Chapter Text
“Where have you been?”
She looked up from wiping more ghoul gore from her helmet.
“Working. Searching”
“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back.”
“I always will. I always plan on it.” She corrected. When Amy thought of what had gone wrong this time, though, she sighed and placed the helmet down on the armor stand, stepped out of her battered T-45 armor to try and work on the stuck actuator in the arm. “I didn’t even plan on being gone a week.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back, Soldier. We have work to do.”
She sighed and put her screwdriver down on the tool cabinet harder than she intended.
“Sorry, sir.” She ground her teeth to try and silence the sound of Kellog’s voice spinning his own tale of woe. “Let me know what you need done, and I’ll make it happen.”
“If you need some time…”
“No. Just let me fix this… I’ll be ready to leave in an hour.”
“It will be dark in an hour, Knight.” The pleasure that she just barely sensed at her return disappeared instantly, and was covered by the dark suspicion in his voice, a drop in his eyebrows.
“That’s fine.”
“No, that’s a tactically poor decision. I need you to head out to a few locations for Haylen, and that involves going in with your eyes open and alert. Not tired and obstructed by darkness.”
“It’s fine.” She finally got the plating off the frame and sat it down to begin pulling the frayed wires that were shorting out and causing the actuators in the hand to only fire occasionally. “Sir. Or I’ll just leave now, sneak in, sneak out, and be back before the sun is up. I won’t even engage hostiles.”
“Unacceptable, Knight.”
Amy sighed.
“Okay. Yes, sir. What are your orders?”
“Finish what you need to do here, report inside the station to resupply and rest, and you and I will leave in the morning. I’ll debrief you on what happened while you were away when you come inside.”
“Yes, sir.”
Amy watched him leave with prickles of dread traveling up her arms.
She knew she would hate this part. Danse truly did seem to care about his soldiers, but damn, sometimes caring was the furthest thing from what she wanted.
There was no way she was going to get inside the Glowing Sea; her power armor didn’t even seem to have enough protection from bullets, let alone the radiation, and the one person she would have felt comfortable asking for help to retrieve information from this person hiding there… she was too terrified to speak to.
Nick’s kind, ruined face still blinked at her behind her eyelids at night when she tried to sleep.
Kellog’s greasy voice, and Nick’s face.
She hated that she had his memories floating around with her now, hated that he seemed to be lodged inside of Nick, too. The first person she’d met who was not only willing to help, willing to just sit and listen and understand, but who may have had an idea of what she’d lost in an instant, and what had she done to him? Ruined him. Turned him into a diabolical, evil criminal.
Sure, Danse—Paladin Danse—had been willing to help her, place trust in her, provide her with resources and responsibilities like she hadn’t had in a long, long time, but he had a certain need of her as well. Nick was selfless, and she had no idea how she was going to pay back the debt she owed him.
And she still didn’t know how she would explain to her superior that her friend she kept leaving to work with was a synth. She sat down in the doorway to the small garage and lit a cigarette.
It was less than satisfying, it tasted more than a little like irradiated dust, but still, it stopped the shaking in her hands for the meanwhile at least.
Her armor was nearly fixed; she just had to replace the two wires and reattach the plates she’s remove to access them, but something kept her standing in the door with the last of the day’s sunlight streaming through crumbling buildings to warm her face.
It was reassuring, somehow, that even though her entire world had been destroyed, bombed, murdered and kidnapped that the sun still rose and set each day. It was reassuring that even though she had yet to find a pair of boots that fit her that people seemed warm and happy in Boston’s frigid air. She smiled, looking around at all of the fortifications that Gladius had moved into the old crumbling police station. She throbbed, thinking of Nate. It was reassuring that despite the desperation she saw on people’s faces everywhere that there was still an army fighting for the greater good, and folks who had discipline and dreams and honor.
By the time she realized that she was sobbing, her tears were growing frigid on her face. The cigarette had burned down to ashes in her hand and there was nothing left.
She fished another out of the crumpled pack in her pocket and lit it.
She stood up to close the garage door and turn on the small nuclear heater hanging from the ceiling. And also, Haylen was standing in the doorway.
Amy briefly considered ignoring the Scribe and turning back to face the clattering garage door as it shut. She realized that realistically, though, it would be more awkward that she hadn’t turned around wiping gratuitous amounts of snot from her face and stared at the woman for a solid ten seconds before turning bright red and spinning to face the opposite direction.
So… she just said;
“Hey.” And ran her sleeve over her snotty face again.
“Hey.” Haylen replied.
Amy wished she could have called it a normal interaction… but the Scribe’s eyes were worried, her delicate eyebrows narrowed.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay.” She said softly.
“That’s good.” Amy replied. Her voice was way higher than it should have been.
“But…” Haylen stepped a little closer. “I did find a bottle of wine that I didn’t share with the boys.” Amy appreciated that the other woman finally broke eye contact and glanced down at the greasy floor. “And I will ask if you’d like to share it with me.”
“Oh!” Amy laughed again, and wedged her cigarette between her lips to wipe her eyes again, finally feeling dry skin underneath her fingertips. “Oh, that’s—okay.” She laughed, and stepped back, unsure of what to do with her hands. “That’s—thank you.”
“I’ll be right back.” Haylen said, and she slipped back out of the door.
Amy sat down on the mostly empty toolbench and tried to finish the second cigarette of the night.
When Haylen returned, again, she didn’t even hear the door shut.
“You should probably just stop lighting those until you figure out how to smoke them.”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been smoking them since before you were born.” She stuck the last inch or so of the cigarette back in her mouth. Where did the time keep going?
“Really?” Haylen sat the bottle and two mostly intact coffee mugs down on the tool bench beside her. “I kind of figured Danse was just spinning tales when he said you were pre-war.”
“He knows how to do that?” Amy asked skeptically. The thought of drinking wine from coffee cups reminded her fondly of her college roommate, and she laughed and reached for the wine bottle. The paper label had disappeared over the years, leaving only a dusty, cracked splotch on the dark glass.
“Once in a while he tells a good ghost story, too. You usually have to do something really special to get him to tell stories, though.” Haylen said, producing a swiss army knife and flipping out the corkscrew.
“Well, I’ll try not to disappoint… although I know for a fact that this is the definition of disappointing in the military.”
“Yeah?” The other woman started opening the wine bottle, her mouth screwed into a crooked line.
“Yeah. I’ve been caught disobeying orders and drinking before.”
“You were military?” She looked up with an eyebrow cocked ascant.
“Once upon a time, yeah.”
“What was it like before the war?” Haylen asked as she poured them both lukewarm mugs of what would either be amazing or horrible wine.
“Well, before the war even started, it was very prestigious to have volunteered, that’s why I did it… afterwards…” She remembered the nights of terror, remembered a young Nate kissing her behind Humvees, disarming mines, dodging bullets, reading report after report of young men and women who would never see their families again, trying to figure out how to tell them that they’d fought and died for kin and country instead of endless and pointless consumption. There was a time when the words of patriotism fell flat and ashy on her tongue, though. “Afterwards, I was still glad to have made a difference, though.”
Haylen held out her mug, chipped rim and all. Amy clinked them together, and they sipped together.
The gag and sputter was mutual and in perfect unison.
Had Amy been watching it on a sitcom or a vid she would have laughed. As it was, experiencing the taste firsthand… she gagged and coughed first, and then laughed.
It lasted far longer than it should have, and when she finally stopped, she realized that not only were there tears on her face again, but that Haylen’s shoulder was propped up beneath her cheek.
By the time she looked up, and saw Danse standing at the doorway next, not only were her tears gone, but her sense of privacy was gone again, just like it was during her days in the army.
She laughed.
Amy really laughed.
She picked up her and Haylen’s mugs both, and hopped off the bench, walked over to Danse.
“To you, sir.” She handed one to him.
She watched she skeptical expression cross his face and mentally cursed Haylen as she giggled and the paladin’s eyes flickered over to the Scribes face… but he still eventually took the mug from her hand and took a drink.
“Oh my god!” He immediately spit the spoilt wine back on the concrete garage floor.
Amy took a sip from her mug, just to be sure it really tasted as bad as she thought she remembered.
It did.
By the time she heard Haylen laughing at them from spitting on the floor, Amy felt… so much lighter.
“By the steel, ladies.” Danse said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Next time you need something to drink, we have supplies that won’t kill you overnight, you know.”