Chapter Text
Under the full moon, Clay-Crawler consumed its ether. Viscous and effervescent, milky and alkaline, it was a paradoxical pathway to the garden of paradise locked away inside his own mind. With all of his senses he could see, taste, feel his destiny unfolding before him, a great passage through himself and outbound in the stars, where the Lost Voices of the apocalypse waited for him to join them.
“Ether of the Moon will ease the senses,” Pandora’s-Box said as Clay-Crawler mounted the back of his rad-dragon. It purred under him, content under his weight, bonded with him through mutual trauma. “Together, your heart will beat, your minds will meld. Together you will hunt, together you will consume.”
Don’t shit yourself. Don’t shit yourself. Don’t shit yourself.
As he found his throne upon his dragon, he was detaching from himself. Peeling off his own body, slipping out from under his own skin. His spirit soared for new refuge under the skinsands.
Pandora’s-Box’s voice prowled under his new skin. “Don the skin of the sands. Become the land. Reforge the bond that made you.”
Before the raider knew it, he was no longer in the deep catacombs of the Sandbox, no longer under the layers of the desert’s skinsands, but in the skies, pouring out across the surface of the moon. The rhythmic lunges of the dragon beneath his loins was an extension of himself, a lending of power both frightful and magnificent.
Together they hunted until the sun split the sands anew, raider and dragon fully satiated and bonded, together, with the land.
The vertibird laboured over the rolling ocean of sands until it reached the Firesteppes south of Lex Talionis, forced to a sweeping crawl as the over-capacity weight in its troop load drained the fusion core to dangerous levels.
Grand Zealot Richter settled them down in the rugged shrouds of rock east of Delta Dune known as the Carcass, the only visible semblance of cover for miles. From the air, the rocks did look like the ancient sprawled carcass of some great serpent, curving rock formations like a spine with each vertebrae spiked in salute to the sun. Maybe it was. Some dormant mutant snake calcified in place by demonic forces. Anything was possible in this forsaken land, Iliya thought gloomily.
The shadow of his eyes, chasing her, consuming her.
It was a wild stroke of luck that they had reached this place before the vertibird lost power. A wild stroke of luck that they had managed to escape Camp Talion without being pinged and obliterated by Brotherhood air control. The riots had provided all the cover they had needed. Or had the elder purposefully let them go?
He had seen her. Iliya could still feel his eyes on her like a pair of superheated lasers, hunter-killer beams of power seeking her across the desert.
She was still seeing them, hunted by them, when Piper shook her gently by the arm. “C’mon, Blue. Let’s get you out of this heat.”
They had landed behind the shadow of the Carcass, but the heat and dust in the air was still a blight in her lungs. Coughing, she allowed Piper to usher her off the gunship and under the natural awning of the rocks, where they hunkered down with Dogmeat while the rest of the crew unloaded the gear. They had packed enough for at least a week, as much as the vertibird could handle. Most of it was water.
“No wonder the tribals don’t even squat here,” Cait said as she dumped some of their tanks of water in the shade, “there’s nothin’ here. No plant life, nothin’ to hunt. It’s dry as a bloody nun’s cunt.” She tossed Iliya a fresh bottle of water, sipping from her own canteen with a disgruntled grimace. Piper had to fend for herself, it seemed. Cait had been overly protective of her since carrying her through the riots, and Iliya suspected it had something to do with her changing stance against the Brotherhood regime.
Hancock dumped more gear beside them, tent packs and tarpaulins. “I worry about you smoothskins. You won’t survive out here for long.”
“The radiation is the least of our problems.” Valentine was close behind with armoury crates, trailed by Codsworth dragging more by his multiple limbs “You’ll all die of starvation and thirst if we don’t get this rescue operation done and dusted ASAP. We’ve got one spare fusion core, we need to use it wisely.”
By now, the crew had gathered sluggishly into a semicircle around their leader, pressed against the exterior rock of the Carcass. Some stood, some squatted, but all wore faces grim with repressed rage and determination, mirroring her in loyal equilibrium.
“Think we could raid the aquifer at Delta Dune before the Dark Bloods move back in?” Preston queried first.
“Too risky,” Hancock and Valentine shot down in perfect tandem, making Iliya smile in observation.
Hancock continued solo. “Place’ll be crawling with critters and Darky scouts, not to mention the rads. We don’t have the meds to dope everyone up to the eyeballs long enough.”
“Just such a shame to let it go after everything we put into claiming it,” Preston lamented. “What the hell was Clay thinking...”
“He wasn’t,” Piper snarled, visibly restraining herself from mouthing off on him further. “He’s a raider at heart, always will be. I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him the way we did.”
Iliya remained silent, letting her team vent and ruminate among themselves. It was something she learned from Danse. “Where appropriate, a team needs to fire off tension without their leader cracking down on them at every turn of thought. Only step in when needed. When leadership is necessary.”
When is leadership not necessary, Danse?
“When your team is fully capable of conducting themselves without you babysitting them. Give them the space to grow, and they’ll work for you, not just with you.”
“That’s in the hands of the Brotherhood, now,” Hancock growled in his low squat, pawing the sand at his boots. “They want it back, they’re gonna have to roll in with a gun big enough to fight off that damn dragon.”
“What’re you suggesting then?” MacCready asked with arms dumped tiredly on his hips. Sweat dripped down his face from the shelter of his cap. “We all just load up and go straight in on the Sandbox guns blazing? Because if that’s the plan then I’m down for that.”
“As much as I love your spirit, MacCready, I think we might need a subtler approach,” Valentine shrugged, looking pointedly down at Iliya for support. Or confirmation. At times, she rued the reality that she was their leader figure, and not just a woman flailing her way through life, one day, one move at a time, misguided followers in tow.
Stick to your guns. They follow you for a reason. Maxson made his move, Clay-Crawler made his, now make yours. It’s what you do. You move and they follow. Movers and shakers, remember?
Iliya swallowed her water and spat sand from her lips. “We have the firepower and the training. They have bows and arrows and superstition. We go in hard and hot.”
“Bows and arrows and a dragon,” Piper countered gently beside her.
“They won’t call it down on their own base. They’ve set up underground for that very reason.”
“What about those bloodbeasts?” Cait brought up next. “Can they ride ‘em down there?”
“Some passages are narrower. If we stay out of the wider passages we should be safe. If not, we have enough explosives to fuck ‘em up. Fuck the Red Claws. Fuck this desert. Fuck everything and everyone. I’m done with diplomacy. It’s time the Red Claws found out what happens when you fuck us over too many times.”
A wordless consensus swept through the team. After everything that had happened in recent days, from Clay-Crawler’s betrayal, the Red Claw attack and destruction of Delta Dune, the rioting and the Brotherhood’s violent oppression in response, nobody was in the mood to play nice now. War was a machine of escalation. Once set in motion it prowled onward of its own volition. There was no backtracking of moves, no recanting of power strokes, no mending of soured relations. Peace was a pipe dream for the romantics and idealists.
I used to be one. Until the world happened to me.
X6-88 took advantage of the quiet rage. “If this is happening, I recommend we make a scouting run to the canyon outskirts during nightfall, acquire an entry point, or multiple, if possible. We have several synth relay grenades for use as initial cannon fodder or probing assaults, and the full functionality of your battlesuit, ma’am.”
Iliya stirred from her slump. “Full functionality?”
“Yes, ma’am. You’ll be needing it. I’m authorised to unlock access of its full operating system, but you’ll need training to efficiently wield the cybernetic interface and safely deploy its offensive and defensive capabilities.”
“I’ve been throwing around forcefields, how much more does this fucking thing have?”
“You’ll soon find out, ma’am,” the courser said with a dastardly smirk. “We’ll work on that while you recover your health and your team run reconnaissance on the Sandbox.”
MacCready dusted off his hands and moved forward on point into the body of the rocks. “Guess we’re making a home of this crashpad in the meantime then.”
The name stuck. They soon hollowed out a home in the Crashpad, rigging up tarpaulins and canopies from overhanging rock formations, setting up tents and campfires, digging pits to keep their water storage cool and hidden from invaders, hiding food and munition stores in shallow caves. It bore a resemblance to Buttcrack Canyon, minus the Minutemen. Iliya couldn’t keep from wondering what was happening to them all back at Camp Talion. At least now she didn’t have to stress about one of them letting slip about Danse’s survival. Only guesswork of his current location...
Overcome with impatient anxiety, she found herself craving chems for the first time since treatment in the Institute. It sneaked up on her without warning, gnawing at her sanity and reasoning abilities in familiar tones. Not now. She didn’t need this shit right now.
Frustrated, she slipped away under her tent to suffer in silence and stare again at the wound in her lung. The entry point was nearly sealed, only a pale puckering of flesh around a small raw centre. The black veining was fading, too, though still pulsing with each breath. She was beginning to feel the effects of her augmentation. Breathing in the hot dust was becoming easier, more effective to power her blood and muscle tissue. She was moving around on her own again, helping out with the camp setup, all the while tacitly smouldering with adrenaline.
Tomorrow. They would make their move tomorrow, after the scouting run tonight. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer while the Brotherhood interrogated the Minutemen. She would have to make do with a crash course on the suit’s functions. It would distract her from the cravings.
She found X6-88 out by the vertibird, prepping it for battle. “Are all courser’s handy with vertibirds?”
He didn’t startle at her sneak attack. “Most of us. It wouldn’t be very smart of the Institute if we didn’t strive to understand the weapons of our enemies.”
It reminded her of something Danse always said during her training. Know your enemy.
“I’m ready to get trained up.”
The courser halted in his mechanical ministrations to take stock of her seriousness. “You’re still in recovery from your wounds.”
“I don’t have time to be babied. Maxson will have the Minutemen interrogated for Danse’s location, and after Delta Dune the Brotherhood won’t hesitate to come down hard on the Red Claws. We have to get in there first before they nuke it all to hell. Just run me through the basics.”
He took a long, studious stare of her, before eventually giving in. By now he must have learned the type of woman he was dealing with.
The cybernetic interface was like learning to play a holotape inside your head with a booming migraine to boot. It was all mind control, thought-based commands without any physical gestures, unlike interfacing with power armour. Iliya felt like a baby learning to walk for the first time. While the crew pored over maps and her rough sketches of the inside of the Sandbox, she strained for several hours grasping the basics of cybernetics.
“Without the implants in your brainstem, interfacing will be far more challenging for you,” X6-88 explained after her first rage-quit. “The suit is advanced enough to channel your brainwaves alone, but perhaps you would consider installing a neural implant‒”
“You’re not getting in my brain.”
“So be it.”
Learning the impact collision tithing system was a cake walk, seeing as she had already floundered her way through that during her escape from captivity on the Prydwen. Any kinetic energy sustained was converted into a stored energy source for her use in not only forcefields, but a personal shield system, deflector screens, telekinesis, and a spherical shield projection. The downside of these upgrades was that she would be left vulnerable, as the suit would siphon off power from her personal shields.
The crew took turns throwing shit at her to deflect or push back. Oddly, Codsworth seemed the most enthused by this, lobbing rocks and empty water bottles at her with all the strength his hydraulics could muster. She fended everything off with relative ease, nearly decapitating Dogmeat at one point as he rushed to her defence, confused as to why his pack were attacking his mistress. It was at times like these where she sorely missed Strong. He would have had a field day.
Eventually they worked their way up to actually shooting at her. She quickly discovered that she could not only block bullets, but throw them back and even redirect them. It was a neural load she wasn’t accustomed to, and she grew fatigued quickly, stooping with a headache and fresh pain in her wounds.
“Time to rest, ma’am,” X6-88 refereed from the sidelines.
But Iliya was determined to push on. “I can keep it up,” she sniffed, wiping at her nosebleed. “Show me the shockwave shit.”
“The ‘shockwave shit’ will be far more taxing on you than the shielding and forcefields. Gather your strength, then we can try again.”
So she returned to resting under the shade, munching on her rations while the crew organised themselves for the scouting run at nightfall. Hancock would lead one ground team while Valentine would lead another, landing out in the canyon outskirts to find hidden entrances down into the subterranean Sandbox. Garvey would stay on the vertibird to provide air support, being the most practised on the minigun, and at reading and marking maps. They were working off what vague intel she could provide after her brief captivity in the Red Claw home base, but the tribals had been careful to keep her and Danse in the dark as much as possible, blindfolding them whenever they ventured out to the surface and purposefully disorienting them when walking through the catacombs. All she could really be certain of was that the hidden cave entrances were usually heavily shrouded in red foliage and surrounded by small crop fields.
“We’ll get it done,” Garvey assured as she hovered over the charter maps with them. “Just like finding settlements in the Commonwealth.”
“These guys don’t want to be found, Preston.”
Hancock smacked a hand on her back. “You just focus on you and not killing us all with those gnarly superpowers you got.”
As the sun sank, X6-88 began his next lessons. “The shockwave function is not unlike the moving forcefield you generated to ensure our escape from the Prydwen.”
She remembered all too vividly, pushing the field out through the fires to throw it at the Brotherhood like a wind of flame. “It was cool and all, but it took a lot out of me.”
“It’s all about how you channel the energy, ma’am. Now that you can control the operating system, you can better choose how you disperse energy. Rather than shoring up a stationary forcefield to only then move it with ineffectual force, or deploying a field to deflect force the way you were attacking targets, only to throw the force back on yourself as well as your target, the suit will automatically propel a shockwave in your chosen direction, from your chosen extremities, with less mental gymnastics required. Select the shockwave function through your cybernetic interface, and hit that boulder over there.”
Iliya stood in the open outside the Crashpad, clad in the battlesuit and simmering energy. She aimed her hands at the boulder, envisioned it was Maxson, and strained herself in effort to send out a wave of energy. Nothing happened.
“Try again.”
She did, harder. Something in her brain thumped like a temporary headache, the suit’s veins flashed down the length of her arms, and a miniscule gust of wind blew the sand around the base of the boulder. Iliya sighed and slumped her arms to her sides. “This shit is hard.”
“I told you.”
“Why don’t coursers get suits like this?” she asked while catching her breath. “You’d be unstoppable in the field.”
“For that very reason, ma’am.”
Iliya spun on him with a frown, eliciting his elaboration.
“The Institute is very cautious of synth rebellion. There is a reason we coursers were designed with limited emotional development. Make us too smart, too powerful, and we pose a threat to the Institute itself.”
“That doesn’t bother you, X6?”
“Why would it? I’m incapable of being bothered by it. That’s the point, ma’am.”
“If I found out that my makers designed me to be incapable of developing to my full potential because they were scared of me, I’d be pretty pissed.”
He didn’t directly respond to this, instead redirecting the narrative. “Some of the earlier prototypes proved to be problematic in this way. Too emotional, too corruptible.”
“Too human?”
“Precisely.”
Iliya could only hold her silence, disturbed by their incompatible perspectives on what it was to be human. To him, it was a flaw, a thing to avoid at all costs for the risk of becoming corrupted and uncontrollable. To her, it was a saving grace, a thing to strive for in order to fight the risk of being controlled. It was where the Institute and the Minutemen would never see eye to eye. But in this, were the Institute and the Brotherhood really that different?
As nightfall approached, Iliya was still practising while the crew geared up and prepared the vertibird. Garvey risked venturing over into the proximity of her infantile shockwaves to fill her in.
“We’re about ready to take off, ma’am.”
“Still calling me ma’am?” she spared him a laugh through her exhausted breathing.
“Old habits die hard, I guess.” He reached to scratch the back of his neck. “We’re going radio silent for security’s sake, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on the teams from the air.”
Fighting the urge to demand to join them, Iliya gave up on her practice to spare him her full attention. “Just be careful, Preston. Please. First sign of trouble, I want you to pull them out. No hesitation. I don’t want to lose any more people.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with knowing irony.
She watched from the sands as the vertibird battered its way up into the night airs, disappearing from sight and earshot over the rock formations of the Carcass. It took a lot out of her to exercise the self control in order to stay behind. Every shred of her wanted to be out there, hunting for Danse herself, toiling off all her tension and stress into physical, palpable effort. Delegation was never her strong suit.
“Have them working for you, not just with you.”
“Time for recess?” X6-88 observed her quiet.
“No. Let’s get this bitch done.”
They pushed on through the midnight hours, testing multiple targets, some stationary, some mobile. X6-88 deigned to try her stress response to summon her fight-or-flight instincts. He struck at her in mock attack, encouraging her to defend herself with shockwaves.
“Don’t concern yourself with my safety, I’m designed to withstand much more than any human.”
“Trust me, I’m not concerned at all.”
But it yielded little results. All she could managed was a subtle shove of energy, only enough to force him back several steps.
“You’re not focusing. Centre yourself. Let go of all the background noise.”
“Easy for an emotionless drone to say.”
“That hurts, ma’am.”
“Bullshit.”
One time, she mistimed her strike and felt the full frontal impact of his fist on her shoulder. Though he pulled his punch, it was still enough to blare into her bone.
Her fury had nowhere to go but out. It culminated into a scream that cracked him centre mass, throwing him several metres across the sands to land in a dark plume somewhere beyond her eyesight.
“Fuck! X6?”
She heard him sifting through the sand. “So you do care.”
Iliya laughed ecstatically as she found him in the dark, hurrying to dust sand off him. “Don’t kid yourself. Just worried about the consequences of damaging my son’s property.”
“As a very expensive instrument, I am not expendable like you are, ma’am.”
“Careful, I’m the one with the superpower suit.”
“That only I have authority to activate and deactivate at will.”
She was throwing him around with shockwaves at a far more successful rate now that she better understood how to channel her energy. It was a taxing solution, sourcing her anger for power, and likely unhealthy, but it worked, and that was all she needed right now.
It was while she was guzzling a lukewarm nuka-cola, drenched in sweat, that she heard the vertibird returning to the Crashpad. She and X6-88 hurried to meet the crew.
“Any luck?” Iliya called over the rotors and rushing sands, trying to do a headcount on everyone.
Hancock was the first out, letting the others deal with the gear behind him. “Yeah. Both teams found an entrance that goes in deep enough to start branching down multiple paths.” He clutched his hat to his head as he and Iliya got out from under the rotors. “Gonna be a mish finding the right way in, though. I’m not so sure about separating into two teams. Think our best shot is to stick together.”
“I’ll trust your judgement. I managed to figure this suit out while you were gone, so I should be able to protect everyone if we’re all together.”
“Good. Surprised you didn’t kill this jackass while we were gone.” The ghoul gestured impishly at the courser.
“She did try her best.”
Hancock’s black eyes gaped in amusement, before a wolfish grin spread. “That so? Sounds like a story for the campfire.”
“You tell her?” Preston asked the ghoul as he neared the three, followed closely by the others. Richter kept the vertibird rotors powered behind them, hitting Iliya as suspicious.
“Not yet, just reporting on the ground teams,” Hancock shrugged.
Preston took that as his cue to take over. “We sighted another vertibird patrolling the area further to the north–spotlights searching the terrain. We went dark as soon as we spotted them, but we can’t be sure we weren’t spotted in return.”
Iliya tried in vain to tamp down her anxiety as it crested over her stomach and up into her chest cavity. “Shit! They could have us pinned now.” Fingernails slotted between her teeth as she paced side to side. “They were looking for Danse, same as us.”
“That’s not all,” he continued dreadfully, following her movements to keep her attention. “The Dark Bloods are on the move for Delta Dune.” She stopped then. “It didn’t appear to be the whole Bloodhunt army, but it was a big enough contingent to cause trouble. And they were moving fast on those mounts.”
“Bloodbeasts,” Iliya murmured in snarls. “Any rad-dragons?”
“None we could see in the skies. The bloodbeasts were pulling carriage trains. Must be keeping them out of sight for the element of surprise. Though the giant war drums and fire machines might have ruined any chance they had at that...”
“The element of surprise isn’t the Dark Bloods’ strong suit. They’ll be keeping the dragons hidden to keep from triggering the Red Doom. Damnit. We can’t sit on this. Everyone’s moving faster than we anticipated. We’re out of time.”
“Whatever you want to do, Blue, we’re with you.” Piper encouraged. “You wanna stick it to the Reds before the Brotherhood or the Darks get the chance, we’re in. Let’s get Danse back where he belongs.”
“Huzzah, mum!” Codsworth exclaimed with his signature suave alacrity. “It’s about time these appendages got their Mr. Gusty on! We’re right behind you.”
“I advise against it, ma’am,” said X6-88 before anyone else could add to the discourse. “You’ve just spent hours exerting yourself in training. You need the recovery time.”
“Recovery time is for pussies,” she jested with more nonchalance than she felt. “That’s what chems are for.”
Even Hancock took on a look of dismay. “Uh, yeah, maybe the courser’s right, sis. We need you at your best in there.”
“I’m fucking with you all. Relax, I’m not touching that shit again. I’ll dope up on stimpaks. That’s the only way we stayed alive in the pre-war military, I’m used to it.” Her fingernails bit into her palms as her fists enclosed.
If only I could convince myself as easily as I could convince them.
As momentum built into action around the camp, Iliya propped herself on stims and dense calorie rations, but it didn’t touch the sides of her need meter. She was drained to near depletion from the day’s training, and her wound was paining her with each breath again.
What if I fuck up out there? What if I can’t get him back? What if he dies because of my weakness?
Her eyes darted among the crew as they loaded themselves and the vertibird for hard warfare this time, taking note of the time spans between raiding the camp and loading the ‘bird.
She was moving for Hancock’s tent before her rationality could ward her off. Panting, sweating, her fingers like thirsty feelers, dipped into his personal stash of chems and wrapped around the first jet inhaler they found. Like a fever dream, everything in her world numbed out to focus on this weight in her palm. Trembling with anticipation, with guilt, with longing, Iliya brought the little thing of self destruction before her eyes.
“Take it. Why not?”
Nate. At her shoulder. Indissoluble in her shadows.
“Your son will disown you.”
She stared at it. Her enemy. Her saviour. Without it she would be long dead. Without it she would be nothing.
“Everyone will.”
But Danse will be alive. That was worth everything. Everyone.
Her grip was white-knuckled around the inhaler as she stood tall. It moved with her, for her, against her, a presence rising up with her. It spoke to her in lavish whispers, parting the shadows of doubt for unbiased reasoning. It was the only way to ensure his survival. Her team’s survival. Her own survival. The seductive envisioning of how one breath of its essence would give her crystal clarity, sharper reflexes, undeniable agility both physically and mentally. She was more than herself with it. She overshadowed herself. Eclipsed herself.
It was now or never.
“What the fuck are you thinking!” Hancock. He caught her wrist from behind, but didn’t manage to wrestle it free of her grasp.
“I need it!” she beseeched in a guttural whisper. “I’ll be useless out there. People will die, Danse will die, everyone will die if I don’t do this!”
“That’s bullshit, sis!” His hold on her wrist strangled enough of her strength that he was able to tear the jet from her fingers. All at once she felt empty, hollowed. A wretched creature slavering for scraps of its memory, its pulsing presence in her hand.
She would not crumble. Not now. Instead she reared. “You of all people, Hancock. You know. You know...” Although enforced by rage, the pleading tones in her voice sickened her.
His rage rose to meet hers. “I know how it fucks with your mind. Fucks with everything you are. But it ain’t shit, Iliya. It’s all in your head. You don’t need it. You never needed it. Whatever lies you’re telling yourself are its lies, not yours.”
With everything she had left, she tried to suck it up. Tried to stand tall and hold herself cogent, superior to the emotions ravaging her body. But her throat warbled and her mouth shook. “You’re not me, Hancock. And I’m not you.”
“I know,” he softened then, melting back from his defensive stance against her. “It’s my fault. It’s my damned fault. I never should have gotten you into it. I just saw you struggling and thought, what’s the harm? I can do it in moderation, if I coach her then she can too. She’s tough. She won’t get lost in it. I didn’t even see that I was lost in it. I didn’t see that it had me by the throat, too.”
She watched, sharply lucid, as he dropped the jet and stomped it underfoot.
All of her effort at self restraint fled out from under her. “No!”
Hancock caught her up as she dived to recover whatever remained. “Pull your shit together! Listen to me.” His ghoul hands had her by either side of her head, forcing their eyes level. “You don’t need it. It needs you! So it’s gonna do everything it can to make you think you’re nothing without it.
“I am nothing!” she cried, clutched feebly at the arms that held her sturdy. With a rugged inhale she steadied her melt and grabbed at him with the full force of her intent. Her voice pitched deep, growled through bottom teeth, incontestable. “I am nothing.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” He ate up her challenge with a dauntless stare. “You don’t get to say that now. You’re everything. You hear me? You’re fuckin’ everything. To us, to the slaves out there, to the Minutemen. Don’t let that shit beat you. Don’t you dare.”
“I’ve lost everything,” she pressed, compelled. “One step forward, two steps back. I can’t protect people. I only kill them.”
“That shit is not on you. You bet your ass we’ll get Danse back. And we’ll make the Reds wish they never crossed us. Then we’ll get Deacon back, we’ll get the Minutemen back. Maybe even Clay if the little shit gets his head out of his ass. We’ll find a way to free the people in this desert and keep the Dark Bloods away from the Commonwealth. You just gotta keep away from this shit long enough to get back to your old self.”
“I don’t know if I can keep it up...”
“What’s Danse gonna think when he gets back to find you back on that shit? You think he’ll be understanding like I am?”
She shook her head and let it hang, finally letting the rage fizzle out of her.
“I know we haven’t been there for you enough on this. A lot of us were sceptical of you working so closely with the Brotherhood, gettin’ cosy with Maxson. But we haven’t been fair. I take responsibility for that, for encouraging you to get too close to him. When it backfired, we just let you walk out into that hellscape alone. We all sat back like fucking cowards while Danse took off after you, alone. Well mark my words, that won’t happen again. From now on we have your back, sis. Through thick and thin. You move and we follow.”
Movers and shakers.
By now she was wrangling with tears, exhaustion sapping her of the will to deny it. “If he dies... I’ll never forgive myself for not taking it.”
“Then let us be your jet. You won’t need it. You got us.” Slowly, he yanked her upright, forcefully pushing her shoulders back from their hooked slump. “All that anger you feel, don’t let it use you. Use it. Now, let’s go kill us some Red Claws. Let’s get our big boy back.”