Archive of Our Own

Irma tried to throw them out of the Memory Den when they carted in the dead body, but Deacon threw a passphrase at her that Whisper hadn't ever even heard before and she begrudgingly let them through. Dr. Amari met them at the door to her basement lab, presumably on her way to investigate the commotion.

“What is this? What are you thinking bringing this- oh.” Her expression dropped cold as she took in the imposter's likeness. “That's not good.”

“That's what I said!”

Her gaze snapped to Deacon - the real one - and her confusion gave way to recognition as she took in the cadence of his voice, the shades, his height… The face swap must have been really fresh if Amari hadn't seen it yet. Whisper almost felt bad for not giving her a heads up. “I see. That’s pretty convincing, but you need to do something about the way you talk. It's distinctive.”

“Noted,” Deacon managed, adjusting the synth's arm over his shoulder. He was bearing the bulk of the weight and they had walked pretty far. “And it's good to see you Amari, but could you let us in? We need to put this thing down before it snaps me in half.”

She sighed, waving them into the room. “Fine. Put him on the table. I know better than to ask what's going on, but you are going to have to tell me what you think I can do about a broken neck.”

“He's a synth,” Whisper explained, helping as much as she reasonably could to get him into the room.

Deacon took over explaining as he heaved him through to the table. “Claimed he was a new model, and that he had a tracker in his noggin.” C7-56 dropped onto the table with a clatter that made Amari jump, his bright blue eyes gleaming in the overhead light as his head lolled unnaturally to the side. Deacon turned pointedly away, not letting Amari see his expression as he caught his breath. Whisper eyed his slightly shaken demeanor warily as she helped to get the synth's legs the rest of the way onto the table.

“Goodness those eyes!” Amari said, using both hands to turn the face upwards so she could peer into them. “Are they true to life? No wonder you’re always wearing those glasses.”

Whisper cut in, ignoring the question. “We need to know if he was telling the truth, Amari… need you to have a look.”

Her head snapped up. “A look!? You mean cut out his brain? That's heinous! I can't do that!”

Whisper sighed. Shouldn't she be used to this kind of thing? Hadn’t she ever handled a cadaver in… whatever training it was that doctors went through these days? “It's necessary. Trust me. A lot is riding on this.”

Amari gently rested the synth's head on the table again before crossing her arms. “Don't you two have a tech genius already? Take it to him! I don't need to be opening people's heads down here. It's bad for business.”

Deacon wouldn't look away from the wall. “There are about a thousand reasons why that won't work, Doc. We need you to do it.”

Amari huffed an infuriated breath at him.

Whisper stepped in then. “But if it helps, just know that we are very very close to never bringing you another package again.”

Deacon's head turned her way slowly, a brow raising over the top of his shades. Beg your pardon, the brow said. She'd almost forgotten that she hadn't actually given her intel over yet. Deacon didn't know that they had a way in.

She looked back to Amari. “How much time do you need?”

“You mean you're not even going to help?”

Deacon straightened, bringing back the casual swagger he liked to wear while dealing with the tourists as he drifted toward the exit and beckoned Whisper to join him. “We have somewhere we need to be. You know how it is, saving the world and all that. But we believe in you and we'll be back in… a couple hours…?”

Whisper followed him as Amari gave the synth before her a solemn look. She took his head in her hands again. When she didn't answer right away, she and Deacon stopped at the door and watched as she gently closed the synth’s eyes. “What was his name?” she asked.

Deacon looked briefly to the floor before raising his gaze to the exit.

Whisper said “C7-56.”

Amari nodded, then turned towards the cabinet next to her and opened a drawer. “Come back at midnight. Have a plan for how to get him out of my lab.”

Whisper nodded, though Amari couldn't see it, then started towards the exit. Deacon’s hand found her back as he positioned her slightly ahead of him and to the left. “Where to, boss?”

“The apartment,” she answered, referring to his one-room safehouse that sat high in the building next door. “We need to catch up.”

Irma gave them a sour look as they reappeared on the ground floor of the Memory Den sans corpse. Deacon's hand slid off of her. “Yeah. We do.”

“College Station. One quarter mile south. Maintenance tunnel 47A. 783 feet west. Blast the south wall.”

Whisper nodded, pacing in front of him. She was too keyed up from the day's activities to join him on the couch.

Yeah. That was it. That was for sure the only reason why.

Deacon ran a hand over his face, studying the map she'd drawn for him where it lay on the coffee table. It was a map of the Institute. The relevant parts at least, including the old unused section they'd have to go through to get to the atrium.

“And you're sure they don't know about this?”

She sighed. “I'm sure. I told them I wanted to scout old parts of the structure to consider for future developments... they want me to run the place once my son dies, isn't that stupid?” What was she saying? Of fucking course it was. She waved off anything that Deacon might have to say to that without looking as she continued to pace. “Nevermind. Point is, once I got in there I found an old terminal system with access to the original plans. It showed exactly where the breech point would be. That part of the Institute is pre-war, and they'd had to build around the metro tunnels so… I think it's accurate. And I think there's a very good chance that they don't know about it.”

“That's not sure, Whisp. That's very good chance.”

“It's the best we've got. At the very least, we should scout it out, see if they're watching the tunnel or not.”

“Even if they're not on the outside, they still could be on the inside.”

“They aren't. I was down there. The dust is atrocious - you're gonna hate it - and there wasn't a fleck out of place. There hasn't been any activity in there in a long time.”

Deacon studied the map some more. He'd decided it couldn't go with him to HQ. Couldn't risk it being intercepted. He’d have to memorize and recreate it. After a few more minutes of contemplation during which Whisper made more turns across the floor in front of him, he sighed. “Quarter mile south. 47A west. 783 feet. South wall.”

“Yes,” she whispered, rubbing the back of her neck with her good hand as she nodded.

“Don't forget the tape measure,” he murmured. He took off the shades and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “How much of this did you tell the other guy already?”

Shame twisted in her gut. She wished she could say none. Instead, she had to swallow her pride and cross her arms tightly over herself and say “I told him there was a tunnel. Hadn't gotten around to the exact details yet but…”

Deacon went still, face still buried in his hand. Then he slid the shades back on. He flipped the map face down on the coffee table and pulled a clean sheet of paper in front of him.

“You said the town's jammed though, right? He couldn't have gotten it back to them yet. There's no way.”

Deacon had begun drawing out the map on the new paper, testing his memory. “Why don't you just tell me exactly what happened between you spilling your guts to an Institute plant and the two of you leaving the Rex together, alright?”

She pursed her lips as she thought, then kicked herself when she realized that after slipping up, she’d immediately left the room.

She could practically hear the horn on her clown car beckoning as she started. “We decided to bring the information back to headquarters immediately. I was shocked that he wanted me to go with him. Now I know he wanted me to lead him there… but, anyways. I left to get dressed in the bathroom and when I came back-”

“How long were you gone?” he asked, flipping the map over to check his work so far.

“Five minutes. At most. I came back and he…”

She could picture him, standing there with his back turned to her. Fucking suspicious. How the hell was she so fucking stupid?

She had to bite the bullet. “He was at the window and… and he had something in his hand.”

“Ah Whisp,” Deacon chuckled. Her glare snapped to him. “Fucking classic. Keep going.”

“So he tried. So what? If there's no signal here then-”

“There's no signal for the birds. We don't know anything about their coms. Never got the chance to fiddle with yours.”

“Shit.” She crossed to where she'd dumped her pack on the couch and pulled out the wristlet she kept wrapped up in her spare shirt, just in case it was listening. “Keep quiet for a minute, ok?” Deacon glanced up but said nothing as she unwrapped the device and went to the window to check the readout. She wrapped it again before speaking. “No signal.”

“Hm… we'll have to get whatever tech he was using and make sure it's the same story. Go on. What happened next?”

She shoved her wristlet into the bottom of her pack. “Then we…” God dammit. She cleared her throat, casually beginning to pace again. “Then we went into the hall and-”

“Go back, try again, Whisp.”

“Try what again? I picked up my pack? He grabbed his? We left the room and-”

His shades lifted, tracking her as she paced. “Whisper. C'mon. I trained you. I know when you're hiding something, and the fact that you're doing it now is very very naughty. Tell the truth so we can move on, please.”

She resisted the instinct to dig in her heels, just as a fuck you to mister always right... but what did it even fucking matter. “Well it's definitely not relevant but that's when he kissed me,” she admitted.

“Aha.” He didn't look up from his drawing. “No need to be bashful about that, pet. How was it?”

“Completely fucking weird,” she snapped. “That's when I realized something was wrong. Deacon's never kissed Whisper before, why would he start now?”

He stopped drawing then, though he thought he’d covered well by pretending to check the original as he collected himself.

“So I broke it off and told him to cut it out, that he was wasting his time and energy trying to manipulate me… he looked totally confused, of course. Now I get why.”

“Poor little lamb,” Deacon murmured.

Whisper stopped to glare at him, planting herself by the blacked-out window. “C7-56 was a victim. Don't be so cavalier.”

“No, I mean it. You started it right? Kissed him first? Guy probably thought he'd won the lottery just to have you go and fuck him on the taxes. Then he had to go and pull a gun on you. Got his neck snapped for it. Poor little lamb. What happened next?”

She regarded him for a moment, feeling suddenly so thoroughly exhausted by… so many of the things he'd just said. Finally, she gave in and crossed the space between them, plopping herself down on the couch. She leaned against the backrest, staring at the ceiling for a moment before closing her eyes. “Then we left the room and went to the elevator. I noticed he was fidgeting a lot while we waited. That made me more suspicious so I checked and…”

Shit. Would it still be there after the surgery? She rolled her head to the side to look at him, but there was a shadow over the spot. Deacon turned to her in the silence. His brows pinched in when he found her staring. “What?”

“Can I just…?” She hesitated for a moment before leaning forward and reaching up to his jaw, gently moving it with the back of her bandaged fingers so his chin would catch the light. She didn't miss the way that every single muscle in his body seemed to seize up when she touched his face. Another red flag she should have caught immediately with the imposter and didn't.

She was sort of surprised when she actually found the mark. “Here,” she said, smoothing over it gently with her thumb. “You have a scar. He didn’t.” he was watching her out of the side of his sunglasses and she met his gaze. “They definitely got your eyes right, though.”

She rubbed her thumb over the scar one more time before dropping her hand and her gaze into her lap. Deacon started breathing again a moment later but before he went back to his task he gestured to the bandage with the end of his pencil. “What happened there?” She lifted her hand, turning it in the light. She'd opened her mouth to answer but before she could he said “It wasn't like that when you left Home Plate.”

Anger simmered in her for a moment before settling again. What the fuck did it matter. “You followed me from Diamond City,” she intoned.

He let the scratching of his pencil answer for him. Then he asked, “Did he hurt you?”

“No.” She flexed her hand. “No, I hurt me. I uh… I got really mad at a mirror.”

His pencil quieted.

“Had to teach it a lesson.”

There were another few beats of silence before he set the pencil down. He handed her the new map.

Whisper took it with her uninjured hand and leaned forward to study it as he stood and crossed the room. She inspected the first part the closest. The maze of the old building was the trickiest and most imperative part, since there wouldn't be any way to navigate to where it led into the new building without knowing exactly where you were going. It all looked perfect of course. She almost wished she had found a flaw as Deacon sat down next to her again, lining up a few items on the table in front of them. She looked up from the map.

A stimpack. Tweezers. Scissors. Cloth. A bowl and a can of water. One after the other, in a nice tidy row.

“Good?”

She handed the map back without looking. “Perfect.”

Deacon took the page and set it face down on top of the other one, then picked up the scissors and turned back to her, lifting his palm. “May I?”

She didn't even care to argue, just put her bandaged hand in his surprisingly cold one.

Deacon went quietly to work, cutting the bandage off and setting the scissors down neatly where they'd been, then folding the used fabric over itself again and again until it was a nice little rectangle. He placed it at the end of the evenly spaced line.

She couldn't help but laugh a little bit as she watched. Deacon had been lifting her hand to inspect but he paused at the sound, scrutinizing her face. “That’s a nice sound. Thought maybe you'd forgotten how to do that… care to share with the class?”

She gestured to the table as he carried on with his inspection. “Just this. You're just so obviously you and he was so obviously… not you. I'm just laughing at myself so I don't cry, really. I'm so fucking stupid for not clocking it sooner.”

Deacon hummed, picking up the tweezers. “If there's one thing you're not, Whisper, it's stupid. And I would know. I've had to outsmart you this whole time.”

Another laugh bubbled up in her chest. It didn't exactly sound like the laugh of the mentally well.

“It was not always easy. So no, you're not stupid.”

“So humble,” she noted, trying really hard not to cry.

He brought her hand up closer to his face, obviously squinting behind the shades. She watched him for a moment before saying, “Don't be shy. I've seen them before.”

He turned to her wordlessly, looking for an explanation.

“The glasses, Deac. You'll have better luck without them, I think.”

He didn't look terribly amused as he turned back to the task at hand, taking her advice and removing the shades to sit primly on the table in front of him.

It took a lot to keep her reaction quelled. She managed to keep breathing at least, though there had definitely been a bit of a stutter and a slight uptick. She tried to keep her hand relaxed in his. The man was jumpy enough without picking up her reaction to the deep bruises under his eyes, or the way the new, sharper cheekbones she'd noted earlier looked a lot less natural and a lot more unwell within the context of his sunken eyes. His whole face looked worse; sicker.

What the hell had been going on out here while she was gone?

After a moment of easier inspection, he began tweezing. “Did he help you with this? There's so much glass in here still…”

She let her gaze trickle carefully down his body, noting the way his clothes looked to be a few sizes too big, the individual bones and tendons she could see moving in his hands as he turned hers in the light, the sick pallor of his skin… “Yeah,” she said. “I don't know if he really knew what he was doing. First time topside I guess.”

He picked what looked to be precisely nothing out of her hand and wiped it on the discarded bandage. “Born yesterday,” he agreed.

Whisper set her jaw against that particular bit of darkness.

After removing a few more shards from her hand he said “Any reason why you didn't stimpack it?”

“Ran out on the way here.”

Those icy blue eyes pierced her for a moment before going back to the task at hand. “Doing what?”

“Ran into trouble,” she explained smoothly. “What, weren't you watching?”

“I took another route. Knew where you were going from your note, and figured that the woman who had managed to whisper her way through Concord, Lexington and most of Cambridge on her own without taking more than a single bullet would have had no problem with a simple jaunt down Commonwealth Avenue.”

Her gaze dropped to her free hand. He'd found her vault. And intercepted her note. Something about that made her feel…

A lot of things she didn't have time to feel right now.

“OK well maybe I'd gone looking,” she admitted quietly.

It had been a while since he picked anything out of her hand, but he was taking his time looking for more glass, turning her hand this way and that in the light. “So… you walked across Boston and worked some of your shit out on…? Ferals? Raiders…?”

“And supermutants,” she added.

Deacon stopped breathing again, his grip tightening on her hand for a moment before he placed it gently on his knee. He put down the tweezers and opened the can of water and still didn't inhale. His leg was warm under her palm compared to his icy-cold hands.

“Almost took on Swan, but decided I didn't have enough time.”

He finally sucked in a breath. “Don't even fucking joke,” he seethed, picking her hand back up and holding it over the bowl.

“Don't joke? Wha- wait, did you see that pig fly by just now?”

He poured water over her wounds. “You worked your shit out on all that and then still felt the need to go ballistic on a mirror when you were done. Makes me think maybe you're not doing so hot, sweetheart.”

“I'm not,” she laughed.

He glared down at her as he sat the can on the coffee table and picked up the cloth.

She met his harsh expression as he dabbed a little too hard at the wounds on her knuckles, still smiling in a way that she could tell definitely looked at least a little manic. “I'm really not, Deacon. I've been… I'm fried. I have nothing left to give. I've been in deep cover for so many months, my soul is cooked. My brain is toast. I'm a meal, apparently.” That same unnerving laugh bubbled up in her chest and she said, “So dig in, I guess. I dunno. What the fuck do I care? And for that matter, what the fuck do you care?”

“I think maybe you need a rest,” he said calmly.

“What, like in the loony bin?” Fucking rich coming from him. “Yeah probably. Haven't got those anymore though do we? Guess I’ll have to just keep wandering free out here, doing whatever asinine thing that's asked of me.” Deacon glanced away for the moment that she paused, but his eyes snapped back onto her when she added, “You think I need a rest? What, like I can just stop? Like I’m not going to be on the lam from the fucking Institute until they're brought down? I'll be burned in the morning, Deacon. There's no fucking way they don't pick up on what went down between me and C7.”

“I know. I am going to handle it. You are going to go somewhere quiet and somewhere safe and you are going to rest.”

She gaped at him as he picked up the stimpack and uncapped it with his teeth. “The fuck I am!”

He spat the cap out, sending it skittering across the table and to the floor. She watched it go with a bit of disbelief as he lined up the needle and said “Your cover is blown. That's fine. We don't need it anymore. They're gonna burn you. No problem. They're gonna burn too. Within the week, if I have anything to say about it. And you...” He looked up from what he was doing, his eyes piercing into hers. “You have done more in service to the Railroad with just this one piece of intel than I have in my decades of work... and now you're tired. You're hurt. You’re done, Whisp.”

Her eyes were too blurred with tears to see him inject the stimpack, but she felt the prick in the back of her hand. She heard him set the empty syringe back on the table. He didn't put her hand down as her skin stitched back together, his thumb dragging back and forth, up and down the back of her wrist. “You earned it.”

Whisper shook her head. This was bullshit. “You don't know how to find Patriot! A-and the civilians, they may not listen if I'm not there!”

“I’m sure we can find Patriot, and we'll get the civilians out. I promise.”

She yanked her hand out of his and stood. “I'm not sitting this out, Deacon! I'm the one who had to see all that evil shit up close, I- my fucking kid is in there! I'm going to be there when they go down!”

“No. You're not.”

“Why the fuck not!?”

He stood, his voice cold and even as he towered over her in a way he could somehow usually avoid. “Because I'm afraid it'll kill you, ok? I'm afraid that going back in there even one more time might be the last straw and it might be what kills your soul and that's not allowed to happen. We still have a life to live when this is all over. You're not allowed to give up yet.”

She took a shaky step back from him, watching as it prompted something to flash over his face. He tore away from her before she could analyze it too closely though, going to the blackened window and leaning heavily on the sill.

Something about what he'd said chilled her, and it wasn't the part where he'd talked about the death of her soul, or when he said he wasn't going to allow her to give up. No, what was really terrifying about what he'd just said was just two little words. I'm afraid.

What on Earth could make Deacon feel afraid?

There was a tremor in her voice. “What do you care if I give up?”

“I care,” he ground out.

“Bullshit. You just want-” she reached for a reason. Some way he was trying to trick her or manipulate her and bend her to his will. But she came up empty. He already had what he needed. The Institute. On a platter. He didn't need her for that anymore. Did he really just…

No. It still didn't make sense. “If you gave a single genuine shit about what happened to me after this was all over, you would have shown it, Deacon.” The old wound had cropped up again, never far from being blown wide open. “You wouldn't have left me to deal with this alone. You would have been there when I went in-”

He didn't turn. “I didn't think it would happen the way it-”

“You would have helped me get ready, you would have told me it'd be ok!”

“I thought I'd have more time, that they'd wait for me-”

“But you had to run off and leave me there and-”

“I fucked up!” he shouted and it felt like the atom bomb all over again. She stood frozen in shock as he went on. “I know that! And I'm sorry! I didn't think in a million years that Dez would have actually sent you in there without me signing off on it and I was fucking wrong and I missed it! I've regretted it every day since and if you never forgive me I'll regret it every day until I die.”

She stared down his back as the last word hung on the air around them. Regretted it every day. His hollow cheeks and bruised eyes were sticking in her mind as she considered that, though he wouldn't look at her now. He was gripping the frame with one hand while the other appeared to be on his face, turned away from her so she wouldn't see whatever was still there. The fear. The honesty.

“Why do you care?” she found herself asking again, her voice raw.

Deacon sucked in a breath, straightening his back so he was at his full height as he dropped the hand from his face. He said nothing.

“Tell me why you care. Tell me. Whatever you've got going on in there that makes it so fucking hard to say out loud, don't you think I deserve to know? Haven't I earned it yet?”

“Turn out the light,” he replied.

All of the air in the room vanished. What was left of her argument froze in her chest as she watched him, trembling at the window with something barely contained.

A lot of things could happen in the dark, not all of them good.

In fact most of them were usually very bad.

The crawl of anticipation over her skin sent a tremor through her. She crossed her arms, watching as he gripped the window sill and waited for her to follow his command. What would he do if she didn't obey?

She reached behind the couch and flipped the switch on the wall before she could lose her nerve, dropping the room into darkness. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen there in the pitch black.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Whatever was going to happen, she'd invited it. Whatever was going to happen… she was done fighting it. Whatever happened tonight, she was going to let it. She would rejoin the fight tomorrow.

She was going to be there when the Institute fell. He wasn't going to manipulate or force that away from her.

Cold palms cupped her cheeks and she realized with a jolt and a gasp of air that he was right in front of her. She instinctively put her hands on his hips to steady herself as he pushed back along the sides of her hair, continuing until one hand rested at the nape of her neck and the other had slid up to her ponytail. When he let down her hair, releasing the tension all around her head in a cascade of relief, her breathing slowed. Her head dipped heavily forward and her eyes welled as he slipped his fingers into her hair, soothing her scalp.

Her forehead came to rest against his sternum and she knew it was over. Done fighting. What the fuck did it even matter anymore. She slipped her hands up his sides, gripping his shirt and feeling cocooned in his warmth as he pulled her tighter into his terrifyingly sparse frame.

She wasn't expecting him to say anything. For a few minutes, she thought that the hug was going to be all the answer he was going to give. She was almost ok with it.

But she was extremely fucking wrong.

“There once was a man who did… a lot of really horrible things,” he began, wrapping one arm over her shoulders to tuck her closer into him. The other stayed in her hair. “Evil things. He wasn't an evil man but he didn't see that what he was doing was wrong for a long time. Too long… he did a lot of harm.”

She already knew there was a heavy darkness in him. How could she not? He showed it to her often enough, openly admitting to the atrocities he aspired to while hiding behind the veil of a murderous raider or the like. Anymore she could see it even when he was just Deacon. It was like she could sense the pulse of it, always lurking just behind the shades and the easy smiles, biding its time as it waited to be let off leash.

She nuzzled against his chest, savoring the feel of his fingers running through her hair.

“Then one day… he happened upon some real, genuine happiness. And he saw what good looked like. And… he changed, became a better man. He started a new life, convinced he had found his happily ever after just like that... but it was too late. He'd inflicted harm, and it couldn't stand. So even though he'd changed, even though he kept to himself and planned never to fuck up like that again, the universe had to balance the scales. It had to inflict something on him. A punishment. It had to let him know that he wasn't allowed to be happy anymore.”

A heavy quiet sat over them as she gently ran her palm in little circles over his chest with her freshly healed hand. Not allowed to be happy. That felt familiar.

Eventually he went on. “He lost everything he cared about. All the happiness. All the good. Gone in one swoop. The universe razed his life, left him with nothing. No… soul. He couldn't even find the courage to off himself. He needed to suffer for what he'd done and he knew it.

“So he wandered. And he tried to be good. At the very least he tried not to do any harm, but it's hard to get anywhere in life that way… he definitely never made the mistake of trying to find any kind of happiness. He knew the universe wouldn't let it stand if he did. He'd lose anything he cared about in fucking blood and fire, again and again. He'd forfeited his right to it a long time ago.

“Years went by before he stumbled on the way out. He found this great… diabolical evil in the world, and he knew he had to try and fight it. He threw everything he had at it… and for a while he just did it because he wanted to, because it gave him a purpose and because he knew it was right and because he still hadn't managed to get the guts to fling himself off a cliff… but then, one day… the universe offered him a deal.

“If he could pull it off, if he could fight this… blight on humanity and win, then it would be over. He would be allowed to be happy again… or at the very least he would be allowed to move on. To end things.”

Whisper slipped an arm up to wrap behind his neck, the other hand sliding over her mouth to stifle her breathing. She was shaking hard enough that she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be on her feet. The way he was talking, the way he seemed to unironically be referring to the universe as something sentient, something to be negotiated with, it felt…

“And then one day the universe sent him a test.”

Fully delusional.

Just how unwell was the man holding her?

“He hadn't been looking for it. He hadn't been trying to cheat their deal. He wouldn't have dreamed of it. But one day his happiness just… waltzed into his arms.” She sucked in a shaky breath as his hold on her tightened. His hand stilled in her hair, holding her head firmly against his chest. She was sure he could feel her frantic heartbeat. “It was right there,” he hissed, “All over him. All around him. Creeping in and infecting his soul more and more every day. But he could not have it. He knew that the second he grabbed on to it the universe would-” he snapped his fingers behind her back, making her jump “-snatch it away.”

Silence reigned. He was just barely shaking around her now too. Whisper waited for him to go on.

She waited for him to go on for a long time.

She finally finished for him.

“He hasn't made good on his deal yet, has he?” she managed, voice trembling.

“No.”

“But he's close.”

He shifted his head, lips moving against her hair as he said “Very, very close.”

She relieved a heavy breath, hoping he didn't hear the click of her teeth as her jaw chattered with adrenaline.

Well.

That little story didn't exactly leave her with much agency, did it?

And the man she loved was completely batshit.

But she knew that already.

She rested against his chest, determined to sit in his arms and feel his hands roving soothingly up and down her back and through her hair as she contemplated his admission for as long as he'd allow it. His words from earlier echoed through her head: We still have a life to lead when this is over.

She was a reward. She was a punishment. It seemed that to him, she only existed within the context of his ability to avoid going on too many of the murdering sprees he was partial to. And whether or not he could be the savior of the Commonwealth of course, praised by synths everywhere. She didn't love that, but she did suddenly feel safer than she had in a long time.

Once again she thought that she had gotten all she was going to get. Once again she was dead wrong, and nothing could have prepared her for what was next.

“I was in Sommerville on an intelligence op about 15 months ago when I got a drop through the priority runners. It said that the v-” He stopped short, adjusting his hold on her so she was closer, more tightly bound. When he spoke again, he almost sounded resigned. “It said that the vault we'd had tourists on for the better part of two decades for Gen 1 activity had opened and that…”

Whisper's eyes popped open in the dark.

Deacon sighed. “... and that a strange woman had been seen tip-toeing around Concord in a vault suit.”

Her blood ran cold.

“I thought we had found the fucking Institute,” he nearly laughed.

She tried to push away from him, but even with his spindly new body, his iron grip held.

“I thought that you had escaped and that you knew the way in and that you were either going to tell me how to do it or you were going to die in my torture chamber.”

Rage and hurt and… she didn't even know what else was about to burn out every last one of her nerves.

“And then I saw you-”

She pounded against his chest, tears welling painfully in her eyes as she used her tight voice, “I thought you’d seen something in me, you prick!”

“I did.”

“But when we met? When you showed up and saved my life? Decided to team up with me? You'd actually been… looking for me!?”

“Oh I found you way before then, pet. I killed the raider that shot you.”

She shoved at his chest with both hands but he didn't give an inch. He was too strong.

“Slaughtered them all.”

He'd proved that time and again.

“I killed damn near anything that even breathed in your direction that first month.”

She buried her face in her hands, still pressed against his chest.

His hand curled over the back of her head. “And I left you presents, sweetheart. Every stimpack you picked up, every package of food-”

This couldn't be real.

“I put it there for you. That first modded 10mm you found? With the hair trigger?”

She had never stood a chance on her own.

“The pack you carry around now. The one you found outside the apartment building in Lexington just… full of useful stuff…”

“Stop! Just fucking stop,” she sobbed.

The man she loved was a batshit psychopath stalker!

But fuck! She knew all of that already!

“I can't believe you kept this from me!” she wailed.

“Well I kept expecting you to fess up. Didn't think you’d drag things on for so long… but it turns out we really are two peas in a pod when it comes to hiding our tragic backstories.”

She laughed her new crazy laugh.

God, why'd she have to laugh at that?

She punched him in the shoulder.

His nose nuzzled against her hair. “I know, okay? I know I'm completely off my fucking rocker, and I know that I can be hard to deal with and-”

“Impossible to deal with!” she cried.

“Yes, I know, I'm impossible to deal with, and I know my relationship with the truth rubs some people the wrong way… but believe this one thing, Elanor Blysse Green: I am in your corner. Always have been. Always will be. I care.”

She felt like she was going to shake right out of her skin with fury. He cared about his fucking happiness. About getting what he thought he was owed. “I can't do this,” she sobbed.

He shushed her, soothing over her hair. “I wasn’t ever going to tell you all that but you're right. You deserve to know.”

She punched him again. “I can't do this I can't do this I need-” she sucked in a breath.

“Need what,” he whispered.

Fuck it. Fuck all of it. What did any of it matter? As long as her heart was still beating and her soul was still sitting firmly in her chest, tormenting her with every choice, with every tragic turn in her life, she had to find a way.

“Anything I can give. It's yours.”

She had to live with what she was given. She had to make things bearable, even if she could never hope of living the idyllic picture perfect life she had always had in mind for herself. She had to do something.

“Name it.”

She had completely crumbled in his arms. “I need to be Bunny,” she sobbed. “Please. Please just let me be Bunny. Right now. Right now. Please.”

A tight hand in her hair tilted her head back and then lips were crashing against hers, feeling more desperate and possessive and hungry than Bunny was used to as she found herself teetering backwards on weak legs. She tried to reciprocate, to meet him where he was, but it was all she could do just to manage the occasional swath of air around his lips to fuel her sobs. She didn't care how much she breathed though. She needed to get lost. To forget who and what and where and when she was.

Their kiss broke and his other hand blanketed her throat, his thumb pressing hard against her pulse point as she gripped onto his forearm with both hands. She felt his words against her lips as he nearly growled, “Are you sure that's what you need, Bunny dear? Because I'm feeling like these circumstances may call for something a little different.”

She shoved against his chest as hard as she could, thrashing in his grip and letting loose a visceral cry. It seemed that was all the answer he needed. Within moments she was face down on the bed, crushed under the weight of her beloved fucking psychopath as he gripped her throat and bit at her ear and rutted against her from behind. Pressure was pulsing between her eyes from the lack of air and she could feel herself getting tighter and tighter with every press of his body against her heat through the layers of fabric between them. The way he was pulling back on her hair had her imagining flames licking over her scalp, and when she tried to brace her forearms and push up off the bed, she found that she couldn't gain a single millimeter.

He was mouthing against her jaw just under her ear and she had to rub her thighs together to get any kind of relief from the sorely missed feeling of his tongue against her skin. When his grip loosened on her throat, allowing a thin stream of air to finally tease her lungs, she squeaked out a “Please.”

He obliged almost instantly; releasing her throat to reach between her and the bed and unfasten her pants, allowing her a real gulp of air. Then he was finally touching her where she needed it and moaning as he twitched against her backside. She moaned with him, letting the sound of them together take her far, far away.

“So wet for me already,” he hissed, “You filthy fucking animal.”

“Please just fuck me. Please. Please…”

He lifted off of her enough to yank her pants down over her ass and they both kicked off their boots. He pushed her pants down to the ankles and she frantically tried to kick them the rest of the way off as the clinking of his belt dominated over the sound of their rapid breaths. Only one leg was freed before he was arranging her hips, and then he was sliding into her and she decided one leg was enough.

A high and breathy sound streamed through her as the most wonderful and distracting hurt blotted her thoughts. He was always so big and it had been so long that the stretch felt borderline dangerous.

He released her hair to brace himself on the bed and a groan rumbled deep in his chest as he stalled part of the way in, then started to back out. She planted her hands on the bed and thrust back against him. “Just fuck me, asshole!”

He was suddenly all the way inside of her and she basically screamed, fisting her hands in the quilt below them as his weight crushed her back against the bed. His hands found their way back to her throat, to her hair as he quickly set an ambitious, driving pace. “Is this what you want, huh? Is this what you needed, you whore?”

She tried to nod as the lack of air set alarms off through her body. She made no attempt to get a hand on him though, to try and tap out. They would do this until either he stopped or she finally went somewhere really damn far from there. She could feel her arousal rising higher and higher and nearly every thought she had was a blessedly numb mix of need air need air must come it’s right there right there right there-!

Air invaded her lungs suddenly as both his hands found purchase on the mattress on either side of her and she immediately missed the pressure on her throat, the pull on her scalp. She sobbed beneath him as he began to rant in her ear. “One thing I didn't know when I first saw you was how much of a greedy fucking whore your were going to be for me. I sat there and I watched you sleep and I thought of doing all sorts of things to your perfect skin, to your fucking mind but i didn't think you'd like it… I knew you were mine but I did not see this coming. Didn't know I could want something like this, that I could ever love something so much again. That I'd-”

She finally whipped her head back violently, knowing he'd dodge in time to spare the broken nose. He did her one better and immediately pressed her back into the mattress with a palm on the side of her head as she demanded that he “Shut the fuck up with that shit! Just fuck me!”

He spat on her, saliva splattering on her cheek and she gasped in one wild breath as she pulsed around him. A hand slapped over her mouth and cranked her head back against his shoulder as his other arm propped up under her neck, keeping a measure of his weight off of her but threatening to put pressure on her throat. She could still breathe through her nose but it wasn't enough and she found herself trying to draw more against his palm as she dug nails into whatever skin she could find.

And then she was laughing. She was laughing her new crazy laugh into his hand as an immense fucking bomb of pleasure raced forward to meet her. She cackled all the way up until she came, screaming into his palm and bucking back against him.

Then she was back to laughing again as he slowed to a crawl, groaning and hushing her and calling her a good girl. Humming through her giggles, she delighted in the way he was pulsing pulsing pulsing inside of her, in the way his ragged breaths stuttered against the top of her hair.

Once she'd quieted enough, he removed his hand. Then he was pulling the hair off of her face as she turned it into the bed to wipe the errant saliva and tears off of her cheeks. She was still panting through her aftershocks when he started to pull her shirt up over her head, making her shoulders ache as she maneuvered her arms out from under her for him and cherished the little kisses he left up her spine. She finally got the other leg of her pants kicked off, happy to have the opportunity while he removed his own clothes after she'd had to come with them dangling off the edge of the bed by her ankle.

Moments later she was on her side and moaning around the bony fingers on her tongue, the slide of sweaty skin against her back reminding her of just how alive she really was. How alive he was. How together they were. Even as a part of her mind considered the horror of just how emaciated his fully naked body felt pressed against hers, she tongued his hand and thought that she'd like to swallow him whole. The lowest registers of his voice rumbled wordlessly behind her as he thrusted at a more gentle pace, one hand resting on her chin as she delighted in the taste of his skin, the other wrapping around beneath her to knead her breast and keep her body pressed firmly against his.

Her nails dug into the skin of his forearm and her teeth in his knuckle as he started to hit something sore and raw inside of her. Then she hissed and gasped with a particularly direct hit, releasing every hold she had on him to instead grip the quilt and try to get away. He stopped moving completely and she wasn't sure who it was that leaned into her ear and asked “Are you hurt?”

Still wincing, she nodded. “Just give it a little break. Please.”

A hum vibrated against her back and he nuzzled his nose into the crook of her neck, taking a deep breath against her skin.

Then he bit her and she gasped, squirming but so completely enveloped in him that she couldn’t move away again. When he released her he said “Sometimes I feel like I wanna eat you alive, is that weird?”

She was relieved that he'd let go so easily. “Completely,” she answered, gripping his wrist and using it to bring his fingers back up to her mouth. She kissed them gently before tonguing them again, focusing on the pulse she could feel in them if she sucked hard enough and the way it matched with the way he was still throbbing inside of her.

“Boy you sure are making it easy to not wanna fuck you into the mattress,” he growled. She hummed around his fingers, making him groan as he twitched against her insides. “Total cakewalk. Very considerate behavior.”

She made a point to squeeze around him as she moaned, delighting in the responding sound of barely adequate restraint against her ear.

He jostled her in his arms. “Are you good? Or do you just love torturing me?”

She pulled his hand from her mouth slowly, sucking on his fingers the whole way. “Both,” she rasped. “Go slow.”

A firm hand against her belly held her in place as he began to drag delectably in and out again, his other going back to her tongue, his breaths sounding shallow. She tilted her head back to nuzzle against his face and receive a kiss to her temple. When he pulled the fingers from her mouth again she let them go only because she knew instinctively that he wanted to card them through her hair, to push it up from the nape of her neck and arrange the strands neatly out of the way. With that sorted, his lips found her cheek and she felt the softest little fluttering kisses against her skin as he continued at a dizzyingly slow pace.

“You're always so soft,” he whispered and for some reason it hit her like a bat to the knee who it was speaking so gently against her ear. “So perfect.”

She tried to reach for a character, to help him slip into one. “Soft little bunny?” she offered.

He hummed, wrapping his free arm over her breasts to grip her shoulder and accelerating in a way that had her feeling a bit breathless. “Soft… little Whispy,” he corrected between breaths, sending a little chill through her. “All mine. Mine mine mine mineminemine…”

He bit the shell of her ear and she was sure that he had to have clocked the way her heart was now galloping in her chest, the way she was struggling to breathe right. Everything she had felt earlier, all the emotions from her evening murder spree and her bloody foray with the bathroom mirror, all the fear and anxiety and horror from the bombs of fucking information he'd dropped on her just a few minutes before, it all came rushing back up at once.

She wiggled out of his grip and he let go of her easily for once, seeming a bit confused as she pushed away from him and flipped to her stomach.

“Whis-” he started but she pounced before he could utter the name, straddling him and pressing her hand to his throat as she crushed their mouths together. He kissed her back enthusiastically at first, gripping tightly to her hair with one hand and the forearm at his neck with the other and groaning onto her tongue, but as expected that zeal died down gradually, the tension in his body rising.

Urgency edged into her fingers and she reached between them to angle him against her entrance, making him moan into her mouth with a pitch she hadn't heard before. She had to release his lips as she sank onto him and she planted her elbows on either side of his neck, cradling his head in her arms. Her hair fanned over his face as he panted erratically, trying and failing to pull it all together into a neat bundle in his hands. She wondered if he had a single coherent thought in his head at that moment.

If she had been able to reach his lips to kiss him she would have, but she had to settle for panting and licking against his throat as she followed the stutters and pauses in his rapturous moaning like a roadmap with her hips. She wanted to keep the tension at bay, to keep both their poisonous thoughts and emotions and ridiculous obsessions away from the front of their minds so they could just devour each other in peace… but eventually he started to really squirm. He dropped her hair, finding her hips and gripping them instead. He didn't do much with that move except communicate to her that he was starting to think too hard about what they were doing.

She pushed up onto her hands, then raked her nails down his chest and over his washboard ribs as he hissed. When her hands were finally planted at the bottom of his ribcage, she began to bounce on him.

“Fuck,” he gasped, releasing his grip on her. She felt a hand slap down onto the bed next to her foot, punctuating the word. She wasn't sure where the other ended up in the dark.

Fuck was right. They'd never done this before. In all scenarios and in every set of skin they slipped into, she had never been allowed to be on top of him like this.

He groaned something almost pitiful, then found her hips again and gripped them tightly this time, like he was actually trying to still her. “Wait,” he gasped and she threw herself forward to silence him with a tongue down his throat, panic thrumming through her limbs. When she grabbed his jaw, holding his mouth in place so he couldn't squirm away from her so easily, she heard another strange new sound from him.

She felt powerful.

She started to move again, sliding up and down as much as she could on the tip of his cock without breaking the kiss and-

A sudden grip in her hair halted the whine in her throat. She couldn't stop it when he lifted her just far enough off of him to growl “Raspberry” against her mouth and as much as it felt like her heart had been cleaved in two, there was not a single beat of stillness once the word had left his lips. She slid off of him immediately, falling to the side and giving him all the space he needed to sit up.

The dark trickled down over them as they panted together. Whisper's chest tightened more and more with each second that slid by them, with every breath that came later and later. Too far she thought as she fell back against the bed, laying the back of her arm over her eyes.

She wanted to know exactly what the fuck it was about that that he couldn't handle, but couldn't imagine asking. Not with the way the grief and the fury and the worry were all starting to kick back up in her belly again.

It was a bit of a surprise when Deacon eased back next to her, his breaths still ragged but slower than they had been. The bed wasn't big enough to avoid the brush of their arms against each other. She hated how well it soothed the anxiety churning in her gut.

Then he said “We shouldn't tempt fate like that,” and she could have fucking decked him.

She was still a little breathless. “So you can pin me down and choke me, fuck me into the bed until I'm screaming, that's all good and fine… but the universe doesn't like it if I get on top?”

He flinched as she said the universe, like her acknowledging aloud that he was the delusional man from his story was crossing a line. “I don't make the rules,” he replied.

And he thought she needed a rest. If anyone had been doing this shit for too long it was him. The man had completely lost it.

And they still didn't have fucking time for this.

Whisper rolled away from him, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and completely planning to just get dressed and let that be that. Then she was stopped short by a hand on her forearm.

“Wait,” he said. “Just… come back for a second, ok?”

Something like despair thrummed through her as she sat frozen.

She should just ignore him.

He shifted behind her, his grip dropping from her arm to support his weight as he leaned into her back.

The man had just admitted to stalking her long before they had even met. Their whole relationship was a lie.

He hooked his chin over her shoulder, his other hand grazing gently down her arm, then stopping to brush the hair that was now hanging loose there back into order.

They didn't have time for this. They didn't have time for this. They didn't have time for this…

She felt herself lean back into him, and he took that as an invitation to drop a kiss into the crook of her neck as he wrapped his forearm over the top of her chest. She shuddered a breath. “I'm tired,” she said because she was. Emotionally she was drained, and she felt that exhaustion deep in her bones.

“I know. Just lay down with me for a few more minutes, Bun.” He kissed her shoulder and she shivered. “I've missed you too much for it to be over now. Please.”

She didn't have time to try and hold it in, to try and temper her reaction. She took a breath in to try and respond and just sobbed.

A gentle pull at her shoulder was all it took, not forcing but instead persuading her to lean all the way back into him and onto the pillows again. He shifted around until they were facing each other with her firmly tucked against him.

This whole situation sucked. On top of the fucking world ending, on top of her husband being killed and her infant son being kidnapped and raised into an unfeeling slave driver, on top of her entire life turning to shit… this genius, angel, hilarious, perfect fit, motherfucker psychopath was now holding her and combing through her hair and he did care about her. He did. But he was also certifiably insane.

And that was bad. It was bad because it made him unpredictable. It was bad because what if he… snapped?

Hurt her?

He gently worked a tangle out of the ends of her hair with his fingers, shushing her gently as she cried into his chest over the fact that in this outrageous, dangerous, lawless world where she was a prime target for deathclaws, ferals, raiders and any other fucked up thing the universe may want to throw at her, it was horrible to have someone like him at her back. In her corner. And not just someone like him, but him. The man who could keep up with her wit, and who could make her smile when it felt like the world was crashing down around her all over again, and who had just made her scream-laugh through an orgasm. The man who had killed for her, who had kept her safe and protected her so completely for so long.

What a really very terrible turn of events for her. It was so unfortunate to have a tirelessly devoted and deranged shadow who she just so happened to be in love with to keep her company there in the fucking post-apocalypse.

She hadn't realized she was laughing again until his hold on her tightened, the soothing sounds he was making turning a bit more urgent.

They really were two peas in a pod.

He was her partner. And he was obsessed with her. And she didn't know how far she could even get in this new world without him. She didn't want to try.

He was nuzzling his chin against the top of her head… that or he was shaking his head in disbelief. She wasn't sure. “I'm gonna get you out of here,” he whispered. “I promise. When this is over. I'm gonna come and get you, and I'm gonna take you somewhere far, far, far away.”

She wiped at the fresh tears around her eyes. She didn’t even want to think about the mess that was going to be left after the Institute was dismantled. The refugees, the questions, her god damned mental health if there was anything left of it… “We can't just leave,” she said.

“Yes, we can. We can. Once we've… once I've... wrapped up this one last project at work, I'm going to resign and then we're gonna move. I'm going to take you somewhere new, Bunny. Somewhere clean and safe and new where we can just stay in one place and… be whoever it is we decide we want to be.”

She tightened her hold on him. That sounded like a nice dream.

It was never going to happen. Nothing was going to go according to plan and in all likelihood one or both of them were going to die in the next few days.

But it sounded like a dream she could hold onto, something he'd laid out for her to play in, to build around. Something to whisk her away from the nightmare and the stress and the fear for a little while.

She breathed deeply, picturing a modest house and a sturdy fence and children playing in the yard. She saw herself hanging a sheet to dry in the breeze as her darling husband bounced their baby in his arms and watched the kids play. A smile pulled at his lips, filling her heart.

She tilted her head back and pressed a kiss to whatever part of him she could reach, which turned out to be his throat, just under his chin. Now that she knew where it was in the dark she cupped his cheek and he stiffened for only a split second before he was shuddering a breath and melting into it, just the way Bunny was used to her husband reacting to her touch.

She convinced him to tilt his lips down to hers with the drag of her thumb against his jaw and when their lips met it was like a balm to her soul… and by the way his breathing was beginning to hitch and drag against her tongue, it seemed that he felt the same way.

They could be happy after this. He'd said so. Clean and safe and new and together. Happy. Not dead. Not gutted. Not soulless.

He broke their kiss to gasp in air and whisper “Oh, Bunny-”

She gripped his jaw and forced it to stay put for her as she kissed him again, just a bit more urgently than she had before. Then her leg was hitched over his hip and she felt his cock twitch against her in response as he groaned into her mouth.

And then he was rolling them and she was a little shocked and quite pleased to find herself on top of him again. He reached behind her to work himself back up more quickly as she devoured him, grinding against his stomach until he grabbed her hips and guided her down to meet him.

She hummed before releasing his lips. “Wanna see Bunny hop?” she whispered.

He groaned in response, squeezing her hip painfully tight and kicking his leg with a strange twitch as she slowly sank down onto him and then dragged herself back up his length. She pecked his lips at the top and he begged, “Please…”

“What my darling wants…” She kissed him one more time before sinking down and tucking her head under his chin to work herself on him. His hands traveled from her hair to her face, down to the bed and then up to her breast, round and round over and over as she rode him, like he couldn't find purchase strong enough to hold onto as he got fucked. It made her feel insanely powerful, like holding a deathclaw on a leash.

She worked him up quickly, moving her hips the same way she always used to to entrance Nate and feeling very very sure of herself as she monitored his reactions and pictured the bedroom streaming with fresh air and sunlight where they might someday make love. She kept it up as he settled on kneading her breast with one hand while the other gripped her hair, his moans and whines rising higher and higher as she waited for the perfect moment to suddenly… stop.

Bunny stilled at the very peak of one of her bounces, hovering her mouth just over his as she waited to see what her darling husband would do.

“Fuck,” he gasped as both of his hands found her hips and squeezed, trying to force her down on him again as her hair fell into his face. His leg kicked and twitched on the bed the same way it had before as he gasped in little short breaths. When it clicked that she really wasn't going to move again so soon he fisted her hair close to the scalp and held her close, his words coming in a frantic stream. “Fuck Bunny baby, you can't fucking do that to me. It's cruel. Cruel. You're fucking vicious, c'mon.”

Her tongue darted out to just graze the back of his teeth as he panted and she felt the tip of him move inside her as he twitched and gasped.

“Torture,” he choked out. “You do like to torture me. I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

“I love you,” she hummed, barely, barely beginning to move on him again.

His breathing stuttered in the moment before she was kissing him again, trying to say the same thing she'd just said over and over again with her hips and tongue as she poured more and more of herself into him. Eventually she felt him move under her in a way she hadn't felt to that point, a huff of air puffing out of his nose as he gripped her hair more tightly and tried to devour her tongue.

Was that a… sob?

She broke the kiss and tried to reach up to check his cheek for tears but then he was whispering “I'm sorry. I'm sorry Bunny I'm so sorry,” against her mouth and it felt like her heart had fallen into her stomach as she stopped short.

“What? Why?”

“I can't do this,” he said and she had approximately one and a half seconds to feel devastated by that before she was safely under him again, feeling him rut and grind against her exquisitely as he cradled her head into his neck and pressed kisses against her temple.

“I love you too,” he whispered. “Of course I love you. How could I not?”

Bunny dragged her nails down his back and he shuddered, moaning loudly against her hair and then saying “I love you I love you I love you” over and over again until she was sure she wouldn't ever be able to forget the sound of his voice again.

Eventually it all became too much and her cup spilled over suddenly, making her whine into the darkness as she tightened and pulsed around him. He slowed nearly to a halt himself, seconding her sentiment into the pillow as he came into her.

As her jaw started to chatter its way down from ecstasy, her whines sliding down to a more even pitch, her beloved’s voice also quieted against the pillow. It turned to little gasps and almost whimpers as he came down from where he'd just been, and he finally stilled inside of her, weighing heavily, exhaustedly into the bed as she cradled the back of his head.

Pitiful moans escaped them both as he moved down her body to gift the gentlest of kisses against her lips and it was like something inside of her clicked. Even though it was ending for now, it wasn't ending forever. No one was pretending anymore, if they ever had been.

Something like hope was riding high in his thoughts as he came down the rickety stairs and hit the landing at a trot. He'd woken up with one of those old songs in his head and he hummed it as he turned sharply around the bannister and into the foyer.

There had been nothing to harvest the day before. Not a thing. Barbara had suggested that they had a guardian anti-angel watching over them, making sure that all their crops would end up smashed by radstags or eaten by bugs or seemingly commandeered by God himself… but he'd seen a few promising tatos on the vine while he’d been fixing the fence before dinner and he was pretty sure the repairs were going to hold this time. His time that morning spent washing up in the bathroom and singing to himself was tinged with some definitely not desperate at all optimism. Today was the day. New life! Honest living! Here we go!

He stopped at the broken mirror they'd pieced together and hung back up on the wall of the dilapidated old world home to pick up his sunglasses and his hat as he sang, “We can't go on together, with suspicious minds…”

He hesitated with the glasses near his face when Barbara's usual falsetto answering call of suspicious minds didn't come.

“Barb?” he called.

There was no answer.

He moved towards the kitchen, the sunglasses still stalled in his hand. “Oh Barbie baby, where's my favorite duet partner hiding this morning, huh?”

Not in the kitchen. He leaned around the corner. Not in the living room either.

Something heavy settled on his nerves. The front door was just slightly ajar. It was broken when they'd moved in and he hadn't gotten around to replacing the latch yet. It mostly stayed closed though and it wasn't often that they encountered anyone as far out into the wastes as they were, so he hadn't worried about it. He was a light sleeper anyways so it didn't matter much.

He crossed the room in a few strides and shut it. When he looked back into his empty house and saw a line of books that had been knocked over on the shelf, an uneasiness walked down his spine.

If she was hiding or something, pulling some sort of prank, it wasn't funny. “Barb,” he said again, all business now.

No answer.

Not only no answer but no sound.

He moved into the kitchen, going to where they kept a little stack of paper in case she'd left a note.

Something caught his eye out the window.

Darkness greeted him when he opened his eyes, immediately feeling like he'd slept too long and not at all. He was exhausted. He was used to being exhausted. What he wasn't used to was being naked.

You're going to need to bolt and you won't be able to.

Exposed. Exposed. Exposed.

Where did you even leave your shoes?

The thump of boots dropping onto the floor echoed through his head.

Your clothes?

The jangling of his belt overtop frantic breaths. The shuffling of fabric as he pulled off her shirt and threw it, pressing kisses up her back.

Your heart?

He turned to where he remembered leaving her, when he'd finally rolled to the side and planned to rest his eyes for just a moment before getting up. He couldn't see anything in the complete pitch darkness of the apartment. He held his breath and listened for hers in the silent room. All he could hear was the sound of his own voice chanting I love you I love you I love you…

His heart was racing.

The old bed creaked as he rolled off of it and to his feet, crossing the room in just a few long strides. His foot landed on something small and hard and completely out of place and it sent a shock through him.

The terror in her eyes as she scrambled for breath.

The eerie quiet of the catacombs.

The swing of a precious, broken body from a tree.

He’d finally slapped the wall enough times to get the lights turned on and immediately found all the things that were out of place. His clothes and boots scattered around the foot of the unmade bed. The plastic cap from a stimpack on the floor where his fucking foot had just been. The doorstop next to the door, unused. A whole host of shit all over the coffee table. Medical supplies, papers, his glasses- fuck!

He looked frantically to the door again and-

A note on the dresser.

He breathed. Note.

There was a note.

He snatched it up, immediately recognizing Whisper's coded handwriting.

All he could see was the bend of a neck, the swing of a rope. There was no sound except that of his own voice:

I love you I love you I love you…