falloutober day one: WAR NEVER CHANGES.
2k / ( eventual sole survivor x hancock x maccready )
a/n: thank you @falloutober for the amazing october word prompts! ive been excited about this challenge for months, and ive already plotted out an entire series to work with falloutober that im super excited to share! so, without further ado, welcome to my pet project, “wasteland, baby!”
xx, scavver
SYNOPSIS — A nuclear apocalypse should have been the end of the world in 2077. But two hundred and ten years later, humanity is still clawing at the brink of survival, scraping instinct from underneath their fingernails and wiping irradiated sweat from wasteland-marred foreheads. The year is now 2287; natural resources have mutated, people are as irrational as ever, and a pre-war vault dweller emerges from a pod in which she had been frozen for the last two centuries. The Sole Survivor of Vault 111 has hell to pay, and who better to join her pursuit of revenge than a red-coated ghoul mayor searching for a purpose and a gunslinging sharpshooter with too many debts to pay?
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The world ended in 2077.
It wasn’t a surprise for anyone. Nothing lasts forever.
There’s always an end, a lowering of a pencil after tracing a careful circle. There are preserved pieces of time frozen on display for people to reminisce about. But when something expires past it's intended use, does it count as dead? Is it really lasting if it's pointless? Does something need to have a purpose to be alive or has humanity just been trained to believe so?
Watching the orange skies darken with the mushroom clouds of a nuclear war, Eleanor Mercer couldn’t help but feel expired. She held her five-month-old son in her arms as the elevator lowered them into the ground, where Vault 111 would save them from the war waging above ground.
She had only been granted the elite spot in the Vault because her late husband, Nathaniel Mercer, had died on duty and granting Nora a place in the Vault was the government’s way of compensation.
Never mind that Nora could scarcely afford their suburban lifestyle on her own, or that their infant son was now fatherless.
She had planned to move back in with her parents in the country, maybe go back to medical school, try to build a happier future for her son.
The large elevator doors closed with a resounding slam.
Her neighbors, an assortment of military personnel and government officials, were crying and holding onto each other as they descended. Nora barely recognized any of them, and now they had to hide away in a Vault together for who even knows how long.
Expired. Gone. Over.
Nora’s tongue tasted metallic, adrenaline postponing a complete breakdown. Was that it? Was it all worth nothing? Their entire lives, just… blown up?
Selfishly, she thought about the boxes in her living room that were still half-packed, full of treasures and knick-knacks that she wished she had taken with her. Books, pillows, Nate’s guitar, her son’s favorite blanket. Maybe some onesies, or at least diapers, for her baby — her baby who was squealing, gurgling as he cried into her chest.
Snapping into focus, Nora readjusted her hold on him, quietly soothing his cries and rubbing her palm over his back in an effort to comfort the infant. Slowly, just as slow as their descending elevator, his whining lulled and his eyes closed, half-asleep against his mom’s shoulder, unaware of the uncertainty in the world.
This didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like it could be an ending. It was a semicolon; a sentence that is pulled longer than it should have, words added on and on and layered atop one another, when in reality, Nora wasn’t completely sure any of it was worth writing at all.
To Nora, the world had ended just as it started; with a bang, a flash, and a deep-rooted emotional scar that would last eternities.
The elevator stopped; the first family out were the Russos, with their small crowd of children. Mrs. Russo found the Vault Overseer and was immediately demanding to contact their in-laws to see who survived, while Mr. Russo tried to herd their kids into following the orders of the Vault Technicians.
Other families were smaller and quieter, following instructions without question. Nora followed close behind neighbors whose names she didn’t know, at the rear of the group, heading through the Vault’s entryway and into a room lined with pods that reminded Nora of small spacecrafts.
This room was significantly colder than the entryway, and the baby started to cry again.
Kissing his forehead and rocking him gently, Nora trembled, struggling to keep calm. "It's okay, sweetheart. Mommy's here, see? We'll all be okay. We’ll all be okay.”
No matter how many times she repeated the words, she couldn’t convince herself.
Glancing around at the lines of pods they were told they would be decontaminated in before moving to the deeper sections of Vault 111, Nora couldn't help but wonder if "okay" was the same word as before.
Next to them, a Vault Tech Doctor cleared his throat, stepping forward with a fake smile. "Sorry to interrupt, Mrs Mercer... But it's vital that you put on your new Vault Suit. And, please, step in here..." He gestured to the pod to Nora's left and she nodded once, absently.
The doctor gave her a folded pile of clothes and moved on, giving the same pile to all the other residents that had been able to enter the Vault.
The jumpsuit was a slick and heavy material that stretched easily in her hands, smelling like disinfectant. The whole Vault reeked of a hospital, actually — the metallic white walls were crisp, bright orange railing blocking the mounds of wires and tech beside each pod. There was a loud ambient sound like an air conditioning system on full blast, but Nora couldn’t locate where it was coming from.
One of the neighbors whose name she didn’t know offered to hold the baby while Nora dressed into the blue jumpsuit, prepping for decontamination in the pod.
"He'll be okay, right?" Nora asked the doctor as she took the baby back, shifting uncomfortably in the skin-tight suit, "The, uh, the cleansing won't hurt him?"
"Not at all!" The doctor ushered them into the pod, "Vault Tech decontamination regimes are perfectly safe for both you and your little one. Now, take your time! We have all day."
Nora slid into the seat of her pod, resting her back against the soft pads, holding Shaun close. The door closed heavily, locking them in the pod.
Her throat started to close up, panic seizing at her chest, and she struggled to make herself breathe, to calm down, to be strong for her son.
"The pod will decontaminate and depressurize you before we head deeper into the Vault." The doctor's voice was robotic and altered as he spoke through the closed door, pressing buttons on the side of the pod. He gave Nora another fake smile, "Just relax."
"Time for a whole new life." Nora murmured to the baby, once again rubbing his back soothingly.
She wondered about all the work they’d put into the things they surely lost; would her son be happy here? Did they have all of the materials and necessities to properly care for a baby? How long would they be there? Would her son grow up underground, learn to read here, learn to live here? Would he get a chance to pursue a life for himself? Or would they be mindless worker bees for the rest of their lives?
"Resident secure." The Vault 111 Computer spoke through speakers imbedded into the inside of the pod. "Occupant vitals: Normal. Procedure complete in five... four... three... two..."
Nora never got to hear the final number of the countdown. Frost arose on the inside of the pod, coating the glass and sending goosebumps rising on her arms as she panted, finding it difficult to breathe. Before she could even wonder what was going on, why it was suddenly so cold, her vision went white, and her body became stiff.
Her consciousness distorted, like she was balancing between sleep and awake, knowing only the foggy darkness of the freezing pod.
"Manual Override Initiated." The computer's voice spoke again, and Nora gasped as feeling returned to her fingers and nose. Was that it? Was she pressurized and ready for her new life at Vault 111? Why was it so cold? "Cryogenic stasis completed."
Panting, Nora struggled to move her arms, to lift the baby and check on him, but she felt so... stiff... heavy... like her entire body was asleep... she could hardly breathe, hardly move, hardly see... Her vision slowly came back in, blurry and distorted, but good enough to see two mysterious figures approaching her pod.
"This is the one," a woman's voice spoke out of a hazmat suit, pointing towards them. "Right here!"
Were they worried about the baby? Where was the doctor?
The second figure was a man wearing a brown leather jacket and biker pants, with odd straps crossing over his chest and back, adorned with so many weapons it was hard for Nora to even name them all. He had a pistol in his right hand, and his left hand flexed at the holster on his hip. He examined the pod, then turned to the woman. "Well? Open it."
Pressing a few buttons, the woman released the locks on the pod, opening the wide door. Steam rolled out Nora was sent into an immediate coughing fit, holding her son tightly against her chest. He was crying again, screaming against her jumpsuit, and she could barely move well enough to soothe him.
Continuing to cough, her voice ragged and hoarse, she looked wide-eyed between the two mysterious figures, her eyebrows drawn. “Is… is it over? Are we okay?”
“Almost.” The leather-clad man stepped forward; hands braced against her shoulder to keep her from stepping out of her pod. “Everything is going to be fine.”
The woman in the hazmat suit approached cautiously, hands extended. “It’s okay, hon. Just give me the baby.”
“What?” Nora croaked, wheezing, holding her son tighter. “No, I’ve got him.”
"Just give him to me." The woman coaxed softly, wrapping her gloved hands around the baby’s middle. "Everything will be okay, just hand him over."
"No, wait — No!" Her protective fury took over as she gripped her son tighter, struggling against the woman’s advances.
"Let the boy go." The man said, and as Nora turned, she met the barrel of a gun, inches from her eyes. "I'm only going to tell you once."
As Nora and the hazmat-wearing woman struggled over the baby, his cries increased in volume. The leather-bound man growled loudly, grunting out another warning.
A gunshot rang out.
Pain like nothing Nora knew swarmed her body, her vision going dark with it.
Her arms slacked and the hazmat-wearing woman stumbled back, holding the baby, ignoring his screams.
Nora had screamed, too, she realized only after she went quiet, her frozen hand palming at the bleeding wound in her shoulder.
"Damn it." The man put his gun away, shaking his head. He whirled murderously around to the woman, who coward before him. "Get the kid out of here. Go!" The woman turned without question, fleeing out of Nora's line of sight.
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real.
Bleeding, frozen, in a pain like none other, Nora tried to heave herself from her pod, to follow the woman, to get her baby — but the man easily pushed her back against the cushion of the pod, putting his gun away.
He wore a frown, a deep one that carved long lines into his gaunt, pale face. A scar ran over his left eye, marring deep into the flesh, his icy blue eyes ringed in a sleepless red. He gave her a sadistic smile that looked closer to a grimace, “At least we’ve still got the backup.”
And he closed the pod door, sealing her in again.
Nora pounded on her glass as he walked away, trying to scream again, but her voice wouldn't work. Blood ran heavily down her arm, dripping from her fingertips.
The Vault Tech Computer rang again, "Cryogenic Sequence Reinitialized."
Nora's vision went white once more.
Pain thrummed through her, and for a long while, it was all that she could feel. Pain and impossible cold, so freezing that it burned.
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All Vault residents must evacuate immediately."
Gasping and coughing, a sudden heat rushed through her, loud alarms filling reverberating around the metal room as her pod door was unlocked and released, opening too quickly for her to brace herself. She fell forward, hands and knees on the ground, heaving and shivering and panting as she tried to catch her breath.
She barely registered the flashing orange lights and trilling alarms filling the Vault as she tried to stand, only to stumble back to the ground, shaking violently. Her body still felt frozen. She fell limp against the Vault’s cold, dusty floor.
Even unconscious, Nora kept shivering; two hundred years was a long time to be frozen, after all.
falloutober days four and five: DADDY-O & THIS THING CALLED DEFEAT
( 3.8k / eventual sole x hancock x maccready )
a/n: i'm so so late but i'm catching up! here's a well due day four, with an included day five :) this chapter is dialogue-heavy but i tried to smoothen the pace a bit just to make it easier to read, but there still might be a few mispellings and weird spacings because i was rushing to post. enjoy! xx, scavver
synopsis — a few weeks into traveling together, nora discovers that this arrangement means more than just caps to her new bodyguard-turned-friend and doesn't quite know what to make of his unveiled story.
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"More caps, huh, hotshot?"
MacCready rolled his eyes at her over the corpse he was looting. "Is there a reason you're bringing this up again?"
Huffing a laugh, Nora didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. She just rocked her head back, resting it against the metal beam behind her, looking out at the view of the wasteland. Miles and miles of dead grass and dry trees, lit with the dim orange glow of the wasteland's sunset sky, the sun so large and bright against the horizon that it washed the world in a warm glow that shone through the heavy clouds and the layer of fog that sat upon the world like a blanket.
Atop Mass Pike Interchange, the overpass crumbling around them, they could even see the distant lights of Diamond City, the ballpark so alit that it looked like boasting. They had more electricity than they knew what to do with, and yet the majority of what was left of Boston was left starving and freezing as winter rolled in.
Around Nora and MacCready, the corpses of a dozen Gunners were sprawled around the overpass, still-warm blood pooling out onto what used to be a busy bridge.
"I thought it would be a harder fight." Nora admitted, adjusting her gasmask. "Especially with that robot."
"The assaultron? Yeah, it was probably the most dangerous thing here." MacCready stood and dusted off his beige duster, counting the bottlecaps as he dropped them into his old military backpack.
"Winlock and Barnes, though… they couldn't kill a squirrel with a rocket launcher."
Nora snorted as Mac fell next to her, the two of them perched on a broken slab of concrete. They'd been travelling together for weeks, and she'd more than paid off his two-hundred cap fee, but he was still scrounging for every cap they could get their hands on.
And Kellogg was still out there.
The thought was a constant weight on Nora's mind; she'd found him easily enough, with the help of Valentine and the inside knowledge from Hancock, who seemed to know everything about everyone in the Commonwealth. They'd tracked him down to an old military bunker, but they had been unable to win the fight against his army of synths. Evacuating the building was one of the hardest pills for Nora to swallow. Admitting that she wasn't capable of finding and saving her son was too much to bear, so much that she couldn't even face Valentine or Hancock again.
They'd understood when she told them to go back to their homes, but they hadn't wanted her to travel alone, so they had instructed her to track down RJ MacCready, a relatively loyal hired gun, which seemed to be rare in the Commonwealth. Hancock himself had said that Mac had good aim, a good heart, and wouldn't choose a higher bidder over Nora… probably. So long as she told him about her son.
Apparently, he had a soft spot for kids that ran deeper than his greed.
"Impressed yet?" The merc in question knocked his shoulder against hers, pulling her out of her worrying. MacCready always seemed to know when Nora was overthinking. "I told you I was a damn good shot."
Nora rested her weight against him, head lulling back against his shoulder, her tired eyes drifting closed. She'd learned early on that he was just as touch starved as she was, and as their friendship grew, she found it easier and easier to be comfortable leaned or pressed against him, knowing that if he had a problem with it, he would always tell her. "I dunno. Haven't really noticed."
"Oh, come on! You've got to know talent when you see it!"
"Mhm. Guess so."
"There it is. Wasn't too hard to admit, was it?"
Laughing, Nora picked herself up and turned towards him, his crooked smile a familiar sight through the circles of her mask.
"Actually, I am impressed."
His smile faltered. He turned to his gangly fingers, suddenly flustered, and started fiddling with a cap, voice weak. "Yeah. I thought you might be. I'm… I'm completely self-taught, you know. Picked up a sniper rifle when I was ten and never looked back. Always thought it was smarter to hit my targets long-range. I mean, why take chances, right? Besides, I had to come up with every trick in the book to survive the Capital Wasteland."
Sensing his mood shift, Nora matched his posture, her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward, head ducked close to his. She tried to joke around again, to take them back to the lightheartedness they had before. "I'm sure your parents were thrilled with that hobby."
"Never knew my parents."
"…Oh."
"I was born in the wastes. It…" He turned to her, searching her mask for an expression he'd never see. "It wasn't so bad. I wasn't alone. I grew up in an underground place called Little Lamplight with a bunch of other kids. Left there when I was around sixteen. We had a policy… no adults. When you were sixteen, you packed up and left. It sounds crazy, but having adults around was something those kids couldn't trust."
Nora's heart constricted in her chest, squeezing with worry for tiny children with weapons, forced to survive and live in a big, scary apocalypse. "How could kids survive without help?"
"Everyone pulled their own weight, just like any colony. We had jobs and we watched each other's backs. Can you believe I was actually their mayor for a while? Me?" He scoffed out a laugh, a nostalgic smile pulling at his mouth. "Sounds crazy, I know. But everything is. Nothing makes sense anymore. We just… roll with the punches. Always have, always will."
"Pretty brave, a bunch of kids living alone like that."
"I dunno." MacCready squinted into the distance, the sunset lighting his sea storm eyes into melted honey, casting a warm glow over him. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, like he had to force the words out. "I think we were just lucky."
Silent, Nora stayed as still as possible. She often felt like her and MacCready understood each other on a level that shouldn't have been possible. He was a hired gun from some underground club, and she was a pre-war lawyer thrust out of time on a manhunt for her son's kidnapper. But there were too many layers to both of them, too many similarities next to wide, abstract differences.
Clearing his throat, MacCready looked down, tugging his hat lower, casting a long shadow over his face. "Anyway, when I hit sixteen I ended up wandering the capital for a while, taking odd jobs here and there. But things were pretty hot with the Brotherhood of Steel running the show, so I hitched a ride with a caravan and made my way north until I ended up here and heard the Gunners needed some sharpshooters. Biggest mistake of my life. They were animals, killing anything that got in their way. I… Well, I went with it for a while because the caps were good, but, I dunno, I guess it all started to catch up with me. So I quit. Which… pretty much brings us to now. And that's… my whole life in a nutshell, I guess."
Not knowing what to say, Nora looped her arm around his, intertwining their fingers. It wasn't a foreign movement; she often held his hand, especially when she got too freaked out around ferals, or when she couldn't sleep and needed reassurance that she wasn't alone.
He turned their hands, running his thumb across her pale knuckles, red and raw even from the gloves she'd been wearing, now strewn on the rubble-covered ground in front of her, covered in the blood of a dead Gunner. After a long moment, he turned back to her mask, his voice quiet. "I don't… I haven't been able to rely on anyone since I was a kid. Everyone has either ripped me off or tried to plant a knife in my back. But you…"
"Me?" Her voice was too-quiet, rough as the word choked out.
"You're different. We see eye-to-eye on almost everything." A slow smile grew on his lips, the light returning to his eyes. "I have a funny feeling you actually care about what happens to me."
"Don't get cocky, 'Cread." She smiled too, even though he couldn't see it. "But... even though you're an ass, the road can be a lonely place. I'm glad to have met someone to share it with. Being alone scares the shit out of me."
"I know." He squeezed her hand, "I'm beginning to realize how much I missed having someone around that I can depend on. I… I couldn't have done this without you."
They both turned to look at the carnage before them. Nora rested her head back on MacCready's shoulder. "Do you think they'll retaliate?"
"No. There's nothing to worry about. For the Gunners, it's always about the bottom line. They just lost an entire waystation and that's costing them big. Besides, they have no way of knowing I was involved. Everyone who knew my name is dead."
They both went quiet again.
Nora couldn't articulate just how much his word struck her like a stake to the heart, ripping her apart from the inside out. Everyone who knew my name is dead. Did her son ever know her name? Was he even alive, out there in the wastes?
"Anyway," MacCready said quickly, pulling his hand from hers. "I owe you a favor. You're the one who hired me, but I dragged you all the way out here."
"You don't have to. It's okay."
"Nah, I don't like these things hanging over my head. Tell you what, I'm giving you back the caps you promised me in Goodneighbor." He dug around in his pack while Nora sat, speechless. Pulling out an old lunchbox that rattled as he sat it on her lap. "I'll still stick with you, but now we're even."
Shaking her head, she pushed the box back to his hands, "You don't— you don't owe me anything—"
"I'd like to keep everything nice and even."
Forcibly putting the box back into his military bag, Nora just kept shaking her head. "You don't owe me anything. How about you just buy me a drink, Hotshot? It's not like I was about to let you have all this fun alone anyway."
He laughed, giving in and letting her situate the caps back into his bag. "Glad you enjoyed yourself. Lead on, Boss."
~~~
MacCready always knew where to get the best drinks. It was probably Nora's favorite thing about traveling with him.
The Dugout Inn, a little bar and hotel in Diamond City, was run by the Bobrov Brothers, Vadim and Yefim. Vadim, who ran the bar, snuck MacCready two bottles of his specially distilled "Bobrov's Best", which was the strongest moonshine Nora had ever tasted.
The building was in the city's southern dugout, a single-floor structure with a lobby bar and several rooms. A wanted was posted on the wall by the entrance corridor leading to the lobby, where Vadim's bar was located, it up with a single lightbulb. To the left was another hallway leading to the bedrooms that Yefim ran, and to the left was a small area with closely packed tables and a loud radio playing some sad repeats of old songs. A few city residents loitered, drinking and talking softly, each looking exhausted and scared to make too much noise.
Beyond the tables, farther to the right, was the illuminated kitchen where fluorescent lighting pooled out, reflecting off the cracked tile flooring and catching on every metallic surface in the lobby. But, tucked away in a dark corner was a faded corduroy sofa, the faded brown and red fibers patched and stitched up in multiple places. It was away from everything else but not isolated, just a private little couch where two friends could share moonshine and softly spoken words.
"Swindled your way into another one?" Nora asked with a quiet laugh as MacCready came stumbling back over to that brown and red couch where they had been loitering for the past hour.
His shins bumped into the coffee table, and he cursed reflexively and nearly dropped the two blue bottles he held. Shushing himself, he fell onto the musty sofa next to Nora, nearly sitting on top of her, sending them both into another fit of giggles.
Watching MacCready struggle to uncap his third bottle of Bobrov's Best, Nora fought back more laughter.
She had removed her coat and gloves, leaving her in just her mask and blue jumpsuit, her Pip-Boy heavy on her left wrist, the green glow dimmed in the low light. She'd been drinking through an oddly bent metal straw just so that she could keep her gasmask on, but the straw just made the unholy flavor of Bobrov's Best somehow worse, the moonshine burning down her throat and settling uneasily in her stomach.
"Freakin' finally." MacCready grumbled as he finally got the cap off, taking a heavy gulp as Nora was sent into another fit of giggles.
"Cursing doesn't offend me, yanno." She teased, rolling the lukewarm glass bottle between her bare hands.
MacCready's smile fell, eyes becoming distant as his entire being seemed to darken, to sober up in seconds. "Didn't think it did."
"Hm… then you ought to let it go once in a while. It's good for the soul."
He snorted, half-turning to her and searching the lenses of her mask. He slung his legs over her knees, leaning against the sofa's back with a false look of comfort. "Believe me, I know."
Nora tried not to get too jittery at the heaviness of his legs over hers. "Then why…?"
"I figured you'd ask sooner or later." With a huff, MacCready leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, knocking his hat askew. The two bullets tucked into the rim gleamed in the dim light. "I… It's not about you, I just…"
He fell silent, hand covering his eyes as he mulled over his words. Slowly, he straightened on the couch, pulling his leg from hers and putting distance between them. One of his hands formed a fist and rested against his collarbone. Like the alcohol had risen from his stomach and was filling his chest, drowning his heart. Like he couldn't fake the comfort anymore. Like he was too drunk to pretend that he wasn't in pain.
Nora didn't press for answers. She took a glance around, taking in the peeling paint on the walls and the few patrons that lounged around, each looking more miserable than the last. The radio was buzzing lightly, filling the room with the sound of a young man sounding way too awkward for his occupation as a radio host.
"It's about a promise I made." MacCready finally managed to say, lifting his moonshine to his lips again. "When I left the Capital Wasteland, I didn't just leave Little Lamplight behind… I left my family. My actual family. A wife, a son. Duncan's the one I made the promise to. I told him I'd clean up my act and be a better person." Laughing hollowly at himself, MacCready heavily sat the bottle down on the coffee table in front of them. "I guess that sounds pretty stupid coming from a guy who shoots for a living."
A cold feeling rose through Nora, the hairs on her arms standing up. Bile overtook the flavor of moonshine in her throat. The blue bottle felt too heavy in her hands, and as she set it on the table next to MacCready's, her hands shook.
He had a family. A family waiting for him at home while he spent weeks at Nora's side, helping her hunt down her own son while abandoning his own. He had a wife, but he'd slept next to Nora for weeks, sometimes so close that they'd wake up curled around each other — and she didn't know much about apocalyptic society and their rules, but Nora was pretty sure that they had crossed more than a few lines in their weeks together.
His son… holy shit, he'd left his kid behind. Nora was tearing apart the entire fucking world looking for her son, but MacCready had just left his own. Was it for greed? For the caps? Did the Gunners really pay that well?
The irony pulled a startling laugh from Nora's chest, the moonshine making her unable to bite it down.
MacCready tensed, just as drunk as she was but handling it easier. "You think this is funny?"
"Yeah, I do." Nora's modulated voice was deeper through her mask, and as she laughed through her icy rage, she sounded utterly mechanical. "You left your kid at the capital, hundreds of miles away? You just left him?"
"I didn't have much of a choice!" MacCready threw his hands up as he spoke, face flooding red. "Duncan is sick! I don't know what's wrong with him, nobody does!"
"So your solution was just to run away? To leave?" Nora's voice was rising, and her entire posture stiff and tense, a million uncertainties running through her. She thought she knew MacCready. She thought she had a solid grip on his character — but now her memories of Nate were clouding her judgement; every anger she'd held onto regarding her dead husband leaving her alone with a newborn was resurfacing. How dare he leave her? How dare MacCready leave his own family? What if MacCready died out here, like Nate had died? What if MacCready's family never got to see him again, just like how Nora had never seen Nate again?
MacCready's hat was off. He ran both hands through his hair in a lame attempt of self-soothing.
Nora fought to keep her voice down, body heat rising as she drowned in too many emotions to handle, especially after two bottles of specially distilled moonshine. Her voice was a gravelly whisper when she finally managed to speak, "You left your family behind to come fuck around with raiders in Boston?"
A sudden sob tore out of MacCready.
Nora froze, her anger freezing with her.
Wiping at his eyes in frustration, MacCready was trembling. She'd never seen him cry before.
Yell, yes, and get annoyed and frustrated with her at what felt like every turn and every mistake until they both got more comfortable around each other. He'd once gone a whole two days without saying a single word to her. He'd once threatened to leave her in a hoard of ferals because she'd dropped her gun. He'd been cruel, frustrating, rude, greedy, and as they warmed up to each other in the last few weeks, he'd shown her a softer side, a funnier side, a happier side of himself that he kept hidden under layers of green turtlenecks and sniper rifles. But she'd never seen him cry.
His voice was uneven when he finally managed to speak. "I don't… I don't know how much longer he has. Every doctor I've talked to has been useless. Nobody's even heard of his disease, I've… I've done everything I can think of, hired a hundred doctors that ask for too many fuckin' caps just to tell me that they don't know how to help. And Duncan… One day he's playing out in the fields behind our farm, and the next he took a fever and this blue rash showed up all over his body. Last I saw, he was too weak to walk. I couldn't ask him to come with me. I wouldn't dare travel with him and risk worsening whatever the hell's going on."
"I…" Chest aching, Nora tried to piece together what he was telling her, quickly realizing that her perception and understanding didn't matter. He was hurting, his son was hurting, possibly even dying. Nora's judgement meant nothing compared to those stakes. She might not ever find her own son, but if she could help MacCready save Duncan… "I'm so sorry, 'Cready. What can we do?"
He looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, his baby blues so wide and hopeful that it chiseled at some icy part of the iceberg in Nora's chest. "You're serious?"
"Yes. Whatever you need, I'm there."
"I need someone like you." He blurted, still drunk as he clumsily grabbed her hands and squeezed with both of his. "You've already done so much for me, I… I feel horrible asking for more, but if you're willing to risk it, I'd be… I'd be really grateful."
Maybe she'd never get her baby back. But MacCready could get his. All of their abstract similarities started making sense, like a puzzle piece coming together. "How risky?"
"It's no walk in the park," He breathed, "If it was easy, I would've done it already."
"Count me in, partner."
He grinned, wide and slow, turning to his military bag and pulling out a bundle of papers. "A few months before we met, I bumped into a guy called Sinclair who claimed his buddy caught some kind of disease. I thought he was wasting my time until he said his partner broke out into blue boils. They dug up information about a cure at a place called Med-Tek Research. They even managed to grab the building's lockdown security codes, but Sinclair's buddy died before they were able to break into the facility. I mean, there's no way that's a coincidence, right? Med-Tek has to be the place!"
"I hope so." Nora squeezed his wrist as he gave her a pile of papers held together with a rubber band. "If there's a cure, we'll find it."
His shoulders relaxed, and he rushed to wipe at his eyes again. Nora pretended she didn't see him cry. "Thanks, partner. For Duncan's sake, I hope so too."
Knowing how it felt to abandon her hunt for Kellogg after being attacked by a swarm of synths, Nora bit the inside of her cheek, hoping that MacCready never has to feel like that. "Just… Let's not get our hopes up too much, okay? This could be a dead end."
"I've been disappointed so many times in the past, nothing gets my hopes up anymore." He retrieved his bottle and took a long drink. "What you're doing, Noor… No one's ever cared that much for me in years. At least, not without expecting something in return."
What about your wife? Nora wanted to ask, but kept her mouth shut.
"Even if it takes the rest of my life, I'll repay this debt to you. I swear it."
Not looking at him, Nora unbound the papers and glanced through them at the clumsy handwriting she knew to be MacCready's, at all the notes he'd taken on Med-Tek and of Duncan's illness, of any hint of a cure and of the letters Sinclair wrote to him.
Some of the pages were scrawled with what looked like crayon drawings done by a child, of a tall man in green next to a small boy in yellow.
And, again, Nora squeezed MacCready's wrist, saying the same words she felt like she'd be saying for years to come. "You don't owe me anything, MacCready."
( scavver masterlist )
⠀⠀ ─── ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀❛ 𝓱𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝓴𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐞 ❜
31-part series / eventual sole x hancock x maccready
these chapters are inspired by @falloutober’s 31 days of apocalyptic prompts for october 2023 — even though it isn’t being written in october, i just love these titles and wanted to work with them <3
this madness is in a semi-organized timeline, and i've included a lot of ocs and changes to canon because i think it's fun, so to get a clear view of the story i recommend reading it in the order it's posted. but if you don't want to, don't worry about it! i've tried to make everything as simple as possible so that each fic can be standalone as well as part of a series.
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01. WAR NEVER CHANGES
─── the one where nora watches her world end twice.
02. NEON
─── the one where the detective has a hunch and nora debates the morality of ferals.
03. DISTANT GLOW
─── the one where maccready needs the caps, and this strange, masked vault dweller needs an extra gun.
04. DADDY-O & 05. THIS THING CALLED DEFEAT
─── the one where maccready isn't just a bodyguard, and nora doesn't know how to think about him and his moonshine-revealed secrets.
06. MONUMENT
─── the one where duncan maccready's cure is hidden under dangerous layers of feral-ridden hallowed halls.
falloutober day two: NEON
5.3k / ( eventual sole x hancock x maccready )
a/n: this is wayyy longer than i intended, but once i started writing i just couldn't stop. i've actually deleted nearly half of this chapter (it was originally nearing 9k words) just to make it feel more organized, but i really like the idea of the sole survivor contemplating philosophy and morals and ethics in this wasteland they don't know how to live in, so i kept a lot of the scenes that are mostly just nora's inner thoughts. it can be kind of dreary and slow-moving but it'll speed up quick enough! i just really wanted to touch base on some topics that, realistically, nora would probably find herself overthinking constantly. i also really love nick valentine so i really wanted to introduce him early on to set up his dynamic with nora <3 i hope you enjoy!!
xx, scavver
SYNOPSIS — Ripping apart the Commonwealth in search of her son, Nora runs into dead ends at every turn. Tracking down Nick Valentine, a synth detective with a sarcastic streak, only led her to another rocky road that cut straight through the heart of the city: Goodneighbor.
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"Gotta love the irony of the reverse damsel in distress scenario." The detective, shrouded in darkness, was clicking a lighter as if they had all the time in the world. "Question is, why did our hero risk life and limb for an old private eye?"
Nora stared at the shadow, incredulous and more than a little frustrated. Diamond City had been more trouble than it was worth; the detective wasn't even there, having left weeks prior to work a case in Park Street Station, and his secretary was half-sure he was dead. But Nora's son was still out there, in hands that weren't her own, and finding the detective felt like the only viable option available to her.
She had snuck past dozens of gangster-like triggermen inside the station in order to get to Nick Valentine, her hands shaking as she was forced to shoot at them before they shot her, and when she finally got to the room the detective was trapped in, he was just... standing there.
Nervously checking the magazine of the gun she picked up (she had no idea what it was, only that it had bullets and a trigger and could probably kill someone), Nora used her sleeve to wipe blood off of the stock. Her shoulder, where her son's kidnapper had shot her, burned with the movement.
The idea of taking a life wasn't something she was ready to face, but the gun-wielding maniacs who attacked her at first sight were obstacles in the way of finding her son. She had to fight back.
Valentine managed to light his cigarette as Nora stood there silently. The orange glow lit up his face — and Nora forgot all about the blood on her gun.
The detective's face was torn down the left side, exposing a metal jawline and clicking mechanisms, the gaping hole of ripped not-flesh following the column of his throat and disappearing under his beige trench coat. As he put his lighter away, the dim glow of fluorescent light from across the room gleamed from his equally robotic hand.
"Look, I know the skin and metal parts ain't comforting, but I still need to know why you went through all this trouble to cut me loose." Valentine said flatly, inhuman yellow eyes narrowing at the gasmask she wore, which she was instantly thankful for: she had no idea what her face must have looked like upon realizing that Diamond City's famous detective was a robot.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Nora tried to make her voice as nonchalant as possible. "I need you to find someone, but it's... complicated. I don't know where he could be, exactly how long he's been gone, or who took him."
"Hm. I've done jobs with less. Somehow, nice and simple never make it onto the menu in my world." He exhaled a cloud of smoke, the grey wisps twirling out of his exposed neck and cheek, and brought his cigarette to his lips again. "I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't a hostage at all, but rather Skinny Malone's new flame, and she's got a mean streak. You've got troubles, stranger, and I'm glad to help. But now ain't the time. Let's blow this joint. Then we'll talk."
Giving a single, sharp nod, Nora turned to leave. "The way out isn't completely clear; we might have to fight through some—"
"No, stranger, you misunderstand." The detective fixed his frumpy coat and hat, tossing his half-finished cigarette to the side. "I'm wrapping up my Malone case, then we're leaving."
"Fuck your case." Nora snapped back, her mask modulating her voice and making her sound a lot tougher than she actually was. "If the girl wants to be here, let her. I don't give a fuck. My kid is missing and I'm not wasting any more time here."
"If you want my help, we're doing it my way. I don't drop a case until the damn thing's closed." Valentine didn't seem bothered, as if he dealt with worse on the daily... which was probably true. He smoothly stepped passed her and picked up a revolver from a dead triggerman.
Feet rooted to the spot, it took Nora a solid count of ten before she could make herself follow the detective, her entire body trembling with both nerves and anger.
As they continued deeper into Park Street Station, the half-built unused Vault started to feel endless. Each hallway looked exactly like the last, and the steep staircases only made things worse. The maze of locked doors and trigger-happy gangsters weren't fun, either.
Reloading her gun, hands shaking, Nora decided she wasn't bothered so much by the killing, but rather the fact that it was so easy. Taking someone's life was always the subject of horror, of grief, a character trait of every bad guy in every piece of fiction she'd ever consumed.
But as soon as one part of the human body fails to work in tandem with the rest... lights out. Just like that. A little too much blood lost, a wound a little too close to the neck, a punctured organ, a hard hit to the head — death was always hovering close, waiting for the first opportunity to swoop in.
It was kill or be killed, Nora reminded herself as she raised the gun again, gunshots ricocheting around the metal walls, bullets tearing through her enemies like playdough. It felt like a physical burden, to carry the weight of their lives, to carry each shot, each pull of the trigger. None of it left her. It never got easier.
She would get her son back. She would. And if this was what she had to do to get there, then so be it.
Valentine was talking to her as he led her through the Station, but she barely heard him.
He knelt down next to another locked door, the sharp metal rods of his robotic fingers clicking as he picked the lock. "I think this is the one. Once we step through this door, get ready for anything."
The door slid open not a moment later, and Nora lunged out of the way, putting her back to the wall as pullets rained upon where she'd been standing not a moment earlier. She grimaced in pain as her shoulder knocked against the metal of the wall, sending a sharp tang of pain through her entire arm.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" A new voice yelled, a Chicago accent ringing in his tone. "That's Nicky! C'mon, man, what're ya doin'? You come into my house, shoot up my guys? You have any idea how much this is gonna set me back?"
Valentine snorted from the other side of the doorway, where he'd ducked for cover. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your two-timing dame, Skinny. You ought to tell Darla to write home more often."
A shrill woman's voice laughed. "Aw, poor little Valentine! Ashamed you got your ass beat by a girl? I'll just run back home to daddy, shall I?"
The detective swooped around the doorway casually, walking out towards Malone and his gangsters.
Nora followed more hesitantly.
Malone was wearing a crisp tux that matched Darla's sparkling dress, and the rest of his crew wore beat-up mismatched suits, their submachine guns pointed toward Valentine.
Skinny shook his head, "Should've left it alone, Nicky. This ain't the old neighborhood. In this Vault, I'm king of the castle, you hear me? And I ain't lettin' some private dick such us down now that I got a good thing goin'!"
"I told you we should've just killed him!" Darla stomped her foot, pin-straight hair swaying. "But then you had to get all sentimental! All that stupid crap about the old times!"
"Darla, I'm handling this! Skinny Malone's always got things under control!"
"You call yourself Skinny Malone?" Nora blurted, words falling out before she could catch herself. "Like, unironically?"
Darla's icy eyes turned on Nora. "Who's his friend? He must've brought her here to rub us all out!"
"...Tempting, but no." Taking a slow step forward, Nora stood next to Nick, her hands raised in a sign of peace. "Darla, listen to me. You have a home to go back to. You don't want to throw your life away with these thugs, not when you can do so much better somewhere else."
Immediately, the girl's chin started quivering. Darla burst into tears, blue and black eyeliner running down her face, "You're right! You're right! What am I doing? I've gotten all mixed up!"
"Darla?" Skinny tried to hold her, arms out for a hug, but she shoved passed him and raced towards the subway station's exit. "Wh-where are you goin?!"
"Home, Skinny!" She cried over her shoulder, "Where I should have stayed!"
Skinny Malone seemed at a loss for words as Darla escaped, a moment of silence passing as his grief and shock was replaced with anger. "Come on, Nicky! You cost me my men, now your little friend cost me my girl?"
"My little friend here just did you a favor, Skinny. You've always had bad taste in women. Besides, don't you think Darla's a little too young for you?" Valentine put his revolver on a nearby table, spreading his empty hands towards Malone. "Now that she's not around to feed that temper of yours, maybe you'll see sense and let us walk? You still owe me for two weeks in this hole."
"You smug, overconfident ass." Skinny put down his weapon, too. "You get to the count of ten. I see any of your faces after today, I'm gunning you down!"
Valentine wrapped a metal hand around Nora's elbow. "Let's get out of here. Fast."
They took off running, Valentine leading the way through the Vault's exit and from there, through the abandoned tunnels of what was a construction site two hundred years prior.
Climbing through a maintenance tunnel to safety, they found themselves in the middle of a street in Boston. Nora vaguely recognized the buildings around them, mostly brownstone apartments with a few scattered shopfronts that she'd never gotten the chance to properly explore before the world blew up.
Valentine lit another cigarette. "Ah, nothin' like the empty Commonwealth sky... never through anything so naturally ominous could end up looking so inviting."
Glancing up at the sky above them, Nora cringed. There were no stars, only green-tinged clouds covering the moon, and a ripple of irradiated heat moving across the pitch-black nighttime sky. She was thankful again for her gasmask. She had no idea what state she would be in if she were to inhale the post-nuclear-bomb irradiated air.
She turned the glass lenses of her mask towards the robotic detective, tilting her head. "I'd probably use different wording."
Laughing, Valentine took another huff of his cigarette. Could he even feel the nicotine? What kind of robot smoked? "Thanks for getting me out. How did you know where to find me?"
"Your secretary."
"Ellie? Huh. She's a worrier. I figured she'd've thought I'd died and have sold the agency by now. I'm surprised she told you anything at all, with that mask you're wearing. One look at you and half of Diamond City would've been screaming synth."
"...Synth?"
He went quiet, eyes narrowing at her again. Then, softly, "Synthetic person. Like me. All the parts, minus a few red blood cells. I got built, I got old, I got tossed. Now there's newer, more humanlike synths running around, and I opened up that little agency in Diamond City, and it turns out people have plenty of missing friends they want me to find. Missing friends who typically turn out to be synths, if you believe the stories. In fact, you mentioned a missing person. No trace where he's gone?"
It took Nora a long moment to wrap her head around what he was saying. People were being kidnapped and turned into robots? If that's what happened to her son... "No trace. Just... taken from Vault One-Eleven."
"Hm." Examining her unblinkingly, Valentine exhaled a long billow of smoke. "Who else have you told about this?"
"A Mister Handy robot named Codsworth. He's an old friend. I thought he deserved to know."
The corners of Valentine's mouth went up and for a moment, Nora couldn't see any robot in his expression, not a single trace of any synthetic-ness in his being. Minus the tear in his cheek that exposed metal and wiring, he seemed... human. She wondered what he was like when he was new, before he was visually different from an organic person.
Valentine finished his cigarette and stomped it out. "I've got a hunch. We should start in Goodneighbor."
"Where?"
"The heart of the Commonwealth. You're lookin' for someone, then Goodneighbor's your place. Everybody knows everybody there. Ready to go?"
Not at all. Nora was the farthest thing from ready. She didn't want to take a step forward, she wanted to take two hundred years worth of steps back, to go back to her home and her son and her family and her plans before the world went to absolute shit. But, gulping past the bile in her throat, she managed to nod, putting one foot in front of the other. "Yeah. I'm ready."
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The zombies found them in exactly twelve seconds.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck—" Nora stumbled in her too-big boots, her heavy gasmask shifting on her face with every thundering step she took, running as fast as she could through the city.
She didn't know where the detective went. She'd lost him when the hoard found them.
And she didn't know where she was going, but running was easy, running was safe, running was the only instinct that seemed beneficial. The familiar streets of Boston all seemed wrong, and she circled the same building twice before ushering herself on a different path, hearing the screeching and slapping of the zombies chasing after her.
Heart pounding, sweat dripping down her spine, legs pumping faster and faster — she didn't even care what kind of sounds she was making. She couldn't take on a dozen zombies.
Her lungs rattled as she breathed heavily, the metallic taste of blood on her tongue, her own warm breath filling the gasmask that sat wrong upon her face.
Even with half-decayed feet, the zombies were fast. They fell over themselves just long enough for Nora to have the upper hand, heaving herself up onto the roof of an old school bus and falling onto her ass on the faded, peeling yellow paint, panting and clutching her wounded shoulder, which had started to bleed through the haphazard bandages she'd wrapped it in, the blood soaking all the way through her jumpsuit and spreading along the blue fabric.
On the ground, unable to climb, the decaying zombies screamed furiously at her. She shrieked right back at them.
Then she wasted three bullets, her shaking hands missing every shot.
"Studied my ass off for a degree, and what do I show for it? Jack shit."
Reloading the gun wasn't as easy as she felt it should've been, but she managed to get the bullets secure and fired again, this time hitting one of the creatures in the shoulder. It's entire arm detached and fell to the ground with a sick, sad plop.
It stopped screaming and stared down at the limb with mild interest. Then, slowly, it's foggy-eyed gaze lifted and locked onto Nora.
The others were still crowding the bus, trying and failing to climb it, shoving each other down and attacking their fellow undead in their eagerness to get to Nora.
But that one zombie, with the smokey black eyes, just continued to stare. Nora found herself staring back. She memorized the slope of it's haggard skin, the tearing of flesh and the exposed bone of its jaw, the bloodstained clothes that were better described as scraps and rags.
It was human. Or it had been, once. She wondered how it became as it was now; could its circumstances be explained by some kind of virus or disease? Was this the outcome of the nuclear waste? The irradiation?
The Pip-Boy that she'd taken from a skeleton in Vault 111 started clicking. She was familiar with the Geiger counter, but the ominous half-there clicks still made her blood go cold.
Nora didn't know how long she sat on the roof of the school bus; heart heavy with a grief that wasn't her own. Long enough for the armless creature to finally leave, and long enough for her to teach herself how to properly reload a handheld pistol.
The foul-smelling rotting zombies eventually seemed to forget what they were fighting for and wandered off, grunting and hobbling along the rubble of the roads. Some of them just collapsed, twitching, waiting for the next meal to approach them instead of hunting for it.
While sitting there, bringing all of her limbs tight to her body to prevent the zombies from grabbing her, Nora questioned the morality of shooting them. Was there a person left in the husks of bodies trying to tear her apart? Was the stare of the creature a reaction of the human it used to be, or just a mindless action done by a zombie that had no thoughts outside of hunger?
Did killing them count as survival? Or did they need help? Was there some kind of cure she hadn't heard about yet? Maybe the kindest thing to do was put them out of their misery.
Nora decided she hated ethics.
It shouldn't be her job to decide what lived or died; and she'd killed enough for the day, enough for her lifetime.
Eventually, the hoard roamed away, scattered into the concrete jungle, out of her view.
The city was drenched in darkness, the moon casting a dim glow over the rubble.
Sliding off of the bus as carefully as possible and lowering herself to the ground, Nora snuck into the shadows at the edge of the road, away from where the zombies had gone. She turned to the right, seriously hoping this path wouldn't kill her, and started walking as carefully as she could, avoiding the gravel and debris littering the ground.
But the zombies saw her anyway.
Nora took off in another sharp run, not even caring where she was going, not even caring if she never found Nick Valentine again — she just needed to get away.
The creatures grunted and groaned, and she could hear the gross slapping of their decayed feet as they scrambled and stumbled towards her, but she didn't dare look back.
Climbing a patchy wall and jumping over another pile of rocks from a broken building, she came to a sudden stop at the sight of bright neon lights.
The sky was dark and dim, heavy with bog-like green clouds covering what little glow the moon provided — and the hot pink mismatched lettering of the giant sign reading GOODNEIGHBOR was jarring. It was set upon a clumsily made but sturdy-looking wall between two towers, nestled in the old historic district of Boston. As far as Nora knew, there were museums and a hotel and a couple of restaurants in this area, but she was too shocked to move.
She'd expected Goodneighbor to be, well, a neighborhood. Not some random corner in the middle of the city.
The zombies, somewhere in the ruins behind her, maybe a street or two away, started screeching. Gunfire echoed across the building, the screaming of humans accompanying that of the undead.
They'd found new prey.
Despite being ill, tired, feeling disgusting, and half unable to even comprehend this new, horrible world... she wanted to trust Valentine, to trust that there was someone within this patch of the city who could help her.
She made her way to the gate, edging it open and slipping inside. The occasional dim streetlight broke the darkness, the flickering of candle flame lighting up storefaces and dirty sidewalks. Above, the dark green clouds crackled with the oddest lightning Nora had ever seen.
But as she stepped further into Goodneighbor, her heart lurched with yearning.
There were people loitering around; real, actual people. Not zombies, not homicidally insane trigger-happy madmen shooting at her for no reason, and not the snobs of Diamond City who cringed and hid from her as she walked through the haphazard streets.
Even in the darkness, the night sky looming green and sickly above them, humans perched upon stools and stood lazily in front of small shop tables, talking and laughing and drinking together, wearing all sorts of mismatched clothes. Nobody was attacking each other. Nobody was screaming. Nobody seemed... frightened, like they had in the other city.
This place was safe. This place was safe.
She had to find the detective — he should already be here, somewhere.
Nobody paid her any mind as she took another few careful steps forward, glancing around nervously at the handful of people bustling in the shops to the right side of the entrance. To the left was a big brownstone building with boarded windows and an alleyway to the side that led to what Nora presumed was the other half of whatever "Goodneighbor" was.
Slowly, so as to not draw unwanted attention, Nora edged closer to the small crowds of people, trying to find Valentine.
"Hold up there." A man stepped in front of her, hands out. His bug-like eyes bore into hers with devious intent.
She tried to step away, but he matched her movements, drawing closer as she stepped back — he cornered her back in the entryway of the city, approaching slowly like he was stalking prey.
The man wore a leather jacket and matching pants, a skull bandana over an otherwise bald head, and a cigarette hanging from very pale lips; everything about him seemed washed-out and ill, and he blinked too much like he didn't really know if what he was seeing was real.
"Excuse me," Nora tried to evade him, raising a hand to her face to make sure her gasmask was still in place, her shoulder aching with the movement. "I'm looking for a detective—"
"First time in Goodneighbor?" He asked, unmoving, as if he hadn't heard a damn thing she'd said. He gave a low chuckle, rubbing uneven stubble. "Can't go walkin' around without any insurance."
"I'm not interested. Just here to look for someone."
"C'mon, now, don't be like that, sweetness... I think you're going to like what I have to offer."
He took another step forward and Nora took a step back, trying to keep an even distance between them. But he was quick, too quick for the dazed look in his eyes.
Like a viper, he lunged towards her, grabbing her arm and holding tight enough to bruise — the movement knocked her shoulder out of place, and as he tugged her arm, pain shot through her entire body. She tried to yank away from him but stopped at the stabbing twinge, the blood draining from her face.
His other hand, which casually removed the cigarette from his lips and held it precariously between two fingers, rose towards Nora's chest, easily undoing the singular button that held together her black canvas coat — as he released the button, the material fell away, revealing the bloodstained blue jumpsuit from Vault 111.
He seethed, lips pulling back in what could've been a snarl as easily as it could've been a smile. "Now, sweetness, you're gonna hand over everythin' you've got on you, yeah? Including that fancy Pip-Boy. Or else accidents will start happening. Big, bloody accidents."
"Whoa, whoa! Time out!" Another man swaggered over with his hands up to deescalate the situation, and Nora did a double-take, breath catching in her throat at the sight of him. "Someone steps through the gate the first time, they're a guest. Lay off."
The man was on the shorter side, with a giant tricorn hat to make up for the height. He wore a red frock coat to match the hat, an old American flag as a belt, and a frilly white shirt — making him look like he just stepped out of some off brand of the Hamilton Musical. But the outfit wasn't what caught Nora's eye.
He was a zombie. Or, he looked similar enough to the one Nora had stared at only minutes beforehand. His skin looked... burned, in a way, almost like it was peeling off of his skull. He had no nose, no hair, and his scarred skin was discolored and half-gone, large indents carved into his cheeks, pulling around his sarcastic smile.
"Why d'you care?" The pale guy, still holding onto Nora's arm, dropped his cigarette and stomped it out harshly with a metal-lined boot, sneering at the man in the red coat. "She ain't one of us."
The scarred man sported a misty expression and a hyena grin, but there was no mirth in his expression. "You ain't hear what I said? Let her go, Fin. Last warning."
Fin squeezed Nora's arm, and black spots danced in her vision. He grunted out, "You've gotten soft, Hancock. Keep lettin' outsiders walk all over us and soon there'll be a new mayor. Like what you did to Vic, yeah?"
"C'mon, man, this is me we're talkin' about!" Hancock's grin widened as he walked confidently towards Nora and Fin, close enough for Nora to see the stormy grey of his foggy eyes — just like the armless zombie on the street. He leaned closer to Fin, "C'mere, c'mere, let me tell you something..."
Fin, either high or stupid, fell for the bit and leaned in.
Hancock casually grabbed the man's shoulder, patting twice like one would for an old friend.
A knife appeared in Hancock's other hand, and in an instant, the blade was driven into Fin's chest.
Nora yelped as Fin went down, almost taking her with him. She scrambled backwards, ripping from his slackened grasp, and stumbled over her too-big boots, falling on her ass. Blood splattered over her blue jumpsuit.
Stabbing Fin three times, Hancock had his teeth clenched as he finally let Fin's body fall heavily onto the cobblestone ground, limp and lifeless. He tutted, "Now, why'd you have to go and say that, huh? Breakin' my heart over here."
On the ground, Fin let out a whine, wide eyes staring up at the starless sky as blood puddled around him, his ribcage little more than a sunken cavity.
How strong did someone have to be for three stab wounds to look like a hundred?
Hancock shook his head mournfully. Then he looked towards Nora and stepped over the corpse as if he'd forgotten about it already, as if he hadn't just killed the man, as if Fin wasn't just murdered in the middle of the street — and, to Nora's surprise, none of the townsfolk even cared, and hardly anyone seemed interested in the scene before them.
"You alright, love?" Hancock asked, extending a bloody hand for her to take. A hand that was just as marred and pocked as the rest of his skin.
Nora flinched back, leaning away from him, her shoulder throbbing as her elbows propped her upright upon the ground.
"Ah, not so friendly with ghouls, eh?" Smile thinning, he retracted his hand and gestured to his face, "Like it? I think it gives me a sexy king of the zombies look, yeah? Big hit for some folk. Now, there's a lot of us walking rad freaks around here, so you might want to keep those kinds of reactions on the low burner next time."
Staring up at him like he was crazy, glad for the gasmask to hide her expression for fear she'd be stabbed next, Nora stammered, "Y-you think I... You think I care—" She gulped thickly, unable to find her voice for a long moment, shaking her head. Blood ran down the side of her mask, dripping onto her jumpsuit, staining it further. "You just killed that guy less than a foot away from me. I'm not too concerned about your face, given the circumstances."
He grinned, actually grinned. "Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people. You feel me? Everyone's welcome."
Nora's gaze drifted down to the dead body that this so-called mayor had so casually abandoned. "Of the people, for the people... oh, brother..."
Hancock laughed, kneeling next to her and extending his hand once again for her to take. "Oh, I can tell I'm gonna like you already. Just consider this to be your home away from home. So long as you remember who's in charge, kapeesh?"
Blinking up at him, she didn't really know how to respond. Her entire body was sending alarms up: what the fuck, oh fuck, what the fuck, who the fuck, why the fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—
Through her fear, Nora recognized this man to be someone important. The coat and name felt like a title more than an endearing play on history, and from the way Fin spoke to him...
Hesitating briefly, she took Hancock's hand and let him help her to her feet, wincing as her shoulder pulled again.
Once rightened, Hancock slid a forefinger and thumb through a lock of Nora's greasy black hair, gently pinching and pulling, removing a clot of blood from the dark curls.
Without further ceremony, the ghoulish mayor led Nora over the dead body and towards the tall brownstone building, where a heavily armored redheaded woman stood cross-armed against the brick, enveloped in shadow.
"This here's Fahrenheit." Hancock introduced, and the woman gave a single sharp nod. "She's the one you go to if anyone like Fin comes back around, alright?"
Nora nodded slowly.
Fahrenheit turned back to the body on the street and frowned. "Too bad about Fin. I'm gonna miss him the next time a super mutant attack comes around."
Hancock gave another good-natured laugh, turning back to Nora. "What brings you to Goodneighbor, sweetheart? Anything I can do for ya?"
Nora kind of felt like bursting into tears. She fought for words, "I'm... I'm supposed to be meeting someone here. Nick Valentine."
Hancock's grin widened with glee. "So you're the one Nicky told me about. Hm... He painted a different picture than the one I see."
Having no idea what that meant, Nora took the safe route and stayed silent.
The mayor gestured towards the door to the brownstone, "He's inside, up in my office. If what he said is true... I wanna hear your story."
