Among Other things...

Careful with the strength of his suit, Paladin Danse swiped a hand through the dust on the chest plate, revealing the winged sword emblem on its front. Delaney wore the same Brotherhood-issue combat armor over her military fatigues. Hers was in notably better condition. 

“Knight Astlin,” he said. “She was in my company, years ago. Best marksman I ever saw.”

“She was a friend?”

“Friend” was a difficult word to assign to bones, much less to any Brotherhood soldier. That he had been given the chance to hear Astlin’s voice again was astonishing, certainly, but the sight before him was not unexpected. It was an unspoken assumption that most knights would meet their end in battle, and all of Artemis had been assumed to have met that end nearly four years ago. 

Tara Astlin had been his sister. They had fought together, bled together, and placed their lives in each other’s hands. But to call her his friend would have been foolish. It suggested a dangerous level of attachment. Of reckless hope—the kind that sank like a cold stone in his stomach as he stared at the body beneath his hand. 

“She was a good soldier,” he said, which was the truth, though a dishonest one. He withdrew from his crouch to cast his gaze about the office. He did not look too closely at the feral corpses, new and old, that littered the room, nor did he look too closely at the way Delaney studied him. “We shouldn’t linger. Note the coordinates of the remains for our report to Scabbard. Scribes will be dispatched to retrieve them for shipment back to the Citadel.”

Delaney cocked her head. “I didn’t think anyone retrieved bodies anymore.”

The spike of anger was bitter and unexpected. He heard the cold in his voice before he could stop it. “We are not raiders—cutthroats and cowards who leave their men lying in the street. The Brotherhood honors its dead. We always—always make an attempt to bring our siblings home.”

She raised her hands. “I was trying to say it’s refreshing to see—if you’d let me get there. Sheesh.”

“You’re new,” he said, a reminder to himself more than her. “Consider this a lesson in the Codex. The last entry in a soldier’s Scroll may very well be their most important, as the manner in which they die holds as much meaning as the manner in which they live. We report their final deeds so that they may ascend into history.”

“So even though Artemis probably didn’t survive…”

“We can still bring them home. If not their bodies, at least their stories.” His gaze fell on the pile of older corpses by the door. Over a dozen decayed ferals at the entrance alone. “Knight Astlin died with honor. She will be remembered by those that come long after.”

These were the words he said aloud. He did not give voice to the anger, still simmering beneath the surface, at how her squad had left her here, barricaded in the room alone. He did not imagine how it must have felt to die with her back against the wall, no one around to hear her scream as the monsters tore out her throat. He did not give voice to these thoughts, to Paladin Brandis’s imagined failings, because to do so would make him a hypocrite. After all, Danse had gotten two-thirds of his own squad killed. He couldn’t rightfully pretend that he would have done any better. 

“Have you noted the coordinates?” he asked when the silence stretched. 

Delaney held up her Pip-Boy. “Already done. The satellite array isn’t too far. We could check out the next location before—”

A snarl shredded the air between them. One of the corpses twitched to life by her feet. Delaney threw herself out of the way, crashing into a broken display case as the not-so-dead feral lunged for her legs. He shot three lasers into the mutant’s spine. He shot a forth into the back of its head for good measure. It slumped on its stomach with a rattling sigh, unmoving—even after he gave it a solid kick to the ribs to test.

He prodded at the other ferals with the boot of his power armor, silently cursing himself. They had done a thorough sweep of every room in the Recruitment Office except this one. Astlin’s body had derailed him.

It was a poor excuse. 

None of the other corpses came to life, which was almost a disappointment. He had the inexplicable urge to throw one out the window. He turned to his knight. “Area’s clear. Are you—”

Delaney was sprawled on the ground, shattered glass and splintered wood scattered around her. Her hand was pressed to her thigh, her teeth gritted as blood trickled from a gap in her armor. “Shit,” she hissed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He crouched beside her. The string of curses ran through his head with renewed vigor. She was his charge. He should have double checked the room. Now look what had happened. “Did it bite you?” he asked, serious. The chance of infection from a mutant bite was dangerously high. 

She shook her head, to his unexpectedly strong relief. “No,” she said through her teeth. “It was the damn display case.”

“Let me see, soldier.”

Blood soaked her fatigues when she removed her hand’s pressure. The wound was deep and jagged, with bits of glass embedded inside. Whatever broken edge she had caught, it had ripped her thigh right open. Not a simple fix. 

“We’re not going to the satellite array,” he decided. 

Delaney fully bared her teeth in a snarl, not unlike Dogmeat when he snapped at a raider’s heels. It wasn’t a look of pain. She was pissed.

They cleaned and dressed the wound as best they could in the wreckage of the office, but despite the aid of pressure and a Stimpak, blood continued to soak through the bandages over fifteen minutes later. She needed stitches, but this wasn’t the place for it.

Which is how they soon found themselves on the road not east to the satellite array but south to the nearest settlement. It was, uh…a painstaking process.

“This pace is inefficient,” he said for far from the first time. 

She glared up at him, also for far from the first time. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

He liked to think he was mindful of his stride in his power armor when there were members in his squad without. He was not one of those paladins who exhausted their men by forcing them to sprint to keep up. At this pace, however, he practically had to shuffle his feet as Delaney limped alongside him. It would take an hour to walk a single mile, and by then it would be dark. There were too many nocturnal creatures that would love to happen upon slow, injured prey. 

“We would move faster if I carried you.”

“You’d have to put your rifle away,” she said, breathless from exertion. “We’d be vulnerable.”

“You still have two hands.”

“Two guns are better than one.”

“You’re dripping blood down your leg.”

“I can walk.”

His patience was slipping. “We have very different definitions of walking.”

“We’re not far from County Crossing,” she snapped. “Just leave me alone.”

“This pace is inefficient,” he repeated. She ignored him. 

If she were any other knight, he would have ordered her to listen. Hell, if she were any other knight, he would have written her up hours ago—after a harsh reprimanding. Instead, he bit his tongue, because Nora Delaney was not any other knight. She was not truly a soldier, though she had the honor of one. Most of the time. 

And it was because she was not a soldier that he stowed his rifle in his scabbard, thrust his arms under her knees and back, and hefted her into the air without a word of warning. To no surprise, this act did not diffuse the situation, but he would not deny the satisfaction that accompanied it. 

She thrashed, spitting like a feral cat. “I hate you. I hate you so fucking much.”

Coolly, he said, “You can direct your ire towards any hostiles that cross our path.”

“This is so undignified.”

“On that we agree.”

She would not have spoken like this to him months ago, when they had first met. She had been polite and obedient in the beginning. Since then, she had morphed into the most infuriating woman he had ever met.

He had known her true goal for joining the Brotherhood from the moment he had sponsored her. Everyone did, but it was easier to pretend the combatant who had recovered an entire super mutant stronghold’s worth of nukes was on their side. When she went off on her own for days or weeks without reporting in, Elder Maxon pretended she did so with his permission. When she talked back or disobeyed his orders on a mission, Danse pretended their inevitable success made up for it. Exceptions were made for Nora Delaney, the knight who wasn’t a knight. It simultaneously vexed and baffled him. 

His vexation and her disobedience had only become stronger with each passing month. She snapped and snarled like a wounded animal, hackles raised in battle and out. The Brotherhood had yet to find what she searched for, and somehow it had become his problem. Somehow, he had to pretend she wouldn’t leave him behind as soon as she did find it.

They made it to County Crossing before dark. The settlement was barely more than a mutfruit patch and a shack, but it had clean running water, a rarity in the Commonwealth. The farmers allowed them to set up their tent in the roofless ruins of an old house, with access to any supplies they needed. 

Anything we can do for General Delaney, they had said. Not for the Brotherhood—they pointedly ignored Danse. For Delaney. 

Like he had thought: exceptions.

If he had to count his blessings—and not strangle the source of his perpetual headache—Delaney was calmer with her feet up. She had stayed quiet as they had flushed the last of the dirt and glass out of the wound. Now, as she lay on a camp mattress within the tent, she flashed him a small smile. He wondered if she’d hit her head on the display case too. 

“This might be the longest I’ve seen you without your power armor,” she said. “I almost forgot there was a man in there.”

He could say the same of her—and then some. She had stripped out of more than just her combat armor for the occasion—her Pip-Boy, fatigues, and most of her clothes had been cast aside, leaving her in a tank top and underwear. He was accustomed to seeing his team in various states of undress. They normally didn’t smile at him while half-naked in bed, though. 

Her legs were quite long.

“We do not have any local anesthetics,” he said, before he could process the thought. The farmers’ medical supplies were sparse. Apparently, the caravan doctor they stocked up from was due to pass by in two days, which didn’t help them now. 

Her lips quirked. “Whiskey and a broomstick in the mouth?” 

“We do not have those either.”

“More fun for me.” The smile dropped. Almost off-handedly, she asked, “I take it you’ve done this before?”

“Many times. You can trust I know what I’m doing.”

It had taken watching Haylen operate on herself only once for him to realize that having a single medic on the squad was a disadvantage they needed to mitigate in any way possible. Severe trauma was still beyond his abilities to treat, but a minor laceration on the leg was easy enough to suture without assistance. 

“I do trust you.”

Trust was a given among his men, so he did not know why it surprised him to hear her say it aloud. She lacked discipline; she did not desire to shoot him in the back—or vice versa. That they would keep each other alive when they were together was one of the few constants in their relationship. Still, it had been an unspoken constant, up until this point. 

She looked up at him, eyes too wide, jaw set too tight. It was a vulnerable position—laid out beneath his looming form. She was not a small woman, relatively. Tall, with long limbs toned by muscle, she’d once knocked Rhys flat on his back in a sparring match. But Danse was well-aware that, compared to him, most things were small. A towering height and broad frame were an advantage in combat with enemies that could swing a chunk of concrete at his head. Here in this tent, for perhaps the first time, he would have shrunk himself if he could, just so she wouldn’t look at him like that. 

“This should only take a few minutes,” he said, which was the best he could do instead. 

“Let’s just get it over with.”

She closed her eyes as he brought the needle to her skin. He kept his gaze on his task. Not on her face. If he looked at her face, no matter what expression she bore, it would distract him.

An illogical thought. He’d sewn knights back together before without issue. There was no reason she should have been any different. 

He didn’t look at her face regardless. Exceptions were made for Nora Delaney.

In and out the needle wove, tugging at her skin with each stitch. She didn’t make a noise, aside from her uneven breaths. Over half a year together and he had never heard her cry while awake. She cried out in her sleep often, but they did not speak of such instances. 

The minutes ticked by. He did not have Haylen’s deft fingers; she would have finished the procedure in half the time. His less practiced hands were clumsy by comparison, forcing him to take it slow. The cold lump of guilt gained weight behind his navel. 

“Danse,” Delaney said, alarmingly unsteady. “Talk to me.”

He did not have Haylen’s bedside manner either. If there was a protocol for calming a person who would sooner bite his hand off than accept it, she had yet to teach him. “What would you like me to say?”

“Anything. Tell me a story.”

“Uh, I need you to narrow down the topic.”

A rumble rose in her throat. A growl or a groan, he couldn’t tell. “Scars,” she said, eventually. “Where did you get your scars?”

“I need you to narrow that down too.”

“How about the one across your jaw?”

It took an effort to keep his hands moving. Of all the ones she could have chosen…

He felt the bizarre urge to lie. To say he didn’t remember. Or that it had been from some great battle. She would surely laugh at him otherwise, and the last thing she needed was yet another reason to disrespect him. 

All the foolish thoughts of a battle-green initiate with something to prove. He chanced a glance at her face. She had laid the back of her hand over her eyes, shielding herself from the world.

“Knight Astlin,” his mouth said, before his brain could give full approval. “Rhys bet her fifty caps she couldn’t hit a Nuka-Cola bottle from a hundred yards away, blindfolded.”

“She shot you?”

“No, she shot the bottle. Which exploded as I was walking by.”

She exhaled sharply through her nose. He double checked that he hadn’t poked the needle too deep. “I bet that earned her quite the earful, huh?”

“In a sense. I let her off with a warning. It was an impressive shot.”

She exhaled sharply again. The vague impression of a laugh. “Look at you, rulebreaker,” she said as he had feared she would. But then she added, “I would’ve liked to have met her,” and that statement was worse—because he agreed with it. 

“Almost done,” he said, for lack of an alternative. “Can you withstand the pain for another minute?”

“If you keep talking.”

He did not want to keep talking. He cast about for an escape, and he found it by his hand. “Where did you get this scar? On your shin.”

Her lips curled. With her eyes covered, it was nearly unrecognizable as a grin. “My husband tried to give me a piggyback ride. He tripped, sent us both flying. I scraped my shins on the pavement.”

Ah. Husband. Right. He had forgotten about the husband. She never talked about her old life. Nor did he ever ask. 

“You were fortunate.”

“I was fortunate,” she murmured. The same word, yet inexplicably different from what he had meant.  

He finished the last stitch. She uncovered her face, her brown eyes amber in the lamp light. Despite the ashen tinge to her cheeks, she maintained her grin as he cleaned up their makeshift medbay. 

“It’s funny,” she said. “It’s the stupid scars I remember the most. The ones that tell stories. They’re starting to get covered up now. This one on my elbow,”—she traced her fingers along a discolored patch of skin, darker than the rest of her olive complexion—“there used to be a scar here from when I fell playing tug-of-war at a potluck. There’s a different one on top of it now. I don’t even know where it came from.” 

She let the arm fall onto the mattress. Then she drew her fingers down her body. “When I left the vault, I kept track of them at first. The first time I got shot.” Her fingers circled an indentation on her thigh, above the fresh sutures. “The first time I caught shrapnel from a grenade.” Those fingers glided up her hip, trailing over stretch marks as she lifted her shirt above the dark crescents between her ribs. “After a while they lost meaning. They just show up. Enough time and all the old ones will be gone. I’ll be a completely different person with completely different skin.” 

She let her hand fall to the mattress on her other side. He didn’t know at what point her grin had faded. Her shirt was still rolled up. 

“Maybe it’s already too late,” she whispered. “The person who I was before all this, I don’t see her anymore when I look in the mirror. I think she might have died with the bombs, and I don’t know how to mourn her.”

It took him a moment to recognize this statement as metaphorical and not an admission to being a synth. It would have been easier if she had actually admitted to being a synth. Then he could have followed protocol. There was no protocol here. 

She must have been in an extreme amount of pain to say these things to him. No bared teeth. No snaps or snarls. Just an ashen-faced woman too exhausted to pretend to be his vexation. They did not speak like this, paladin and knight. They had deviated from the roles they had carved for themselves. But they had both taken their armor off hours ago. 

“I don’t remember my parents’ faces,” he said, and she went still. “Or most of my childhood. The boy who might have remembered died to become an orphan who cut his fingers on scrap metal. And that orphan died to become a soldier with scars, gained with every battle, every loss. I am not the same person I was when I joined the Brotherhood, nor am I the same person I was when my squad left for the Commonwealth. None of my men are.”

Haylen’s smiles were rarer. Rhys was quicker to throw a punch. And Danse? Four graves greeted him on every patrol of the police station’s perimeter, a constant reminder of the cost of a leader’s failure—and a permanent lesson learned. 

“I cannot speak to your experiences. Only my own. I could count my scars,”—sometimes he did—“but it wouldn’t do much good. It certainly wouldn’t change them. I stand by the choices I have made, the orders I have given. It has not occurred to me to mourn the orphan with cuts on his fingers because that orphan would not have survived to today.”

She shielded her eyes beneath her hand again, though he had long since stowed the needle away. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered, voice so strained the cracks were tangible. 

His wrists tightened, the painful ache of an unfamiliar kind of panic. That he had never heard her cry was another constant in their relationship. By definition, it was never supposed to change. 

Without thinking, he brushed his thumb against the indentation on her thigh, above the fresh sutures. “The goal you seek. Could the person you were before have achieved it?”

She took a shuddering breath. “No.”

“Then bury her. Honor her, but stand by who you have become.”

Her lips pressed into a wobbly line. He redirected his gaze to the medkit, shutting each latch with a sharp snap, too loud in the growing space between them. 

She swallowed audibly. “You said the Brotherhood honors its dead.”

“We do.”

“When I die—really die, will you bury my body in Sanctuary, if you can? If not my body, at least my heart.” Without uncovering her eyes, she tugged the chain around her neck out from under her shirt. Two gold rings swung from her hand, a pendulum over her chest, glittering in the lamp light. “It’s the closest I’ll be able to get…to him.”

An absurd request to come from her. He doubted Delaney knew how to die. She would likely claw her way out of any grave before the dirt had settled. 

Then he saw Astlin. Her back to the wall as enemies poured in. The ferocity with which she fought, taking down attacker after attacker, the bodies piling up in the dozens. Sheer stubborn willpower kept her on her feet—until sheer stubborn willpower failed to replace allies and ammo. In the end, she fell alone, with no one but monsters to hear her scream. 

Except it wasn’t Astlin in the vision. It was the knight breathing tremulously before him, lost in time. 

“You have my word,” he said. But you will never need it. Not while she was with him. He stood by his choices, including those made in a heartbeat. She would not be his fifth mistake; he would make sure of it. 

She exhaled a gentle sigh. When her hand finally fell away from her face, her eyes were closed. If the pain had dulled enough to allow her to slip towards sleep, that was a good sign. 

He moved to stand up. “You should get some rest. I will take the first watch.”

“Wait.”

Fingers closed around his wrist. He froze. She gaped at him, seemingly as startled by the act as he was. Her mouth opened, then closed. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears as clearly as he did in combat. One beat…two…three…four… She was still holding his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “For snapping at you earlier. It was unfair.”

Whatever she had originally intended to say, that hadn’t been it. He couldn’t begin to fathom what thought had hooked on her tongue, but the warmer his skin grew beneath her hand, the less he wanted to wait to hear it. 

“I think you may have injured more than just your leg,” he said on impulse. 

She blinked at him. Then her touch vanished as sank onto the mattress, clutching her chest in laughter. It was an explosive sound, deep and melodic and bursting with warmth. He couldn’t recall if he had ever heard her genuinely laugh before. Surely he would have remembered the odd sensation it left in his stomach. 

“Get some rest,” he repeated, once she had calmed down enough to wipe the tears from her eyes. 

“Danse?” she said softly, halting his second attempt to flee. He stared pointedly at the front flap of the tent. The air inside had become stifling. “Thank you.”

He gave a noncommittal grunt. As best as he could to not give the impression of retreat, he left the tent, cutting directly through the cool night breeze to his waiting power armor. He slammed the fusion core into its slot and climbed inside with the practiced movements of someone who wore the heavy metal like a second skin. As the suit clunked into place around him, a confused warning about his elevated heart rate popped up on his HUD. He dismissed it. 

Thoughts of their mission slowly recentered him. Despite their detour, today had resulted in the successful completion of multiple objectives. They had located remnants of the lost patrol, cleared a building of a feral infestation, and gained intel on a new location to investigate. Once Delaney was well enough to walk, they could get back on track to their inevitable victory, same as always. 

Except tonight wasn’t the same as always. It wasn’t even the same as that morning, when they had set out together. Because, for once, Nora Delaney was neither his vexation nor his bafflement.