Dear @bagheera-is-back,
this year has been quiet different from what everybody had in mind. But we all found a way to get through it. I hope you got through it well and that you took the last few weeks in stride. I also hope your family is fine as well and you had good and merry holidays.
I am your gift giver for the Fallout Secret Santa and wrote you two little stories to hopefully make you smile.
I wish you a very happy 2021
MacCready:
She loves to sing. Sometimes to external music, sometimes to music in her head. It doesn’t matter because she can’t sing in tune for the life of her. The only partial saving grace was maturity, which helped lower her voice so at least it was decently pleasant off-tune and not an ear drum rupturing kid screech.
The day her son was born was probably one of the happiest days of her life. She sang to him in the womb and she would continue to sing to him, till he gets old enough to roll his eyes and groan at her. Thinking about it, even that wouldn’t stop her.
And then – the bombs dropped. Her family got stored away in freezing pots and on top of all that she had to watch her husband get killed and her son getting taken away. The next she remembers is waking up in freezing cold and seeing all her neighbor’s dead – frozen in time.
That’s the day she stops singing.
She finds Codsworth and is more than happy to have a familiar face around. Preston becomes her right-hand man, and the Minuteman are getting stronger and stronger with every passing day.
After weeks of repairing settlements and fortifying them up she finally has time to think about how she’s going to find Virgil. She can’t ask the brotherhood, plainly put because they’re pricks. She would ask Mick, but if she’s being honest, she’s a little worried about his circuits and she doesn’t want to risk anything with one of her closest friends. She can’t take Hancock because he was already too long gone from Goodneighbor. As much as she loves Curie, she probably isn’t ready for the whole Wasteland yet. Her thoughts drift from one friend to another till they finally stop at the one person she already worked with but isn’t sure if he even counts as a friend. Robert Macready. The man who doesn’t share but is a hell of a good shot. It could work. It has to work.
Goodneighbor is the exact same as it always is when she’s visiting. He’s sitting in the same chair he already sat in as they met for the first time. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.” Of course, he would know it was her as soon as she entered. “Hey Mac”. Finally, he turns around to look at her. “What brings you into this most welcoming town this time around? Hancock got another job for you?” “Actually, I’m here to ask you something and nothing is obligating you to say yes” she looks everywhere but at him. He raises his eyebrow “Well traveling with you is fun, as long as you’re not sending me to farm, again I should be able to survive it.” A smile grows on her face “No, no farming this time. But we need to go into the glowing sea”. He nearly chokes “The *cough* the glowing sea? WHY?”. Sighing she explains everything she found out about the institute, the runaway doctor, her son, and the way to get inside the institute. He listens, but she can clearly see he can’t follow everything. She pulls out a map and shows him the exact way she wants to follow. “I’ll follow you. I will do everything in my power to help you get the information you need. But I have a request to make,” he looks up to see her already staring at him and nodding “we’ll be passing right by a building called MedTek. I want to search it for something important that I need.” She’s nodding again. What will he need from the building? Since he already turned around and grabbed his rifle, she’s guessing this conversation is over and she’ll have to wait for another moment to question him.
Two days later they are on the road together. Some hours get buy without either of them uttering a word while other times they jump from topic to topic and can’t seem to stop talking. She still doesn’t know what Mac needs from MedTek but they’re nearly there, so she’ll find out.
They arrive and the building looms abandoned but not completely destroyed. What they didn’t expect was the swarm of feral ghouls that awaited them after nearly every door. Finally, they arrived inside the last room. Macready has been mumbling something that sounds like please this whole time. She closes the door just incase some more ghouls decided to wake up and visit them. “Macready please. What are we looking for?” He looks over to her. “I’m sorry I guess I haven’t been very fair to you. I’m looking for a cure. A cure to a fairly unknown disease. But - - - but my son is sick. And I don’t know how long he still has. MedTek is known for the fact that they have experimented with diseases and they must have found a lot of cures.” He stares at her with a slight panic in his eyes. She nods and begins searching. They will have a of other time to talk, right now calming him down by showing him she will be at his side is more important.
They find the cure. They check if the cure is actually for the disease that sounds closest to what Duncan has and they get the hell out of that building. Macready seems to not be able to actually grasps what’s happening. “What if we take a retour to Goodneighbor, send the cure off, restock, sleep and then make our way into the hell that is the glowing sea?”. He smiles and nods, that’s enough confirmation she needs.
There’s a smile on her face. She helped his son already, her son is gonna be saved soon.
On their way back to Goodneighbor, Macready cleans his throat and looks at her. “You should really sing more.” Shocked she stares at him. “You were humming and quietly singing to yourself nearly this whole time back.” She chuckles “I’m sorry, I guess this adventure reminds me of something” she just smiles at his confused face and keeps on walking.
Maybe she’ll find her voice again.
Hancock:
He’s fairly sure he has never seen anything more beautiful in his life. The last few weeks went by in a haze, partially because he was busy running Goodneighbor and saving the world with the general of the minutemen herself. Maybe it also was a side effect of the jet he consumed whenever a mission went exceptionally well.
After the biggest rush was over, he took up the invitation of staying in Sanctuary for a few days to lay low. He knew damn well he could take a break.
It wasn’t unusual to hear sounds in the night, turrets were humming, animals making sounds, Codsworth humming through town and the occasional reparations done by Sturges or whoever is still up and can’t get some shut eye. It also wasn’t unusual that he was the one up all night because the left-over drugs were keeping his body running or just his mind doesn’t want to shut up. What was unusual though was waking up to see the whole settlement lit up by hundreds probably thousands of small little lights. He guessed it was around five or six in the morning because the sun wasn’t up yet, and he also seemed to be the only one walking around just yet.
Sitting down on one of the watch towers as he liked to call them gives him a beautiful view of the whole settlement. He has never seen something more beautiful. “I didn’t expect you to be awake already”, to his right the general herself takes place. “More like, I’m still awake and decided to take a morning stroll.” He winks at her. A smile spreads on her face. “Morning stroll, of course honey.” She bumps her shoulder into his and then lays her head on his shoulder. “Guess how many lamps that are?” “Probably around 100” he says curiously and tries to count the lamps he can see. On his shoulder it feels like she’s nodding before she says, “Exactly 439, if you count the ones at the front gate too.” He nods impressed and takes another drag of his cigarette. “They’re beautiful, but I gotta ask: What did you put them up for?” She breathily laughs “It’s Christmas.” He looks at her curiously. He heard the word before, and Deacon had talked about it a few times, but he does not really have a clue what Christmas is supposed to be. She sees his curious stare “Christmas was always my favorite holiday as a child. The whole family was coming together, there was way too much food to eat, your grandparents would tell stories of their childhood and your parents would force you to learn a poem to perform in front of your family.” He chuckles “Sounds like a fun time.” She nods eagerly “Hell yes, as a child getting presents from everybody in your family was the best thing ever, but as you grow older you start to appreciate other things within Christmas time. How the lights give you warmth, the smell of your home calms you down no matter how stressful your day was and how many memories old songs could unlock.” – she sighs and cuddles closer to him – “But sadly that traditions don’t seem to have survived 200 years in the apocalypse. So, I hung up lights. Sadly, there seem to be no Christmas songs that survived. I asked Travis and Magnolia and no chance. Nothing there.” He puffs the smoke along to her telling her story and enjoys her presence. “We can write our own Christmas songs. Make them up so they fit into our time.” He smiles as she jumps up excited. “Hell yes, I’m gonna ask Piper for inspiration.” she speaks in his direction before she is already gone.
Leaning back, he relaxes, takes the last drag of his cigarette and smiles. Looking over the settlement and the fading back of the general a thought crosses his mind, maybe he has seen something this beautiful in his life already.
