This was going to be a straight up slash fic, but feels got in the way. Enjoy.
MacCready slumped against the wall. He didn't know why he'd been dragged back to Sanctuary Hills to wait for Nate to change, but yet here he was, trying not to sneak peeks at him changing. He knew exactly how things worked before the bombs dropped, hell, how things worked out in the open with the Gunners, but still, eyes had to look, that was his philosophy. Besides, he saw the way Nate looked at him, the way he ignored Piper's little smiles and hands on hips. All Nate might need is a little time, time away from what he was back then. Maybe then he'd could crack Nate's shell…maybe not. When Piper passed on the baton of Nate's traveling companion to him, he'd been told he'd wind up here pretty often. That he was okay with, this was a nice little street with nice little houses and a nice little Nate…or well, it had been at one point. Nature had done a number on the roofs and wall panels and board and batten, chipping away at the wonderful pastel World of Yesterday that Nate once belonged to. MacCready could see Nate look up and sigh through the holes open to the sky.
"Y'know, I'm surprised there aren't any carpenters in the Commonweath," Nate said, stepping out of his room. One of the first things he had found after leaving Vault 111 was a suit in a suitcase, somehow preserved from the elements. Paired with Nate's glasses, chiseled face, and combed reddish hair, the resulting man didn't look all that Commonweath.
"Look at you, Back Bay mover and shaker," MacCready quipped. Nate had stepped out, looking presentable, but rumpled by Pre-War standards, and a vision of cleanliness and professional perfection in the Commonwealth.
Nate laughed slightly at the insinuation, and nodded towards the door, "Let's go," he said quietly.
The two stepped out into the misty morning and walked behind the house, and down to a small footbridge, their feet crackling piles of leaves fallen off for the season and snapping fallen maple branches, the fog a gentle embrace wrapping around the rough, brutal edges of what MacCready figured would once be a beautiful morning in what would once be called Massachusetts. Of course, he wouldn't know that, just Nate. Lucky him, back in the Old World, able to tromp around the woods from here back to the Capital Wasteland without even a bloatfly to peck at his balls.
"So, where are you taking me, Nate," MacCready asked. Nate responded only by tightening his lips and trudging forward a little faster. The quiet was a little disconcerting, Nate wasn't the most talkative person ever, but normally he would be just as wry as MacCready was. He didn't much like why he was being silently led on a walk in the woods, but he got the feeling he needed to stick by Nate a little more than he usually had to. The slope of the path got a little steeper, the trees alongside the path gave way to an outcropping on the left. Nate powered up the hill without looking back, past an army truck and an excavator, until MacCready saw why the two were out.
"Wait, I don't think…I…that's not what I think it is?" MacCready asked. There before the two, a blue gear seemed to emerge from the ground, overlooking Sanctuary Hills and down to Concord.
Nate opened his mouth, "Yup, the good ol' Vault sweet Vault."
"The freezer for my little Nate-sicle?" MacCready cracked, regaining his composure. Nate's lips pursed again. MacCready just looked away, and Nate began to walk onto the platform.
"Hey, come on," Nate said, commanding MacCready onto the gear platform.
"Okay boss," MacCready put his hands up and followed, unsure of exactly how entry into the Vault worked.
Nate turned back to look at the tight streets of Concord in the distance as MacCready gingerly stepped on to the gear. He couldn't help letting out a quick, involuntary gasp as the platform sunk into the ground slowly, Nate almost instinctively turning away from Concord and down at his feet. MacCready watched as the pale sky above grew more distant and as the Vault closed in on itself, he found his heart pounding and his breaths getting ragged.
"Hey, Nate, how'd you file in here with the bombs falling?"
Nate let out a small chuckle, and put his hand on MacCready's shoulder. MacCready found his heart was beating a little stiller at the same time, "But really Nate, this is all pretty terrifying, and I grew up in a cave, for cryin' out loud."
Nate's eyes grew a little distant, "God, I barely remember. It was all so fast, we all just ran up here…they dropped the bomb right as the platform descended, though."
MacCready's eyes widened, "So you actually saw the bombs drop? As in, you just saw your entire world literally go up in flames?"
Nate chuckled again, "And collapsing under extreme air pressure. I still don't think property values will ever recover."
MacCready looked up. A tight world of peeled paint and rust faced him, the clatter of metal grates and a yellow turnstile reminding him of…no, nowhere but there, focus on something else,
"So, this is the old homestead?" MacCready queried, his voice a little unsteady still, trying to regain a little of the roguish charmer act. A bit of hurt flashed into Nate's eyes, his tight lips giving way to exposed teeth.
"This place," he said, a little too loud and a little too accusatory, "Fuck this hell."
Nate's lips twisted again, his eyes went distant. His shoulders slumped, the weight of the earth above seeing to settle on to him, to truly remind him of an unconscious home for 210 years, something MacCready found interesting, for being a man who sometimes felt as if he had somehow crammed forty years into twenty two, mostly at the expense of some pretty critical ones. Most eighteen year olds don't clutch to their swaddled son racing up a broken escalator in the Ballston metro station hearing their wife scream for the last time behind them, not even in the Capital Wasteland. Sure as hell not in Boston, 2077, but yet here Nate was, on the same dam…darned boat, losing a wife in a godforsaken tunnel, and at least Duncan was a concern, as opposed to a complete mystery. There was a yearning home he could hold in his heart, the farm next to what was once an ancient robotics office in what was once Reston, Virginia. Nate would call it that, as opposed to the Rest like all the other locals, and Nate wouldn't focus on all the fields of razorgrain just past the Brotherhood's control, giving bread in such quantities that no one had ever seen. Nate wouldn't see the hope. Sad fu...fudger that he was, he'd probably talk about how he'd might have gotten transferred there, and sigh over the broken houses full of dumb shi…stuff like dishwashers no one could find the power for, not even then. Nate said why the bombs fell. Over all the stupid oil and uranium. They could have held on, solved their problems, but being paranoid and destroying each other sounded like much more fun back then apparently. But there Nate was, hemming and hawing over stupid things like that, instead of thinking of safety or the Brotherhood. Granted, like he had so much authority there, joining what could be best described as a vicious paramilitary troop of psychopaths. At least Nate fought with other half decent people.
But there Nate really was, walking through the yellow entrance gate towards a hallway. MacCready ran a few steps to catch up. When he had mentioned freezers a few minutes earlier, he was spot on. The cryo pods had the bulk of a fridge with a small porthole in the front. Nate walked past silently, looking down. MacCready walked up to the first pod, and wiped off the condensation. The still face of a woman with short hair looked back, crystals of ice hanging off her hair and eyelashes and against her lips, contrasting with her warm, dark skin. MacCready instinctively reached for the big red switch to release. It only went halfway down before stopping abruptly. Klaxons rang out, and MacCready dropped the handle and jumped back.
"Warning, failure in the cryo-pod manual release system. Warning, failure in the…" a robotically female voice recited over the din. Nate turned around and walked up to MacCready.
"They're all dead. Don't try," Nate said, barely audible over the noise.
"Wait, so…so you're the last one?" MacCready asked nervously.
"Yes, yes I am," Nate replied, a little too quickly and flatly for MacCready to think Nate was okay with it. Nate put his arm around MacCready to gesture him forward towards the end of the row of pods. Nate looked down, unable to see what was in the last pod, and turned the switch. It worked this time, and the front of the pod opened upwards in a cloud of dry ice. And there she was.
"Oh, oh God, is that her?" MacCready asked, secretly worried that too much fright and spectacle was leaking into the question.
"Yes, it's her," Nate fell silent after another curt reply.
MacCready looked at Her. She was pretty, all dark hair and olive skin, splayed across the inside of her pod in a way unlike the other lost and frozen. Most importantly, a blossom of dried blood was spread across her chest, as if to add a brutal mockery of Her and Nate's child being taken, Her way of keeping Shaun alive ruined. The way Lucy had died, there wasn't much left, as if she had just wandered into the tunnels and never come out, but this? Her frozen mummy would outlast the whole Commonwealth. Go fuc…go figure.
"So, what was her name?" MacCready asked, dredging up his admittedly rusty empathy skills.
"Nora," Nate replied softly.
MacCready gave it a second of thought, "Pretty."
Nate stared into her eyes, locked open forever, "She held Shaun on the way here and into the pod. Next thing I knew, a man the Institute had under their payroll had pried it open," Nate stopped momentarily, if anything to keep himself from tearing up, "She fought back, wouldn't hand over Shaun…so here we are."
"And he took your son away?"
"Yup, and so the story goes."
Nate was already blinking heavily, staring back tears. He reached out to touch Nora, but just couldn't work up the will for his hand to meet her cheek. He was frozen there, unsure of exactly what to do, his mouth unable to vocalize. Honestly, he was doing a lot better, MacCready thought, than himself. He'd never gone back down that damn escalator, and here Nate was, actually trying. He walked up to Nate, and pushed his hand up to Nora's cheek. The two stood there in silence, looking at her. MacCready considered perhaps moving a little closer to Nate, but quickly caught himself.
It was a little strange, being the attached, smitten one this time. He had shrugged off Lucy as she played "He Loves Me Not" with every weird mutated flower in the remnants of every garden she could find for years. Nate could be trusted though, for firepower, valuable power armor experience that didn't involve a gear on his chest and a stick up his ass, and really just for generally being there. He saw through the bitter merc shit he tried to pull, (but hey, it was with the Gunners and in Goodneighbor. Trying too hard was in the mission statement,) probably because Nate was doing pretty much the same thing, and it took a good actor to know one. He figured both had a lot to prove, considering both literally stumbled out of holes in the ground against their will. Nate just hadn't done it at twice the speed like he had, a fifteen year old clutching a rifle ducking in Metro Stations and dark hallways watching as three factions of the Brotherhood duked it out, waiting for Lost Hills to save them, regardless of whatever Elder Maxson and his cute little haircut said on record. But hey, wandering into town after having the bombs dropped, your family ruined, and getting tossed around by a deathclaw in a broken power armor suit had to be a pretty close second. Regardless of it all, Nate felt like someone who got it, warts and all, as strange as it felt. So he guessed that now was really the time to be there for Nate, not charm him.
After another moment, MacCready brought Nate's hand down and back to his side, backing away from Nate and turning to face him, "So, how many times do you come down here," he asked.
"Used to come a lot when I first came out and I was here a lot building Sanctuary Hills with Preston, but then I headed for Diamond City, came a bit less. Haven't been in about a month and a half," Nate replied.
"You always dressed in the monkey suit?"
Nate chuckled, more of a sincere one, "Yeah, I wear the monkey suit. People did stuff like that back then. They'd get roses…"
"Do you plan on keeping her here forever?" MacCready asked.
Nate paused, faced with a dilemma he hadn't thought about.
"I don't know," he replied, "I hadn't thought about it. I'd just kind of run around so much looking for Shaun and building Sanctuary, then working towards the Institute and helping you get the cure for Duncan, I just never thought long term about it."
MacCready knew that feeling. It was hand to mouth until the Rest, trying to find food for a baby that had just begun teething in the middle of a war zone. Nate had seen enough war zones, same as him.
"We'll bury her," MacCready said.
Nate paused for another second, "We should."
Nate reached out for Nora, but once again, couldn't seem to reach out to grab her. MacCready stepped forward, and gingerly put her body into a fireman's carry, "I'll help."
The two buried her behind the yellow house given to Sturges and Mama Murphy, just past the corn and potatoes facing the playground. It was all a little funny to Nate, he had moved here with Nora so Shaun could play there, a major selling point over the old house on a tight street in Somerville. It was almost a little funny how a playground could somehow be so futile, nothing more than some pipes stuck in the ground.
A simple cross made from two branches was all that marked the grave, with "Nora Coelho Connally" carved as deep as Nate could muster, and with a penknife against petrified hardwood, it wasn't all that deep. It would do for now. Nate sat in a rusted metal patio chair, dirt still embedded in the lines of his hands, clutching and rubbing his and Nora's wedding bands. MacCready pulled up another chair beside Nate, sitting backwards in it, leaning his sternum against the backrest.
"So Nate, tell me about her," MacCready asked.
"Well, you'd love her," Nate began, "Sharper than a tack, and pretty restless. I still can't believe she stayed still long enough to be pregnant with Shaun. She was my best friend in the world."
"Best friend? Nate, that's us, not your mother of your child," MacCready said, raising an eyebrow.
Nate tensed up and sighed, perhaps slightly disappointed about it now that he had finally loosened a bit.
"Well," he began, "Things were complicated between us. She…she kept secrets, of mine, and maybe a little of hers. I…I…I didn't love her."
"Whoa," MacCready said, more than a little stunned, "Did we just go through all of that just to…"
Nate interrupted, "I didn't love her like one of those radio plays WRVR makes, but…it was different, I guess. We depended on each other, trusted each other, joked with each other. In hindsight, it feels like more than love. We were the same soul, y'know? We didn't need to love like that."
MacCready just wanted to say 'And that's how it is with us, maybe more,' but he just knew he couldn't. Nate needed time to breathe, to process. He had the benefit of having a lot of people who cared about him, Preston, Piper, Nick, hell, even Dogmeat could help Nate out. Not like him, a teenaged Little Lamplight washout, ready for the world to fuck him over. All MacCready wanted was to hold him, say things that would help instead of whipping out his acid tongue, but he just didn't know. Didn't know about what Nate wanted, who Nate was, how Nate saw the two of them. So here it was, all bottled up and left unsaid.
However, this had still been a good endeavor. Buring Nora had felt a lot like the burial for Lucy he never got, never tried even. MacCready thought about her bones, probably still there lying on a DC Metro platform, a still, orderly concrete tomb. Those stations were almost beautiful, perfect and smooth and grid-like. Nowhere in the Wasteland could ever be like it.
Perhaps it still fit, in a way, despite the circumstances, the way how putting Nora in the ground finally seemed to fit.
"MacCready?" Nate piped up after a minute, "Wanna head out tomorrow? I heard of something interesting in Jamaica Plain to check out."
MacCready smiled, "Hey, gotta make those caps," He adjusted his hat and turned back towards the house.
Before stepping through a hole in the wall inside…ish, he turned back around. He figured he should take a chance, see what Nate might tell him later. They both seemed to need it.
"Hey Nate, you can just call me RJ now."
RJ gave a quick smile, and disappeared behind a wall.