but also suspicious - speak of the devil and all that.

“Who says I was gone?” Deacon replies, deadpan, and then after a moment he cracks a smile. “Nice to see you, too, fearless leader. I come with good tidings.”

Through the sarcasm, Nate detects some serious professional pride. Whatever Deacon has been doing the last few weeks, it seems it has come to a head. It sounds important enough that Nate manages to push aside his concern for Benny for the moment. “Should we get the others?”

“No need to drum the gang together just yet,” Deacon says. “This is for your ears only.” He glances over his shoulder, not nervous, just cautious, it seems. Then he takes a step closer. “It concerns our mutual friends downstairs.”

Something in Nate balks at this, and it takes him a moment to pinpoint why: he doesn’t like the implication that because this is about the Institute, it concerns him more than the others. He won’t keep secrets from them, especially not from Hanco*ck, especially not about the Institute.

Deacon smiles at him in that unsettlingly calm way, like he knows exactly what Nate is thinking.

“The good mayor can be a little hotheaded. He’s not a compromising kind of guy. I’d feel more comfortable if the person holding the trigger was someone who knows what it means to let a cold war run hot.”

He seizes Nate’s right hand, turning up the pip boy, about to slip a holotape into it. Nate pulls back his hand. “What’s this?”

“The nuclear launch codes.” Nate glares at him, but Deacon laughs. “I’m not joking, buddy. It kind of is. This’ll allow you to send out a signal which will result in the Brotherhood of Steel receiving detailed information about the exact location of the Institute. They’ve been busy building all sorts of nasty surprises down at the old airport. It shouldn’t take them too long to mobilize once you send the signal. We’re talking a couple of hours here.”

He says all this in a casual manner, like it isn’t a major step towards victory, but Nate gets the impression that behind his mirrored shades, Deacon is watching him cautiously for a reaction. Maybe he’s too surprised to have one, or still distracted by that strange conversation with Benny, so Deacon prods him by saying, “I know, you’re probably thinking, why don’t we just do it? Get rid of the Institute now, before they can make their move?”

There have been too many times in his life when people have looked at him and made the wrong assumptions. He frowns at Deacon. “That’s not what I’m thinking.”

Deacon smiles again. This time, for a split second, there’s a flash of almost genuine feeling behind it.

“I know, buddy,” he says. “That’s why I’m coming to you with this and not the big man in town. Hanco*ck’s got the fighting spirit, but… the Railroad’s top priority isn’t destroying the Institute. I might be wrong, but I think we’ve got something in common there. Folks we care about, downstairs.” He winks, and in that moment, Nate is certain that Deacon knows far more about him, about Shaun, than he has let on, even to his own boss.

It feels like being driven into a corner, like having his back to the wall - but then Deacon picks up his wrist again, and slides the holotape into the pip boy almost gently, stepping back as soon as it’s done. “Here are the codes. I trust you won’t use them unless you have to.”

He’s walking away already, and even as Nate opens his mouth to call after him, he doesn’t know what to say.

Deacon was joking – a dark, not particularly tasteful kind of humor – when he called the tape nuclear launch codes. But there’s enough truth in the joke that Nate wants to chuck the tape into the deepest part of the sea.

This was his idea. It came to him in a moment of righteous anger and confidence, right after he confronted his inner demons and confessed his love, when he felt like he could take on the world, like he would do anything not to lose what he has found.

Desdemona said that the Institute had infiltrated the Brotherhood already, and would use it to strike against Goodneighbor if the opportunity presented itself. There’s no confirmation that this is actually true, but it gave Nate the inspiration for this plan: the Brotherhood may be a bunch of jackbooted xenophobes who would like to cleanse the Commonwealth of ghouls and mutants and anyone not to their liking before claiming it as their territory, but the one thing they hate even more than garden-variety freaks is the Institute with its abuse of technology and its synths. All that’s preventing them from striking at the Institute directly is that they don’t know where to hit, because no one knows where the Institute is located.

No one except Nate.

So the idea was to deliver this information to the Brotherhood and then watch their two biggest enemies go at each other. Nate has seen the Institute’s defenses. Their coursers are fearsome, but not numerous enough to withstand a full-on assault with the sort of firepower the Brotherhood has. The Institute’s main advantage is secrecy, and without that, they will fall – but hopefully not without taking down a significant part of the Brotherhood’s forces, weakening them enough to buy time.

Time for their other projects, the Shroud and the Minutemen recruitment, to come to a head. They want to be ready by spring, ready to propose a second CPG to the citizens of the Commonwealth. Which is why it is so important to take the Shroud to Diamond City, to garner support from the people there – there’s no place of greater strategic importance, and it’ll be the first place the Brotherhood will try to take over, once they’re finished with the Institute.

Nate was riding high on happiness and mentats when he shared this plan with the others, too high to notice dissent, if there was any. He only recalls the look of pride on Hanco*ck’s face, the way even Fahrenheit seemed impressed with the big sweeping strategy of his plan, how emotional Preston got when he mentioned bringing back the Minutemen and the CPG. Even Deacon seemed more amused by the idea of dressing up as the Silver Shroud than anything else.

But now that he holds the power to put his plan into action, he wonders why no one was shocked at how savage and calculating it is.

Someone who knows what it means when cold war runs hot. Why did Deacon put it like that? Nate isn’t the only one in their circle who witnessed the end of the war. After all, Daisy and Kent know just as much as he, if not more – Nate barely even witnessed the actual destruction of the world. But Daisy and Kent also lived through its survival, its rebuilding, they came here the long way, they had time to grow and change. But he comes directly from a world that lived by the madness of nuclear stockpiling and the balance of terror – the ghosts that haunt him are barely even ghosts.

Is it coincidence that it was Nate who hatched this ruthless plan?

He hates that Deacon didn’t just come out and say so. Why does he have to be so damn oblique and evasive about it? Hell, if he disagrees with the plan, why did he go along with it in the first place? For a second, Nate even wonders if the tape really does contain the trigger codes, but that seems too messed up, even for Deacon.

Deacon seems to think that Hanco*ck wouldn’t hesitate to use this power. Nate suspects that he might be right about that, but still, the one thing that terrifies him more than having the ability to start a war is the idea of keeping it to himself, a secret poison.

Perhaps he should give himself time to think about it, but they leave for Diamond City tomorrow. He needs to talk to Hanco*ck now.

The first floor of the State House is empty, however, and Nate can feel the thumping beat of music from the Third Rail through the soles of his boots – there’s a party going on, and of course that’s where he’ll find Hanco*ck.

The Third Rail is packed with people. It seems everyone in Goodneighbor is down here, and quite a few of them are decked out in ancient holiday decorations, everything from dusty Halloween costumes to long-faded Santa hats. At least one person is wearing actual radstag antlers as a grisly headdress that may be meant to evoke reindeers and Christmas cheer, but actually hits a far more savage note. For once, the stage doesn’t belong to Magnolia, who is watching regally from the VIP area.

The source of the ground-shaking bass beats are a rag-tag three person band. The singer is a ghoul with the smokiest voice Nate has ever heard. He - or she, Nate isn’t sure – is accompanied by a woman on steel drums and a grey, bearded fellow with a strangely rigged electric bass guitar. It’s a far cry from jazz, with echoes of ironworks and mortarfire at its loudest, but Nate lets it wash over him for a moment and feels it gripping him from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes.

It takes Nate a moment to spot Hanco*ck among the crowd because tonight his red coat isn’t the most outlandish costume in the room. He’s wearing tinsel around his neck like a feather boa and is belting along to the song. When Nate reaches him, Hanco*ck throws an arm around his shoulder, pulling him down into an effusive kiss that carries an aftertaste like gasoline – jet, or something very much like it.

“Someone get this man some festive f*cking cheer!” he calls at the top of his lungs, and a moment later, someone throws a handful of glitter at the side of Nate’s face. Nate’s startled expression sends Hanco*ck snickering, especially when he tries to wipe the sticky stuff off with his hand and only succeeds in spreading it further.

“Ya don’t even wanna know what it’s made of!” the ghoul hoots.

Nate can’t look at Hanco*ck’s mood without wanting to forget what brought him here in the first place. Shouting over the music, he tells Nate this is an early Christmas party. It was thrown together hastily as soon as word made the round that the mayor won’t be home for the next few days. Hanco*ck is especially pumped over the fact that some of the usual holiday gigs, like the band that currently has the stage, are already in town and game for some impromptu performances. They’re travelling performers, folks who travel from settlement to settlement up and down the coast, getting paid for their music and stories and juggling acts.

“Always wanted to join one of these troupes when I was a kid,” Hanco*ck shouts, and mimics throwing his knife at the bottles above the bar. Nate grabs his wrist before Hanco*ck can try to demonstrate.

He holds onto Hanco*ck with a startled laugh, then pulls him close by it, so he can speak into his ear without shouting, “How high are you?”

“Barely,” Hanco*ck claims, with a mock pout.

But Nate isn’t asking because he’s worried - Hanco*ck taking some jet at a party is hardly the same thing as him drinking himself into a stupor to dull his feelings.

Nate is asking because he’s tempted: this might well be the only time to let down his hair for a while. If he’s going to use what Deacon gave him tonight, there will be war. It might be brief, it might be elsewhere, but still, tonight feels like shore leave.

Hanco*ck catches his inner struggle and grins. “Ain’t no night like tonight,” he says and drags Nate along with him to the bar, the sea of bodies parting for them.

Charlie, unlike Codsworth, doesn’t seem to feel the need to ingratiate himself with the mayor, serving others before diverting Hanco*ck some of his multi-limbed attention, and as they wait, Hanco*ck’s hand sneaks down to the small of Nate’s back, under his shirt and into the waistband of his pants. It rests there possessively even as he orders something from Charlie, and they wait as the robot disappears into the storage room and returns with three differently shaped pills, which Hanco*ck grinds to a fine dust with the hilt of his knife. He mimics how to snort it, and after giving him a skeptical look, Nate bends down to the dark wood of the counter, giving it his best try.

It burns sharply in his nostrils, worse than the sting of jet, and his eyes water as he lifts his head to gasp. Hanco*ck squeezes Nate’s ass approvingly while using his free hand to rub the remainder of the powder into his gums. “Now who can’t thumb his nose,” he shouts, the absurdity of that statement accompanied by an equally absurd happiness, and Nate manages to stay serious thirty seconds at most before bending over the counter with laughter.

“This is stupid,” he says, a moment later, wiping his eyes, “I don’t feel anything.”

“Yeah, right,” Hanco*ck giggles.

The music changes. It seems to speed up and grow more melodic at the same time, and it’s no longer just deafening noise. Nate must be starting to get used to it, because he finds himself tapping his feet, and then suddenly he thinks, why not, and pulls Hanco*ck closer to the stage.

He didn’t know he liked dancing. He knew he was good at it, that he picked it up easily during the few lessons he had for prom, that the dancing instructor made some embarrassing comments about people of Nate’s colour having gypsy blood, but until this moment, he never knew he liked dancing.

This isn’t about steps and whose hand to put where, this isn’t about looking good - there’s just the rhythm, and the brush of bodies against his, warm and welcome and vibrant, and Hanco*ck, who dances like he fights, with drunken grace and abandon, and somewhere in the breathless swirl of motion there’s a center of stillness and weightless joy.

The night turns into fractured moments, slipping and sliding from one to the next. The two of them, collapsing panting and laughing on the couch next to Magnolia, Nate trying to tell her something about her dress as she smiles down at them, dignified and indulgent and looking like she’s ten feet tall. Hanco*ck, taking to the stage with an utterly butchered rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, accompanied by the ghoul singer cutting hilarious grimaces behind him and ending with him stripping off the flag around his waist and slowly undoing the buttons of his shirt. His coat, sailing above the audience in a beautiful arc, slow as honey dripping from a spoon.

Hanco*ck, sitting in his lap half-naked as they watch the stage being claimed by a sword swallower, a woman tattooed from head to toe with snakes that Nate swears are moving under her skin. Music again, Magnolia on the stage with the band, her voice an ethereal note among their industrial rhythms. Back on his feet, skin to skin with the crowd. Someone shimmies against Nate’s side, someone writhes against his back, hands on his chest and under his shirt and he is absolutely willing to blend into a single moving beast until the sun comes up.

He wakes up to the cold, forlorn sound of Charlie sweeping up broken glass. His glitter-covered cheek is sticking to the ancient leather of a couch, and Hanco*ck, naked from the waist up, is starfishing on top of him. They’re the only people in the Third Rail - it seems everyone else has been given the boot when the party was over.

Nate’s chest feels strangely constricted, and after a moment of panic, he looks down at himself and realizes he’s wearing someone else’s far too small T-shirt, and also Hanco*ck’s tricorn, which tips sideways when he lifts his head and rolls under a coffee table littered with empty bottles and inhalers.

He lets himself collapse back onto the couch, and manhandles Hanco*ck a little until he makes a better blanket, which elicits only a few muffled protests from the ghoul.He closes his eyes again, letting gravity lurch.

The next time he wakes, it’s because Hanco*ck’s comfortable weight on top of him is gone because Hanco*ck is sitting up, perched on the arm of the couch and smoking, the tricorn back on his head. The lights are dimmed and Charlie is nowhere to be seen.

“Was there an orgy?” Nate asks, rubbing his eyes. He sounds like a ghoul himself, his throat parched and raw as if he has been abusing it in every way possible.

“Not what I’d call an orgy,” Hanco*ck says, in a tone that dares Nate to be shocked.

He isn’t. Whatever happened, they did it together. If anything, he’d like to remember it, but maybe it’ll come back to him if he wakes up fully.

Hanco*ck gets up and ambles behind the bar, rummaging around for a moment before emerging with a bottle of vim which he hands to Nate before sitting down again to take another drag from his cigarette.

Nate lets the cold soda soothe his tender throat. “Where’s your coat?” he asks.

Hanco*ck points to stage, where a mannequin wearing the red coat dangles from the spotlight by a rusted chain around the torso. The mannequin has been defaced, quite skillfully, with what appears to be dark red lipstick, imitating racy lingerie and a ghoulish visage.

“Everything ready in case folks wanna burn me in effigy while I’m gone.”

Nate watches it dangle and turn gently on its chain for a while. Inspite of what Hanco*ck just claimed it was for, to him it looks peaceful, almost affectionate - a joke, not a threat, a fetish to stand in for the real man. And it makes him realize something that he didn’t even consider last night, upset as he was over Deacon’s strangeness

Hanco*ck watches curiously as Nate undoes the buckles of his pip boy, lifting his brows as Nate takes his hand and wraps the soft, worn leather bands around his gnarled wrist, pulling the straps as tight as they will go. “What’s this, love?” he asks, blowing smoke. “You marking your territory?”

There’s a gentleness in his question that belies its flippancy, a genuine uncertainty, and Nate looks at the circle of lighter skin around his arm, and then at his ring finger, where the tan lines have faded across the summer. He left his ring in the vault, with Nora, so she’d have some part of him.

He thinks he knows what Hanco*ck is asking and that finally loosens his tongue: he doesn’t want Hanco*ck to think this is a token of love, when he’s actually handing him a loaded gun.

“Deacon came back last night,” he chokes out. “He’s been successful with the Brotherhood. Everything’s ready... instructions are on that tape.”

Hanco*ck draws in a sharp breath of surprise, his eyes lighting up as he understands what this is. Nate feels a hollow pit opening up in his stomach at the thought that Hanco*ck won’t even hesitate to pull the trigger, but he’s determined to go through with this. Reaching for Hanco*ck’s hand, he offers, “Do you want me to show you how - “

“I watched you use this thing a million times,” Hanco*ck says, waving him off. He stubs out the cigarette and lifts his hand to stare at the pip boy like a child with a brand new toy, not like a man holding wholesale destruction and slaughter. Then he stops, turning slowly to Nate.

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“It’s your home,” Nate says. “Goodneighbor. The Commonwealth.”

“It’s yours, too, sunshine,” Hanco*ck says, frowning.

“You took me in.” Nate means Hanco*ck, but he means everyone else too. “And it’s… more of a home than I ever had. But I shouldn’t be the one to make this decision.”

It’ll be easier to forgive you than to forgive myself, he thinks but doesn’t say.

He wonders if Hanco*ck is disappointed in him. There’s a moment or two, where his frown flickers into something darker, but he never says anything. In the end, he just shakes his head, and leans in, brushing a smudge of glitter off Nate’s cheek with his thumb.

“Let’s go to Diamond City,” is all he says.

*

Kent is already waiting for them in Hanco*ck’s office, nervously twisting an old gas mask in his hands. Over his usual suit, he is wearing a wrinkled oilskin duster that might look dramatic on someone less prone to slouching. He doesn’t even seem to notice the fact that Nate’s face is smeared with glitter and that Hanco*ck is missing his coat - as soon as he sees them, he jumps to his feet, exclaiming,

“Oh, thank god, you didn’t leave without me!”

“We don’t have the recording yet,” Nate points out.

Kent blinks, flushing as much as a ghoul can flush, and stammers, “Oh, that’s right - I came here to give it to you, didn’t I? But you have to take me with you to Diamond City.”

Nate doesn’t want to say no, after all, Kent has poured so much energy and love into this project, but… “It’s going to be difficult smuggling one ghoul past the guards.”

“I know,” Kent says, his face scrunching up in a sad grimace, “and believe me, I know I’m not cut out to be a hero, but… I’m the only one who can help the Silver Shroud, this time! I have to be the one to talk to Travis, otherwise he won’t do it.”

He glances furtively at Hanco*ck, then back at Nate, a silent plea in his blue eyes. Nate gets it, then: after the way Hanco*ck talked about Travis, Kent doesn’t trust him not to be cruel to his former protege. It’s sweet of him, especially considering how timid Kent is, but Nate is about to reassure him that he’ll be gentle with Travis when Hanco*ck gives Kent a hearty slap on the shoulder.

“It’s high time you catch a little adventure - just ‘cause you lasted 200 years don’t mean you ain’t gonna grow mouldy in that old den of yours. Welcome to the team, brother.”

Kent flinches, but stutters out a thank you before sitting back down with a sigh of relief, waiting for the two of them to clean up and get ready to go.

Their preparations are quick. Hanco*ck puts on the same rag armor and balaclava he wore to Trinity Tower, though in addition to his shotgun and knives, he’s loading his pockets with more caps than one could possibly spend in two days, even if Diamond City’s market is one giant holiday sale – and a generous helping of chems, Nate notes. He refrains from comment, though he resolves to watch Hanco*ck closely for any signs of excess abuse.

Nate’s base layer is the Silver Shroud costume, but he hides the signature silk scarf with Deidre’s fuzzy knitted one, and wears the mask that hides his eyes but not the hat. It probably looks weird, but people wear stranger stuff in the wasteland, and it’ll keep him from being immediately recognizes as either the Shroud or Nathan Hale.

Hanco*ck offers Kent an old hunting rifle, but Kent reveals that inside the folds of his oilskin coat he carries a very well-maintained 10 mm, shyly reminding them that he was the one who created both Nate’s armor and his weapon

He claims how to use it, but when they descend down into the old subway tunnels to leave Goodneighbor, his hands shake so badly that Nate wonders if it’s safe for him to handle a gun.

The only threats they run into in the tunnels are a couple of mirelurks that are either hibernating or dead, and a few sad ferals frozen inside a puddle where burst pipe has flooded the tracks. One manages to lift their head, groaning as it tries to get up. Kent whimpers softly at each cracking shot as Hanco*ck goes around putting them to a final rest with his shotgun.

Once they have to return to surface, they’re slowed down by the snow packed tightly in the streets. In many places, it’s high enough to cover the wrecked cars lining the roads, and the swathes cut into the white by passing caravans or mutants have iced over, making for dangerously slippery terrain.

Nate assumes that the cold weather is going to play in their favor when they get to the gates of Diamond City, because there is a perfectly good reason for them to be wearing cloaks and masks covering most of their faces. But as they walk past the outer guard posts of the city, he immediately notices the shelters and tents that have cropped up near the gate. Haggard figures peer from these shelters as they pass by, their faces bruised by frost and grey with desperation. A few creep towards them on unsteady feet, holding out their hands. They look more like ferals than people. Nate notices Kent freezing, and tries to pull him along, away from the beggars, but Hanco*ck walks straight towards them and starts filling their hands with caps – and a few of the chems he stuffed into his pockets earlier as well, psycho and jet and buffout, stuff to keep people on their feet. Immediately, more squatters are flocking towards them as the first few still cling to Hanco*ck with amazement at this unexpected turn of luck.

Nate fears that any second, their naked gratitude will turn into some kind of feeding frenzy, that they won’t be able to get rid of these people, but then he realizes that that is exactly what Hanco*ck intends – when the throng of squatters counts almost twenty, he nimbly extricates himself from the grasp of an elderly woman, and marches towards the gate. “Come on, brothers, they can’t call ya shiftless beggars now,” he calls, and while some of them hesitate, most of them follow.

The two guards at the stadium entrance lift their weapons when they see what looks like a riot coming towards them, but Hanco*ck, a step ahead of the squatters, throws a handful of caps onto the ground. “They can pay,” he calls in a mocking tone. “No need to shoot them.”

If the guards weren’t so startled, they might notice the ghoulish scratch of his voice, but the two men are clearly out of their depth. One of them tries to intercept Hanco*ck while the other is mobbed by people trying to shove their newfound wealth at him for passage into the city.

“You can’t do this,” the guard trying to stop Hanco*ck protests.

“Can’t I?” Hanco*ck retorts, and flashes another pocketful of caps. “Didn’t know old McDonough instituted laws against charity while I was gone.”

The two guards catch each other’s eyes, neither of them coming up with a good retort, and the one talking to Hanco*ck gives up. “Just go in!” he hisses angrily, “and stop causing a ruckus!”

Hanco*ck snorts derisively, and they’re ushered past the gate while the mob of drifters outside still haggles with the guards.

“They didn’t even ask us who we are,” Kent whispers in awe.

“Knew we’d have to spend some caps to get in no matter what,” Hanco*ck growls, “but I’ll be damned if I put them into the hands of assholes.”

Nate glances back over his shoulders, down the stairs. A few of the dirty figures have been let past gate as well, but not all of them, and the ones left behind are growing more desperate and agitated.

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says, following his gaze. “There’s a good chance there’ll be blood. Ya think it’s better to starve quietly? Those caps just reminded them what all those cozy folks inside owe ‘em.”

“Diamond City owes them?”

“Far as I’m concerned, basic human f*cking decency is something everyone owes.”

As they emerge from the gloom of the passage into the stadium, Diamond City spread out in front of them under the brilliant blue and white of the winter sky, Hanco*ck abruptly falls quiet. He and Kent both stop, rendered speechless by the sight of their old home.

Nate remembers what Diamond City looked like to him the first time he came here. Everything he had seen of the Commonwealth until that moment had been scorched ruins and death, scarcely inhabited. Aside from Preston and his friends, all of the humans he had met had been tribal, savage raiders. But here, safely cupped inside the bowl of the stadium, lay a whole city, houses built after the war, a school, a printing press, craftsmen, a chapel, children playing in the street, even an orchard, mutfruit trees flowering in the first flush of spring.

He saw what Diamond City could be, in that moment. It took him a while to notice the heavy presence of armored guards, the separation of stands and field, the nervous, distrustful looks he earned as a stranger.

“I came here when it was nothing but tents,” Kent says sadly. “Like those people out there.”

Hanco*ck’s eyes, Nate notices, are drawn to the mayoral office high above the city. Even with most of his face hidden, Nate sees the conflict in his dark gaze, the faltering of his righteous fury as he turns away.

“Hasn’t changed a bit,” he mutters, moving on down the metal stairs towards the field.

Nate keeps his eyes to the ground as they pass the newspaper building, but neither Miss Wright nor her sister are anywhere to be seen. The last time he went to Diamond City, the market was bustling with people in the afternoon, today it looks almost closed up. The paths between the shops are paved with boards and metal sheets, but where the ground shows, it’s black mud pockmarked with footprints several inches deep and fairly fresh - not too long ago, this place was busy.

Now, there are only a couple of people hurrying along. The noodle bar is completely empty, with the protectron blaring Japanese to the thin air as the noodle pots steam up into the rosy afternoon sky. A guard is slowly making the rounds, face hidden behind a helmet, eyeing them until they move on.

“This ain’t right,” Hanco*ck mutters out of the corner of his mouth.

Nate nods. It reminds him of Anchorage during the war, what little remained of the civilian population suffocated by the military presence. “We need to go somewhere less conspicuous.”

“The Dugout,” Hanco*ck says. “No one there gives a sh*t.”

On his previous visits to Diamond City, Nate was too busy and too short of caps to sample the local bars, but he walked by this place a couple of times and thought it didn’t look like much. Turns out the Dugout is even more dismal on the inside, making no pretenses of being anything other than a place to get miserably drunk. It’s almost empty except for a gaggle of squatters who have found their way here before them and are now warming themselves with moonshine and slop. There’s a young lady chatting with them whose hair and dress look far too nice for a place like this, and behind the bar, looking grim, is a middle-aged man who must be the proprietor.

“No caps, no service,” the innkeeper warns them. His accept is heavily, undeniably Russion, though how in the world a first generation immigrant got to Boston is anyone’s guess. Surely Russia didn’t fare so well in the that they have working ships or planes – perhaps winters are so cold now that the Bering street freezes over, but the prospect is so daunting that Nate almost asks the man his story.

Hanco*ck is faster, though. “Oh, I got plenty of caps, Yefim,” he says, leaning over the bar conspiratorially, and slips a piece of paper from his sleeve across the bar. Nate recognizes it as the same type of document Hanco*ck gave to MacCready to pay for his services - a note of favor, he called it.

The Russian’s face remains completely blank as he glances at it, and then neatly rolls it up and tucks it into his shirt pocket, acting as though nothing happens. Then he turns and gives a sharp, two-fingered gesture to a man across the room who looks like a slightly younger, slightly more cheerful version of him.

They exchange a few words in Russian as the other joins him behind the bar, and then the younger Russian laughs out loud, slapping his hand flat onto the bar, bellowing, “Welcome, tovarich! Let Vadim show you presidential suite!”

The room that they’re ushered into is windowless and claustrophobic with a single bare light bulb hanging from the concrete ceiling and wallpaper that has mostly rotted off the walls. There’s a queen-size bed and an assortment of mismatched armchairs all stuffed into it. As soon as they’re inside, Hanco*ck pulls off his mask and cloak, revealing his ghoul face to the Russian.

Vadim laughs, although the volume doesn’t entirely mask his shock. “What honor! I am talking to the man himself? Really? Oh, you are madman, walking into Diamond City like this.”

“You ain’t given me a choice,” Hanco*ck lies smoothly. “I’ve been trying to negotiate that trade deal with you for years, and you keep playing coy with my messengers. So I had to see to matters myself.”

“Eh,” Vadim shrugs. “Not me, Yefim, you understand? I am all for deal, but he’s the older one. Very professional, doesn’t like risky business. This might not be best time to talk to him about it, you know. Interesting times, not good for business.”

Hanco*ck asks him what he means by that, and Vadim talks for a long time but actually says very little, skirting the issue and merely hinting at unrest and possible emergency laws. The more he is prodded, the more evasive he gets, finally excusing himself with the promise of drinks and good food. Under his jovial grin, there’s a barely hidden nervousness, as though someone is pointing a gun at him and telling him to smile. The Russians, Nate suspects, would love to do business with Hanco*ck otherwise, but don’t want to house a ghoul in their establishment in the current climate.

“This doesn’t sound good,” Kent says anxiously after Vadim has left. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come back here!”

“We need to talk to someone who’ll actually tell us what is going on.” Nate pulls down his own mask, so he can look Hanco*ck in the eye as he makes his suggestion. “Valentine.”

Hanco*ck takes a step towards him, tilting his head. “You wanna take this to Nick?” he asks softly.

There’s a tension in his tone that has nothing to do with martial law or any material threat, and Nate understands what he’s asking. How much are they going to tell the detective? All of it, probably, because neither of them is going to try and lie to Nick Valentine. There’s going to be a lot to unpack, far more than just the politics.

Is a man with the ghost of a cop rattling around his brain going to approve of them inciting a riot on his beat?

But the flutter of nerves he feels at the prospect of Nick’s reaction only goes skin deep. He and Nick shared minds, if briefly. He’s certain that Nick is a decent man first and a cop second.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing. “I think we should.”

They take the long way to Valentine’s Detective Agency, avoiding the market and instead circling around, walking past the flooded part of the stadium. At the sight of the red neon sign of the arrow-pierced heart, Hanco*ck pauses, all of the smooth confidence he wore at the Dugout bled out of him. He looks small under his rags, as skittish as a feral cat sniffing at a feeding dish, and visibly sucks in a deep breath before following Nate inside.

The place looks unchanged, still smelling strongly of dust and the accrued musk of old paper from the many, many boxes of files and notes stacked everywhere. The synth detective is sitting at his desk, his sleeves rolled up, cigarette smoke wafting around him, a picture of deep, almost meditative concentration rudely interrupted by their entrance.

He glances up, taking in their ragged, masked appearance, the phosphorous glow of his eyes moving slowly from Nate’s fine, silverish coat to Kent’s gas mask to Hanco*ck’s wrist, where the pip boy still dangles loosely, and back to Nate’s face, before he stubs out the cigarette in an ashtray.

“Welcome to Valentine’s detective agency,” he says calmly, although Nate is certain that with that one glance, Valentine has identified all of them as armed and varying levels of dangerous. “Anything I can do for you, gentlemen?”

Nate takes a step forward and pulls down his mask. Valentine’s brows rise, and the stubs out his cigarette just as Nate says, “Hello, Nick.”

A moment passes in which Nick just musters him, then he comments dryly, “Well, that’s another cased closed.” A hint of stricture creeps into his voice as he adds, “Good to know you’re not dead, pal.”

A hot flush of embarrassment shoots through Nate. He didn’t even consider that Nick might be worried about him but of course he was - the last time they spoke each other, Nate was building a teleporter to get to the Institute, and that was more than two months ago.

“Yeah,” Nate says, suddenly ashamed. What was that about a bond between them he just thought? Nick has a ham radio, and Nate knows the frequency he uses, he could easily have sent a message with the pip boy.

He knows why he didn’t, though. He didn’t want to admit that he had found Shaun, and that Shaun was… he didn’t want to explain it all to Nick, who would understand it all far too well.

But finally the corner of Nick’s mouth pulls up into a crooked, forgiving smile, and he says, “Don’t worry, I get it. Too busy to worry about this old bucket of bolts.” His gaze flicks to the other two. “How about you introduce me to your pals?”

At that, Hanco*ck tugs off his balaclava, grinning at Nick just a little too brightly, not quite able to hide his nerves, “Hey, Nicky, ya don’t recognize me? I’m hurt, real hurt!”

The old synth makes a noise that is almost a chuckle, quiet and surprised. “Now that explains why I haven’t heard from Nathan. Been getting him into trouble, have you?”

“Yeah, look,” Hanco*ck says, “‘bout that. You might say that, sure, but you gotta look at the big picture here. I’ve been keeping the peace in my town, just makin’ sure folks respect our property. I didn’t make him get into bed with Bobbi No-Nose, helping her to try and rob me - gave him a second chance because I knew he were a friend of yours, all right?” He’s talking fast, picking up more nervous speed as he goes along. “We put all of that behind us before things got serious. Accounts settled, no one owing anyone anything - you know I’m trouble, but I ain’t that kind of trouble - “

Nick’s brows have been climbing rapidly at this incomprehensible outburst, twitching at the mention of robbery. His expression starts amused and then becomes more concerned, until Nate puts a hand on Hanco*ck’s arm. “Stop. You don’t have to -”

“f*ck,” Hanco*ck says softly, deflating with a sigh. “I love him, Nick. That’s all you need to know. Finally found someone I love more than jet and getting myself into trouble.”

“And I assume that’s not the jet talking,” Nick says mildly, covering whatever his reaction is to these news like the professional he is.

Nate tries a smile. “It’s not. I didn’t think there’d ever be someone else again, after… but here we are.” He let’s his hand drop down from Hanco*ck’s elbow, clasping his hand for a moment before letting go. “We’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“I have a feeling that’s something of an understatement,” Nick sighs. “And you? If there are any other surprises waiting for this old synthetic brain, out with them!”

Kent fumbles with the gas mask, finally managing to pull it off. “Hi, uh, it’s just me. You know, Kent from the radio - “

Nate has seen Valentine smile, usually with dry humor or a melancholy tilt to it - the bright, wide grin that spreads when he recognizes Kent looks almost uncanny on his synth face. He rises, and without his usual restraint, pulls Kent into a warm handshake. “Connolly! Goodness, this is a surprise!”

Then Nick pauses, taking a step back, his gaze narrowing as it wanders down Nate’s outfit again, then flicking to Hanco*ck, and back to Kent.

“Ah,” he says to Kent. “I see. You’ve finally found someone willing to play dress-up. It only took forty years for the right man out of time to come along.”

Kent blushes, and then confides, “Oh, that’s right, I never mentioned… when Nick first opened his detective agency, I couldn’t believe my luck. He was so much like the Shroud already! But he just wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I’m a detective, not a vigilante,” Nick points out. It sounds as if this isn’t the first time he’s had this discussion with Kent. The tone he takes with Kent is patient, but he fixes Nate with his yellow stare. “It’s one thing taking the law into your own hands when no one else is doing it, but putting on a mask? A policeman should always be held accountable.”

That’s not what Nate hoped to hear from Nick, but at least the detective is willing to hear them out. Nate starts haltingly, right where all of this started: with Bobbi No-Nose and her scheme. He’s not proud of any of it, but Nick restricts his disappoval to a mild scoff at how easily they broke Mel out of Diamond City’s prison, and a thoughtful nod when Nate explains the deal he and Hanco*ck struck at first. He seems to understand then why Hanco*ck was so nervous about telling him that they’re lovers, because the look he gives Hanco*ck is as penetrating and stern as the one he wore when he called the Shroud a vigilante. But it softens when Nate mentions their trip leading them to the Slog.

“I see,” he says again, and there’s a wordless exchange between him and Hanco*ck that results in the ghoul visibly relaxing. “How is Wiseman?” Nick asks kindly.

“Good,” Hanco*ck shrugs. He drops down into one of Nick’s chairs, slouching like a teenage delinquent. “The way he always is. Still obsessed with those damn tarberries. He likes Nate.”

“I can imagine.”

Hanco*ck takes over telling their story, growing more and more animated as he relates their victory against the Forged and how they brought the Sanctuary settlers to Goodneighbor, the close call at Tucker Memorial Bridge and the realization that the Institute is after them, the Railroad’s intervention and everything that followed. This version of events is a much quirkier, less harrowing one, and as much as Hanco*ck tries to be nonchalant, the pride he takes in all of it shines through.

Nick seems genuinely impressed, even making a few noises of approval, but when Kent explains their plans for the Silver Shroud, Nick rises, slowly walking to the back of his office, where he mulls over an ancient pinboard covered in notes. He picks up a piece of rolled up paper and returns, seemingly deep in thought. He lets Kent’s enthusiasm pan out before he muses, “Isn’t it highly interesting that out of all the folks speculating about the Silver Shroud, the one person who figured out that it’s an ad campaign for a new government is apparently Mayor McDonough?”

Hanco*ck makes a hoarse noise in the back of his throat. “Whatcha talkin about?”

Nick unrolls the paper on the desk - it turns out to be an issue of Miss Wright’s paper, the Public Occurences. On the cover is a black and white block print of one of the old comic book covers, the Shroud caught the bright circle of a floodlight, trench-coat billowing dramatically, machine gun in one hand, and the silver scarf flying to hide his features. The headline asks MAN OF MYSTERY: WHO IS THE SILVER SHROUD?

“This was printed a week ago,” Nick says. “As soon as the first copies were sold, McDonough ordered Piper to cease and desist, and pulp any remaining copies. She told him where to stick it, and he had her arrested.”

“Arrested?” Nate asks. “Not thrown out of the city?”

“He tried to make it look like he was being merciful on account of the weather, that he wouldn’t send a young woman out into the cold, but if you ask me, he wanted to make sure she couldn’t get up to worse trouble. What I couldn’t figure out until now is why. It’s a harmless article, compared to some of the things Piper has written about him in the past. Couldn’t see the connection between him and some holiday fluff piece about comic book vigilantes.”

Kent, barely holding back his need to grab the paper, asks, “Could-could I read that?”

Nick hands it to him, still thinking out loud. “It certainly makes more sense for McDonough to want hush up this story now that I know Piper was playing right into your hands, even if she didn’t know it… but the question is, how did McDonough?”

“If you’re saying there’s a narc in Goodneighbor, think again,” Hanco*ck mutters. “No would talk to him or his cronies. Not for a million caps.”

For a million caps, a few of them might, Nate thinks. But not their inner circle. “Maybe he’s just smarter than you give him credit?”

“If you ask me, there’s only ever been one McDonough who occasionally puts his clever mind to good use, and he isn’t mayor of this town,” Nick says with a pointed look at Hanco*ck, who blinks like he hasn’t heard right.

Nick shakes his head. “No, McDonough has been anything but smart lately. Locking up Piper might have been popular in the stands, but everyone in the lower field thinks they might be next. It’s got people on edge, and that’s never a good thing for a politician who’s been in office as long as he has. He’s been erratic for a while now. As far as I’m concerned, the Brotherhood of Steel is one of the worst things to happen to the Commonwealth in a while, but I never expected McDonough to think the same. He flat out refused their emissaries, won’t let them into the city, no explanation for it. All that’s done is that now people are starting to think there might be something they’re missing out on. And there was a fella in town about two weeks back, said he represented the Minutemen - sounds like it might have been your friend Preston Garvey. McDonough refused to see him, publicly denounced the Minutemen as a joke afterwards.”

This comes as a surprise. Nate knows that while he was busy playing the Silver Shroud, the other members of their little conspiracy have all been working towards their own goals, but he didn’t think he missed something this big. “Preston never mentioned that.”

Hanco*ck grunts. “Not his proudest moment, having to admit that I was right.”

“About McDonough and the stands, maybe, but down here, folks remember the Minutemen fondly. Between that and Piper, this town has been a powder keg for the last couple days. It’s coming up on Christmas, too. You’d be surprised, but the phones at the precinct never used to run so hot as they did during the holidays.”

“So… should we abort?” Kent asks. “It sounds a lot riskier than we thought…”

No one answers him for a moment. Nick has returned to his evidence board, poring over the connections. Hanco*ck is toying with his mentats tin, a deep, distracted frown etched into his features. Finally, he shoves it into his pocket, turning to Nate. “Let’s take a walk,” he says.

Kent looks between the two of them uncertainly. “I’ll stay here and read the paper?”

Hanco*ck nods, and pulling on his mask with obvious distaste, steps outside. After the cigarette fog of the detective agency, the bracing evening air is both a shock and a relief. Nate draws deep breaths, silently following Hanco*ck until they reach the water’s edge at the far end of the field. It’s nearly dark now, the few clouds inky blots in the fading blue of the sky, and the bowl of the stadium slowly filling with lights. Before them, the empty curve of seats above the water is turning into a wall of darkness.

Hanco*ck wanders a few feet along the reservoir, before finally coming to a halt.

His voice is a low scratch when he speaks. “Our shack was over there. Just at the water front. Cheapest bit of real estate in town. Flooded when it rained too much, stank in summer, mildew all year long. A total sh*thole. Dunno what happened to it… maybe Guy had it torn down when he moved up into his shiny new office. Can’t really blame him if he did. He always said Ma and Da died because they never made it out of there.”

“Where are they buried?”

Hanco*ck doesn’t respond for a moment, as if he hasn’t even heard the question. Then he shrugs. “Folks that can afford it burn ‘em. Cremation. That way the critters don’t get ‘em. Everyone else… they make do with the rubble or the river, and hope for the best. We were capsless when they died. Skint. Ma even had some unpaid debts. But Guy took out another loan to pay for the funeral. Took him almost three years of labor to pay it off.”

There’s anger in Hanco*ck’s voice, thicker than the grief, but also something distant and lost, like he’s remembering a time when he didn’t hate his brother. He visibly shakes himself out of it, expelling his breath in a hiss. “Listen to me… I bet you don’t even know what happened to your folks.”

In Nate’s imagination, they burned in the blasts, in their home… he never went there to make sure, because not knowing the details was easier. Perhaps if they make it through the winter, he’ll go. Say a prayer over whatever remains.

“Nora is still in the vault,” he says. “I thought… the cryopod would preserve her.” For what? He wonders. So Shaun could see his mother’s face? A grisly thought, though he remembers one night, down in the Institute, when he paced his room in a frenzy, almost ready to drag Shaun out of bed and demand that they go to the vault. He wanted to yell at him, beg him to look at her and call her collateral damage to her face.

Now he wonders if Shaun ever went to the vault to look at his parents in their icy coffins, or if deep down, his son was as scared of the sight as he is.

“What the f*ck are we going to do?” Hanco*ck asks in frustration. “One half of my brain is yelling at me to run back to Goodneighbor and forget we ever came here, and the other half says f*ck him, f*ck the assholes in the stands, if they want a revolution, let’s give them one.”

He kicks a chunk of ice. It skids across the rim of ice until it plunges into the water, sending ripples out into the dark.

“What if there’s a peaceful solution?” Nate asks. “Someone could go talk to your brother. Convince him the only way to stay in office is to listen to what the people want.”

Hanco*ck’s head snaps up, his eyes flashing. “Cut a deal with an asshole like him?”

It’s far easier to be sensible, Nate discovers, when it isn’t your own family. “Let’s think about it, at least. Give it until tomorrow, and if you think it’s worth a shot, we can find a way. Nick could watch over the radio station, make sure Kent and Travis are safe, and we could go talk to your brother.”

Hanco*ck is still for a moment, then he tears off his mask and pulls Nate down into a kiss. “You,” he exhales roughly between their lips, breath turning to mist, “you’re the best damn thing that’s ever happened to me. If you think that’s what we oughta do, we’ll do it.”

Nate folds him into a hug, Hanco*ck’s face bent against his collarbone, hidden from view. For a while, that’s all they do, their breathing slowly settling into the same rhythm, warmth pooling between their bodies. Then Hanco*ck’s hands begin to wander. “You know,” he murmurs, “I ain’t getting any sleep tonight either way. What say we leave the old men to catch up and give a big damn f*ck you to the ghoul laws on that queen-size in the Dugout?”

The Bobrovs don’t seem overjoyed to see them again, particularly the older brother, but Hanco*ck only pauses long enough to tell Vadim to give Kent an extra room if he shows up. He slams the door as soon as they’re back in their own room and starts to pull off the rags that hide his features as if there’s a prize to be won for speed. Nate stops him, kissing him and slowly leading him backward to the bed, where he takes his time undressing him, piece by piece. The frantic, hurried fumble turns into something slow and intense. Hanco*ck, propped up on his elbows, is hot under his fingers, his belly taut and shivering with quick, shallow breaths as Nate peels off his pants, revealing more and more of the scarred, mottled surface of his body. The lights here are bright, less forgiving. Nate makes a point of slowly kissing the inside of Hanco*ck’s thighs, the sharp bones of his ankles, the spot just under his jaw that makes him gasp.

He sees the shift, from self-conscious tension, to the moment where Hanco*ck flips them around, pushing down onto Nate’s co*ck with a defiant, fierce grin, reveling in his own nakedness here in the heart of Diamond City. He’s noisy tonight, so noisy Nate is sure they’ll hear him all through the bar, and he knows it’s on purpose. Laughing, he tells Hanco*ck to stop, and when he doesn’t, tumbles him onto his back and finds an angle that disolves those showy moans into something soft and real.

An hour later, he pulls on his clothes, and makes the quick walk over to Nick’s place to fetch Kent. Nick gives him a once-over that undoubtedly reveals exactly what he’s been doing, but keeps his thoughts to himself. They agree to meet in the morning, and one brief, slightly awkward walk with Kent later, Nate dips back into their room.

Hanco*ck is still awake, toying with the pip boy, the one article of clothing he still wears. When Nate comes in, he rolls onto his belly, lewdly wriggling his skinny backside. “How about some sloppy seconds?” he jokes with a glance over his shoulder.

The night doesn’t feel long. They doze for a while, missing the early hours of Christmas Eve, and when they wake again, Hanco*ck jokingly suggests that they forget the whole thing and just stay in bed for another week as a present to themselves.

“Have you thought about talking to your brother?” Nate asks him.

“Been really successful at not doing that until you mentioned it,” Hanco*ck groans, but then he rolls one shoulder back, causing the joint to crack loudly, and says, “Yeah. We’ll do it. Not setting my hopes high, but who the f*ck knows? Let’s play ghosts of Christmas past.”

The bar is surprisingly busy already when they step out of their room in full gear. A slow rendition of the Holly and the Ivy plays on the radio on endless repeat. Perhaps it’s the only surviving record of a Christmas carol, and again Nate wonders who no one is recording new music. But perhaps that’s just Diamond City, desperate to cling to what they have.

Kent, who has successfully faded into a corner, his breakfast untouched in front of him, gets up quickly when he sees them. Together, they make their way to Valentine’s Detective Agency.

Nick approves of their decision to talk to the mayor. He also agrees to stand watch by the radio station. Before he lets them go visit Travis Miles, however, he says he needs to talk to his assistant, who, as it turns out, is watching over Miss Wright’s younger sister in her absence. “Just in case,” he says. “I don’t want Ellie and Nat to get caught in the fray.”

While he’s gone, Kent chatters nervously about the newspaper, which he seems to have been poring over the whole night. Miss Wright has done her homework, collecting every scrap of information about the Silver Shroud’s new exploits one could find, and it seems she has quite literally gone the extra mile to get within reach of Kent’s broadcast to listen to the reruns of interviews he did with Rex and Billy about their rescues.

But that’s not all. She has guessed that the Shroud must be operating out of Goodneighbor, and from there it of course isn’t a far stretch to assume that Kent must be involved somehow - “those of us above a certain age,” she writes, “will of course remember the name Kent Connolly, even if it’s been a long time since we had the chance to listen to the Shroud’s adventures.”

“Isn’t that nice of her?” Kent asks.

Hanco*ck, Nate can tell, is about to say something snide, but he uncharacteristically keeps his mouth shut.

It’s noon by the time Nick finally saves them from having to stew any longer.

*

The little trailer by the waterfront that houses the radio station looks like a bunker to Nate. Kent climbs up to the door with nervous glances over his shoulders, then finally works up the nerve to knock.

There’s no answer. Kent gives them an apologetic shrug and tries again, a little more insistently. A quavering voice from inside responds, “Go away!”

Kent barely dares to raise his voice. “Travis,” he says, leaning close to the metal of the trailer. “It’s me.”

There’s silence, followed by a loud thump, like someone knocking over a piece of furniture, then stubborn silence again.

Kent sighs. “Travis, we’re coming in!”

The door isn’t locked, and there’s no resistance. The trailer barely offers enough space for all of them, and it smells uncomfortably of cold sweat and stale noodles. Travis Miles is a cowering, white-faced wreck of a man - younger than Nate, but already sagging, and staring at all of them with a terrified, hostile expression. “This isn’t,” he gasps, like a man being choked, “I’m not – please leave!”

As soon as Nate pulls the door close behind him, Kent reaches up to remove the gas mask, and Travis freezes. His shaking stops. For an instant, surprise smoothes away the dark bruises under his eyes, but then he shakes his head, flinching backwards in his rolling desk chair. “Oh no,” he breathes. “Kent. Oh god, this isn’t, this can’t be - am I - “

“Hi, Travis.”

“This can’t be happening,” Travis groans frantically. With each word, his voice is growing thicker, closer to tears. “I - oh god - I’m sorry. Kent. It’s really you, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here - ”

“Hey, uh - “ Kent takes a half-step forward, then stops, wavering. “I thought we - we’re still friends, right?”

“I never - I meant to - I should have said something, when they threw you out,” Travis agonizes. “I’m such a coward, god, why are you even - “ He bolts from his seat, suddenly, pushing Kent aside, but he’s too slow for Hanco*ck, who grabs him and pushes him back into his chair.

“Christ on a cracker, ever heard of calmex? Chill, brother. You got reason to feel bad about yourself all right, but we ain’t here to throw a f*cking pity party. Listen to Kent. He’s giving ya a chance to redeem yourself.”

As unkind as his words are, something about Hanco*ck’s verbal assault cuts through the panic attack. Travis sways for a moment, like he might faint, then pulls himself up straight. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m trying. God, this is bad… Kent? Can we - can they - “

“Of course,” Nick says, before Travis even manages to finish his request. “Come and get us when you’re ready.”

The leave, returning to Nick’s place. Again, the hours drag. Nate is starting to sweat inside the heavy armor. Nick is quiet, smoking cigarette after cigarette, calmly watching Hanco*ck pace and fidget and rifle through Nick’s old files. Eventually, the synth turns to Nate and asks,

“So, did you ever…?”

Despite Nick’s complete poker face, Nate immediately knows what he means. He’s been expecting this question since last night. Nick is the one person to whom he actually owes an answer. Perhaps it’s that knowledge, or perhaps it’s the calm, thoughtful way Nick listens, but this time, it’s easier to explain what he found at the Institute. Or perhaps it will be easier with each telling, perhaps it is Nate who is changing, growing less and less brittle, more like Nick himself: compassionate, gentle, human in ways that have nothing to do with what’s under their skin.

He’s telling Nick about the boy, the little synth copy of Shaun, when Kent finally stumbles back into the agency. He’s accompanied by a burst of cold air and tumbling snow, and clearly in a rush: “He said yes! We’re doing it!”

Nick unfolds himself from his chair, shrugging into his trench-coat. At the door, he pauses, touching Nate’s shoulder with a gentle squeeze that is kinder than words or condolences. For Hanco*ck, he has a sterner glance. “You were always the bigger man, John,” he says.

Hanco*ck, shocked by the burden of expectation so suddenly placed on him, says, “Always knew I had ya fooled, Nicky,” and slips out into the late afternoon gloom.

A fresh inch of snow has fallen while they waited for Kent, and the sky is dark with low, heavy clouds. The sound of a choir chimes from the small all-faiths chapel by the market, rising and falling to the tunes of old carols. Nate stops on the ascent to the elevator that’ll take them to the mayor’s office, grasping Hanco*ck’s hand to switch on the pip boy’s radio. There’s a waver of static, then the sound of Travis’s voice, caught in mid-ramble.

“Isn’t it weird?” he asks tremulous but far more confident than earlier. “How, you know, folks get together on nights like this, and you think of all the people who… who’ve gone away? Don’t we all have someone we miss? And you… I know some of you are sitting together, telling stories about the ones we miss. Well, I’ve got a story for you tonight. A story about an old friend, one that we haven’t heard in far too long, and it’s also, you know, a story by an old friend? Oh, wow. Don’t mind me. Just listen to this - uh, did you - did you want to say something?” There’s a crackle, and some rustling, and then the gentle timbre of a ghoul voice, “Merry Christmas, Diamond City.”

A puff of white fog wreaths around Hanco*ck’s face as he exhales. Nate looks up from the pip boy at the shacks in the stadium bowl, the houses climbing the stands, each light a window, a family, perhaps a radio that at this very moment blares the new Silver Shroud opening from its speakers.

Chapter 19: Radio Freedom

Chapter Text

The elevator climbs slowly, creaking and groaning like an old man pulling himself to his feet. It lurches to a stop about halfway to the mayoral office, swinging on the cables. Hanco*ck curses and smacks the button again, and after what seems like an eternity, it resumes its ascent.

It’s built for this purpose, Nate suspects. Stairs would have been easier, but someone wanted to force visitors through this chokepoint of anxious waiting, so that when they finally reach the top, they’re unsettled and relieved at the same time.

The lights are still on inside the building, which at least means that they haven’t made this trip for nothing. He keeps half his attention on the slowly approaching platform, and the other on the receding roofs of Diamond City’s field. There’s some movement there, lights turning off and on inside the crooked shacks. Someone is running across the market, banging on doors, and further down the field, towards the Dugout Inn, neighbors raise their voices in a heated debate.

On the radio, tuned to a whisper, the Shroud’s return to Boston unfolds. The whole episode is just under an hour long, and Nate keeps watching the clock on the pip-boy, his heart skipping a little at each passing minute.

At last, the elevator reaches the platform. Hanco*ck jumps across the divide before the bridge has fully extended and marches with purpose towards the door of the mayoral office.

The guard on watch shifts inside his cobbled-together armor, blocking Hanco*ck’s path at the last moment. “Office hours are over. Go back home if you’ve got one.”

“Funny,” Hanco*ck purrs. “Bet you didn’t think you’d be freezing your ass off all night when you graduated from clown school.”

Nate puts a hand on his lover’s shoulder. “I know it’s late,” he tells the guard. “And Christmas Eve. But we’ve got something very urgent to discuss with the mayor. Trust me, it can’t wait.”

The guard doesn’t even look at him. Instead, he takes an angry step towards Hanco*ck. “Oh yeah? You callin’ me a clown? You wanna say that again and give me cause to have you thrown in jail? Take off that mask so I can see the ugly idiot I’m talking to.”

Nate draws a deep breath, pushing aside the feeling that this is rapidly spiraling out of control. He thinks of the Silver Shroud, always certain, a law unto himself, never bowing to authority, never hesitant. What would the Silver Shroud say? Do you serve the mayor or your city, son? If you want to keep the peace, let us pass -

At that moment, the walkie talkie the guard carries at his hip crackles to life. “Attention security, we’ve got a situation, I repeat, we’ve got a situation on the lower field - “

He doesn’t even see Hanco*ck move. One moment, the guard is reaching for his radio, the next, his head slams against the door and the gun skids across the metal grating of the platform, and Hanco*ck has him pressed against the wall with a knife at his throat. “You got no idea how much trouble you’re in, Frankie. I been wanting to bust your balls since first grade...”

“Who the f*ck are you?” Frank gasps. “You’re never gonna get out alive - “

On the guard’s radio, other voices are chiming in, more and more agitated, asking what’s going on, calling for back-up, and Nate hears someone shout something about the radio station. Hanco*ck twists his knife, a bead of dark blood smudging the blade. There’s no way to salvage this, McDonough is never going to listen, not if they murder this man to get to him. And they don’t have the time - Nick and Kent are clearly in trouble, things are moving much faster than they thought.

Nate throws off the rag cloak he’s worn over the Shroud armor, pulls out the silver gun, and shoving Hanco*ck aside brings it down hard on the guard’s head. The man tumbles back against the door, eyes unfocused, and clings to it for a moment before his knees buckle and he falls to his hands and knees with a pained groan. He’s sick a moment later, the thin puddle of vomit trickling through the gaps in the metal. Nate rips the walkie talkie off his belt. “We need to go back - “

Hanco*ck isn’t listening to him. He pushes open the door, pulling off his own rags and mask as he barges in. “Guy! Guess who’s back from the dead? Stop hiding behind your desk you f*cking coward and come out here - “

Hanco*ck stops abruptly, staring at someone Nate can only see once he follows him inside. A woman. She has just walked in from the other room with a steaming cup and now stands frozen in shock. In front of her, on a very tidy desk, sits a plate of cookies and a radio. It’s playing the Silver Shroud, the volume so low the voices blend into each other, echoing the whisper of the pip-boy. At the sight of Nate barelling in with the machine gun in hand she drops the cup with a soundless gasp.

She wears a pencil skirt and a silky white blouse, now stained with hot chocolate, and her blonde hair is done in an immaculate bob. She looks like something out of the past, one of those mannequins in broken shop windows, and yet Nate remembers her as one of the few kind people he met in this city - he tried to bribe her to get the key to Kellogg’s house, but after listening to his story, she gave it to him for free.

The gun slides his arm on its sling as he lets go of it and slowly lifts his hands in a placating gesture before pulling down his mask. “We’re not here to harm you. Do you remember me?”

McDonough’s assistant collects herself remarkably quickly for a woman threatened by two armed men. “Yes,” she says. “I do remember you. You came here looking for Mr Kellogg and the boy.”

Her expression doesn’t give away whether she also recognizes the costume he’s wearing. But it’s too late to worry about secret identities.

“I never thanked you for your kindness,” Nate nods. “We need to talk to the mayor.”

“He’s not here,” she says with such professionality that Nate isn’t sure whether this is a well-practised lie or the truth.

But the truth convinced her to help him once, so maybe it’ll do so now. “Kellogg,” he says. “He wasn’t just a mercenary. He worked for the Institute. They’re operating right here in city. The mayor needs to listen to us - “

Her perfectly plucked brows lift, vanishing under her fringe. “Ah,” she says, and Nate feels a sudden warning tingle of unease, because that isn’t shock, that’s a revelation, that’s something just clicking into place, and whatever she just figured out worries her deeply.

She knows more than they do.

At that moment, however, the radio broadcast is interrupted by a burst of static, and doesn’t resume. Both the radio and the pip boy are silent except for a flat white noise. Nate waits for it to resume, his breath caught in his throat, then turns to Hanco*ck. “We need to get down there.”

Hanco*ck grinds his teeth but nods. They’re out on the elevator in a moment, but no matter how often Hanco*ck jams the button in frustration, it doesn’t move any faster than it did before.

Down in the stadium, there are more lights on than a moment before. The radio station is hidden behind some of the higher shacks in the center of town, but Nate can see movement in the marketplace, people in the street, a gaggle of them spilling from the chapel and others moving more quickly through the dark alleys, towards the cheap end of town, towards the water reservoir and Travis’s trailer.

They don’t have time for another scenic ride.

“Hold on,” Nate tells Hanco*ck, pulling out the grappling gun and tugging his mask back into place. He jams the grappling hook between the railing of the platform, grabs Hanco*ck around the waist and takes a step back to get the run-up for a jump out of the elevator and a wide swing that’ll carry them down to the nearest roof.

Just then, the secretary appears above them, leaning onto the railing, her thin blouse rippling in the cold wind. “Wait,” Nate hears her call after them just as he makes the jump. “McDonough! He’s at the chapel. If this is about the Institute - I’m not sure you can trust him!”

The line pulls taut, and they zip down, a brief sharp bite of cold rushing against their faces before they tumble down onto a sheet metal roof with so much force the metal bends and rebounds underneath them. Nate’s aim was off by only a few feet, bringing them too close to the edge. He tries to throw himself down onto his side at the last second, hoping to slow their slide, and in doing so, he loses his grip on Hanco*ck and the gun at the same time, just before the momentum carries him across the edge of the edge of the roof. Nate just barely manages to break his fall with a rolling tumble onto the frozen ground and back to his feet - and finds himself in the middle of a crowd of people. They flinch back at his sudden drop from the sky, gasping and shouting in surprise.

It’s a good thing he hasn’t activated the night vision lenses Kent included in the mask, or the bright light all around him would dazzle him even more than the fall already does. He landed right in front of the chapel, Nate realizes, among the spooked churchgoers in their holiday finest.

“He’s got a gun!” a man screams as Nate staggers up from his crouch, and the circle of bodies around him widens as people recoil. It widens, but it doesn’t give him an opening, and he can’t get into a fight here, not if they want this mission to succeed - these people need to like the Silver Shroud. They might not have recognized him yet, but eventually they will.

He’s still caught like a deer in the headlights when a voice from somewhere above them with a familiar ghoulish scratch shouts, “Hey, look, it’s the Silver Shroud!”

The light is too bright to see anything, but there’s a clatter of boots on metal, followed by a faint thump from the back of the chapel. Hanco*ck is running, and leaving him to distract the crowd - a smart choice, but Nate’s heart skips as he faces the staring Diamond City residents, their panic now turning into recognition.

“The Silver Shroud! Here in Diamond City…”

He draws himself up straighter, horribly aware of the fact that he’s not actually the Silver Shroud, he’s not even Rex Goodman, just a guy in a costume - with the gunners, all he did what throw smoke bombs and shoot people, and the mutants were even less likely to care about his performance, but he’s going to have to talk to these people.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s he doing here?”

He needs to act, to talk. The longer he just stands there, the more they’re likely to realize he’s just a guy in a costume, every bit as shocked as they are. It’s hard to see their faces as more than bright blurs, but Nate doesn’t see McDonough anywhere among the congregation.

“Citizens!” he says, wishing he’d taken lessons from Goodman and Kent. “Where is your mayor?”

Immediately a confusion of whispers breaks out. “He wants the mayor!” - “He’s here!” - “No, he left in the middle of the nativity!”

An old woman comes close enough to almost touch Nate, her wizened hand shaking as she lifts it to point. “There’s trouble down on the lower field. Security came and he went to sort it out. I heard everything.”

Another figure steps forward, a dark-skinned man dressed in a rugged version of a pastor’s vestments. He puts a hand on the old lady’s back, looking at Nate as though he can see past the mask. “What is your business with the mayor, son?”

The answer comes from somewhere, an echo of all the discussions he’s had with the members of the future CPG, of the comics he read as a child, of the way Hanco*ck speaks to his people.

“My business is with you,” Nate says. “With the people, not the mayor.”

There’s a sudden silence, the jostling of the crowd easing up, astonishment wherever he looks. This is a city of people used to keeping their heads down, being corralled like cattle inside its walls, treated like children by the government.

And like children, they’re ready to listen to a man in a costume, a hero from the pages of a funny book, come to tell them right from wrong. It’s a heady, intoxicating power suddenly at his fingertips, and he reaches for it, consequences be damned.

“There’s a reporter locked up in your prison for printing the truth. Piper Wright. Your mayor is trying to silence her. Just as he’s trying to silence Travis Miles right now. What happened to freedom of the press? Why doesn’t he trust you people to make up your own minds?”

The longer he looks at the crowd, the more it resolves into individuals, people he’s talked to before, faces and names he dimly remembers. The schoolteacher, the hairdresser, the guy with the baseball obsession, the scrap merchant. Some of them look afraid, as though his questions fall on deaf ears, and all they hear is the oncoming upheaval. But a few are frowning, nodding, thinking, hungry for more.

He’s just about to say more when the sound of a gunshot rips through the night, thunderously loud and close. Echoes of it are thrown back by the stands, but it clearly came from the direction of the radio station.

The words die in Nate’s throat. The sea of people parts for him as he darts off into the direction of the shot and then follows him, but he’s leaving them behind, racing like his life depends on it, skidding and sliding around the narrow turns and alleys, slush spraying where he steps into icy puddles, the shacks a blur around him.

There’s another crowd around Travis’s trailer, but this one consists largely of armed security, with a few gawkers at the edges, mostly the ragged, run-down folk from the Dugout Inn, a few whom look barely sober enough to be on their feet.

In the door of the trailer, flanked by guards with their guns raised threateningly, Nick stands, a fatal expression on his pale synth face as he looks down. Time seems to slow as Nate follows Nick’s gaze.

A few steps on front of the trailer, on his knees in the snow and held at gunpoint by two guards, Kent quivers with his hands raised high and his face unmasked. But Nick isn’t looking at Kent. He’s looking beyond him at something on the ground – and so is everyone else. They’re staring at a body in the snow, small and unassuming, surrounded by a growing pool of blood from a gunshot.

Standing about ten feet from the dying man, shotgun still raised high, is a masked figure.

For a moment, these images jar in Nate’s perception, like pieces of a puzzle that won’t fit. The man on the ground wears a brown suit, he’s balding and pudgy, but still, for a second, perhaps through some familial resemblance, he looks like the ghost of another. And the man holding the gun seems like a perfect stranger, until finally he unfreezes, taking a step back, and Nate understands that it’s not Hanco*ck bleeding out on the ground but McDonough.

Hanco*ck is the one who pulled the trigger. He shot his brother.

“Get him!” one of the guards in the back bellows, but he’s held back by his compatriots closer to the body, who are all staring at it in mute horror.

Nate turns back, and now he sees what they see. There are sparks flying from the wound. Bright electric sparks, electronics among the viscera. It’s a sight Nate remembers only too well, from the day he killed Kellogg.

It’s proof, undeniable and shocking, that Piper Wright was right all along.

Nate pushes past the gawkers, past the guards, until he gets to Hanco*ck. No one pays him any heed, because at that precise moment someone in the back raises their voice and yells at the top of their lungs, “McDonough is a synth!”

Hanco*ck recognizes him. He turns to Nate, his eyes wide behind the mask.

“He ordered them to shoot him,” he says, tonelessly, which doesn’t make sense until Nate glimpses Nick out of the corner of his eyes, shouldering past the guards half-heartedly trying to hold him back and pulling Kent to his feet.

“You’ve got bigger problems,” Valentine tells the two guards who were holding Kent down, and they listen to him with dazed looks, offering no resistance.

“He ordered them to shoot him,” Hanco*ck repeats, anger creeping into his voice at last.

“It’s a synth,” Nate tries to tell him. “That isn’t your brother.”

Hanco*ck doesn’t hear him. His hands have started to shake, the gun slipping from his grasp, and Nate darts in to grab it - they may need it yet. He pulls Hanco*ck along towards Nick, who nods at him and then jerks his chin at the alley that leads to the Dugout, leading Kent in the same direction.

They meet there, and Nick doesn’t waste time or words. “Go,” he tells Nate. “The city needs to sort this out by herself.” To Hanco*ck he adds, with a grave expression, “I’m sorry, John.”

He gets no response, nor does he seem to expect one. After a moment, Nick turns and walks back towards the trailer with purpose, striding straight into the gathering mob, now gaining in number as the folks from the chapel arrive. He seems to be unafraid of them turning against him with another synth revealed in their midst, but his lack of fear is justified. No one attacks him, and a few of the guards even seem too listen, ready to turn to any figure of authority.

At the chapel, only the pastor and the youngest and most elderly of citizens remain. They see Kent, and a few of them gasp and point, but they offer no resistance. Nate ushers the two ghouls up the stairs to the exit, and finds it abandoned, all the guards having been called off their posts. Those squatters that still remain outside are creeping out of their tents, cautiously approaching the empty gates like sluggish moths drawn to a flame. If someone, raiders or mutants or the Brotherhood, wanted to take the city, there’d never be a better time for it. But there’s nothing Nate could do in that case. He has two shell-shocked men to take care of, and what Nick said still rings in his ears, perfectly true.

*

From the outside, the collapsed building looks like no more than a snow-covered heap of rubble. But between two large concrete and rebar walls that have fallen against each other like a house of cards, there’s a sheltered cavern about twenty feet long and just high enough at the center that Hanco*ck and Kent could stand, whereas Nate had to stoop when they first crawled in. The whole place must have been flooded at some point in the past, because there’s a sandy spot in the center, covered in the detritus of past habitation: bent cans and chunks of old coal, a row of three airplane seats, a steel drum half buried in the sand.

They’re right at the riverbank, only a few blocks from Diamond City. They can hear the ice cracking and groaning as large sheets of it drift down the small strip of the river that hasn’t frozen.

If it weren’t pitch black night outside, they’d be within view of the CIT ruins.

Nate didn’t run here on purpose. He got lost trying to get away from Diamond City, and neither ghoul stopped him until they suddenly stood at the river, and Hanco*ck finally emerged from his silent fugue to ask where the hell they were going.

This isn’t much, but it’s a good enough shelter to regroup and catch their breath. Nate drags a few pieces of dry driftwood to the barrel, breaking them over his knees and lighting a small fire, while Kent collapses in a corner with a whimper, hugging his knees to his chest and shivering. Hanco*ck just stands there, like his mind isn’t home right now, and then sits on the old airplane seats like he has lead weights on his limbs.

Nate sits down next to him. It’s hard to tell what emotion churns in Hanco*ck’s silence, whether it’s grief or anger, whether he wants company right now. At first, he tries to give him some space, but they’ve got no blankets or bedrolls, and after a few minutes of sitting still, even the Shroud armor doesn’t offer enough protection against the freezing temperature.

Hanco*ck doesn’t resist him when he edges closer and puts an arm around him, pulling him into a closer huddle. The ghoul just mutters something under his breath, his voice husky and barely audible.

“That wasn’t your brother,” Nate says again, after holding him for a while.

He means to comfort him with that, but Hanco*ck twitches in his embrace with a toneless laugh. “Yeah. Funny. All these years, ‘n I was blaming him for sh*t he didn’t do.”

“You couldn’t have known. He fooled everyone.”

“Everyone, right? Used to think… why didn’tcha find a way to talk to him! You’re his brother, if anyone coulda made him stop…” Hanco*ck closes his eyes, shaking his head. “Turns out it was worse ‘n that. All I needed to do was figure out it weren’t him.”

They don’t know when McDonough was replaced by the synth, Nate thinks. It might well have been after his election, making the ghoul laws the real McDonough’s invention. Maybe Hanco*ck has never actually interacted with the synth replacement. But there’s no use in pointing that out to Hanco*ck, who’ll realize as much once he stops berating himself. No use, and no comfort, because either Hanco*ck wasn’t able to tell the difference between his brother and the synth, or his brother was a terrible person quite without the Institute’s interference. But possibilities are bad.

Nate notices Kent watching them, most of his face hidden behind his arms, still curled around his knees, peeking at them with wide blue eyes. He looks sorry for Hanco*ck, but too shy to offer his own words of comfort.

“What happened at the station?” Nate asks Kent.

Kent’s gaze dips, as if it’s something to be ashamed of. “We started playing the episode. Travis did real good, too. We got… hmm… to the part where the Shroud saves the caravan, then there was a knock on the door. Loud. Security, they said. We… we heard Nick talking to them outside. They said they had orders straight from - from the mayor, though. There was a real loud bang, and they broke in the door, and made us stop the broadcast. Travis - he - he shouted at them. I’ve never seen him so angry! It was like - like a fuse blew. Like panic, but angry. They knocked him down and started beating him, and I - I took off my mask.” He shudders, making himself even smaller. “I just wanted it to stop.”

Nate feels Hanco*ck straighten at his side, and finds his expression changed as he watches Kent. It’s no longer the affectionate but rough way he usually treats him, but sympathy, respect, even a sad kind of pride. He’s been where Kent was.

“Yeah,” is all Hanco*ck says, but Kent hears the meaning behind that single utterance and flushes, ducking his head.

“They dragged me out of the station,” Kent tells Nate, a little bolder now. “That was when McDonough got there. He was furious! Called the guards cretins and other bad things for letting a ghoul slip past them. He ordered them to execute me on the spot, because I disrespected his laws, and that my presence there was a danger to everyone. Nick said there was no precedent for shooting an unarmed man or execution without trial and besides, didn’t they recognize me, I wasn’t a danger to anyone. I think… I think some of the guards would have listened to him, you know, because Nick is always so… but McDonough said he’d fire any man who disobeyed his orders. Put them out of work in the middle of winter. Throw them out of the city with their whole family. Then Hanco*ck - he saved my life. A moment later, and I would have been toast.”

“Never again,” Hanco*ck murmurs. “Kept thinking that as I pulled the trigger.”

Kent swallows. “Thank you. It was… it was even braver than when you fought Vic, in my book.”

Nate knows from experience that the full force of Kent’s hero worship is something difficult to endure, and still, he adds his own voice to it, tighting his hold on Hanco*ck. “It was the right thing to do.”

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says, but clearly that’s not much of a consolation. He digs into his pockets, and pulls out a small leather pouch, shaking two pills into his palm, turns away from Nate so he won’t have to look him in the face. These pills look bigger than his usual mentats, perhaps something entirely different that’s not readily available anywhere but his personal stash. He shudders a little as he moves to swallow them, but at the last second, he closes his hand to a bony fist and tosses them into the fire.

“f*ck this sh*t. This is why I didn’t see it.”

It should be a victory, this refusal to run and hide, a major moment of self-awareness, but it’s also Hanco*ck at his most furious, all that destructive force turned inward. He sits still for a while, hunched and tense, and then curls against Nate, hiding his face against his shoulder.

“Let’s take an hour,” Nate says. “I’ll take watch.”

Kent curls up against some of the rubble, almost blending with the scenery. He seems to fall asleep quickly, whereas Hanco*ck takes a while, shifting and tense, until he slackens in Nate’s hold, exhausted and dead to the world. Nate keeps his arm around him.

The driftwood burns to red coals and then turns black, leaving only a glimmer of light and warmth. Nate’s gaze is drawn to the white snow outside the mouth of their cavern, the distant dark band of the river, the front of ruins beyond.

The pip boy is right there, still on Hanco*ck’s wrist. It’s strange that it’s Nate and not Hanco*ck who’s thinking of revenge right now. He thought his lover was the one with a temper, but it seems Hanco*ck is laying all the blame at his own feet.

Holding him, feeling the slackness of his body, the pain and defeat, remembering Kent on his knees in the mud, Nate feels a kind of anger for them that he last felt when he killed Kellogg. All it would take is pressing a few buttons, and he could sit here and wait for the Brotherhood to arrive with their vertibirds and their shock troops and watch them destroy what tore apart both of their families. He imagines clouds of fire and dust, facing the shockwave this time instead of running underground. It would sweep through him, burn him like the fire that burned through the city, through the world.

Hanco*ck doesn’t resist when Nate carefully lifts his arm, switching on the pip boy. He only stirs and burrows deeper into the silk of the scarf at the sound of the tape being loaded.

It’s not what Nate wants. What he wants is for Shaun to be here right now, to walk up to him and look him in the face and tell him that he’s done feeling guilty about what happened to his baby son. Look at this. Look at what you’re doing, he wants to say to Shaun. You’re making me want to kill you, and I would have died for you a thousand times over.

A message springs up on the display, startling him. They’ve just picked up a new radio signal. He recognizes the frequency - it’s the one the Minutemen settlement beacons use.
It seems like a curious coincidence. Like a wanderer, lost in the wilderness, suddenly spotting the light of a welcoming hearth. It reminds him of that night he spend in the dark, chained to chair by the Railroad, facing his own demons until they faded to nothing. A Christmas miracle.

Nate scrubs his eyes, driving away that burning sensation. He tunes the radio to that frequency, dialing down the volume so the others won’t be disturbed. There’s a barely audible whine of static, then a voice, agitated and familiar. It’s Sturges, barely recognizable as he’s shouting:

- FORCES ARE MOVING TOWARDS GOODNEIGHBOR, WE’RE FACING AN IMMINENT ATTACK. I REPEAT, GOODNEIGHBOR IS UNDER ATTACK. - - MAYDAY, MAYDAY, CALLING ALL MINUTEMEN AND ALLIES, CALLING THE SILVER SHROUD. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. GUNNER FORCES ARE MOVING TOWARDS GOODNEIGHBOR, WE’RE FACING AN IMMINENT ATTACK. I REPEAT - -

Nate shakes himself out of a paralyzing shock and grabs Hanco*ck, shaking him, too. “Wake up! We got to go!”

He’s seen Hanco*ck wake up many times now, and the ghoul is always slow in the morning, as if it takes hours for his body to remember it’s supposed to be alive. But now he’s on his feet in seconds, his knife in his hand, a blind snarl pulling back his lips. He doesn’t even seem to recognize Nate.

Feral, Nate’s mind flashes in warning, he looks feral - but even as he thinks this, he’s already moving, seizing him by his shoulders and shaking him again, the knife wedged between their chests.

“Goodneighbor,” Nate barks, in the hope that that’ll wake him up properly. “Hanco*ck, snap out of it! Goodneighbor is under attack by the gunners!”

A sliver of reason returns to Hanco*ck black eyes. He shoves Nate off. “Then what are ya waitin’ for? Let’s go!”

It takes them only seconds to gather their things and move out, dragging a groggy Kent along. But they’re an hour’s walk away from Goodneighbor. In combat time, an hour is an eternity. Nate keeps the distress beacon playing on the radio at low volume as they fight their way against the cold and the wind. He hopes for a change in the message, any new intel, even bad one. How close were the Gunners when Sturges sent the signal? How many? Are Fahrenheit’s traps on the overpass going to help any, or are they taking a different route?

He can’t help but think of Preston, of the way he could never quite speak himself of Quincy, of what happened there when the Gunners attacked.

An attack on Christmas Eve. How damned evil do you have to be?

“It’s a good thing you had that party early,” Nate gasps as they make their way down into the subway tunnels. He’s grasping at straws. “Folks are going to be back on their feet.”

Hanco*ck shakes his head. His rage has simmered down, turning grim. “You think my f*cking town ain’t gonna celebrate twice given the opportunity? No. They been caught with their pants down, I betcha.”

He’s forging ahead, in a loping run, shotgun in his hands, charging through the dark tunnels like nothing is going to hold him back. He and Kent are moving easily through the dark, and Nate makes do using the mask’s night vision lenses, and hoping like hell he won’t stumble over a frozen feral and break his neck. He keeps his eyes on the ground, so when Hanco*ck suddenly stops, lifting his shotgun to take aim, Nate nearly crashes into him from behind.

There’s a dim light in the tunnel ahead of them and the flickering shades it frames look for a second like the twisted, choppy movements of ferals, but at the last second, Nate grabs Hanco*ck’s arm and pulls down the gun. “Fahrenheit’s evacuation plans!” he hisses.

Hanco*ck is stiff under his touch, his eyes reflecting the dim light with an animal glare. Then suddenly he softens, muttering something surprised under his breath, and Nate sees what he sees: striding ahead of a group of scared settlers and Goodneighbor denizens, sighting through his rifle scope, is the familiar figure of MacCready.

He notices them at the same time. They cross the distance between them in a jog, their boots kicking up old dust that dances in the cones of light cast by a latern that Jun Long holds in a trembling grip. Marcy is also with them, holding the rear with her hunting rifle, as well as Billy, Mama Murphy, their ragged upstairs neighbors, Rex Goodman, Magnolia and Irma, barely recognizable in thick, bulky parkas, Dr. Amari and a couple of sickly-looking drifter types.

Billy immediately lunges at Nate, delivering a crushing hug at waist height before pushing off again and trying not to look scared. “You came! I knew you would come!”

“Where’s everyone else?” Nate asks them.

People start talking all at once, but what he gathers from their confused account is that everyone who can fight has chosen to stay behind to defend Goodneighbor - Codsworth, Preston, Jake and Sturges, Strong, even folks like Daisy took up guns.

“That don’t include you, huh, MacCready?” Hanco*ck asks.

MacCready throws up his hands, palms out. “Hey, woah, chill out. I’ll point my gun wherever you want if you pay the right price, but I’m not going down in a blaze of glory. Sure, you’ve got a lot of bodies fighting, and some heavy hitters like Strong and that assaultron. They’ll be able to hold the wall for a couple of hours. But whatever you got, the gunners got more of it.”

“He was going to run either way,” Marcy spits. “So your henchlady paid him to take us with him. But you know what? I’m done running. If you’re going back to Goodneighbor to fight, I’m coming with you.”

“We are, sister,” Hanco*ck tells her. “Right now. I’m done chattin’. See you in hell, MacCready.”

MacCready rolls his eyes, but he does look kind of uncomfortable, and a little bit hurt. Nate stoops to hug Billy back, pressing him firmly against his chest and tells him, “Be safe, kid.”

When he rises again, MacCready is staring at them, a deeply conflicted look on his face. “Aw, sh - - ucks,” he mutters, then runs after Hanco*ck, who is already a few yards ahead.

“Wait, Hanco*ck! There’s something you need to know. I wasn’t going to get involved, but… you know how this crazy m… mungo here went and blew up a bunch of gunner bosses when he freed the kid? Well, I’ve been keeping an ear on the ground, and it seems like the guy who’s trying to be the new boss is a total, uh, you know. His name’s Clint. Your friends from Quincy know him. From what I’ve heard, Clint’s a hardliner, he’s not going to back off no matter what you do. Cares more about fame than caps. But I know his second in-command. Guy called Harlan. He’s a merc through and through, likes having gunner equipment, but if you make him a better offer, he won’t go to war.”

Hanco*ck turns on his heels, cold fury twisting his features. “Are you suggesting,” he asks in a quiet, tight voice, “that I negotiate with the f*ckers who are attacking my town?”

Next to him, Marcy gives MacCready a withering glare of contempt. “Once a gunner, always a gunner. Why are we even listening to him?”

It’s a strange. A month, two months ago, Nate wouldn’t have tried to join the argument. He’d have followed Hanco*ck into the fray, gladly, even knowing the likelihood that they’ll end up dead. It wasn’t just that he had nothing to live for, that deep down, he longed for an ending. He didn’t think he had something worth saying, an opinion worth voicing. It was so easy to get swept away by the force of Hanco*ck’s manic, violent energy.

Now, he steps in, and the calm he feels is reason, not apathy. “Wait. MacCready might have a point. If we can turn the gunners against each other, this doesn’t have to turn into a Hail Mary. Are you saying you know how we can make contact with this Harlan?”

“See, this guy gets it,” MacCready says, crossing his arms defensively. “Why get your hands dirty when you’ve got other options? Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea what their tactics are gonna be. Bet you fifty caps Clint’s up on the skybridge, firing rockets. Harlan is going to be street level, behind the lines, coming at Goodneighbor from the west or the south. Everyone knows that’s where your walls are the weakest.”

At that moment, the distant thunder of an explosion rolls along the tunnel, shaking dust from the cracks. “We haven’t got time for this!” Marcy shouts angrily.

“We split,” Nate suggests to Hanco*ck. “You and I go talk to Harlan. If he doesn’t listen, it’s still a chance to strike at them from the back, where they don’t expect us. MacCready, you get a line of sight on Clint. Keep your radio on. Marcy, Kent, you get these folks out safely.”

MacCready and Marcy both turn to Hanco*ck, who visibly balks at everything Nate just said. But then he nods. “Yeah. Okay. I’d rather be throwing molotov co*cktails at their asses, but it looks like Goodneighbor’s got plenty of that already. So let’s go… negotiate.”

They break from the group, moving on at a fast jog until they reach the subway exit closest to Goodneighbor. At the surface, they split, MacCready taking off for the nearest building with a decent view from the roof, and the two of them on the look for the gunner forces let by Harlan. On the radio, MacCready keeps up a hushed commentary of instructions, telling Nate what Harlan looks like and where he’s most likely to be.

It turns out he’s correct: there’s a squad of gunners taking cover behind the wall of rubble blocking the road to Goodneighbor’s west gate. One of them is in an incomplete set of T-51 power armor, but the helmet is missing, and from behind, the wearer looks like a woman.

The gunner that actually fits MacCready’s description of Harlan, a burly, short guy with a big salt and pepper moustache and none of the usual gunner tattoos, is holed up in the vandalized diner a few feet away, busying himself with a bunch of portable radios, a missile launcher resting against the broken soda fountain next to him.

From where they are, more than a hundred yards down the road from the gunners, they can only see the outer edges of a few Goodneighbor buildings. There’s a smoky haze above the town, limned with flickers of red. Neither the gate nor the skybridge is within view, but they can hear the sounds of fighting none the less - machine gun fire and the earth-shaking boom of grenades. Now and then there’s a red flash of a laser rifle being fired, or the deep, angry roar of a mutant.

The gunners on their side are not taking many risks - they’re mostly staying behind cover, except for the one in power armor, who keeps making small forays, drawing fire from the folks on the wall, and then retreating back behind the rubble after taking a few shots at them.

Nate is still taking stock, trying to figure out the best way to get to Harlan without being gunned down, when Hanco*ck suddenly moves. He darts forward, out of their cover behind a bus station and down the old sidewalk, a thin, quick figure moving with the silent grace of a shadow and not an ounce of fear.

When he’s within twenty feet, he stops and takes aim, firing his shotgun.

It’s a single shot, not aimed at any of the mercs, but at one of the big crates they’ve brought with them, stacked with frag grenades, carefully insulated with cloth and straw. The explosion is instant and devastating. It hits all of the gunners and even Hanco*ck catches a good deal of shrapnel, even as he dives behind a rusting dumpster. The T-51 is the only thing left standing, and through the smoke, Nate sees it teeter precariously as it turns. He doesn’t wait. Whatever the hell Hanco*ck was thinking, if that T-51 comes at him, he’s dead.

Instead of trying to hit her, he fires the silver submachine at a patch to her left, running from cover with his coat trailing him in a big dramatic swoop, a target she won’t be able to miss even through the smoke.

He hears her scream a wordless curse, and feels the pat-pat-pat of the bullets hitting his armored side as he drops down into a roll behind a rusting car. It’s one smooth motion, propelling him straight back to his feet on the other side, and he comes up behind the car just in time to see Hanco*ck stick his knife into her neck half a dozen times as she goes limp inside her metal coffin.

Nate jogs over to them, but Hanco*ck doesn’t pause. He pulls out his knife in a spurt of blood and marches into the diner. There, grabs the radio from a wide-eyed, gaping Harlan, and tosses it into a corner behind the jukebox.

“You’re lucky, bitch,” Hanco*ck hisses. “We’re not here to cut you up.”

It dawns on Nate that up until today, he has never seen how exactly Hanco*ck has earned his questionable fame among the Commonwealth. Hanco*ck hasn’t gone off the script: this is exactly what he meant by negotiation.

Harlan tries to back away from Hanco*ck, and nearly trips over the missile launcher, sending it rolling noisily across the tiled floor. “Who - who the hell - “

Nate stays a step behind Hanco*ck, looming in his mask and dark costume. Judging by Harlan’s bulging eyes, horrified with recognition, he was there that night at Ticker Tape Lounge when the Shroud took down Bullet and the gunner elite. “You know me, Harlan,” Nate says in his most gravelly voice. “And you’ve probably heard of Hanco*ck.”

“Christ,” Harlan croaks.

Hanco*ck, even without his coat and hat, is a sight to behold. There’s blood dripping down the side of his ghoulish face, and instead of wiping it away, he tips back his head and sucks it from the corner of his mouth, spitting it at Harlan’s feet. “Yeah. You’re in deep sh*t. And I’m here to show ya the path out of it. Up on the skybridge, that’s some nobody called Clint, right?”

Harlan says nothing for a moment. He looks at them as if they’re both madmen, and he isn’t sure whether answering their questions is actually going to save him from getting murdered like the rest of his squad. He’s scared, but recovering from the first shock of the assault with the speed of a veteran, already thinking of ways to save his neck. Slowly, he reaches into his breast pocket, pulling out a cigar, rolling it between his fingers without lighting it.

“Yeah, that’s Clint. Colonel Clint, since his sudden promotion. You wanna talk to him about a ceasefire, there’s the radio.”

“No,” Hanco*ck says, and now he’s grinning, which makes his expression even grislier. “We wanna talk to you, Harlan. Word on the street is, you could be the next gunner brigadier.”

“Could be, yeah,” Harlan says. But he’s just going along with it, not actually convinced. “I got seniority over Clint.”

“Things happen so fast, in combat. He might catch a sudden case of lead poisoning.”

Harlan seems to choke on something, as if he can’t believe what he just heard, but he reigns the coughing in quickly. “Uh-huh. Sure. And you need hired gun for that, huh? Silver Shroud not enough? Well, you’ll have to be real convincing. I’m talking two thousand or bust.”

That was a lot easier than expected, Nate thinks, now he just has to take Hanco*ck’s word that he’ll get paid - but Hanco*ck laughs in the gunner’s face. “Don’t try me, asshole. We ain’t here to hand over cash and watch you run off into the hills. No. We got a long-term deal for ya. We get rid of your man Clint, and you call off this operation. Then you get to go home and celebrate the fact that you just became leader of your outfit.”

“Interesting,” Harlan says, and now he’s starting to look like he’s actually thinking about it.

But Hanco*ck keeps talking, his tone slipping effortlessly from threatening to something smoother, something reasonable, like he’s talking to an equal, someone who understands. “So the Shroud gunned down some of your guys. Occupational hazard, am I right? You’re f*cking mercs, not raiders, aren’tcha? Well I don’t see any customers paying for any of this.”

“Yeah,” Harlan huffs. “That’s what I said.” He looks past Hanco*ck at his dead comrades, grimacing. “Knew it was gonna be a sh*tshow.”

“I know a few mercs,” Hanco*ck tells him. “Your old pal MacCready, for example. He’s been quite comfortable on my retainer. The good ones, the ones who last in this game, they don’t sh*t where they eat. You’ve been around the block a few times, I can tell. You can feel the tide turning in this place. It’s either the Brotherhood of f*cking Steel, or us freaks. Who do you think is more likely to go into business with you?”

It’s not the deal that convinces Harlan. It’s Hanco*ck’s confidence in it, his vision, the smooth way he places his hooks and then hauls Harlan into the boat with them. “MacCready, huh,” Harlan finally says, and it’s as good as a handshake from him.

Hanco*ck flicks up the volume on the pip-boy. “Say hello, Mac.”

“Hi!” MacCready says brightly, “How’s it hanging, Harlan?”

Harlan leans in, gawking at the pip-boy, then shakes his head in a mix of awe and disgust. “Let me guess. This is how you take Clint out of the equation?”

“Who else do you think is gonna make that shot?” MacCready brags.

That cinches it, Nate can tell. He didn’t trust them before: the gunners are hated, and for good reason. They probably all sleep with one eye open. But MacCready is proof that Hanco*ck gives second chances to those that change their tune.

“Do it, kid,” Harlan grunts.

“What Brigadier Harlan said,” Hanco*ck adds smoothly.

There’s no immediate reply. MacCready is taking aim, and taking his time, too, like a true professional. Harlan mutters under his breath, and finally lights his cigar, puffing nervously. Then suddenly the crack of a rifle rings so loud it nearly shatters the weak speakers, and five seconds later, MacCready whoops in triumph, and places a second shot. “Yeah, baby!”

Chuckling and shaking his head, Harlan walks over to the radio Hanco*ck threw into a corner and picks it up. He turns up the volume as well, tuning for a moment, and they’re assaulted by a cacophony of voices all shouting and talking at once - Clint has gone down, his body, with the armor, dropped into the alley below, and no one’s sure who’s in charge now, or where the shot came from.

Harlan barks his call sign into the radio, calling them to order, then tells them to retreat. There’s some confusion, requests of confirmation, but no argument.

“You got yours,” Harlan tells Hanco*ck. “Going to stab me in the back now?”

Hanco*ck wants to do it. Nate can see it, the need for violence, writ as ugly on his features as the craving for chems a few hours ago. He remembers that first night in Goodneighbor, when they returned from Sanctuary. The party, the guy who challenged Hanco*ck. How he stood there, holding the man down while Hanco*ck gutted him.

Harlan, though, isn’t shouting and raging at Hanco*ck. He stands there calmly, dragging on his cigar, waiting for it. Down the street, a distant, savage cheer rings out: Goodneighbor realizing the gunners are retreating.

“You did it,” Nate tells Hanco*ck.

They’ve got an audience and appearances to keep up. For Harlan’s sake, Nate doesn’t say it out loud: you couldn’t save your brother, but you did save your town. Again. Diamond City and Goodneighbor, tonight you saved them both. Let’s go home without more killing.

He doesn’t know how much of that Hanco*ck reads in his masked expression, but after a second, he wipes the knife on his dark cloak and shoves it back into its sheath. “Remember this,” he tells Harlan with a show of teeth.

*

Goodneighbor is in disarray when they walk in the front gate. There are scorch marks along the walls of the State House, and one of the shacks along the wall has been completely torn apart by an explosion, but the most visible scar is the blackened, smoking husk of the building above Daisy’s shop. The heat of the fire still hasn’t completely dissipated, hitting them like a smoldering, invisible wall alongside a terrible smell that Nate instantly remembers from the war: burned human flesh.

Most people are still holed up inside the buildings, but a few are already hurrying through smoke-filled streets. KL-EO is stalking about on her metal feet, the muzzle of her laser still glowing, and the neighborhood watch is busy throwing snow onto the ruined shack to keep the wall from catching fire.

In front of Daisy’s shop there’s a small cluster of people, Preston and Jake among them, and after second, Nate spots Daisy to his relief. She’s seems unharmed, just a little singed, but she’s wiping her eyes when she rises to greet them.

On the ground, stretched out in a wet, filthy puddle, is an enormous green body. At least, some parts of him are still green. Strong’s arms are burned up to his elbows, and his legs and feet are clumps of bloody, charred meat.

Hanco*ck utters a soft curse when he sees the full extent of Strong’s injuries, but then moves on to find Fahrenheit. Nate stays, though, because Daisy is holding on to his arm like he’s the only thing keeping her on her feet. “Oh, it’s good to see you, honey,” she sighs. “What a night!”

“It was you,” Preston says over her shoulder, and as he looks at Nate, his tired, soot-smeared features slowly soften a grin. “You got the gunners off our backs!”

“You have MacCready and Hanco*ck to thank for most of that,” Nate says. “We ran into MacCready and the others in the tunnels on our way back here, convinced him to help fight the gunners… what happened here?”

Preston pulls off his hat, dusting off the soot. “Honestly, I lost track. We sent everyone who couldn’t fight down the tunnels with MacCready before the gunners even got past the traps Fahrenheit set for them on the skybridge. Then they started shooting missiles and picking off everyone who tried to get a shot at them.”

He asks if they brought the other back with them, and when Nate explains that they left them in the tunnels, Preston immediately tells Jake to take Codsworth and Dogmeat and bring them back. The kid hesitates for a second, looking unhappy about something, but then salutes Preston and leaves in a hurry.

“They kept bombarding us,” Daisy shudders. “So many missiles and grenades… I thought we were going to burn down, like the firestorms after the bombs hit. A couple of the boys were up on the roof of my house, shooting at the bridge. They got hit real bad. Fahrenheit ordered the watch to put out the flames, even if they had to cross the square to get snow - that girl knows about fire, she knew we’d all be dead in minutes if it caught on. Some of her boys are at Dr. Amari’s now with burns, along with the other wounded. But Strong here…”

“He did most of the heavy lifting,” Preston says. “Kept going right back into the fire with barrels full of snow, like he didn’t know pain.”

Daisy sniffles again, wiping at her face. “You know, honey, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see him go down in battle, like one of those horrible suiciders. But he went down for the settlement. Like he understood.”

Nate isn’t entirely sure what she means, but he doesn’t ask her. When Preston tries to comfort her with a gentle pat to the shoulder, she falls into his arms, and Nate watches as Preston’s awkward hug gradually turns into something more natural, warm and reassuring, as if only now that he holds her Preston fully realizes that tonight didn’t end like Quincy for them.

*

There are six funerals throughout the day. Two members of the neighborhood watch who went down in valiant action, and a third who died not much later in Dr Amari’s care. A member of the Railroad who heard the Minutemen’s call to action and joined them in the defense and one of Fahrenheit’s scouts, who was caught on the bridge, her body tossed down by the gunners in mockery. And finally Strong, whose massive body takes longest to be consumed by the flames. It’s late by then, the black smoke rising into the last reds of sunset, and most Goodneighbor residents are deep into their cups after hours of drinking against the cold and the loss and the smell of burning flesh.

But even the drunks fall silent when Rex Goodman steps forward to speak solemn words over the pyre.

“I converted this creature to my cause entirely by mistake,” he says. “His, not mine. Strong misunderstood a line from the Scottish play, twisted the words of the bard to suit his own strange view of the world. ‘Yet do I fear thy nature,’ Lady Macbeth says, ‘it is too full of the milk of human kindness.’ Strong took her cynical words at face value. To him, that milk of human kindness was the secret of our strength, an actual material substance that he might one day find and consume, to become fearful like us - and I humored him in that belief because I was in rather desperate need of a friend at the time.”

“Yeah,” someone shouts from the back row. “Ol’ greenskin would drink any old sh*t you gave him. Real buddy, he was!”

Rex deigns the interruption with a thin smile, then continues, “Only after we were freed, when I had the chance to observe him as he tried to fit in here, did I understand that perhaps Strong was wiser in his ignorance than I with the sum of my education. Because human kindness is the secret of our strength, and it does make us formidable. Let me put it another way… another great visionary of the past coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’, and that is what we, today, here, are living proof of. Every one among us here is a survivor only because of the human capacity for kindness and cooperation, because of gifts and sacrifices passed down by every generation since the fall of the bombs, because of people like Strong. Let us never forget that anything with the capacity to grasp that extended hand is one of us - that just as we can make monsters of humans by denying them this, we sometimes can also make humans of monsters by sharing these gifts.”

There’s a moment of sluggish silence after this, stunned, intoxicated stares, and then a growing trickle of applause led by the more sober members of the community. When it dies down, Hanco*ck gets up from the privileged seat on one of the benches that he has claimed. The mere promise of him talking rouses the drunken masses to much more enthusiastic cheers, but he waves them down, shaking his head.

He’s a short guy, and everyone who isn’t in the inner circle around the fire probably only sees the tip of his hat. But his voice carries despite the ghoulish crack, the way it always does. “I’ll make it short, brothers, because any longer, and my ass is going to freeze to that bench, and ‘sides, you just heard a real orator and I’m afraid some of you are still lucid enough to make the comparison, right? You did real good. Everyone. You gave them hell, like they deserved. And you did it all without me.”

Across the square, someone speaks up from the shelter offered by one of the warehouse entrances. It’s Marowski, flanked by his triggermen goons. “Don’t be too modest now,” he says. “You negotiated the ceasefire with the gunners, Hanco*ck.”

There’s just a hint of possible criticism in his tone, like a person could possibly take offence, if they wanted to, by the fact that Hanco*ck was willing to make peace with the gunners.

But Hanco*ck doesn’t play Marowski’s game. “Yeah,” he says. “I sweet talked some mercs into pointing their guns the other way. And if that’s what’s needed, well, this silver tongue is yours, Goodneighbor. Now and forever.”

He stresses the word tongue is a thoroughly inappropriate way, garnering hoots and cheers. Marowski can’t compete with the way they love him. But Hanco*ck turns in a half circle, facing each person within view.

“The rest though. Keepin’ cool heads, keeping everyone safe, fighting for your freedom - you did that without me. All of you. I think it’s time to make it formal. Goodneighbor’s never had a proper election, but come spring, that’s what we’re gonna have. Everyone who was here last night, everyone who survived with us, gets a vote.” A clamor rises immediately, with people pleding fealty, vowing to vote for no one but Hanco*ck, but he waits for it to die down with a crooked grin, and then says, “I’m not running. Find someone else. This town is full of smart, capable, fun folks. Pick someone. Run for office, if ya feel like it. And yeah, that includes you, Marowski. Let’s see how many votes you can get with bribes and threats.”

Marowski stares at him, then shakes his head, and leaves for Hotel Rexford. Most other people remain, waiting for more from Hanco*ck, confusion and excitement spreading in the crowd.

“Go home,” Hanco*ck tells them. “That’s what I’m doing.”

It’s a bit of a struggle to get back to the State House with people rushing him trying to get in a word, but Hanco*ck doesn’t break a sweat until they’re inside, the doors closing behind them. In the dark of the hallway, he finds Nate’s hand and squeezes it so hard it hurts, then pulls him down into a shaky kiss.

“Are you sure?” Nate asks, with a wondering smile. He didn’t expect this, and Hanco*ck, he suspects, didn’t plan it at all, and his panicked expression now is a little funny.

“No,” Hanco*ck gasps, and collapses against Nate’s chest with laughter. “But I just did it, didn’t I? That really happened, I’m not having jet flashbacks, right?”

Chapter 20: Last Rites

Chapter Text

Big white ice floes fill Boston Harbor. In some places, the water has iced-over completely, the ice reflecting the weak mid-winter sun like a mirror. Where they stand, a trickle of warmer water from the sewers has thawed the ice and dark water laps sluggishly at the docks.

Fahrenheit said they only needed to take the body a few blocks away from Goodneighbor, far enough that the scavenging mutants it might attract won’t cause problems. But Preston had kept dragging it along, sweating in his heavy winter clothes, his face locked in a grimace of determination.

After peeling the gunner out of his power armor, which KL-EO said she could repair or at least strip for parts, nobody wanted to waste fire wood or gasoline on the dead gunner. Preston stared at him for a long time and said nothing. But the next day, after all the funerals were over and done with and Fahrenheit said it was time to take out the trash, he was the one who volunteered.

He quietly accepted Nate’s offer of help. Coming with Preston wasn’t entirely unselfish - Hanco*ck’s office is a madhouse after his unexpected announcement the night before, and the man himself is getting increasingly crabby without his mentats to coast him through the hard work of calming down Goodneighbor’s constituents. Throughout all of it, Fahrenheit loomed like a storm cloud: she hadn’t yet chewed out Hanco*ck for not giving her a fair warning, but Nate is certain she was only waiting to be alone with him. He’s glad to get out of there for a little while.

Preston is staring out at the icy, glittering distance of the Atlantic, not towards the shadow of the airship that hangs frozen over the airport, but to the south-east, towards Fort Independence.

The fort used to be the Minutemen’s base of operation, he says. And then he starts talking, about the castle, about the last few generals, about the glory days of the Minutemen. His voice remains flat, like it all happened to another man. But then he talks about the end. He talks about Quincy, about the betrayals, not just from opportunists like Clint, but from all the people who didn’t answer their cry for help, all the settlements who turned away the refugees.

Perhaps Nate was to wrapped up in his own thoughts to see it, or deceived by Preston’s helpful, friendly demeanour, but he never before realized how little Preston has told him about himself, how much he has glossed over his past. How close Preston has come to losing all those shining ideals he’ll so happily endorse even to a total stranger who was barely listening to him when they first met.

“That’s why I didn’t want to be general,” Preston admits. “When I gave up hope… when I lost my faith in us, it felt like another betrayal of what the Minutemen stood for. But maybe…”

“Maybe you were too hard on yourself?” Nate suggests, smiling.

Preston tucks away a reticent smile of his own, and nods.

They heave the body into the water together. It goes under with a splash and bobs back to the surface, bloated with decomposition despite the freezing cold. Hardly a dignified way to bury a man, and yet Nate suspects that’s why they came all this way: it’s better than leaving Clint to rot in the street. It feels like a small but final victory, not against the dead, but against apathy and despair, against that loss of faith that Preston just talked about.

As they walk back to Goodneighbor together, Preston says, “I’m going to Diamond City.”

That’s not a surprise, but Nate still claps his shoulder and grins, happy that Preston has made that decision so quickly. He’s needed in Diamond City after the recent upheavals. They’ve been following the radio since yesterday, when the broadcasting resumed. Travis is back on air, still as neurotic as ever but with a different energy, more urgent, less vague. But they’ve also heard Piper Wright speak upon her release from prison, and McDonough’s assistant Geneva, and Pastor Clements, all recounting the events of Christmas Eve and giving their opinion of McDonough, and the Institute, and Silver Shroud’s role in all of it.

They said there’s going to be an election, probably as soon as the new year, and until then the city is going to be ruled by council. Some names have already been put forward as the new mayor. But the city is far from stable, with uncertainty and fears rampant the population and longstanding injustices being felt more acutely than ever. It’s the field against the stands, those who stick by the ghoul laws versus those who feel they ought to be reconsidered. In the midst of it, some folks are crying for anything that looks like a safe haven in the storm, including the Brotherhood.

Preston will be walking into a lion’s den, one that has already rejected him once, but he seems ready to do so now, almost confident.

And to Nate, it doesn’t sound foolish. He thinks Preston is right to believe in Diamond City. He’d almost like to come with him, not as the Silver Shroud but just as one of his new recruits. For the first time, the idea of putting on a uniform, any uniform, doesn’t seem wrong.

But he can’t go, of course, not without a mask, not while the Institute might be watching.

Preston leaves the same day, with Jake and Rex Goodman and Dogmeat and a couple of Minutemen recruits. There’s one ghoul among them, and she isn’t wearing a mask, just a Minuteman outfit, a rifle slung around her shoulders and a co*cky grin for the small crowd of gawkers and hecklers that’s gathered at the gate. Some are shouting suggestion to her of all the naughty things she ought to do if she gets into Diamond City, while others are saying she’s just going to get herself shot.

The hecklers are getting a little rowdy, but then Hanco*ck appears in the door of the State House. He’s back in his full mayoral regalia, and the crowd still turns to him like he never suggested stepping down. “Don’t listen to these clowns flapping their jaws,” he tells the assembled Minutemen as he ambles down the steps. “None of them got balls as big as yours.”

There’s some muttering, but also laughter, loud enough that only those closest to Preston can hear Hanco*ck as he pulls Preston into a handshake and murmurs, “Good luck, Garvey,” to him.

Preston returns the handshake firmly. “You too, Hanco*ck,” he says, and there’s still that frisson of tension between them that lasts as long as Hanco*ck keeps grasping Preston’s hand, but when they part, they’re both smiling.

Nate wavers for a second as Preston turns to him, almost offering his hand, too, but after everything that happened in the last few months, holding back now seems like the silliest thing. So he gives him a long, firm hug, which Preston returns gratefully after a brief moment of surprise.

“Thank you for everything,” Nate says, almost at the same time as Preston begins, “I never properly thanked you for -”

They pull apart, both grinning, and Nate shakes his head. He never had siblings, and even if he did, he suspects he wouldn’t have been any closer to them than he was to his parents. But Preston is his family in all the ways that count.

*

The new year comes around with a raucous celebration in the upper rooms of the State House, every Goodneighbor citizen packed into the former museum. Their stores are growing a little thin, but still Hanco*ck insists on a feast and free chems on the house. He remains sober, which earns him some ribbing and jeers from his compatriots, but it’s hard to accuse a man of growing dull or going straight when he has as much fun as Hanco*ck does that night.

Nate himself only has one glass of fizzy tarberry wine that Daisy urges on him, and spends much of the night in a corner with Kent, Jun, MacCready and Billy. Marcy has given the kid a box of Blast Radius with nearly all the pieces still intact for Christmas. Nate never liked the game, it always made him uneasy. He’s not the only one. While Kent knows all the rules by heart even 200 years later, his smile is a little crooked the first two times they play it. He actually remembers the meaning of blast radius, after all.

But Billy is obsessed with the game, insisting they play it over and over. Nate wonders if that’s just how ten-year-olds are, or if it has something to with the how becoming a ghoul and being stuck in a refrigerator for two centuries has stunted not only Billy’s physical growth. Jun and MacCready, however, seem to think it’s funny to play it with three people who actually remember when it was new, and after five excruciating rounds, MacCready successfully manages to divert Billy’s attention by teaching him a blackjack-style wastelander card game. It’s gambling, but Nate is still grateful, and gives Billy his own small stack of caps to bet, carefully placing Blast Radius out of view in one of the cabinets.

There are no fireworks, but at midnight the party spills out onto the balcony and after a shouted countdown, KL-EO shoots her laser beam up into the sky three times, calling in the New Year. Nate stands right next to her, at a terrifyingly close distance, with Hanco*ck draped against his side. They kiss, laughing, until Hanco*ck pulls him back to point at the sky.

In the far distance, roughly in the direction of Bunker Hill, and down towards the south, they are answering flashes of light, flares and energy weapons fired into the sky. The brightest comes from the north, close to the airport, the Brotherhood showing off their weapons. It should be sobering, but tonight it just feels like a reminder that they’re not alone, that humanity is still hanging on. The Goodneighbor crowd reacts with jeers and drunken shouts, inviting the Brotherhood to come if they dare, bolstered by the recent victory against the gunners, and then, after a few minutes, the night becomes peaceful again as everyone returns to the warmth and the booze inside the house.

Nate spends a few more mildly indecent minutes in a corner with Hanco*ck, then asks him if he wants to join them at the kiddie table for another round of cards. “Only if it’s strip poker,” Hanco*ck grins, and sends him off with a kiss.

An hour later, Codsworth comes trundling into their corner. “Happy New Year, chaps,” he says, allowing MacCready to fistbump his buzzsaw before tilting down to Billy. “I do believe it’s time for this young man to go home,” he says. “Won’t you accompany us, Mr Hale?”

It’s good of Codsworth to play Miss Nanny for the night, because other than Kent, only Billy still still wants to play. The others are looking to go home or have some adult fun.

“Good idea,” Nate says. It’s quite clever of Codsworth, because Billy won’t complain if he gets a good night story from the Silver Shroud out of it.

He heaves the sleepy little ghoul up on his shoulders, warning him to watch his head with the low ceilings, and with Codsworth parting the tightly packed crowd before them, they make it outside and back to the brownstone.

He sees Billy off to sleep, lingering at his bedside until the kid has closed his eyes and drifted off. He’s a strange one, and he might stay this way forever. It’s not the same as raising a normal child, Nate thinks, but when he lets his guard down, everything inside him grows tender, like a warm, gentle surf rolling over a jagged shore.

Finally, he packs those feelings away and quietly pads into the kitchen, where Codsworth waits, floating still in the air, the blue flame of his jet-stream the only illumination.

He isn’t alone, though. There’s a small, hunched figure sitting at the kitchen table, huddled deep into her patched jersey. Before her, untouched, sits a mug of tea.

Nate draws a sharp breath, realizing this wasn’t about Billy at all. Codsworth just wanted to get him to come here, alone. He closes the door with a click, all the tenderness suddenly vanishing.

“Benny.”

He hasn’t spoken to her since... since before he left for Diamond City, when Deacon gave him the tape with the Institute kill-switch. She wanted to tell him something, but then, with all the excitement, he forgot. He has barely even seen her in the week since. It comes to him suddenly how odd that is. She wasn’t with the group that MacCready led through the tunnels, and she wasn’t with the defenders up on the surface. Why didn’t she go with Jake and Preston? She’s a bit young to join the Minutemen, but Nate thought that’s what she would do, given how tight she seemed with Jake. And she wasn’t at the party tonight, either. Even Marcy didn’t stay home.

Just as his mind races through all the stuff he’s missed, Codsworth moves forward a little, lifting one pincer protectively over Benny’s shoulder. “Please do not be upset, Sir,” he says. “I have been trying to convince the young lady to talk to you, but given her situation, it’s only too understandable that she finds it difficult to trust anyone.”

“Upset?” Nate frowns. “Why would I be - “

Codsworth’s eyestalks wave, and his voice becomes firm as he suggests, “Why don’t you take a seat?”

Nate remains frozen where he stands. A cold shudder is spreading down his spine. It feels like he’s standing on the bough of a ship, and a huge iceberg has suddenly appeared in the dark, the collision already unavoidable.

“Tell me,” he says.

Codsworth’s lenses whirr as he turns something like a reproachful glare on Nate. But Benny lifts her head and meets his gaze, her eyes blankly reflecting the blue of the jet flames.

“I’m not the real Bernice,” she murmurs. “The real Bernice is dead.”

Nate’s mouth is dry. He’s not even shocked yet. His head is ringing, like a grenade just went off in the room. And Codsworth… “You knew?”

“I’m sorry, Mr Hale. She confided in me shortly after Thanksgiving. I might have felt obliged to tell you if you hadn’t, well, released me from my duties.”

“This has nothing to do with duties!” Nate exclaims. He’s aghast that Codsworth has kept something like this to himself - cautious, circ*mspect Codsworth. Has he overestimated the robot’s intelligence? Or underestimated how damaged Codsworth is after two-hundred years of isolation, how skewed his perceptions can be?

“She’s a synth! This - if she’s not one of the Railroad’s synths, she’s an Institute spy - we needed to know this!”

“Forgive me for saying so, Sir, but my expertise with children rather exceeds yours. Everything in my databanks about conflicts like these insists that it’s far better for the child that I convince her to confess than to betray her secret.”

Nate catches the small shift of Benny’s gaze. She’s watching their exchange, watching every second of it, evaluation, measuring his reaction to Codsworth’s obstinacy, watching the robot defend his choices, listening to him calling her a child, watching Nate’s anger.

He exhales, trying to clear his head.

“Are you one of the Railroad’s synths?” he asks her, desperate for a simple, safe solution.

“No,” she replies. There’s a long pause, and when she speaks again, her voice is even quieter, almost inaudible. “Father says I’m a courser. X9-14. That’s what he calls me.”

Father. She has spoken to Shaun. There’s a horrible reflex, from somewhere deep inside Nate, to grab her and ask her: how is he? What else has he said to you?

But then the other implications of what she just said dawn on him.

Benny knows he is the Silver Shroud. She figured it out right away, the night he brought home Billy, because Billy couldn’t keep the secret. If she has talked to Shaun in the meantime…

He takes a step forward, ignoring her flinch. “You’re reporting to the Institute? When did you last speak to them?”

She doesn’t answer him. Instead she reaches into her jacket. Nate’s heart skips a beat, but the thing she pulls out is a knife - the knife he gave her, after they killed the sick loser who bought her from Bullet. She holds it in both hands, one on the hilt, the other gripping the blade too firmly.

“I wasn’t me the first time we met,” she says. “I wasn’t her. She - Bernice - they took her after - after Bullet sold her. They took her memories and gave them to me. I remember her home. Her family. I remember Billy. I remember how Bullet beat her, how - Father told me to go to you. To use the real Bernice’s memories to cry and ask for help. He said that you would, if I was convincing, if I let out all of Bernice’s feelings, even though they weren’t mine. That you would trust me if I seemed helpless. But that wasn’t - that wasn’t how I - how the real Bernice felt. I didn’t cry because she wouldn’t cry and you… you still helped me. And you gave me the gun. You wanted me to pull the trigger. It wasn’t at all what Father said you would do.”

There are tears running down her cheeks. Nate is caught between the horror of her revelation, the fact that they’ve had a spy in their midst all this time and the horror of what she’s saying, her inability to reconcile who she is and who she isn’t, the pain and confusion she clearly feels, even as a synth.

“It wasn’t like he said,” she repeats. “Nothing was the way he said.”

Nate remembers that feeling. It’s how he felt every time he talked to Shaun. He also remembers talking to Nick while they hunted down Kellogg. How even a man as calm and collected as him had to grapple with the experience of having his memories transplanted, of being and not being Nick Valentine.

He’s sorry for Benny, but he needs to know. “Did you speak to them after that? After you came here?”

Her breathing calms. She looks almost grateful, like his firm command is something that she knows, that she knows how to respond to.

“Yes,” she says. He can almost hear the ‘Sir’ tagged on. “I went back to the Institute after you saved Billy. And then every few days. The scientists, they can extract my memories. Everything I see. It doesn’t take long. But after the first time, Father came down to the laboratory, and he told me to tell him, in my own words. He wanted me to talk about you, a lot. I… I told him that you were different from what he told me. That you hadn’t reacted the way he said. Father said you were confused. That you ran away because you didn’t understand how the world worked. That you became the Silver Shroud because you couldn’t deal with reality.”

It’s so strange to hear this, because a lifetime ago, if Nate had read in the paper about some loony putting on a costume and fighting crime like a real life superhero, he would have thought the same thing. Some poor bastard back from the front, probably, or some shut-in who read too many comic books. Someone like Kent. But now it’s like he stepped through a mirror to the other side where the shut-ins and the crazy vets are the only sane ones and… are they?

For a split second he doubts himself, but then he realizes that’s the old world, the old logic, the Institute’s twisted worldview talking. Maybe putting on a mask to do it was a little crazy, but he has results to prove that he’s not only dealing with reality, he’s making it a better place. Results like Billy. Rex. Strong. Diamond City.

Benny is still talking. “Father says… that I understand. That because I have Benny’s memories, I know what the surface world is like. That it can’t be saved. That humanity can’t be saved. But no one here… if the real Bernice was alive. If she’d found Goodneighbour. She would have been happy here. What he says isn’t true.”

Very slowly, Nate pulls out a chair and sinks down into it. His legs feel weak all of a sudden, trembling. “Shaun knows. He knows I’m the Silver Shroud.”

Shaun has known this since he saved Billy. More than a month ago. He knew when they went to Trinity Tower, he knew it was him when the Shroud made a public appearance in Diamond City… he could have ordered a strike against Goodneighbor each time but he didn’t.

Codsworth floats forward, cutting through Nate’s mounting panic with perfect calm. “That is why I judged it less than expedient to tell you, Mr Hale. As I understand, the charade was meant to fool young Shaun, but not only is there no use in crying over spilt milk, but to me it seems that he is far less eager to harm us than you feared. As well he should be - he is your son, after all.”

“But he - “ Nate shakes his head. “He let us walk into that ambush on the way from Sanctuary. He was going to murder everyone.”

Codsworth sways in the air in a thoughtful way. “Miss Bernice, if you would, please tell Mr Hale what you told me. About the last time you saw Father.”

“He ordered me to come find you and extract you when the gunners moved to attack, because he feared you wouldn’t survive the battle,” Benny says. “But it was over before I could find you. I thought he would be angry that I failed. But he was… he couldn’t come down to the laboratory when I reported back. Another courser took me up to Father’s place. It was… he was lying in bed. He couldn’t get up. He said he was glad to hear you survived. That he underestimated you, again. And then he said, ‘A pity you didn’t bring him, though. I would love to speak to him one last time.’”

Codsworth comes so close Nate feels the heat of his jet against his clammy skin. “Young Shaun does not appear to be well,” he says. “What if he has had a change of heart?”

Nate stares at the cracked formica top of the table. “You don’t know him, Codsworth,” he says. “You never met the man he has become.”

“I have not,” Codsworth admits. “But I daresay that people can change. You certainly have, Sir.”

*

It’s very late when Nate returns to the State House. The party has thinned out. Every couch and corner is strewn with drunks and dazed, glassy eyed folks in the throes of a chem high. Hanco*ck has gathered those still sober enough for conversation around him, sitting together surrounded by blue cigarette haze. He glances up sharply as Nate enters, and something shifts in his face, some subtle tension falling away and easing into a smile. He tilts his chin and pats the spot on the couch next to him in invitation.

Nate joins him. He kisses him, tasting the smoke, and says something in reply to a question. Around them, the conversation goes on. Hanco*ck’s arm is a warm weight around his waist, and his voice a soft scratch, his fingers tangling in Nate’s hair, his lips brushing Nate’s ear.

“Hey,” Hanco*ck says, stabbing his ribs with a sharp finger. “You listening, sunshine?”

Nate draws a sharp breath. He shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“Found a new supplier, huh? Damn, it ain’t easy staying clean when everyone around you is trippin’.”

“I’m just tired. What did you say?”

Hanco*ck’s eyes narrow. He has caught the lie, and his tone isn’t quite as suggestive as a moment before when he says, “I was askin’ if you wanna call it a night. This place won’t clear out till morning, but I reserved a room at the Rex, just in case we wanted to have a little… private party.”

Nate is on his feet in an instant. “Let’s go.”

Hanco*ck laughs, bumps a few fists as he goes, and pulls Nate along towards the Rex. The hotel isn’t completely quiet either. There are a few private parties going on in some of the rooms, it seems, and from some of the other doors, he hears the thumps and moans of people having sex.

“Is this a good idea?” he asks as Hanco*ck unlocks a small room with a kingsize and no other luxuries. “I thought this was Marowski’s place…”

Hanco*ck turns around with a wolfish grin, pushing the door shut behind them. “Yeah. Adds a little kick, don’t it?”

Damn. Nate has to laugh at the simple joy Hanco*ck takes in mocking his enemies. He has to laugh, and then he has to hug him, pressing him tightly against his chest, and he whispers against the brim of the tricorn, “I love you. I… you’re making this even harder.”

“Hey, hey, hey…” Hanco*ck pushes out of the embrace, looking up with concern wrinkling his brow. “Makin’ what harder?”

Nate tries to make him sit on the bed, but with every moment that passes, Hanco*ck grows less relaxed. So he’s the one who sits down while Hanco*ck paces as he listens. A few time he stops, and turns around sharply, and tries to interrupt Nate, ready to storm off and do something reckless that won’t solve this problem at all. Nate has told Benny to stay with Codsworth, because this is exactly how he thought it would go.

The one thing Hanco*ck doesn’t do is look at the pip boy. He only does that when Nate is finished explaining what he learned from Benny. Then Hanco*ck looks at the device, and cuts him off before he can say it. “You want this,” he says, his voice harsh. “That’s it. That’s why we’re even here, that’s why you didn’t just f*ck off. You’re going to go to them, nevermind that it’s an obvious trap.”

Going to. It sounds so definitive, like Hanco*ck already knows what he’s going to do when Nate hasn’t even made up his mind yet - or has he?

“I was going to ask you -”

Hanco*ck scoffs, loudly. “Bullsh*t. Coulda fooled me with that two months ago, but I know ya now. There ain’t nothing stopping you.”

“I don’t need the pip boy to go to the Institute,” Nate tells him. He didn’t consciously think this through until this very moment, but the fact that the plan springs into his mind tells him that maybe Hanco*ck is right: he has made up his mind, and nothing is stopping him.

“I don’t need it,” Nate says, “because Benny is a courser. She can teleport us. And I want you to keep it.”

Hanco*ck stops, the wind suddenly taken from his sails. “Oh, hell no,” he says in a small, cracking voice. “No. Not a chance.”

He already knows what Nate is going to ask.

“It’s a feral pact,” Nate says, unneccesarily, because that’s exactly what Hanco*ck is thinking.

After Diamond City, after the revelation about Hanco*ck’s brother, they both know that if he goes to the Institute, the worst that could happen, aside from an attack on Goodneighbor, is that he returns a synth. “If I don’t come back within 8 hours - “

“You think I’m letting you go? On your own?” Hanock takes a sudden step closer, and even when Nate rises to his feet he doesn’t back off. “You think that’s what I’ll do?”

“Yes,” Nate says.

They stare at each other, Nate wrapped in a deathly calm and Hanco*ck, furious and breathless, his expression slowly skidding into the realization that Nate is right.

If he goes, Hanco*ck won’t hold him back. And if he doesn’t come back, Hanco*ck will pull the trigger, even if it breaks his heart. That is who they are.

“Why?” Hanco*ck finally asks.

That’s it. The argument is over just like that. The urge to reach out and hug him again is overwhelming, but if Nate does that now, he might not let go. He might pull the trigger himself, just so he’ll get to stay.

Instead, he tries to explain, as best as he can. “Remember when I came here?”

“Don’t think I’ll ever forget,” Hanco*ck says softly. He goes to the bed, sitting down slowly, like an old man.

“I was at the end of my rope. The only reason I cared whether you were going to kill me or not were the folks depending on me. And before that, in Sanctuary… I acted like Shaun was dead. Like I had gone down there and found out they killed him. When I met him, when I saw what the Institute was, I couldn’t even argue with him. It… it felt like the war. Like it was so big, and so horrible, and so… inevitable that the only thing I could do was hide and forget. I wanted to lose myself, so I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.”

Hanco*ck looks as if he’s feeling the same way, as if he’d like to run and drown himself, too, but he’s listening. He’s listening, and he nods, gravely, when Nate pauses there. “I know,” he says. “But you got over it.”

Nate smiles, and swallows the thick lump that has formed in his throat. “I would have been happy to just follow your orders, and not just because… you know. It was good to let go for a while. Good to have someone who knew what he wanted, what he believed in. But you took me places that made realize… I believe in the same things. I need to talk to Shaun again because now I actually know what to say to him.”

Hanco*ck doesn’t argue. Maybe he’s thinking of Diamond City, of how Nate convinced him to go talk to McDonough, of how futile it would have been if he had got the chance. No argument would have gone through to a synth, and they both know the result might have been the same if it had just been his brother. Rational arguments fall on deaf ears, among family more often than among strangers. Maybe he’s thinking of the city, and the radio transmissions they’ve all been listening to, of how there’s going to be a new election, of how Preston and his Minutemen have been received in the city as welcome support, how it hasn’t yet turned to the Brotherhood. Maybe he’s thinking of their negotiation with Harlan, of a battle won with words and a single shot.

Maybe he’s just thinking about Nate going away and never coming back. About having to pull that trigger without ever knowing what happened.

There were other things Nate intended to say. Moral arguments, about how the Institute is full of people who have no choice in its actions, about how they can’t start building a better world by killing hundreds of people, no more than the Institute can improve humanity through slavery. Practical arguments, about how he isn’t sure that the Brotherhood actually is the lesser evil and that using them to destroy the Institute won’t make them stronger and more aggressive towards the rest of the Commonwealth. Assurances that if Shaun won’t listen, Nate won’t hesitate to negotiate the way Hanco*ck did with Harlan.

But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he turns off the light, and sits down next to Hanco*ck. After a while, they lie down in the dark, Nate curled around Hanco*ck’s back, holding him tightly. Neither of them speaks. They’re counting their breaths, the passing seconds spent together, the beating of their hearts, wide awake.

Very slowly, a faint winter dawn begins to filter in through the gaps in the boarded up window, a beam of bright dustmotes floating over the bed, stabbing a single spot on the stained wallpaper with blazing light.

Instead of a goodbye, Nate speaks warnings. Eight hours, no more. Prepare for the worst, get everyone ready to evacuate. Take care. I love you, but I also love them. And so do you.

“Oh yeah,” Hanco*ck says, tonelessly. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll survive.”

Nate looks at him and sees, for the first time, what immortality will look like on Hanco*ck. A light armor of smiles, and the loneliness of a thousand years.

There’s no way to ease how it hurts to leave him like this.

*

His atoms are torn apart and reconsituted in a flash, brightness and heat searing through Nate’s mind. He exhales in the brownstone and the next breath he draws is stale and tepid, no wood smoke, no crispness of snow, no unwashed human bodies huddling together for comfort.

He feels the earth weighing down on him even before his eyes adjust to the half-light and he begins to make out shadows in the corners of the metal ceiling, the blinking console lights. Benny’s small hand slips from his and she moves away. He turns, balance returning along with his senses, and finds himself looking at a courser in all black, and people in white lab coats.

The courser lowers his laser weapon when he recognizes Nate, although there’s barely a twitch behind those mirrored shades. “Welcome back, Sir. Follow me, please. Father wishes to speak to you.”

Nate takes a step towards the elevator, then realizes that Benny isn’t following him.

He looks straight at the courser, ignoring the technicians. This is the moment that might prove him a fool. If Benny has lied to him, if this is a trap, just a trick to lure him away from Goodneighbor - but there’s no way back now, only forward.

“She’s with me.”

“She has completed her mission,” the courser replies. His voice is calm, respectful. He isn’t arguing with Nate, just stating a fact.

“She hasn’t,” Nate counters, praying that he isn’t a fool, that her mission wasn’t just to bring him back here. “I want her to be there when I talk to Father.”

The courser takes a moment to process this, and then simply nods. He leads the way to the elevator, and Nate senses Benny following them quietly - as they step into the small plexiglass cabin, he glimpses a hint of relief on her features. She didn’t expect him to care enough to take a stand.

She’s as afraid as he is. He was right to trust her.

The elevator descends. The large central courtyard of the Institute opens up around them, bathed in eternal artificial light. Pristine bioengineered plants sit in their in their flowerbeds, unchanged by the season. Water, filtered and purified a million times, springs from the fountains, not a drop spilled along the shining walkways. Except for the uniforms, there’s no way to tell which of the figures on the walkways are human and which are synthetic - all of them seem humanoid, robotic. Nate is reminded of the world that was, of people in airports, of the bodies drifting through shopping malls, the shuttered faces of commuters.

Last time Nate walked among them he searched every face for the monsters who took his son. Now he watches their reaction as they see him passing by, eyes lifting in shock, expressions derailing at the sight of his ragged, stained leathers, his wild hair and weathered face, at the smell of him probably, like he’s a hobo on the subway, disrupting their scheduled boredom.

The interruption frightens them. The few that recognize him seem relieved, grateful because now he makes sense again, tucking away their moment of vertigo.

It’s a house of cards, Nate thinks, a house of cards whose inhabitants have been adding more cards to the tower for generations, hoping to make the foundation strong, the walls secure. Under the sterile calm lurks the anxiety of two centuries.

At the door to Shaun’s rooms, the courser remains behind, taking a quiet resting stance. There’s a different smell here than in the hallways, faint but impossible to erase even with the Institute’s obssession with cleanliness. It’s sickness, the smell of a failing body, almost but not quite smothered by disinfectant.

Nate knew Shaun wasn’t well. He mentioned it before, said that he needed to step down from his position and find a successor. But it was impossible for Nate to grasp the full meaning of that, so shortly on the heels of finding out his son was an old man.

Shaun is dying. Nate knows it even before he sees Shaun lying on his back, the Institute’s version of an autodoc arcing over his lower body, eyes closed. His cheeks have gone nearly as grey as his hair, the skin shapeless and paper thin.

The medical devices make occasional beeping sounds, but that is not the only noise in the room. From the terminal near his bed comes the sound of voices and music, familiar yet alien in this place. The volume is low, but by now, Nate knows it so well he could speak the lines himself: it’s the new Silver Shroud serial that Kent has been broadcasting continuously since Christmas.

He listens to it for a moment, trying to stay calm. He needs to keep his head down here, to keep his wits about him, but this… this is almost too much. It’s Shaun. It’s his little boy, sick and dying and listening… listening to a bedtime story about his Dad.

Shaun startles when Nate mutes the recording, twitching awake with a confused mumble. But as soon as he turns his head on the pillow and sees Nate, his eyes clear, regaining that sharp, cold intelligence that Nate remembers: eyes like scalpels.

“So there you are,” he says. His voice is restrained and quiet, as though it hurts him to speak, but there’s a faint edge to it nonetheless. Reproach, like he expected Nate to be here sooner. Surprise, like he didn’t expect him to come at all.

Nate takes a step closer, wishing the medibed didn’t encase Shaun like a coffin. He wants to touch him, take his hand. But maybe it’s too soon. Or too late. Maybe the time will never be right again for them.

“Here I am.”

“Just in time, too.” Shaun coughs softly. “I’m sure you’re wondering - it’s cancer.”

It’s hard to find any words at all. There are none to express what he feels, and it’s so strange to be polite in this moment, to not be able to hold Shaun instead, to cry with him, the way family should. “I’m sorry.”

The words seem to barely register, slipping away on some invisible wall around Shaun that permits neither pity nor compassion. There’s no way to do this gently or slow. Still, Nate feels brutal when he says, “Shaun, I’m not here to take you up on your offer.”

Shaun frowns. “Then why would you come at all?”

Nate draws a breath to speak and hesitates. There are two answers, both of them true, and he doesn’t know which one to give Shaun, the kind or the cruel. He’s here because Benny told him that Shaun was sick, he’s here on the off chance that a peaceful solution is possible - but he’s also here because there only long-term alternative is destroying the Institute.

The hesitation causes Shaun to smile. “Perhaps you’re not quite as certain as you say.”

Shaking his head, Nate turns away. He pulls the chair by Shaun’s desk over to the bed. Benny is standing in the middle of the room, wide-eyed and silent, watching. At the door, the courser remains, a motionless threat of violence.

“I’m here to talk to you,” Nate tells Shaun, once he sits by his side. “The way I… left, last time. I’m sorry I ran away.”

Shaun sighs. His gaze flits towards the terminal, a small frown crossing his features. “I thought you had changed. That being exposed to the hardships of the surface world had made you come to your senses. There’s no time for this, father. I don’t have the time.”

Last time, this coldness would have cut Nate to the quick. He’d have been blinded with it, horrified, overwhelmed with the idea that Shaun was gone and this man the only thing left behind. But now he watches Shaun speak, and he sees the withdrawal, the aggression, the denial. This is a man in pain, unable to open up even in the hour of his greatest need. He remembers Hanco*ck, the day after Trinity Tower, how vicious he got when he tried to protect himself from the pain of not being loved.

“I don’t want to argue with you,” Nate says. “I don’t want it to be… the last thing we do. But I think it’s the only chance we have to reach some peace. Between us… but also between the Institute and the Commonwealth, if you’d rather talk about that.”

“Then we want the same thing. You must see that becoming my successor is the best way to achieve peace. Some members of the board of directors had their doubt about you. I confess… I myself wasn’t sure, after meeting you. But then, perhaps it was hardly fair of me to put you to the test the way I did, so soon after witnessing the destruction of your whole way of life.”

“You mean making me chase after Kellogg? No, it wasn’t fair. But I think I understand why you did it.” Nate bites his tongue, because Shaun doesn’t need to have his psyche dissected right now. “I’m not angry, Shaun.”

Shaun is quiet for a moment, giving those words a strange echo, letting them linger. Slowly, the faint smile returns to his features. It’s a fine smile, ever so slightly arrogant, the smile of a man who ran circles around everyone else for most of his life. Nate can only speculate on what that life was like, but his son must have some reason for arrogance, given that he worked himself up from test subject to the leader of this place.

“You have changed,” Shaun says, with that patronizing smile. “Recovered from the shock, I suppose. I am sorry I did not give your more time - I should have seen how difficult it would be to appreciate the Institute’s achievements with memories of pre-war life still fresh on your mind.”

There’s a ring to the way that he says ‘pre-war’ that Nate has grown familiar with after so much time among the wastelanders. It’s the way some people talk, when all they have is half-formed ideas and myths. It reminds him of the folks who think that the Silver Shroud was always a real person, or that everyone before the war lived like a king. How much more than they does Shaun know? And how little does Nate know, about the way his son has been taught to think?

“What do you think it was like, the world before the bombs?”

Shaun sighs again, and Nate can tell that he’s impatient, that this doesn’t matter to him, that he wants to conserve his time and energy for other, more important matters. It’s so easy to see the stubborn, driven man his son must have been all his life behind that little impatient frown, and it makes Nate ache for any time with him at all, any time to get to truly know him.

But Shaun decides to indulge him. Perhaps he hopes this is the way to beguile him, the key to Nate’s trust. Perhaps it’s also a topic that secretly fascinates him - after all, the fact that he was born before the bombs has determined so much of his life. “The world was bigger,” he says. “So many more people, so much more space and resources, so much knowledge and power. It was wealthy in ways it didn’t fully understand. If the war could have been avoided, I suppose humanity would be well on the way to conquering the solar system by now. But one day, the Institute could be strong enough to brave the surface again, and perhaps leave for the stars…”

There’s a longing in his gaze, a distant but vibrant brightness. It’s the way Kent sometimes gets when he speaks about comic book issues forever lost to the fire, how Preston looked at the Castle when he spoke about the downfall of the Minutemen.

“Have you ever seen the stars?” Nate asks.

Shaun blinks. There’s a naked moment where he looks small, young. Where Nate, for a fleeting second, knows what it would have been like to watch him grow up. Then Shaun draws a rattling breath. “No. Astronomical research was always low on the Institute’s list of priorities. And… I have not been to the surface since I was an infant.”

“Do you know why the war happened?” Nate asks.

“I hope there’s a point to this,” Shaun says, but it’s clear by the speed at which he answers that he always aced his tests, that he knows the answer from diligent study. “The West and the Chinese both stockpiled nuclear weapons to deter each other from open conflict over their economic systems. The conflict escalated when the world’s oil reserves ran out - which could have been avoided if both sides had invested more in research and developed better nuclear fusion reactors. The Institute isn’t going to repeat any of these mistakes, if that’s what you fear. Research in mankind’s interest has always been our highest priority… and we buried the old ideological conflict along with the concept of nations. There’s no point in having a free market to motivate innovation when mankind’s survival is at stake.”

The people who founded the Institute were CIT scientists - physicists and biologists, programmers, engineers. Not the sort to care about money in the first place, beyond funding their research. It sounds surprisingly pure-hearted to Nate, now that he pictures it. A community of very smart people, trying their best to make things work, to save themselves through their own ingenuity. No lawyers, no humanities scholars to worry much about laws and governments and people’s rights: they probably just organized themselves in whatever way seemed most efficient for a small group of like-minded people.

“I believe you,” Nate tells him. “I believe that the Institute was founded by people who thought they were the only ones who knew how to save the world. But Shaun… you are repeating all of the old mistakes. Well, not all of them, maybe. You’re right that there was no reason for the world to go into crisis over oil - I think we would have managed to find a solution pretty easily, if the politicians hadn’t all be in big energy’s pockets. I always thought… all the war-mongering, all the fury at the reds, that was just to give folks a way to be angry without being angry at the actual bad stuff that happened. But don’t you see? You’re doing the same thing to the Commonwealth. You’re keeping them down with lies and deception, you’re driving them at each others’ throats. So you don’t buy politicians with money - but how is replacing them with synths any better?”

Shaun doesn’t reply. His expression has grown stony during Nate’s tirade, and now he turns away. “I don’t have time for this,” he repeats. “We’ve talked a lot. I need to rest, if I’m to preserve my strength…”

Nate forces himself to relax, to exhale slowly, and not look at the time on the terminal screen. More than an hour has passed since he came down here. Seven hours to go. Punctuality isn’t Hanco*ck’s strong suit, but this one time, he might be watching the time, too.

But on the other hand, Shaun does look exhausted. It would be so cruel to push him, cruel and futile. The conversation they’ve already had… it’s slow, and frustrating, but it’s also so much more than they ever managed before. Before, Shaun treated him like a toy, like something to be moved on a board, and Nate was a hair’s breadth from breakdown. Now, they’re talking like adults. Like equals.

Nate gets up, searching the room for a faucet and a glass. He locates both, and returns with water. Shaun accepts it, and accepts help in taking a sip, Nate’s hand on his back, helping him to sit up a little as he drinks. His back feels warm through the thin fabric, warm and trembling with weakness.

“Do you want me to turn the radio back on?” Nate asks when Shaun sinks back down to the bed.

He thinks he glimpses a moment of embarrassment. Shaun didn’t want him to know he was listening to the Shroud episode. Nate wonders how he acquired the recording, what reasons he gave for needing it. Perhaps he sent a courser, avoiding those questions altogether.

“Or would you like me to tell you the real version?”

“I may fall asleep,” Shaun warns, but it’s permission enough.

Nate thinks about where to begin. He wants to start at the real beginning, at Sanctuary, he wants to tell Shaun about Preston, about the Minutemen, about Goodneighbor and the Slog and everything. But that’s not what Shaun wants to hear, he suspects.

Instead, he talks about Billy. About how he heard about him from Shaun’s little spy, how he put on the costume for the first time, how he broke into Ticker Tape Lounge and killed all the bad man and snatched a little boy from their midst.

Shaun does fall asleep, but not until after Nate has finished telling him about the rescue, about how he brought Billy to Goodneighbor. Then his breathing evens out a little, and the line of pain between his brows eases just a fraction.

Benny has slunk over to sit down on on another chair while Nate talked. The courser hasn’t moved at all, standing by the door like a statue, but Nate bets he was listening, too. When he gets up, both synths watch him curiously, but neither protests.

He doesn’t really have an aim. Just wandering around, trying to pass the time. Trying to glean something about Shaun from this luxurious prison cell of his. But there’s nothing telling, nothing incriminating or personal, except the little synth boy in his glass cage. The synth is active again, staring mutely at Nate. He stares back for a moment, then returns to the living area.

The courser at the door still maintains his unsettling parade rest. The silent way the man has been watching their whole conversation, trying to blend with the furniture, reminds Nate of the times he has skulked around in the background while Hanco*ck conducted his business. He wonders if the synth observes as curiously as he does.

“What’s your, uh, designation?”

“X6-88,” the synth replies.

“And your orders?”

“To ensure the safety and comfort of Father. He has ordered me to assist you insofar as it does not directly endanger the Institute. Is there anything you require? Your room is still ready, if you wish to rest.”

There’s probably no point in asking the synth if he resents being a slave. Codsworth would have said no, if you had asked him, and still Codsworth appreciated his freedom. And why would X6-88 answer honestly, even if he did harbor resentments? Nate has been appointed his master, after all. Nate remembers what it was like travelling with Hanco*ck in the beginning, watching his words, his actions, careful not to enrage him, until he realized there was no need to.

Instead, he asks, “Do you know how Father became the leader of the Institute?”

“I do. Do you wish me to tell you?”

It’s subtle, but Nate senses that X6-88 knows perfectly well that this was a question, that Nate was asking for information. But he demands a direct order, perhaps because it’s the only control he can exert over this conversation.

“Please,” Nate says. “Yes.”

The development of the third generation synths took more than a decade, X6-88 explains. After which Shaun was no longer strictly speaking needed as a test subject. However, the Institute still saw value in him because they recognized his intellect and his uncontaminated DNA was going to be valuable in the Institute’s very small gene pool. The fact that he hadn’t sprung from this small gene pool perhaps gave him an edge, because in his school work he excelled beyond any other children in the same age group. So Shaun was permitted to enter apprenticeship in Advanced Systems and quickly worked his way up what little hierarchy the Institute had, becoming one of the project leaders, then the director of the entire department and finally of the Institute itself.

“Was he appointed by his predecessor?” Nate asks.

He was, the courser says, because that is how the Institute traditionally chooses its director. The successor can be vetoed by the board of directors, but there has never been an actual crisis of succession.

Nate continues questioning him about the Institute, particularly about the members of the board. The courser’s testimony is remote and dispassionate, but that is just as well. Nate doesn’t want to know these people, and he particularly doesn’t want to like them, while there’s still a chance that he might be the cause of all of their demises.

Which he will be, if he stays too long. After an hour, he gets restless, distracted, running out of things to ask X6-88, but he keeps on talking, forcing himself to be patient. A rested Shaun might be more open to discussion than a tired, feverish one.

But after two hours, Benny asks, “What are you going to do now?”

What he needs to do, even though it’s painful. Shaun doesn’t wake easily. There’s a moment of confusion in which he seems terribly vulnerable, and clearly doesn’t recognize his surroundings. It passes after a few seconds, and then he seems determined to sit up, asking Nate to turn off the autodoc. He isn’t any better, any more rested than before, just angry at his own weakness.

Perhaps he’ll be grateful that Nate has no time to be patient.

“You need to listen to me,” Nate says. “I want you to understand why I can’t join the Institute.”

“Have you truly grown so attached to those surface dwellers?” Shaun asks. “To a vicious, dissolute little dictator whose very presence poisons you?”

Somewhere at the back of his mind, Nate expected a moment like this. He knew Shaun would bring up Hanco*ck, he knew it would be bad. But he thought that Shaun would make it about Nora, about how quickly Nate has moved on, and he was prepared for that. The disgust, though… it echoes his own worst fears, it echoes the way his parents sound when he imagines them meeting Hanco*ck, the way Preston reacted at first. For a second, he’s dumb-struck, caught between anger at being judged by his own son and a dumb shame that betrays his own heart, betrays his love and his convictions, like sticking a knife into his own gut.

“If that man knew you were here, what do you think he would do to you?” Shaun goes on.

Nate exhales, relief flooding him. There’s no basis for Shaun’s disgust, only the ignorance of a man who knows the world only through the eyes and ears of his spies.

“He knows, Shaun. I told him everything, weeks ago. He knows about you, about the Institute. And he… I gave him the means to your destruction and he hasn’t used them yet.”

Shaun stills. That’s the only way he expresses his surprise, and it slowly twists into hardness.

“So you have come here to tell me this. After all my patience, all your struggles to find me, you have come here to gloat. Tell me then, father. How will you destroy mankind’s last hope?”

This may be the hardest part. Because Shaun might be right, and Nate is here to tell him.

“I don’t want to do it,” Nate says, and takes a small step towards him. Shaun does not flinch - he’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, too weak to stand or fight him off, but his mouth twitches in anger when Nate touches his arm. “Shaun, it’s the last thing I want to do. But it’s going to happen. If I don’t return to Goodneighbor, or if you refuse to listen to what I have to say, the Brotherhood of Steel will receive the exact location of the Institute.”

Shaun’s gaze flicks to the radio. “And to think… I considered you an idealist. I almost enjoyed our debate. Convincing a man through argument, however misguided your points may be… we at the Institute respect that. But you’ve gone native, haven’t you? I’m not swayed by your arguments, so you rely on brute force.”

He chokes on the last word, coughing so hard it shakes his whole body, but when Nate tries to support him, Shaun pushes him aside, clinging to the bed, trembling, each convulsion taking him closer to a fall. When he finally stops gasping for air, he is drooping to the side, his cheeks ashen and the skin around his eyes wet and bloodshot.

It’s blackmail, Nate thinks. Shaun is right about that. He’s blackmailing his own, dying son, burying any chance that Shaun will ever know that he is loved.

But he is. He is, and that’s why Nate is here. He’s been telling himself it’s about ethics, about the moral high ground, about how they can’t build a better world on top of a mass grave, how there are enough dead haunting the world, but the truth is, he’s here for Shaun.

“If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here,” Nate says. “The Institute started this fight, Shaun. They fired the first shot before either of us ever got here. You’ve been trying to build your future, but you’ve been denying everyone else the same chance. Everyone I love up top is in danger for as long as the Institute exists. But I still came here. For you.”

Shaun tries to straighten. He grimaces, at the pain or at Nate’s words. “Then you might as well go and destroy us. You can’t save me. You never could.”

This time, Nate doesn’t fight the pain. He lets it wash through him, embraces it, until he’s capable of speaking again. And then the words come naturally. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

The first time, it wasn’t his own fault. It was Shaun who waited sixty years to wake Nate up, and there was nothing Nate could have done. But the second time, those four months that have passed since Nate left the Institute… every single day hurts, now that he knows how little time remains, for them. And yet, if not for those four months, if not for the things he’s seen and done and learned about himself, Nate wouldn’t be here now. He’d be be pulling the trigger, one way or another.

“I wish I had come sooner.”

Shaun is slipping back down to the bed, his strength fading. His eyes close for a moment, and Nate fears that this is it, this is Shaun shutting the gates forever, refusing to listen or speak to him any more.

But Shaun does speak again, after a long moment. It’s quieter, like the thread of anger he’s been clinging to has been cut, and all that remains is a cool intellect, lingering while his body shuts down. “So you think the Institute is repeating the mistakes of the past. You could change that, you know. As director, it would be in your hands.”

Nate lowers himself into the chair once more. He lets his fingers digs into his thigh, enough to hurt. He, too, feels exhausted. But it seems neither of them is ready to give up just yet.

“That’s not the only reason,” he says. “Shaun, I have a question. You have the technology to transfer a person’s mind and memory into a synth body. And there’s a healthy synth version of you right next door. I know it wouldn’t be you, but it would give you a far better successor than I ever could be, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” Shaun says.

There’s no explanation, no reason for this denial. It’s as Nate suspected: they could do it, but they won’t.

“When I first came here… you told me that synth technology would allow you to change everything. To redefine mankind. You’re right, it’s incredible. They’re a new kind of life. Don’t you realize that you’re selling yourself short by just using them as slaves?”

“You’re talking about technology you don’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t. I’ll never be as smart as you - I haven’t read a proper book since high school. But let me tell you a story, Shaun. When you were born, your mother wanted to buy a Mr Handy so neither of us would have to stay at home. It didn’t really sit right with me, you know. Leaving you with something hardly smarter than our dog. We picked the personality setting for him that made him sound like some prim and proper British butler because we thought it was funny. But two hundred years later, that joke has grown into a person. A thinking, feeling being. If not for Codsworth, I wouldn’t be here right now - because he listened to your synth spy and told me you might have a change of heart!” Nate stops there, trying to calm down. He runs his hand over his mouth, shaking his head. “But you’re right. A synth couldn’t be the leader of the Institute. Not without forcing you to admit that what you’re doing is insane.”

Shaun looks at Nate as if he’s actually holding a gun to his head and telling him to swallow poison. But as bitter as these words are, they’re still kinder than the rest of what Nate has to say.

He’s not sure that he should. Maybe he has done enough, maybe appealing to Shaun’s intelligence and ambition, to his scientific pride, is all that it takes. But the rest needs to be said as well. Nate can’t let Shaun go to his grave without realizing this.

He glances at Benny, alone on the couch. “Let’s say that they’re not human,” he says. “That it’s okay to treat synths as machines because that’s all they are. Fine. Tell me, Shaun, what happened to the girl whose memories you put into this one?”

Shaun doesn’t answer. Nate turns to the courser. “X6-88. Do you know what happened to her?”

The courser answers promptly, before Shaun can object. “Specimen H9-14 was terminated after the memory extraction.”

Nate turns back to Shaun, and for second, despite everything, it’s satisfying to see his small flinch when he meets Nate’s gaze. “So you took a child, a child that was sold and abused and mistreated in every way, and you used her and then murdered her? Tell me, Shaun, what would it have cost the Institute to keep her alive? To give her even a tiny fraction of the incredible paradise you’re telling me you built down here?”

If Shaun said anything right now, if he opened his mouth and said something horrible, like that Bernice was already lost, that she was worthless like the rest of the surface dwellers, any of the horrible things he has said before, then Nate would leave, whether Shaun tries to stop him or not. He’d take Benny and go back home and tell Hanco*ck to send that damn signal.

Except that he wouldn’t. Because Shaun keeps quiet, he stares at Nate in quiet surprise, not even guilt, just surprise on his old, grey face.

Nate softens. He wants to touch, and this time he does, running his hand over Shaun’s. He watches the way Shaun’s eyes widen, disconcerted, as he takes his hand and squeezes it gently.

“No one ever talked to you like this, did they?” Nate asks. “You’ve always been good. The Institute’s poster boy. Because if you hadn’t been, they’d have treated you like you treated her. A specimen.”

Mutely, Shaun shakes his head. His breath hitches as though he is choking, and he tries to pull his hand from Nate’s grip, but he doesn’t have the strength. Nate doesn’t let go. He holds on, and then gathers Shaun up in a hug, holding him, riding out the old man’s weak attempts to fight him off. At one point Shaun tries to speak, gasping the courser’s designation to give them some order, perhaps to have Nate arrested, removed, but Nate pulls him down against his shoulder, muffling his voice.

When he softens his grip, Shaun doesn’t try it again.

“I’m sorry,” Nate tells him. “I wish I had been there. But that’s why they killed Nora. That’s why they left me in the vault. We’d never have allowed them to do this to you.”

There’s no reply from Shaun. Nate strokes his back, feeling the warmth pool between their bodies. Under the sickness and the disinfectant, Shaun smells like a person. Not like the baby he was, but still, Nate tries to fix it in his memory, these sensations, this moment.

It ends when Shaun starts convulsing in pain. He begins retching, and Nate just barely manages to drag him to the bathroom and hold him upright. There’s are medical supplies on the counter, but Shaun, in between throwing up thin bile, refuses the dose of Med-X Nate tries to give him. A clear head, he croaks, he wants to die with his mind clear.

Nate holds him until the retching stops. He wipes his face clean, then helps him back to the bed.

“I’m so proud of you,” he murmurs, stroking Shaun’s wispy white hair. “I’m so proud of you for being smart enough to escape.”

Shaun stirs, his eyes opening again. “I didn’t.”

“You woke me up,” Nate says. “You let me come and find you. You listened to me.”

“It’s too late.”

“That’s what I thought when the bombs fell. It’s never too late, Shaun.”

He’s not sure Shaun has heard him. He seems to be drifting further and further away, unable to keep his eyes open. As his face slackens, it looks more and more like a death mask.

The footsteps of a large person moving very softly approach behind Nate. “Sir,” the courser says. “I must ask you. Will you address the board as acting director?”

Nate turns to look. He sees Benny tensing on the couch, sees X6-88’s long, dark fingers wrapped around the heavy laser rifle. He doesn’t have to ask to know what is going to happen if he says no. Shaun ordered them to kill him if he refused, because he didn’t know that killing Nate would be a death sentence for the Institute. And now he is in no state to revoke his order.

Slowly, Nate lets go of his son’s hand, and rises to his feet.

*

The pool has frozen over. Dark wisps of tarberry fronds sit still in the solid ice, under a surface scratched and scuffed by boots and the claws of passing wasteland critters. The sun is setting behind the hills, sending the long shadows of skeletal trees to grasp at the ice and the squat building beyond.

X6 lowers Shaun into the pool chair with great care, making sure that he is still wrapped in his thick coat. The chair faces east, towards the encroaching night. A puff of mist gathers at Shaun’s mouth as he blinks at the darkening sky.

The door of the pool building opens, revealing a sliver of warm light. A figure steps out and walks along the pool towards them, slow but fearless in the cold night.

Nate gets up, raising a hand to stop X6 from going for his gun.

“Wiseman,” he greets the old ghoul.

Wiseman’s dark eyes wander from Nate to the old man in the chair, bundled up and staring at everything like a child, then to the two coursers, the girl and the heavily armed man. He’s clearly bemused by all of this, but he stays calm.

“I needed some place quiet,” Nate says. “Somewhere quieter than Goodneighbor.”

“We’ve got almost as much quiet as tarberries,” Wiseman says. “Help yourselves.”

“We’ll be out of your hair soon.”

Wiseman chuckles in the back of his throat, running a hand over his bare scalp. Then he nods.

“You call if you need something, kid.”

And he turns and walks back to the house, not questions asked. Nate sits down next to the chair on the ground, ignoring the cold. “We’re safe here,” he says softly.

Shaun might not be listening to him. Each of his breaths grows slower, more shallow, more labored. But his eyes are still open, facing east. Out of the dark, stars shimmer into being. Shaun’s cracked lips move without sound. There’s nothing left to say.

Nate watches the stars climb until his vision grows too blurry to make them out. He turns to watch Shaun instead. Watches the last of his breaths even out, watches the life fade from his features. Kisses his forehead before it grows cold.

“Take him home,” he tells X6, before turning to Benny.

*

It’s been over eight hours before he left Goodneighbor when he walks into the State House, but the pip boy sits abandoned on a table. Hanco*ck is a thin, dark silhouette against the balcony door, a dead cigarette dangling forgotten from his fingers.

It drops to the ground when they see each other. Nate crosses the distance between them quickly, stepping onto the small red glimmer and grinding it to dust. He holds up his hand before Hanco*ck can grab him and kiss him.

“Wait.” His throat is raw from all the talking and crying he did tonight. “Listen to me first. You… you might wanna get your gun.”

Hanco*ck starts forward, eyes flashing. “I might, if ya don’t tell me what the hell that’s supposed to mean - .”

“I don’t know know,” Nate says. After everything he did tonight, after hours and hours of keeping his wits about him, of staying strong for Shaun’s sake, he feels the walls close in on him, the panic cutting off his breath. “I… I’m acting Director of the Institute.”

Hanco*ck stares up at him with his mouth open, caught in mid-snarl. Then he exhales in a sharp hiss, which turns into a laugh. “Ho-ly sh*t. Wow. At least now I know they ain’t replaced ya with a synth, huh?”

Somehow, Nate gets from the balcony to a chair. He doesn’t remember sitting down, just feels the sweat on his back, the slight tremor in his knees. He’s talking between choppy gulps of breath, about Shaun, about the stars, about the board of directors, frozen in their seats as he stood before them and told them their only choice was between reform and destruction.

Hanco*ck is crouching before him, his arms resting on Nate’s knees, a crooked grin on his face. Despite what Nate is telling him, he doesn’t seem to think he needs to be put out of his misery.

“And they just f*cking let ya give it to them like that?” he snorts.

Nate shakes his head.

Justin Ayo barely let Nate finish the sentence before he was out of his chair and calling for the coursers to have him terminated. Instead, their guns turned on him. The others though remained in their seats. None of them took Ayo’s side. Shaun was right: Ayo was unpopular enough to make Nate seem like a viable alternative. And they’d stick with him even if he ordered the coursers to fire.

“Did ya?”

“I told him it was choice.”

Hanco*ck laughs darkly. “Ah. And he chose badly.”

“You don’t think…” Nate isn’t able to finish, but in Hanco*ck’s expression he reads understanding. He knows what Nate is asking: does this make him as bad as the others? Does this call for their feral pact?

With a shake of his head, Hanco*ck gets up, squeezing Nate’s shoulder. He walks a few steps, lighting another cigarette. “Honestly? I did a lot worse the first couple months after I took over. And if ya ask me, they’re damn lucky if that’s all the blood you spill in revenge.”

Revenge. Somehow, that word sticks to his mind, reminding him of all the reasons he has to be angry. But there’s no anger left. He forgave so much tonight, forgave himself, forgave Shaun, that there’s no anger left to hold on to. He thinks of his son, of those last peaceful moments with him, and buries his face in his hands, sinking forward in the chair.

On the balcony, Hanco*ck released a lungful of smoke, and flicks the cigarette over the railing. He takes his time, closing the door and lighting a lamp before he pulls Nate up from the chair and over to the bed, murmuring soft nonsense words of comfort as he holds him through the crying.

Chapter 21: Epilogue

Chapter Text

One morning, Nate teleports to a street corner near Goodneighbor and finds the alleys soggy and dark from the melting snow. It drips from the rooftops and gurgles in the gutters, and the watchman who salutes him from the wall has his sleeves rolled up to catch the sun. He glances at his pip boy in surprise and realizes that it’s April, and that winter is over at last.

Spring hesitates for another three weeks. There are no cherry trees in the Boston parks, no tourist crowds flocking to the swan boats, no ducklings in the ponds. But then, one day, the mutfruit trees suddenly open small, pale flower buds, and the razor grain sprouts on the rooftop gardens, and before you know it’s late in May and the mildness in the air suddenly carries the first taste of summer’s humid heat.

The day they take back the Castle is sunny and brilliant, and as they advance up the hill, the new recruits from Goodneighbor and Diamond City and the little settlements all over the Commonwealth that Preston has drummed up for this day eye the black-clad coursers with suspicion. A woman spits at Nate’s feet in passing, and hisses “murderer” out of the corner of her mouth, and a few of the farmers sneer at the sight of Hanco*ck in his bright red coat, making comments about fancy Goodneighbor ghouls.

Hanco*ck, impervious to the derision, whispers “Show them the Shroud, sunshine,” to Nate right before they charge.

By the end of the day, thick black smoke rises from the burning carcass of the mirelurk queen into a fiery sunset, and a dozen people at least come to shake Nate’s hands once they see that it is safe. The celebration begins almost as soon as the field hospital is set up.

X6 asks for permission to teleport back to the Insitute with his squad of coursers. Nate tells him, for what feels like the fiftieth time that month, that he’s a free man, but he also says, “I reccommend that you stay for the party. Have a drink, maybe. Get to know some folks.”

It’s a win-win, he thinks. Either X6 will defy him, and act like a free man for once, or he’ll obey and be forced to show his human side. Behind his shades, the synth’s brows twitch as he sees what Nate is doing, but he does see X6 later, with a drink in his hand, silently listening to an old soldier telling tales of the Minutemen’s good old days.

He goes to find the woman who spit at his feet. She’s laid up on a cot in the field hospital, her left leg bandaged and the side of her face burned by mirelurk acid, her eyes clouded by painkillers. But she recognizes him, he can tell.

“Who did they take?” he asks her, quietly sitting down on a crate.

She looks like she’d spit at him again, if she had the strength. “My husband,” she says. “Roger. You took him and you put a f*cking synth in my home.”

He nods. “They killed my wife,” he tells her. “They came into the vault because they wanted our baby boy, Shaun. She wouldn’t let go of him. So they shot her.”

And he tells her the story, as much of it as she needs, as much of it as she’ll understand. It’s the first of many conversations like this that he’ll have over the course of the next weeks and months. When the promise of reparations, of improved crops and medical aid, of cleaning up the water and the soil isn’t enough to appease the anger of the surfacers, he gives them his story.

When she falls asleep, Nate takes his own advice and joins the party. Hanco*ck has already made friends, but the laughter of the group surrounding him dies down when Nate approaches. He looks at them, their questioning, distant, guarded expressions, and pulls off the tailored, armored courser coat he’s been wearing to battle, baring his arms and the tattoo circling his right wrist. By the flicker of the bonfire, the name might not be easy to read, but they know what it means - it’s the wastelander’s practical but permanent alternative to a wedding band.

If anyone isn’t clear on the signifance of the gesture yet, Nate bends down to kiss Hanco*ck, and then lowers himself on the floor between Hanco*ck’s knees, accepting a drag from the cigarette offered to him before closing his eyes and resting his head on Hanco*ck’s thigh.

The gesture bares his throat, but more importantly, his heart. He hears the hush, and then the conversation resuming, and smiles as he feels Hanco*ck’s fingers carding through his hair.

Two weeks later, to the noise of construction going on the in the courtyard, and the rolling of the waves and the chugging of the water purifiers, the first Commonwealth Spring Assembly sits down around the biggest table in the Castle. In the coming years, it’ll grow too big to fit into any of the fort’s old rooms, and they have to build a bigger timber structure in the courtyard, but even that first time, it feels a little crowded.

There’s Daisy, who won Goodneighbor’s election by a wide margin because Fahrenheit refused to run. “I’ll run against you and you only,” she told Hanco*ck with a show of her teeth, “until then, I’d rather be the power behind the throne.”

“Who says I’m running?” Hanco*ck asked.

“You’ll grow bored f*cking about as a senior citizen,” she says, sure of her prediction. “It’s either chems or politics, for you. Just make it within my lifetime.”

Across from Daisy, there’s Geneva Harding, Diamond’s controversial successor to McDonough. She won mainly by votes from the stands, but also by showing firm support to the Minutemen, and in the coming weeks, cements herself as a cautious diplomat, cleverly taking a neutral stance somewhere between those that hate the Institute and those that don’t.

There’s Preston for the Minutemen, and Glory, representing the Railroad and those of the freed synths who did not elect to stay with the Institute. There’s Kathy Kessler from Bunker Hill, and Old Man Stockton, and June Warwick, who remains distrustful of the Institute, but no longer spits at Nate’s feet.

There are a dozen other farmers like her from settlements all over the Commonwealth, and one of them is Wiseman, who smiles whenever Daisy speaks, and extends an open welcome to any synths who wish to become tarberry farmers. There’s a representative from the Gunners, almost as unpopular as Nate with the Commonwealthers, and a drifter whose smell and tendency to scavenge even claimed property makes everyone keep their distance. There a young man in an Atom Cats jacket, and a haggard Child of Atom invited by Virgil, who has come back into the Institute’s fold after Nate delivered his cure.

There’s Hanco*ck, whenever he feels like attending. No one formally invited him, and he doesn’t officially represent anyone, but people listen when he talks.

It takes a week for people to agree to let all of the parties present join the new Commonwealth, but by the end, only two of the settlements walk away from the table. Then, the tough part starts, and they begin to hammer out their new constitution.

It’s easy to agree on the basics, on the rights accorded to every person living within the Commonwealth: to life, and freedom of movement and creed, to personal property and so on. The arguments start when it comes to the question of who those rights extend to. Humans, of course, and ghouls, and even synths are eventually accepted, but Nate and several others at the table insist on going further. Robots must be included, if they are capable of exercising these rights, mutants, if they are willing to respect the rights of others.

Daisy is the one to bring up another snag that no one else even thinks of at this point. “Look, I’ve been a trader for, oh, the last hundred years or so, and there’s nothing bad about buying and selling what people need. I got nothing but respect for your enterprise, Mr Stockton, it’s been a light through some dark times. But I also remember where that road takes you, if you follow it the end. I say we do it differently, here. We do it the way settlements have been doing it for two hundred years no. You own the land that you farm, you own the place where you put your bedroll, you own the things you use, but that’s it. The rest belongs to the community. The water, the soil, the workshops, the… whatever it is you got down there in the Institute.”

Next to Nate, Dr. Allie Filmore speaks up for the first time that day. She’s always been quiet at this table, answering only when someone directly addresses her. It’s different down at the Institute, but Nate knows the surfacers still frighten her. At the end of the day, she sometimes cries, and part of it is an admission of guilt, but most of it is just the stress from looking out of the window and seeing the open sky, from the sounds and the smells of the real world.

But now, she almost smiles. “That’s how the Institute has been doing things since its foundation, Miss Daisy. We allocate all resources according to need and efficiency, and ask for a contribution from each to the best of their ability. All of our works are public works.”

“Yeah,” Hanco*ck says, blowing a smoke ring at the stone ceiling. “You just been working with a real narrow definition of what your public is. Let’s not fall into that trap, huh?”

It’s a long debate. The vote is narrow, but the wording ends up awkward but inclusive, replacing all instances of any citizen and any man and any human being with the phrase, “all who pledge to uphold this constitution.”

The Brotherhood comes calling during the final week of the assembly, right as they are busy working out the fingers details of how to organize themselves. They descend in a big show of power, with deafening vertibird rotors and the thumping boots of power armor, and march up to the Castle’s gate demanding the immediate release of any synths and Institute personnel.

Preston shakes his head when Nate makes a move to get up on the ramparts to speak with them. “You have no right to take citizens of the Commonwealth,” Preston tells the Elder, “and I and everyone in here is bound by our constitution to give aid to the best of their ability to any who need it. I don’t know who’d win a fight between us and you, and I don’t care to find out. Do you?”

Down in the courtyard, the gunner representative mutters, “Hey, no one ratified any of this bull yet. If you’re going up against the Brotherhood, I’m out.”

At which point Hanco*ck pulls out a knife, demonstratively uses it to sharpen the tip of the quill Blake Abernathy has been using to take notes, and puts his signature under the document, a sprawling homage to the original. “You get the honor of being second, Borden,” he tells the gunner with a low-lidded grin.

Preston is the last to sign, after Jake runs up the stone steps, handing him the document. He glances over his shoulder, down into the courtyard, and gives Nate a bright, soft smile before putting the quill to the parchment.

In the end, no one fires the first shot. Elder Maxson misses the moment. The Brotherhood withdraws, unwilling to commit a massacre of this scale, and in the following weeks, Deacon occasionally drops by with news of the internal strife breaking out within their ranks, with more and more of the knights demanding a return to the Capital Wasteland, even a deposal of their Elder, for the complete failure of this mission.

It’s early July when they withdraw. The flight of the Prydwen is a spectacle that many watch from the ramparts, but Nate remains up there with Hanco*ck a long time after, sitting on a sandy patch of seagrass and watching the clear horizon, basking in the afternoon sun.

It’s almost dark when the sound of bright young voices drifts up to them from the little scrap of beach below the Castle’s walls. They were faintly audible before, but Nate lifts his head when he recognizes them, instantly alert.

“It’s definitely dead,” a boy with a slightly raspy voice declares.

The voice answering him is clearer, softer, but with an arrogant certainty to it, “You don’t know that.”

“Uh, yeah, I do!”

“You don’t.”

“I so do! We used to go to the beach all the time, before the war.”

A childish scoff. “Beaches before the war wouldn’t have had mutated animals.”

“Oh, you’re just a big scaredy-cat! Look, I’m gonna touch it with my knife!”

“I bet you’re not even allowed to have a knife! I’m going to tell father.”

Hanco*ck snorts softly at that. “Your kid’s a little snitch,” he murmurs fondly.

Nate shakes his head. “I’m going to go down there before *your* kid decides to pick a fight with a mirelurk.”

He thought introducing Billy and Shaun to each other would be a good idea. It took him a long time to warm up to the little synth that the real Shaun left behind. It was partly the feeling that this was some last attempt at emotional manipulation, and partly the fact that little Shaun has an uncanny way of acting like, well, a synth. He’s quiet and withdrawn and distrusts strangers, and when he does warm up, he turns out to be haughty and precocious, just like the real Shaun must have been at his age.

Which is why, in the end, Nate couldn’t help but love him. He brought him up here hoping that maybe Shaun would like to stay on the surface, but so far, it’s been an unmitigated disaster - Shaun hates the surface, and he hates the other children up here, and he particularly doesn’t get along with Billy.

“Sucks to be you,” Billy exclaims down at the beach, unimpressed by Shaun’s threat that he’ll tell Nate about the knife. “I got this for Christmas from - ahhh! Shoot! It’s alive!”

Nate darts forward instantly at the sound of Billy’s scream and the hollow crack of a mirelurk bursting up from its nest in the sand. He reaches the edge of the ramparts just in time to see Billy stumbling backwards, knife in hand. A few steps behind him, Shaun is cowering in the sand, screaming as well, and just as Nate scrambles back to the blanket he and Hanco*ck have been lazing around on to grab his gun, he see’s Piper Wright’s little sister run along the beach towards both boys, shouting, “You stupid little goobers - I can’t leave you alone for two minutes!”

Hanco*ck tosses him the gun, and he turns back around just in time to see Nat whacking the mirelurk with her baseball bat. “Hit it, hit it!” Billy screams.

“What do you even have a knife for!” she screams back. “Give it to me!”

Maybe that’s what Billy is trying to do, but just as he holds out the knife, the mirelurk moves forward, ramming the long hunting knife straight down its gullet. It skitters back, and then folds up with a shudder, dead.

Both Nat and Billy stare at it, panting. Nate lowers the gun, his heart hammering loudly.

Hanco*ck, apparently completely unconcerned, ambles up beside him and says proudly, “That’s my boy.”

“Wow,” Billy gasps. “Did you see that? I killed it with one blow, just like - “

He turns around to Shaun as he’s bragging, and falls silent when he sees the little synth still cowering in the sand and whimpering. “Hey, uh, Shaun?”

Nat elbows him viciously, hissing, “This is your fault! Oh, damn it, I was supposed to watch you, I’ll be grounded for life if he blows a gasket or something!”

It really doesn’t look good. Shaun hasn’t seen much of the surface world except for the few weeks he spent with Kellogg, when he was mostly kept indoors. This wasn’t how Nate hoped it would go. But when he turns to go down and intervene, Hanco*ck’s hand darts out and pulls him back. “Let them sort it out,” he murmurs.

Billy grimaces, and takes a few steps towards his foster brother, kneeling in the sand. “Hey. I’m sorry I called you a scaredy-cat. It really was scary. And you were right.”

That last admission is what moves Shaun to lift his head and wipe the snot from his nose. “I didn’t say it was dead, I just said you couldn’t know. You have to test your hy-” he swallows down a little hiccuping sob, “your hypotheses.”

Nat frowns. “Your whatsits?”

Billy shrugs, shaking his head. “Do you wanna see my knife?” he asks Shaun.

Bit by bit, Shaun recovers, getting back up on his feet. He looks unhappy at all the dirt on his clothes, but then asks, “Do you think we can use the knife to see what it’s like inside?”

Even from up here, Nate can see Billy’s face lighting up in delight, and the disgusted grimace on Nat’s face as she exclaims, “You’re both so gross!”

But she remains with them, looking quite interested as Shaun and Billy heave the mirelurk onto its back and argue about how to dissect it. “But you gotta swear not to tell Piper or your dads about it!” she demands.

Shaun looks conflicted for a second, but he agrees to a pinky swear.

“See,” Hanco*ck says, as they three link their fingers. “Better to let them make their own messes. Might’ve been safer if you’d gone down there, but this way, they’ll be thick as thieves.”

He turns out to be right. Nat, Billy and Shaun become inseparable, especially after the following spring, when Nate and Hanco*ck travel south with MacCready to go looking for his son. Duncan is a sickly boy, awfully short for his age, timid even after he’s cured of his sickness, but the three of them take him under their wings, and Nate has never seen MacCready happier than when he watches them run about getting into trouble.

Each spring, the Commonwealth holds its assembly. Five years after the founding, Blake Abernathy brings up a motion to deal with the problem of outsiders, as he puts it. More and more are coming, from the cold north, from the newly joined settlement of Far Harbor, from the Western back country, from the Capital Wasteland. Many of them are poor, homeless drifters, and just as many are ghouls looking for the new promised land, but from the south, people come with their young children, to protect them from being drafted into the Brotherhood. Their numbers have grown so large that the Brotherhood has begun patrolling the borders, trying to intercept the refugees, and parts of the Railroad have found a new calling.

“How do you know that they’ll fit in?” Abernathy demands of the assembly. “That they’ll stick to our laws?”

“If you build it, they’ll come,” Daisy says serenly. “I don’t see the problem, Blake.”

They argue about it back and forth all afternoon. Nate doesn’t say much during the discussion. His thoughts linger on the thing that Daisy has said, on how true it rings to him, how little the motivations of the strangers coming to join them worry him. Abernathy and some of the other settlers think the newcomers might be opportunists, hoping to live off the Commonwealth’s charity, or Brotherhood spies, or uncivilized savages. But it seems simpler than that to Nate.

Even if the newcomers aren’t used to living with the common welfare in mind, even if they come haunted by their pasts, even if it might take them a season, or twenty to understand what really drew them to the Commonwealth, in the end they’ll recognize it for what it is.

A place worth living in.