3 for Cherry and Deacon
“It’s always been you.”
A month after Deacon left, Cherry stops calling herself the Red Queen. What’s a queen without a king? she asks, and Desdemona says, Stronger. But she doesn’t feel any stronger—not without her partner in more than just crime.
Six months after Deacon left, Cherry hugs Tinker Tom and apologizes over and over again while he scolds her about how much danger she’ll be in if she retires. When, Tommy, not if, she says. When the door closes behind her, he looks to Desdemona with tears in his eyes, and she stares at the floor. They’re both thinking it, though neither one says it: What do we do now?
A year after Deacon left, Cherry slips her red ribbon out of her hair and wraps it around her palm. She stares at it for a time, remembering when she found it, tied in a knot around the hilt of a blade stamped with a communist star.
Red Queen. Cherry’s codename wasn’t in reference to her love of the color. She preferred blue, in truth, but red was symbolic. Passion, power, wrath—all represented by red. And more: China and cherries and blood. Her blood. Her husband’s. Her son’s. The blood that flowed through each and every synth.
And that little boy who called her mom and begged her not to leave him. The little boy who said “I love you” as the glass dome of a memory lounger slid over his tiny body. He opened his eyes an hour later with no idea who she was. Better that way, Cherry said. Better he know that his new parents loved him instead of thinking she didn’t.
Deacon was the one who suggested it, after two days straight of trying to coax Cherry from her room and stop crying. A child she never made, a child she didn’t love, “given” to her by a grown man who spat at her on his deathbed. Why would he think they could ever be a normal family? Why would she think she deserved one, after killing him in a rage when he cursed her and her cause?
So Cherry trusted Deacon when he introduced her to that couple. Tourists, he said, ones who were always kind and warm and loving. They wanted children, but never had any. They’d be perfect, he said, taking the child’s hand in one of his and Cherry’s in the other. She kept trusting him, even as she cried tears she didn’t think she’d have when the boy sat in the memory lounger. And she trusted him until he came home with eyes red and swollen, never meeting hers, mumbling out the news that Mercer safehouse was attacked.
The University Point Deathclaws were back with a vengeance, and they were after the Railroad. None of the new members even knew who Deacon was, but they knew Cherry. Oh, did they know her. Kill the Red Queen was painted in blood on a wall in Mercer safehouse next to three dead bodies—two tourists and a child.
Deacon left the same day. He left his clothes, his disguises, his books, and walked away from their lighthouse. Away from the Railroad.
Away from Cherry.
So as she sits on the docks, a year to the day, watching the sun sink below the waves, she holds out her hand and lets her red ribbon go. The wind carries it out of her hand and into the water, and she follows it with her eyes until it becomes just another dark blot in the water.
She hears footsteps behind her and turns her head to look. She doesn’t recognize the man as one of her current charges, with his messy ginger hair and squarish glasses. He looks tense, hands fidgeting about before he slips them into the pockets of his jeans, and he smiles nervously as she stands up to face him.
“Hi,” she says warmly. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.”
“I’m new, I guess,” he says, voice low with a hint of a natural Bostonian accent. “What’s, uh… what’s this place?”
“My place. Say, have you come across a rice cooker out there?”
He snorts, then clears his throat as if he’s trying not to laugh. “Uh… yeah, mine’s in the shop.”
Cherry smiles. “I know, the new sign’s ridiculous. At least they kept the countersign, right? Welcome to Deacon safehouse.”
The man looks up at the lighthouse. “Beacon safehouse?”
Cherry shakes her head. “Deacon. Synth or agent?”
Not skipping a beat, he replies, “Synth.”
“How long do you plan on staying?”
He shrugs. “I guess I didn’t plan that far ahead.”
“Fair enough. As long as you give me a warning before you run away this time.” A smirk tugs at her lips as she adds, “Right, Deacon?”
He grins sheepishly and shrugs. “Yeah, you got me. There’s no fooling you, huh?”
She punches him in the nose and howls something in Chinese. It sure doesn’t sound like a compliment.
As she takes several deep breaths and screws her eyes shut, he rubs his face and mutters, “I deserve that.”
“Yes, you do!” She sighs, long and shaky, as she wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Goddammit, Deacon, I… I…”
“I’m sorry, Xiao.” He meets her eyes and his forehead creases with concern. “I’m really sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything for several moments. She looks at his face—not the one she remembers, but one she still somehow recognizes—and then his hair, soft and thick and sticking up in places, and then his glasses, so new, so clear.
But then again, of course she recognizes him. She’d know the person she loved from miles away and years apart.
He knows she’s taking his changes in, so he swallows and acknowledges them. “I, uh… I went to California for a little bit. I got my first face change out there, and the guy who did it took pictures of his clients before they went under the knife in case they wanted something back, so… I asked for my face back.”
Her eyes widen and shimmer with more tears, which she furiously tries to blink away. “You… this is you? Your real face?”
He almost laughs at the absurdity of that question. The absurdity of the fact that she has to ask it is even worse to think of. “Yeah. The old me. Or at least, as close as he could get it. Age, y’know. Not all of us can still look twenty-five like you do.”
With a shaky hand, she touches his cheek gently. Her hand roams across his skin, from his neck to his nose to his jaw. “It’s you,” she breathes. “It’s always been you.”
He takes hold of her wrist. “Xiao—”
“No, Deacon, it’s always been you. Don’t you see?”
His brows knit together. “I don’t—”
“I knew you would come back. I waited for you all this time, because I knew you would come back to me.”
Now his eyes start itching, burning like they do before the waterworks start, so he sucks in a breath and reminds himself how manly and unemotional he’s supposed to be. It lasts about six seconds. “I love you.” He blurts it out so suddenly he has to take a moment to understand that he actually said it aloud.
“I love you too,” she whispers. “I love you so much.”
His breath shudders and he clenches his fists at his sides, trying to stay rigid and taut so he doesn’t crumple at her feet and cry or fall into her arms and apologize. So he shivers, emotion and chilly wind and too many tears all taking their toll, while staring at this woman who’s really waited for him for a year even after he gave her the worst news of her life and then ran from it.
She sniffles, then sobs, then claps a hand over her mouth as if trying to keep the rest of her voice inside. She reaches out with her other hand and touches him again, this time cradling the base of his skull and stroking his hair.
He wraps his arms around her shoulders, pulling her in, and their foreheads touch as they both just stand there and cry. She kisses his nose—the red swelling that’s starting to show—and he cups her cheek in his hand before tracing her jaw with his thumb.
“It’s always been you,” she whispers again once her breath is steady, eyes shut and forehead resting against his. “I’ve always loved you.”
He tries to say “I’m sorry” and “I love you” at the same time and it comes out in a jumble of sounds they both laugh at. So he just hugs her instead, so tight it nearly hurts, and they stay like that on the dock for so long that when they finally pull apart, the sun’s fully set.
She kisses him on the lips, gentle and slow, and then takes both of his hands in hers. “Welcome home, xīngān.”
(Xīngān can be literally translated to “my heart and liver,” which is a very serious and intimate way of telling someone you can’t live without them.)