This is from Chapter Six of Winter's Grip. Since I'm editing (or trying), here's a little snippet :) - - - - - - -

This was what the world shrank to in weather like this—food, shelter, enough heat to keep your blood runny. A war story as old as mammals. She forced her jittering body into stillness, felt the pulse hammer in her throat and jaw as she turned back towards the diner's thoroughfare. Nick had moved to clear a path, taking bags from a couple who looked ready to cry and guiding them toward a booth, returning a dropped mitten to a toddler who'd already thrown it twice.

The hunter from before had left a slick of slush and the smell of gun oil in his wake. She tracked Nick's movements with the detached fascination of someone watching their own disaster unfold in real time—the gestures so casual, so human, it made her feel like her skin was peeling back.

Was this what it was like to be normal? To not second-guess the warmth of a stranger's hand? To just exist in a world where hands helped instead of hurt, where proximity didn't require a risk assessment, where touch was reflex instead of calculation.

She was still standing there, coffee carrier warping further, when Tisha appeared at her shoulder. “So what’s Superman’s story? What Midwest farm did they ship him in from?”

Her answering snort made Tisha’s eyebrows raise. “He’s a Chicago transplant.”

ayyyy ty @taffingtons for the tag. I've been deep in editing mode on BTGS, so for a change of pace here's a WIP that's been floating in my head and drafts for a bit that's post-war stuff! Tagging @hpysprkl, @amunras, @odd-ball-out, @htchnr, @deathclaw-for-cutie and whoever else wants to play no pressure! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Desdemona was dead.

George wasn’t sure who else. She’d had eyes on Dez when the first shockwave hit the crypt—saw the ceiling buckle, heard the air split open—and then nothing. Of course, they’d had contingency plans, exit routes, fallback points. But she’d never expected to be taken alive.

Maybe that was just how she made peace with it. Not guilt over Maxson—she’d never feel an ounce of that—but for being grateful Deacon wasn’t there. For all she knew, he was still alive somewhere, licking his wounds back at Warwick.

The thought barely formed before the shock of icy water hit her.

Her whole body seized. Cold ripped through her ribs like shrapnel, yanking her out of whatever half-dream she’d been in. For a few seconds, there was only breath—ragged, wet, uneven—and the blur of a buzz-cut fuck face standing in front of her.

It took her a moment to recognize the smell—oil, rust, exhaust. The motor pool. Cambridge PD. She’d walked these same concrete floors a hundred times, back when she was the one sitting behind the glass watching someone else sweat under the lights.

There was a kind of poetry in it, she supposed. Like all things in this timeline, the universe was keen to remind her how much she felt like a dog biting its own ass for eternity.

“Rise and shine, traitor,” the initiate sneered. His voice was too young to carry authority, but it had that Brotherhood cadence—the sermon-turned-order. “Hope you got your beauty sleep. Knight Rhys has big plans for you today.”

She blinked through the runoff and coughed, tasting iron. Her hands were bound above her head, skin split where the ties bit through. She didn’t bother answering.

He clicked his tongue, disappointed. “No snappy comeback? Guess the famous mouth finally ran outta script.”

He waited—a full minute, maybe more—before swinging the metal bucket again. This time, it slammed into her knees.

The pain came distant and late, like a bad radio signal. She bit the inside of her cheek, swallowed blood, and kept her eyes on him until he looked away.


“Enough.”

The word came from the doorway—flat, quiet, but with enough authority to matter to this basic jar head. The initiate froze, posture snapping straight.

Rhys stepped forward, helmet under one arm, armor spattered with dust and soot. “Out,” he said.

The kid hesitated.

“Now.”

The initiate bolted, leaving the room thick with the sound of dripping water and the hum of the overhead bulb.

Rhys circled once, slow, eyes flicking over the restraints, the bruises, the bucket. He set his helmet down on the diagnostic cart with more care than she thought possible of him.

“You were with the Railroad when we breached the catacombs,” he said. “Maxson sends an order to pull out of the Commonwealth—no debrief, no follow-up, no goddamn explanation.”

He took a step closer, voice tightening. “Then we find you—still breathing, still smug—and he’s on the Prydwen talking about a strategic withdrawal like nothing’s happened.”

He leaned down just enough for her to smell the sweat and gun oil. “So tell me, Karras. What the hell did you do to him?” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was happening again.

No—it had happened again.

When he slipped through Faneuil without so much as a peep from the resident greens, Deacon looked up and saw the sky. Yellow smoke coiled from the northwest—high enough to mark the steeple.

Yellow wasn’t mellow.

In their half-baked, mismatched mythology, it meant HQ had been breached.

Protocol said run. Fall back to the next safe house, regroup, radio silence until someone confirmed the casualty list.

Instead, he moved toward the smoke.

He cut west, grateful for the goggles he’d pilfered from one of the lockers back at Warwick; the spring wind pushed grit kicked up from the Vertibird rotors and the cloud was thick. The closer he got, the more the city went quiet in that wrong way: no raiders or radios, just glass underfoot and that chemical tang excess energy rounds and cordite left behind. Wasted fat in a griddle pan. Not even the ferals poked their heads out.

Deacon didn’t take the square. He slid along the block that sat southeast of the steeple, skirting the sightlines he’d mapped before it even mattered like this. From there the Church’s broken spire loomed off his left shoulder, smoke dragging a jaundiced veil across the sky.

The building he wanted had already done half the work of hiding itself. A rowhouse folded in on its ribs, rebar poking through brick like busted stitches—and recessed in the wreckage, that stupid bright blue door. Paint blistered, handle bent, chain intact. Intact? He crouched, checked the jamb for wire, for a pressure cap, for anything that said the Brotherhood had been smarter today than they usually were. Nothing but dust and memories. The taste of old fear, caught under his tongue.

Because it was old, wasn’t it? The constant fear. It never got stale. Never got easier. Just traded names, flavors, nightmares, until it was the only thing left running in his bloodstream.

But it was different now, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

Before, there was just the mission. Now it was something else. Someone else, maybe—if there was a difference. George’s voice in the back of his head, slicing through the static: Pull back. Recon. Don’t be cute. He could already hear her tearing him a new one about “smart” versus “reckless,” except joke’s on her—he hadn’t been either for a couple years now. Not since he’d watched her rise from the bowels of Vault 111 like some old-world myth, eyes like a rad-storm warning and a mouth that could build or break a nation depending on which way she turned it.

Fixer, his brain supplied—too little, too late.

No. Lock it down. Names are for after. If there is an after.

The word tasted wrong behind his teeth. Compromised wasn’t a stamp on a file; it was this—her name elbowing its way into his head where duty was supposed to live. He boxed it. Or tried.