#hate that i have to wait over a year to snag this lim..

[nomette]

“You can’t be surprised that the guy is a synth,” MacCready said, startled. “He has about as much emotion as a bag full of hammers.”

“Did you know?” Leigh said, totally flat. MacCready stared at him, unsure what to say. Leigh surely wasn’t this mad at him over Paladin Danse, was he? MacCready hadn’t done anything. He felt for his pistol, but he hadn’t brought a weapon to the ship. Leigh’s eyes flicked to his hand, tracking the movement.

“I’m not mad at you,” Leigh said. “Maxson…” He smiled, shiny and picture perfect and only slightly alarming. “Maxson ordered Danse executed, even though he didn’t do anything.”

“Sucks to be him,” MacCready said.

“But was he working for the Institute?” Leigh demanded. MacCready thought back. Aside from the camera, which could have been planted by anyone, he didn’t know. He’d just assumed, because most of the other camera carriers had been synths.

“I don’t know,” he said. “X and I never checked in with him or anything. The Knight-Sergeant was kidnapped and replaced a month ago, you could ask him.” Leigh got a mean look in his eye.

“Good to know,” he said. “Would have been better to know yesterday.”

“It slipped my mind,” MacCready said nervously. “I was so happy about, you know,” he said, and held up the hand with Leigh’s ring on it. It was too big, so he was currently wearing it on his thumb. Leigh’s face softened and a soppy smile split his face; MacCready would have made fun of him if he hadn’t been smiling back in exactly the same way. It was only a ring, but it felt like so much. Like a promise, like a sign that his life was finally back on track.

“It’s alright, darlin’,” Leigh said, still holding MacCready’s hand. “I didn’t think to ask you. You’re pretty distracting, yourself.” MacCready knew that the kiss was coming, but it didn’t stop him from going all soft when Leigh’s arm went around his waist. The man was a hazard. He knew was grinning stupidly when they came out of the kiss, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “Keep the replacement our little secret,” Leigh said, his voice low and pitched to make every word a caress. “I just need to grab a little intel, and then we can go home.”

“I don’t know, I was kind of enjoying being President of the Leigh fan club,” MacCready said, just to be contrary. “Think I can get them to buy me a new gun?”

“If you let anyone else handle your gun, I will be very displeased,” Leigh said, and shifted the hand that was one MacCready’s hip, his thumb tracing the line of MacCready’s hipbone over the layers of fabric. They grinned at each other. This, above all else, what was MacCready thought of as love; that feeling of being co-conspirators, of running a two man con against the world. Leigh bumped his forehead gently against MacCready’s before leaving. MacCready emerged from the corner feeling faintly dazed, a stupid grin plastered on his lips.

“The Sentinel kissed you,” one of the squires accused, pointing her finger.

“We’re engaged,” MacCready said, brandishing his ring. The squire shrieked like she’d shot her, prompting groans from the hungover soldiers.

“Lim!” she shrieked. “They’re engaged!”

It cost him a few autographs and a promise to bring Leigh down to see the squires, but he managed to extricate himself from the knot of excited children and escape to a dark, quiet corner. The process of cleaning the base was starting up, but MacCready hadn’t let anyone bully him into helping clean since leaving Little Lamplight, and he wasn’t about to break a six year streak. He popped open a bottle of clean water to get the taste of hangover out of his mouth and waited; soon enough the vertibirds would be up and running, and then he and Leigh would be able to leave.

Duncan was back at the house with Codsworth. MacCready hoped he was doing okay. He was contemplating places that might have more books for his son when someone tapped him on the shoulder. His back was to the wall. Something was above him. He rolled, reaching for his gun, and a force grabbed him and tossed him back into his corner.

“MacCready,” the thing in front of him purred. It was shaped like a woman, and wore a brotherhood of steel uniform and a smirk. The face was pale, the hair dark and cut short. Memory kicked at him. He’d seen this face before, and not in the Institute.

“A-ace,” he said slowly. The name jogged his memory. Ace had been a popular major in the Gunners until she’d vanished inexplicably. Recalled, MacCready thought. Or reclaimed? She smirked, pushing into MacCready’s space. MacCready didn’t bother going for his gun. If she was anything like X6, firing his dinky pistol into her stomach would only annoy her.

“You always had a good memory for names,” she said, tapping a finger against his forehead. “Do you know Lelo?”

“N-no,” MacCready said. “Any reason you’ve got me up against this wall? I’m taken, you know.” Ace did not step back.

“I know.” Her eyes were black, glittering; she peered at his face curiously, the way a cat might watch a bird struggling on the ground. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward. Her lips brushed his cheek. “Thank you for destroying the Institute,” she said.

“Yeah, no problem,” MacCready managed weakly. Ace’s face was smooth, betraying nothing. She reached forward and drew his pistol from its holster, then stepped back. MacCready watched tap the pistol against her palm, his heart thudding in his throat.

“I do wished you could have saved some of the other coursers, though,” she said, and closed her hand into a fist. The pistol shattered. MacCready’s pulse spiked wildly. Part of him thought he was going to die, right there, and part of him was numb with astonishment.

“Wish you could have saved my gun,” he said. Ace chuckled.  

“Fair enough. We were mostly assholes anyway.”

“X6 wasn’t that bad,” MacCready blurted out. Ace tilted her head to one side, watching him like a deathclaw might watch prey thrashing around on the ground.

“Huh!” she said. “You must be getting sentimental, kid. Tell Leigh I took care of the rest of the records, and to leave Lelo alone.” MacCready nodded nervously. A pause, and then, lightning fast— she ruffled his hair, laughed at his flinch, and pushed a weapon into his nerveless hands.  “Figure you'll need this more than me. Good luck!” She vanished into the corridor, gone like a ghost. Even her footsteps were silent. MacCready sagged against the wall, feeling like he’d run a marathon. It was a decent chunk of time before he could make himself take out the weapon. It looked like a standard issue laser pistol, but it was easily twice the weight. The outside was engraved with a series of tally marks, and a courser designation. A6. Ace.

He raised it experimentally and fired at a stack of boxes. There was no sound, only a flicker of light. The boxes disintegrated into a pile of ashes. MacCready put the pistol away very carefully. There was the distant sound of running footsteps, and Leigh came careening around the corner.

“We’ve got to go, there’s a—”

“Courser,” MacCready finished for him. “You just missed her.” Leigh’s face flickered down MacCready’s form, scanning for wounds. “Hey, hey, I’m fine.” MacCready pulled him into the alcove and explained, cuddled close, what had happened.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Leigh murmured, stroking MacCready’s face with one big palm. “I would hate to get out of the Institute and lose you now.”

“Hey, it’s only a courser. No problem for me,” MacCready said, grinning. Leigh was leaning in, close and warm. MacCready titled his head up and kissed him, let Leigh trap him between the wall and his body.

“Hey,” Leigh said when they broke apart. “Your place or mine?”

Despite Leigh’s flirting, the trip back was only a decoy; they touched down in Covenant, then started walking north. MacCready’s mood soured when he realized they were looking for Danse.

“Aw, come on, I thought we were going home?”

“After this,” Leigh promised. He snagged MacCready around the shoulders and kissed the top of his head. “If you want, I can meet you there. This won’t take long.”

“As if,” MacCready muttered. “I leave for twenty minutes and when I come back you’ll have five settlements that need your help.”

“Helping people is so rewarding,” Leigh said innocently. “That’s how I met my fiance, you know.”

“Yeah?” MacCready said, a grin splitting his face. Part of him didn’t really believe it had happened; Leigh was so much, and MacCready was just MacCready.

“Yeah,” Leigh said. His smile stole most of MacCready’s objections out of his mouth.

“Fine, fine. I’m just saying, we destroyed the Institute. If that doesn’t deserve a day off, what does?”

“Let’s take more than one,” Leigh suggested, and took MacCready’s hand. “You might need some time to recover.”  He wiggled his eyebrows at MacCready, who burst out laughing. Hand in hand, they advanced into the woods. Despite everything, it felt good to be back in the Commonwealth, back with Leigh, out of the weird, underworld of the Institute. This was where he belonged; standing at Leigh’s side, back out on the open road.

They made it to the bunker and disabled the security without much effort. Leigh’s mouth thinned when MacCready didn’t holster his pistol after the turrets went down, but he didn’t say anything. Leigh could be as sure as he wanted, but MacCready didn’t trust Danse, particularly not with Leigh. Leigh was so delicate right now, still injured, unable to pilot his power armor. If Danse attacked him... well, MacCready wouldn’t give him the chance.

They walked through the hushed station, past the usual assortment of skeletons. MacCready’s instincts were saying that this was a trap; the feeling doubled when they found the station abandoned except for a rickety elevator.

“Oh, of course there’s only one way down. I don’t like this, Leigh.”

“It’ll be fine, sweetheart,” Leigh said. MacCready ground his teeth.

“Don’t sweetheart me, Leigh. Please, at least get out your gun.”

“For you, darling? Anything.” He unclipped his shotgun and loaded a shell, and the two of them descended into the depth of the bunker.

Danse was an orange figure in the dusty gloom, the color of his flight suit muted by dust and shadow. He peered across the gap at Leigh, his eyes sunken, red-rimmed, his arms limp at his side. Despair perched ugly on his face.

“I’m not surprised Maxson sent you,” he said, his voice low and resigned. “He never liked to do the dirty work himself.” Leigh glaned at MacCready and tilted his head to one side, and MacCready understood that he was being asked to step aside, to give Danse and Leigh space to talk alone. It itched at him; anyone could fake a few tears.

“Yes?” he said. Leigh didn’t so much glance at him.

“Keep watch, please,” Leigh said. MacCready went. Resentment was dug in under his ribs; resentment that he’d had to walk this far on his aching feet, resentment that Leigh cared so obviously and intensely about Danse, about the Brotherhood of Steel, about the great aching wound of the Commonwealth. They’d been heroes once; wasn’t that enough? MacCready wanted to go home and be with his son, and let the rest of the world take care of itself for once. Danse could fight his own battles.

He was staring upwards when he heard the distant sound of a vertibird, and saw the dark shape rising over the trees. It had been a trap, but Danse hadn’t been the danger. He’d been the bait. MacCready sprinted through the bunker and jammed down the elevator button, pulse thudding in his throat.

Leigh and Danse didn’t glance up when MacCready came careening into the room. Leigh had one arm around Danse’s shoulders, his body curled as if he were trying to shield Danse from the world.

“Maxson’s here,” MacCready said. Danse’s shoulders slumped further. His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying. MacCready felt a stab of revulsion. Danse wasn’t his friend. He didn’t want to know these things about him.

“I’ll take care of this,” Leigh said to Danse.

“Don’t do anything to hurt Maxson,” Danse said. “I should be the example, not the exception.”

“What’s the purpose of rules, Danse? To protect people. What have you ever done, other than try to help? The problem with the other synths wasn’t that they were synths, it was that they were being controlled by the wrong people.”

“No one should have that kind of power,” Danse said.

“No one does,” Leigh said. “We destroyed the Institute. I destroyed the Institute. Trust me, Danse. I’ve seen evil, and you’re not it.” A long, hushed silence, MacCready’s ears straining for the sound of power armor on the floor above. He was on the verge of physically dragging Leigh back up when Danse finally spoke.

“Sir,” he said, and straightened. It was the first thing that he’d done that made him look like the Danse MacCready remembered. Jaw tight, muscles tense, a look of terrible pain on his face, Danse lifted the holotags from around his neck and handed them to Leigh. “Give these to Maxson, or he’ll just send someone else to hunt me down,” Danse said. Leigh took them and did the stupid Brotherhood of Steel salute, and Danse mirrored him.

“At ease,” Leigh said. The corner of Danse’s mouth lifted ever so slightly.

“Get the hell out of here, Leigh,” he said. “Maxson is waiting.”

Leigh and MacCready hurried to the elevator, leaving Danse with the rest of the broken machines. They rose slowly, MacCready straining for the sound of power armor, half-convinced that the Brotherhood would be waiting with miniguns when the elevator opened. Leigh took the moment to eat some mentats: grape, judging by the smell.

“Hoping fresh breath will keep Maxson from shooting us?” MacCready muttered. The door opened onto empty space.

“You never know,” Leigh said mildly. He swiped MacCready’s pistol from his hip holster and fired, reducing a skeleton to ashes and making MacCready jump.

“You couldn’t have warned me?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Leigh asked, grinning. He dropped the dog tags in the ashes and pushed them around with his foot, humming. “You’re easy to pickpocket for such a suspicious guy.”

“You’re suspiciously good at pickpocketing,” MacCready retorted. Leigh grinned and wiggled his fingers at him, then retrieved the dog tags, which were now warm and ashy. He tossed them lazily into the air, squared his shoulders, and went unsmilingly out to face Maxson.

Maxson’s fear had apparently gotten the best of him, since he’d brought a vertibird and a bunch of goons just to finish off the sad sack in the basement. Well: either that he’d brought them to finish Leigh off, in which case they were fucked. MacCready hung back in the doorway, wary of the miniguns, but Leigh strolled forward confidently. He paused about five feet from Maxson, raised the dogtags, then tossed them overhead to Maxson, who caught them.

“If you knew where he was, why’d you bother sending us?” MacCready muttered. Leigh didn’t react, but Maxson’s eyes narrowed.

“Good job, Sentinel. I assume the body is inside?”

“It’s an ash pile, I’m afraid,” Leigh said. He held up MacCready’s pistol, then shot lazily at a nearby piece of sheet metal, reducing it to ash. Maxson pursed his lips.

“You disagreed quite stringently with my orders on the Prydwen, Sentinel, and now you don’t have a body for me.”

“Do you think Danse would give up his dogtags?” Leigh asked.

“That thing wasn’t a person,” Maxson said.

“No, it wasn’t,” Leigh agreed. “They’re not programmed to be self-aware. Right up until the end, he insisted that he was a member of the Brotherhood, that there had been a mistake.”

“Was there?”

“I hope not, since I shot him.”

“It wasn’t even human, Sentinel. It was an undetonated bomb. Flesh is flesh. Machine is machine. The two were never meant to intertwine… by attempting to play God, the Institute had taken the sanctity of human life and corrupted it beyond measure.” The sanctity of human life, as if the Brotherhood didn’t take human lives every day. MacCready stared as Maxson began to rant about the evil of the Institute, and the perversion of the natural order, each word more unbearable than the last, until the compulsion to shoot him was almost unbearable. For this, Maxson was throwing away a dedicated soldier? If Danse had been a traitor or a spy, MacCready would have seen no problem in executing him, but to kill him for this nonsense? Danse believed, fervently, blindly, stupidly, in this idiot, and for his blind devotion Maxson wanted to reward him with a bullet.

Finally, the rant trailed off. Maxson stopped, as if waiting for applause, but MacCready and Leigh just stared at him. MacCready was imagining the sound Maxson would make if MacCready decked him when Leigh spoke.

“With all due respect, sir, I think you’ve lost sight of what the real problem is,” Leigh said. MacCready glared at his back. What the fuck was he doing? This was no time for a stand-off. Leigh was injured and out of his armor, while Maxson had an armed guard and a big-fuck off gatling laser that he was just crazy enough to use on someone who disagreed with him. Leigh continued, blind to MacCready’s silent protest. “They used to say the same thing about Chinese people, back before the war, sir. ‘The only good chink is a dead chink’, they would say. And then they dropped the bombs. Why not? The enemy wasn’t human.”

“Danse was not a human being, Sentinel,” Maxson said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Leigh said. “But we did this to the world. Not synths. Humans. Focusing on synths does nothing to prevent humanity from destroying the world again.” Maxson didn’t reply, or go for his gun; he just stared at Leigh from across the space between them.

“Take a vacation, Sentinel,” Maxson said at last. “The Brotherhood appreciates your service.”

“Thank you, sir,” Leigh said. He turned his back and marched into the treeline. Maxson’s gaze shifted to MacCready, who felt himself pinned, caught in unexpected crossfire. He stuck his tongue out at Maxson and ran after Leigh in a panic. A few steps, and he caught up, grabbed Leigh by the shoulders and spun him around to face him.  

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded. “We almost got shot! You—” MacCready remembered that Maxson might still be listening. “You did the job anyway! Why pick a fight like that?”

“Because he’s wrong,” Leigh said rigidly.

“It’s only Danse,” MacCready said uncomprehendingly. Leigh slammed his fist into a tree hard enough to shake all the branches. His facial expression remained blank.

“I understand that you have never in your life given a shit about justice, or peace, or any kind of ideal whatsoever, but try, for the first time in your life, to have a little fucking sympathy.” There was something feral in Leigh’s voice, something trembling on the edge of violence. MacCready backed away from it, and Leigh, but Leigh was staring at him. Tracking him.

“Do you know what it’s like to be programmed?” Leigh demanded. “What it’s like to give your whole life to an organization, to give everything that you have, and be discarded anyway? No. You have no idea, because you’ve never given a shit for anyone other than yourself and your family. Small-scale. No ideals. Barely more than a raider.”

“I am not a raider!” MacCready snapped. How had this conversation became about him?

“No, of course not,” Leigh said contemptuously. “Raiders kill for fun. You do it for money. You’re a mercenary.” MacCready stared at him. He’d thought- Leigh had never expressed anything but admiration for MacCready’s skills, his ability to do anything to survive. He’d thought, stupidly, that the lack of outward judgement meant a lack of inward judgement. He’d thought that Leigh really loved him.

“I don’t do that anymore,” he said, recovering his voice. Leigh turned away; MacCready grabbed him by the shoulders, shoved him up against the closest tree. “No,” he snapped. “You fucking listen to me, Leigh. I deserted from the Gunners. I knew, I fucking knew when I did it, that I was probably going to die from it, that my son was probably going to die, but I fucking did it. I deserted, because I won’t do anything for money.” MacCready’s voice broke. He was teetering on the edge of tears. “How dare you,” he choked out. “How dare you fucking sit on your pile of caps in your nice house and tell me what I will and won’t do for money.”

“This isn’t about money!” Leigh said.

“You brought it up, not me! Calling me a raider— what the fuck do you know about raiders? What do you know about the Wasteland? All you do is talk about the past, China this and the US that. That has nothing to do with what’s happening now!”

“It has everything to do with what’s happening now!” Leigh snapped. “I’ve seen Maxson before. I know his type. I was there when ideology made the world go up in flames, and I’m not going to sit through it a second time.”

“So, what, you’re going to take over the Brotherhood now too? Is there anything in this whole damn wasteland that you don’t want under your control?” MacCready had meant the words as a taunt, a goad, but the moment they left his mouth he knew they were true. Leigh was planning to get rid of Maxson. That was what the confrontation had been- a last chance to see if Maxson could be prevailed on to listen at all, and he hadn’t. They stared at each other. Realization, slow and awful, was creeping up on MacCready, tightening like a vise around his ribs.

“You are,” MacCready said. His hands curled into fists. “You are planning to join the Brotherhood.”

“I was already in the Brotherhood,” Leigh said. “What made you think I was going to leave, now that they’re the most powerful faction in the Commonwealth?”

“Being the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel isn’t a part-time job!” MacCready snapped. “I know what you’re like, Leigh. You don’t want to be a member. You want to run the place. You going to turn around and kill them, when they won’t do what you want? Or will you get with the program and stay up there in that freakin’ blimp, looking down on the rest of us?”

“Come with me,” Leigh said. “We can enjoy the view together.” The joke fell flat.

“No,” MacCready said. “No! Forget about the Brotherhood of Squeal and come home. Diamond City, Sanctuary, wherever you want. As long as it’s not the Prydwen. I’m not joining the Brotherhood of Steel because you can’t get over mistakes you made years ago! It’s over. Get over it. Come home.”

Silence. MacCready’s heart was racing, his hands itching to throw a punch or to run, but this wasn’t the sort of thing he could remove with a bullet. Leigh’s ring was on his finger. He wasn’t giving it back. If it came down to it, he could pawn it, buy a few days of food for Duncan. He didn’t want to.

“I can’t,” Leigh said.

“Why not?” MacCready demanded. “Why not?” Leigh was looking at him— not coldly, but with a certain removal, as if MacCready were a target, or a mark, or as if he wasn’t there at all.

“I owe it to them,” he said at last. MacCready had been right; Leigh wasn’t with him at all. He was somewhere in the past, replaying whatever nameless deed haunted him. Let it go! MacCready wanted to scream, but it wouldn't do any good. “I know what war does, MacCready. The world changed, but war… war never changes. But this time… maybe I can stop it before it starts.”

“Trying to take responsibility for other people, Leigh? That never works.”

“Only taking responsibility for myself,” Leigh said. “I could run the Brotherhood, and you could run it with me.” He took a step forward. MacCready took a step back.

“Don’t,” MacCready said. It was almost a sob. “We just got out of the Institute, don’t do this again.”

“We can go home,” Leigh said. “We can take some time and think about it.”

“You can take some time to talk me around before doing whatever you want anyway,” MacCready said sharply.

“You gave me that soldier,” Leigh said. “I thought this was what you wanted?”

“Wanted,” MacCready said. A tear ran down his face. He hadn’t realized how close to the edge he was, how powerful the urge was to give into grief completely.  Leigh had gotten this idea in his head— and god, when had he ever listened to anyone— he wasn’t going to back out now.  Leigh was leaving him.

“You can marry the Brotherhood of Steel, or you can marry me,” MacCready said. It sank into the silence between them like a stone. He stared wretchedly up at Leigh, wanting desperately to take it back, but it was impossible. Impossible to join, impossible to contemplate a future without Leigh. But he could do it. He’d have to. Leigh’s mismatched eyes met his; MacCready stared at him, trying to memorize the scar on his forehead, the impossible symmetry of his face, his smile, his beauty.

“Really?” Leigh said. There was that damned smile. Leigh’s face relaxed into it, his real thoughts glossed over by a layer of beauty. MacCready wanted terribly to be convinced, but he didn’t think he could be.

“I’m not going to follow other people’s orders ever again,” MacCready said. “Not even yours.” He let Leigh advance, this time, stood there stiffly as Leigh kissed him on the forehead, and then Leigh was gone.  Back to the Prydwen.

The walk from the bunker to Diamond City was long and took MacCready past the stupid Chinese submarine that had started this mess. He fired a shot angrily into the water as he strode past; his disbelief and misery had crystallized into an incandescent fury. He felt ready to kill anything that got in his way. His feet took him over the bridge, past the spot where he and Leigh had had their first argument, and down into the city.

He almost wished that he’d never met Leigh, but even in his dim, fell mood, the thought rang false. Leigh was so much, so handsome, so strong, so good; stupidly, idiotically, foolishly good. So he’d killed some people; so what? MacCready could see it, could feel it in the haunted look Leigh got whenever he talked about the past. It wasn’t doing him any good; he needed to put it down, to let go of it, like MacCready had.

Barely better than a raider, Leigh had said. But MacCready was alive, wasn’t he? What mattered more than that? Whatever he’d done, he’d had to do it. Hadn’t he?

Raiders drew on him; it was almost a relief to toss the grenades, to lift his rifle and just shoot. It wasn’t hard. It was the thing he was the best at. Barely more than a raider, Leigh had said. He finished the fight, then rifled through the pockets of the dead body.

Raiders didn’t get married, did they? They didn’t take care of their kids. A voice whispered that MacCready hadn’t taken care of his kid, that he’d been on the edge of death when Leigh came along, that he would never have made it without Leigh’s power armor and Cait’s help.

No, he thought. I went by myself. I went down into that place with Cait, and I didn’t run from that glowing ghoul, though I could have. I don’t like doing this, don’t like scrabbling through filth and taking money off still-warm corpses. But it was a lie. He did like it- liked winning, liked the warm rush of victory, liked divvying up the loot and stocking up on ammo to kill again.

It didn’t matter if he liked it, he told himself. It was necessary. And there wasn’t anything wrong with winning. Leigh had thrown him into a tailspinl, and MacCready hadn’t even done anything wrong. Leigh was the one being unreasonable, insisting on sticking his neck out when he’d done damn well enough. There was no fixing the world, no going back. Leigh needed to learn that.

MacCready entered Diamond City in a foul mood; he stomped through the gates and went straight for Piper’s house. Cait was on the couch; she looked startled to see him.

“MacCready!” she said, grinning, and MacCready remembered that they hadn’t talked since the Institute was destroyed.

“Cait,” he said. She grabbed him in a hug; MacCready resisted the urge to lash out, to drag himself free. It wasn’t Cait’s fault he was pissed.

“Cait, I’m not a raider, am I?” Cait gave him a look.

“The hell kind of question is that?”

“Just answer it,” MacCready barked. Cait gave him a disgusted look.

“Well, do you like to dress up in other people’s blood?”

“No.”

“Do you raid settlements? Do you like to put people in cages? Do you like to fuck girls who can’t say no? You ever been so high you killed your friends?” MacCready remembered that Cait had lived with raiders for years at the Combat Zone, remembered that she hated them.

“No. Of course not.”

“Well, there you go, you daft idiot. What’s happened?”

“Leigh and I… Leigh’s joining the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“I thought he was already a member,” Cait said.

“Yes,” MacCready snapped, “but he wants to run it. Apparently he’s got some kind of problem with Maxson.”

“Sounds great,” Cait said.

“No,” MacCready said. He was close to shouting. “He wants me to join the Brotherhood!”

“What’s wrong with that? You joined the Institute, cozied up to that damn courser. Brotherhood at least knows what they’re after.”

“That wasn’t for real. This is real! He wants me to be an officer.”

“Oh no,” Cait mocked. “Looks like you’ll just have to get a bunch of people following your orders. How awful.” MacCready saw red. He stormed out of the house before he could do something stupid, like try to punch Cait. It was easy for her to be flippant; she wasn’t being asked to do anything! The Brotherhood was cold, military, serious. It was just like the Gunners. Leigh might be at the top, but there would be officers under him, people who expected him to shut-up and do what he was told.

Nick Valentine found him by the edge of the reservoir, angrily throwing rocks into the water.

“Hey, kid,” Nick said, and offered him a beer. MacCready took it, considered it, and then pitched it as far out into the lake as possible. It landed with an unsatisfying splash, and then was gone.

“Never liked that kind of beer anyway,” he said, chest heaving.

“Well, I won’t offer you another one then. What gives? Sheng is getting ready to call Diamond City security on you.”

“He can fuck off,” MacCready said. “This isn’t his pond anyway.”

“True, but it is his water purifier.” MacCready made an inarticulate sound of rage and kicked some gravel into the lake.

“Fucking— bullshit— Leigh— Brotherhood of Steel!” he said. “Fuck!”

“You don’t say,” Nick said.

“Buzz off, Valentine,” MacCready said.

“What’s going on, MacCready? You’re not usually this angry.”

“No shit? Leigh wants me to join the Brotherhood of Steel,” MacCready said sourly. “I had enough with the Gunners. Shit pay, or no pay, officers who think they’re better than you… Quincy.”

“Quincy?”

“Come on, Valentine. We all know I was there. I used to be a gunner sergeant. Had my own little unit; they mostly just covered my ass while I did all the sniping. Bunch of fuckers.” MacCready’s anger had faded; he kicked more gravel into the pond, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I’m not a big ooh, rah, rah, kind of guy. I just want Duncan and Leigh to be safe.” Leigh’s name provoked a flare of anger, but even that was muted. Exhaustion was filtering in. Valentine clapped one hand on MacCready’s shoulder. His voice was kind when he spoke.

“Why don’t you go home to your kid?” he asked. “Take some time to think things out. And don’t yell at Cait. She was worried about you, you know.”

“I know,” MacCready said gloomily. He couldn’t bring himself to apologize, or even talk to her, but he bought some drinks from Bobrov and left them at the Home Plate for her, along with a note apologizing.

The trek from Diamond City to Sanctuary was even longer, but there was a caravan, courtesy of Leigh’s ever-expanding network of settlements. No one recognized him out of his coat and hat; he was still wearing the borrowed Brotherhood fatigues. He arrived at Sanctuary late at night, exhausted and miserable, and stumbled into Leigh’s house.

Duncan wasn’t there. In a panic, MacCready ran through the house, looking for him, then out into the settlement. There was a light on in one of the houses; MacCready stumbled in wildly.

“Duncan—” he said, stuttering out the word. Preston and another two settlers were sitting around a coffee table— Duncan was asleep in a female settler’s lap.

“Your son’s been crying all day,” Preston said, glaring at him. “You just vanished without telling him anything.”

“A vertibird came for me in the middle of the night,” MacCready said, so relieved he couldn’t even be angry. Duncan stirred at the sound of MacCready’s voice.

“Dad?” He got up, rubbing his face, and toddled sleepily over to MacCready.

“Cans,” MacCready said, and scooped up his son. “Oh, thank god. You scared me.”

“Dad,” Duncan said, and started to cry. MacCready picked him, up, rocking him back and forth and hushing him. “I thought you left, again,” he said, sobbing. “You didn’t even say goo’bye.”

“Oh, no, Duncan,” MacCready said, hushing him. “I didn’t think I would be gone this long. I had to walk back from Diamond City, took me nearly all day.” Duncan didn’t hear him. He was clinging to MacCready’s neck, still crying. One last little misery in a day full of them.

“Thank you,” he mouthed to Preston, then set back down the road towards Leigh’s house, bouncing Duncan in his arms. Misery made his steps heavy. His legs ached. He sat down on Leigh’s couch, in Leigh’s house, and bounced Duncan in his lap until his son fell asleep. Outside, the wind shook the trees and threw debris against the windows; anyone outside tonight would have a hard time sleeping. MacCready could almost convince himself that Duncan would be happier in this house with Codsworth than outside with him. Safer, certainly. If not here, than with Piper or Preston or some farmer who wanted extra caps and didn’t mind children, somewhere safe and stable. Leigh would be willing to spring for the caps, and Duncan would grow up better than MacCready had. Would grow up knowing that in the whole world, out of everyone there was, not one person had cared enough to stay with him.

The old Little Lamplight sing-song sprang to mind: why did your parents leave you? to save some bread / they lost their heads/ because they’re dead. The rhyme went on and on. It had been a game to try and come up with the best reason your parents were gone, a way to talk about the thing nobody talked about.

No, MacCready thought. Never. Not for the Brotherhood of Steel, not for Leigh, not for anyone. If there was one thing that kept him from being a raider, it was Duncan, and he wasn’t giving him up.

He martialed his remaining energy and dragged the two of them up the stairs and into Leigh’s bed. The covers were warm, soft, nicer than anything MacCready had ever had or was likely to have, and they pressed down on his body like a tomb. Too exhausted to sleep, he stared up into the darkness, his leg twitching in spastic motions as his tired muscles unwound from the hours of walking. Thoughts crammed wildly into his head, flitting like bloodbugs. He needed a plan. He needed to think of somewhere to keep Duncan, someway to get food, someone who would be willing to help him.

He needed not to think about Leigh, but it was impossible; Leigh was the point his thoughts circled around, the center of his life, the center of everything. Whatever plot he had to win over the Brotherhood of Steel, it would work. MacCready was sure of it. The Brotherhood would come to love Leigh as much as MacCready did, if not as well, and not a single one of them would ever see him for what he really was, a liar and a stone-cold bastard, an idiot determined to win the impossible fight against human nature.

He flopped his hand over his eyes. His wedding ring thumped against his forehead. It knocked a kind of rage into him, a cold, sudden fury. How dare Leigh decide, unilaterally, what he and MacCready were going to do? How dare he leave him for that pile of bolts in the sky? Leigh was his, signed and delivered.

“Asshole,” MacCready said, half-startled by the sound of his own voice, by the sudden awareness that Leigh wasn’t leaving him, not while MacCready still had breath in his body to chase him. Leigh wanted to join the Brotherhood of Steel; it was about time he learned that not everyone was under his control. Had he forgotten who MacCready was?

“You’re messing with the best,” he said, staring sightlessly upwards, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind.

#maccready #macready/male!SS #fallout 4 #robert joseph maccready #war never changes #a nomette writes #shot through the head