Chapter Text
The metal just wouldn't give up.
Danse tried to get the door open, but he hadn't pick locks since he was a kid in Rivet City, and it was too complex. The man he was chasing, he was getting further away with every second that passed.
Or setting up a trap, he didn't know which is worse.
He tried again to bash it in with his shoulder, but it only bent slightly. He gritted his teeth. If only he would have been in his power armor, the damn thing wouldn't have had a chance at all. Alas.
Vulnerability he felt when donning the Shroud costume was fresh but a bit unsettling. The costume had some armoring added to it, thanks to Arthur, who had modified it much like he did his own battle coat, but it wasn't that great.
Not like a T-60 armor great, though nothing could compare to that.
He tried to kick the door in, but also to no avail, other that making it crash into the frame with even more noise. Danse could go look for the other entrance, but it would take time. A luxury he didn't have since the building was massive and he couldn't remember any branching corridors that weren't closed off by debris.
"Need a hand?"
Danse spun around, his rifle ready. He was greeted with a smile. A tall, slender figure wearing the same trenchcoat as he was, though she didn't have a matching hat. A light breeze flowing from a broken window played with her short messy hair.
"Let me have a look at this," she walked right up to him, ignoring the laser rifle he was too startled to put away and pressed down on the barrel, "you do realize that this thing gives you the hell away as a Brotherhood soldier?"
"So?" he was slightly annoyed as he put the gun down, this was supposed to be his night. Though she probably noticed him leaving. She was a light sleeper and he never was good at stealth.
Not anywhere near her. Anna probably followed him all the way from the Diamond City and he never even noticed.
"So the guy probably figured out that you are hopeless at anything connected to the art of subterfuge," she lowered herself to her knees, her Pip-Boy's screen glowing bright gold to help her see, "like the rest of the tin men. So he slammed a heavy door with a good lock in your face. And he's golden."
Danse huffed in annoyance, but he knew that she was right. Despite loving both rifles that he gave her, Anna always carried non-descriptive weapons as a Shroud. A Brotherhood-issue laser rifle or a laser musket would have given her away. She told him that Arthur took over the Silver submachine gun.
He would have to find something for himself too.
"You're from the Brotherhood too."
"Yeah, but you know what," the lock clicked loudly and the door slid open, "I'm way more than that."
What happened with a lost looking vault dweller he saw running into the Cambridge police station courtyard? That woman was soft and gentle, her hair glossy, falling down way past her shoulders, and she was shaking at the sight of charging ghouls.
Her hair was the first one to go.
She had cut it short and messy in the ArcJet after a synth hunter grabbed her by it and threw her down the elevator shaft. Only Preston Garvey, diving after her and managing to catch her by the wrist before it was too late, saved her from almost certain death.
Still pale from such a close call, Anna asked the men in a wavering voice if they could let her borrow a knife. Danse was slightly suspicious, but he handed his own combat knife to her, handle forward.
He then watched with fascination as she pulled together her dark, slightly wavy hair, twisted it around her fingers and stuck a blade under it. After a few seconds, it was over and she let the curls scatter on the trashed floor.
Danse liked to think that was the moment Anna Lester he knew was born.
His fingertips ghosted over her dark hair. She looked up at him, smirking, and Danse felt a shiver going up his spine. It started to happen each time she crouched down to pick a lock, reminding him hard about the other times she knelt in front of him.
"I'll take point," he said, motioning to the staircase. Anna shook her head as she stood up.
"This isn't your regular mission. Be quiet, I'll climb the other way."
She was stepping out of the window onto an old shaky fire escape before he could argue with her. Danse didn't trust those things. It felt like they would break off the rusty supports at any moment.
Still, she was probably right. He walked up the steps as quietly as he could, peeking over corners carefully. No movement yet. He kept his eye open for tripwires and mines as well.
Next floor of an old hospital was empty. It was weird, usually places like this one were filled to the brim with ghouls. A lot of buildings had withstood the blasts if they were sufficiently far away from the epicenter, but were not made to protect the inhabitants from the fallout that ensued after.
Hospitals, he knew, hosted hundreds of people before the war, patients, and staff. Most of them were unable to escape in time and started to turn.
Sill, it's never too careful to search through. The only thing he finds is another painting, made in blood. Danse gritted his teeth. This guy started kidnapping drifters in Goodneighbor. Hancock was furious when he and his knight showed up at the old statehouse.
Somehow from the way the two talked he felt like Anna was already involved into this.
Maybe that was why she followed him. Not to pester him or reverse roles of teacher and student for a change, though she totally did that too just because she could.
The old concrete of stairs cracked and gave under his foot and he cursed, almost losing his footing. A chunk of staircase fell down with a crash, making a hole, and his voice echoed in the empty level beneath him.
Groaning, Danse sprinted up. His position was compromised, might as well move quickly.
He burst through the door and froze.
A man in a clean, neat suit stood in the middle of the room, a weeping young woman in front of him. A bloody knife pressed into her throat.
"Ah, you're finally here," the man was speaking evenly as if he was chatting with Danse over a cup of tea, "the Shroud comes to take me away. A pity. I had just arranged the lower floor for my new gallery."
"You brought it on yourself, filth," he growled, low and menacing, his mind racing. He needed to get the civilian out of here.
"Please... sir... help me..." the drifter woman sobbed, shaking. He nodded.
"Not so fast, dear. Should I tell the good sir that there are four more hostages on the other floor, tied to some lovely, lovely explosives?"
He saw a faint green glow of a remote detonator.
"Shit."
"How crude," the maniac scowled at the curse, "you have to go now. Leave me and Elis alone, or I will paint the walls of that room red. And that would be a pity. I have something special planned for her."
The woman let out a blood-chilling shriek.
Danse didn't know what to do. He knew the right thing would be to save as many as he could, but... He couldn't leave her behind. Not with this madman. Not like this.
A window burst into thousand shards, a dark figure rolling over them. Danse couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
"Pickman. I'd say it's nice to see you again, but I can't. Sorry, pal."
Anna rose to her feet, smiling, but it was a different kind of smile. Almost a snarl, her eyes were cold and dark, devoid of any mercy.
"Ah," he turned to her, "it's you, my killer. I'm so disappointed, dear... and here I thought you understood my art, being quite an artist yourself."
"As long as you were taking raiders," her tone was sharp. Danse reached for his gun while this Pickman was distracted. The man took a step back, clicking his tongue.
"You people never learn do you?" his finger popped open the cap on the detonator.
"Oh, you have no idea," Anna grinned and put a hand in front of her. She was holding about six sticks of dynamite, with wires tangled all over them. Even from his position Danse could see that remote mechanism had been ripped out. She tossed it up in the air on her palm.
Maniac started clicking the button, but of course, nothing happened.
While he was distracted, Danse pulled out his rifle and shot the hand that was holding a knife to the girl's throat. Pickman cried out. Drifter dropped to her knees and scurried away, hiding under a table.
"It's... not over!" Pickman was retreating to a corner, pale as paper.
"You're not the first one to ever say it. It's actually kind of cheesy," retorted Anna, lifting her revolver.
The gunshot came at the very same moment Pickman hit a small lever. It was too late when Danse noticed wires running up the ceiling and to the set of heavy double metal doors.
They swung open and dozens of ferals came rushing out, howling. A high-pitched scream of horror the drifter gave got their attention immediately.
His feet were carrying him on the intercept trajectory before he could even think. He slammed into a ghoul with force, knocking the closest withered creature on the floor. The room flashed red as he opened fire.
He noticed Anna grabbing a blade from Pickman's corpse before she darted out of his field of vision.
It seemed like Pickman managed to lure pretty much every single ghoul in the building into that room. They poured out in waves, giving him just barely enough time to kill them. Worse, he couldn't retreat to a better position, as the drifter kept wailing and babbling incoherently. They would be upon her if he moved, so he had to stand his ground.
Anna was in no such predicament. She fired her revolver, cutting down any ghoul that came to close. Moving fast, she repositioned herself to the side of the door, where she could deal most of the damage.
A few ferals managed to break through and slash him with their claws. He slammed them with his rifle and continued his last stand.
Finally, it was over. Anna slipped into the adjacent room to make sure there weren't any stragglers left. Danse tried to reach over to the drifter, but she shrieked and darted away from him, disappearing down the flight of stairs.
He supposed it could have gone better...
Gunshots made him jump up and he rushed over into the room that was previously holding ghouls.
The smell was rancid. But he could see now that there was one more left. A Glowing One. Anna was retreating, firing her revolver, but soon she needed to reload. Dodging one blow from a rad ghoul she missed the other.
Its arm caught her underneath the jaw and she dropped to the floor.
Danse saw red. He fired, perhaps too fast to be as accurate as he needed, too generous with his ammo as the thing darted from side to side, charging. It leaped on him, hissing and baring it's teeth as he ran out of fusion cells.
It crashed down on him, but somehow it didn't attack and Danse was fast to drop it to the floor, disgusted. Only then did he notice a knife sticking out of the back of the creature's head and saw Anna sitting upright, her hand outstretched.
He rushed over to her, adrenaline still coursing through him, helping her up. As soon as she was on her feet he pressed a fierce kiss to her lips, tasting blood on them. A goddess, that's who she was. Of battle and blood and victory. He watched her grow in skill, trained her, protected her, only to see her eventually surpass him.
Just like Maxson did. No wonder they were gravitating towards each other.
Forcing the thought out, he focused on her. His fingers inspected the side of her head where she took a hit. Anna flinched when he ghosted over her jaw and she pushed his hand away. Her palm slid up his arm and stopped when she felt liquid rolling down the waterproof fabric.
Shit.
"You're hurt."
"So are you."
"There is a fucking gash on your wrist. I'll just have a bruise."
Danse sighed heavily. He didn't want her to see it. Didn't want her to have to take care of him. He already felt like he wasn't contributing enough to the team. He could stitch up the wound just fine on his own, but now there was no chance in hell she would let that slide.
"Let's move. We can deal with it back at Kellogg's place. Besides, it's just a flesh wound."
"Who knows what filth those ghouls have had under their claws. It's never good, though. Come on."
Back at her house - she hated it when he called it her house, though, despite this being the way ownership in wasteland worked - Anna was fumbling with a medkit. Danse took off the Shroud costume and inspected a rip on the right sleeve.
Not too bad. They would be able to fix it.
"Put that down and take off your shirt."
Danse chucked. She would make a fine Paladin one day, with that tone of hers. She quickly picked up on command and leadership from him and Arthur, something that made her stand out from the crowd.
He complied because it was really the only thing he could do. Unbuttoning the shirt with one hand was painfully difficult. In the end, deciding that this thing was already ruined, Danse ripped it open. It was not that big of a problem to find another relatively white shirt.
Motioning for him to sit down, Anna approached him. She cleaned the deep gash nails left on his arm and had to cut away some small pieces of ragged flesh to make the wound close up tightly.
Danse was biting on a leather glove while she did that. Deathclaws at the very least left clean cuts with their razor sharp weapons. Ghoul wounds were a lot worse in his opinion.
After applying some antiseptic - it burned like hell - to get rid of whatever nastiness could have gotten into the wound, she started stitching. That was not too bad, but still far from pleasant.
Finally, Anna got up on her feet and he felt another needle, piercing his skin above the wound. Immediately cooling sensation hit him and he breathed a sigh of relief, pain in his arm soothed.
"All done," she went to wash her bloody hands in a small basin in the secret room, now used as a storage and a sort of kitchen.
Flexing his fingers, Danse felt a burning sensation return to the wound, right below his elbow. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Anna crossing her arms.
"Stop that. You'd better do stuff with the other hand until it heals a bit. Or you'll be re-stitching that yourself."
"Fine," he was annoyed. There was too much stuff he needed to do. Fix a servo on his power armor, clean his rifle, go through the arsenal kept in this house and pick a weapon for the Shroud situation and fix the damn suit.
Not to mention that he was hoping to shave. The stubble started to go long enough to start bothering him. He really didn't know how Arthur was living with a beard.
Anna seemed oblivious to his frustrations. Humming contently, she threw the bloody water out of the window, rinsed a basin with some clean water, splashed it out again. A kettle was starting to whistle on a hot plate.
When she handed him some instamash, he forgot about the wound again and started to eat with his right hand. Soon enough a spoon was flying out of his unruly fingers as he cursed under his breath.
Under Anna's pointed gaze, he wiped his spoon and switched hands. There was a hint of amusement on her face when she watched him eat. He supposed he did look kind of clumsy with a left hand.
A knock on the door distracted her and Danse was fast to shovel as much food into his mouth as he could with his right hand while she wasn't looking. That would just be easier.
Nick the detective walked in, bringing in with him whiffs of cold morning air and cigarette smoke. Danse frowned. He preferred not to talk with the synth unless he really needed to.
"I 'eard you were in town, so decided to drop by."
Anna laughed and hugged him. Danse couldn't help but flinch when he saw a skeleton-like metal hand come up, but the synth merely patted her on the back.
"Now who told you that? I thought I managed to enter without much fuss."
"Well, when you have a six-five tall tin man following your every step it's kinda of hard to blend in."
He met the synth's gaze.
"Danse."
"Valentine."
Anna and Nick talked in a hushed tone, with synth showing her some folder. Anna was rubbing her forehead, looking irritated. Finally, she took the folder from his hands and nodded.
"Well, I'd be telling the undertaker he's 'bout to get busy," said Nick in a weird accent and Anna laughed, smacking him on a shoulder.
"Are there really any undertakers in the wasteland?"
"Well, some, of course. But most corpses end up being disposed of by one type of scavenger or another..."
While the two talked, Danse finished eating and cleaned up. Walking up to a large shard of a mirror sitting on the wall over the basin, he scratched his chin. He should have shaved yesterday.
Although maybe he could get a better deal out of Anna. He smirked at himself.
When the door closed after Nick, Anna turned to him and rushed over instantly.
"Oh no, you won't!"
He pretended to be offended.
"I'm fine, just stop fussing over me."
"Nope. Nope. Nope," she took the straight razor out of his hand, "you're going to cut your head off."
"Knight, I need to shave or I'll drive myself nuts," he said with the strictness he usually reserved for orders in combat.
She frowned. Grabbing him by his arm she inspected the wound.
"Oh very well."
She walked up to the hot plate and checked if there is any water left in the kettle. She then poured what was left into a basin, mixing it with cold water that was already there.
"I'm capable of handling myself," he frowned at her, "it's just a scrape."
"Uh-huh. It almost gnawed through the muscle. If you won't let it rest it might not heal properly and will end up hurting your entire life."
Danse remembered that after a fight with a deathclaw he had told her the very same thing. He had to carry her to the vertibird as she tried to wrestle her way out of his grasp, red-faced and embarrassed to be seen in that position.
He already lathered himself, so she came to straddle his hips. Danse went still when a razor came up to his face.
She worked silently, with swift, clean strokes, turning his head when she needed.
"You are... good at this," he admitted, surprised, as she was rinsing the blade.
She chuckled, her light brown eyes suddenly dreamy.
"When Nate came back from the war he was... hurt. It took him some time to recover, and I had to help him do a lot of things. Dress. Eat. Bathe... shave."
Danse's eyes went wide. She never talked about her late husband.
The razor returned, sliding along his skin with care. She didn't say another word until she was finished, and after she wiped his face with a towel, Anna stood up and turned away.
"I... uh, I'll be right back," she said and all but sprinted towards the door.
After a few minutes, Danse decided to go looking for her. He found her easily, sitting on the roof of the house. She hugged her knees, looking without seeing somewhere in the distance. He wasn't used to seeing Anna look... vulnerable. Ever since she got over the shock of transition, she was tough as nails.
And now he pulled that up from under the carefully constructed armor she wore. He felt like an ass.
Climbing up a shaky ladder, he scooted over to her. She didn't move, watching the sun rise over the stadium walls.
"Sorry," he said, "I didn't want to... bring that up."
"You're fine."
She reached into her pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. Danse carefully took it out of her hands.
"That wouldn't help."
"What does it matter? I doubt I'll live long enough to get cancer. Not in this world."
He hummed, not really arguing that. Anna sighed, dropping her head to her knees.
"I just... I don't want to see that happening to you. Or Arthur. It was hard enough to deal with in the old world. And we didn't stare death in the eye for a living."
"We'll get through anything. You know that," he tried to sound confident. She needed that. She shook her head.
"We are not invincible."
He looked to where a bruise was blooming on her jawline. He remembered the cold grip of terror and a blaze of rage he felt when she dropped to the floor.
"No... we are not."
They sat in silence, watching the light creeping over the Diamond City.
"It changes you. Living in the world that is teetering over the abyss. It was a dark time, Danse. Darker than this, in a way. The only way from here is up. We only could go down in atomic flames, and we all knew it..."
The pre-war world, another topic she doesn't like to talk about. He wanted to reach over and soothe away the ghosts, but it felt like she needed to let it out. So he stayed silent.
"After I came back to life, saw what had happened while I was... away. There was no more room for doubt. Losing everything and risking what's left daily, it makes you think. There is no time for regret. No time for hesitation. Take everything or don't. Every day we have can be our last."
He knew what she was referring to. Him. Arthur. The weird... thing they have going.
"Brotherhood is, in a way, a shard of the old world. Order, ranks, decorum. But I don't care anymore. I watched the world burn, felt the atomic breeze on my skin as the bombs fell. I am way too old for that game."
Danse chucked. She was two hundred and forty years old, if one counted from the day of her actual birth. A time traveler. And she didn't like when people point her 'age' out to her.
"So you decide to follow rules that suit you, huh," he shrugged, "better not point that out to Arthur."
"Oh, he knows," she smirked, "he likes it. I don't give a damn about his lineage. I'm not in it for his name, or the privilege, or the rank. I just follow what my heart tells me."
"Do you love him?"
He cursed at himself immediately. That was unnecessary. And, well, why did he just... Shit.
"Love. It's such a weird word, don't you think?" Anna smiled weakly, "you know, I used to take Latin and Greek when I was in law school."
"Aren't those languages long dead now? What purpose would they serve."
"'Ad Victoriam' came from Latin you dummy," she actually gave out a small laugh, " and! They make really good mottos, as well as battle cries."
"Uh. I didn't know that."
She shrugged.
"Anyway, Greeks had four different words that all mean 'love'. All different kinds of love. And we only have one. Love for a person. Love for a family. Love for a pet. Love for a thing. We use the same word, despite them all being different feelings."
"That does sound kind of... lame on our part."
Anna nodded in agreement.
"With that in mind... I still love Nate and I doubt I'll ever stop. But also yes, I do love Arthur," his heart dropped. Danse looked down at the city below and wondered where can he get the strongest alcohol around there.
Turned out, she wasn't finished yet.
"And I love you. But those are all different feelings, just like you are all different people."
His head snapped towards her. She still looked into the distance, refusing to meet his eyes. His hand came up over her back, unsure, but Anna leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.
Danse didn't know how different from his own were her feelings towards him, but he was content to know that she loved him, in her own way. And perhaps that was enough.