A/N: This is part one of three. Major game spoilers about the fate of the Sole Survivor's son ahead. Written because I found the player character's in game response... lacking.

Breaking Point

Part One

The vertibird rocked and swayed as it cut a swath across Boston's night sky from the Prydwen to the Castle, but Paladin Danse's attention wasn't on the patchwork of raider and supermutant strongholds illuminated by glowing burn barrels below. Instead, Danse watched the woman seated across him, the sole survivor of Vault 111, who was so silent and still that if he hadn't seen her climb into the vertibird, he would have thought he was sitting across from an empty suit of power armor.

A thousand questions burned his lips, questions about what had happened to her during the twelve hellishly long hours she'd disappeared into the belly of the Institute. Questions that she'd cut short with a curt wave of her armored hand when he'd asked them. Questions that she'd hadn't answered even when she'd turned over the holotapes and reported to Elder Maxson.

Her terse and tense quiet was so out of character that the soul searing relief he'd felt when she'd returned from that impossible mission crumbled away, and by the time they touched down just outside of the Castle walls, his guts were twisted into a hard, cold knot. Something had gone wrong, Danse was certain of it, but there wasn't much he could do at the moment other than hop out of the transport behind her and follow her through the sentry points and automated gun turrets into the Minutemen's Headquarters.

Any thought that he'd get the chance to interrogate her died when he saw that they weren't alone in the courtyard. Even though it was the middle of the night it looked like half of the Castle was up and waiting for her to return.

Garvey caught up with her first, falling into step beside her armored bulk with such familiar ease that something hot and sharp twisted in Danse's chest. Danse ignored the troubling sensation that was becoming more common the more time he spent with her. It was best not to know what it meant or where it had come from, he had no room in his life for anything besides the Brotherhood after all, so he shoved it from his mind as he followed the pair across the yard.

Cait, Hancock and Deacon brought up the rear, the insubordinate civilian and pathological liar shutting the door when they were all in the brightly lit room. Deacon looked over at Danse with a smug smile as he crossed his arms over his dirty t-shirt and leaned against the racks of stockpiled weapons as though he was daring the Paladin to toss him out. As much as Danse wanted to do exactly that, he swallowed his usual objections to the man's unexplained presence, his instincts telling him that now was not the time to fight that battle.

"Welcome back, General," Garvey said. His soft words were formal, but the naked relief in the Minuteman's eyes was an exact mirror to what Danse had felt himself less than an hour ago when he'd watched her step off of the transporter platform. Then he asked the questions that Danse had already asked. "Did you find the answers you were looking for? Did you find your son?"

She didn't answer Garvey either, and the sound of her silence thundered off of the stone walls until it was broken by a hiss as she disengaged the locks on her power armor and stepped out of the suit. As usual, he was struck by sweep of shoulder length ebony hair, unblemished fair skin, full red lips, and the straightest set of perfect white teeth he'd ever seen. A year out in the wasteland, and the Knight that was technically his subordinate still looked like she'd stepped straight from the glossy pages of a pre-war magazine.

But it wasn't just the usual burn of desire that he'd done his damnedest to ignore that hit him in the gut this time. The look on her usually expressive face was now as vacant as the mannequins they sometimes ran across on their missions. Worse of all, the clear blue eyes that usually snapped with intelligence and humor were flat and dull and as though she wanted nothing more than to lay down and die.

There was only one thing Danse could think of that could put that bleak look on her face and he wasn't the only one who came to that conclusion. Hancock's voice came from behind Danse's shoulder. He might be a filthy ghoul, but he shifted in his leather boots and muttered what everyone in the room was thinking.

"Aw, shit."

Dogmeat trotted forward and whined at his mistress who jerked her hand away when the dog tried to nuzzle it.

"I'm going to my quarters," she rasped. She didn't look at anyone in the room, instead her blue eyes fixed on the far wall as though she was looking at something the rest of them couldn't see. "I don't want to be disturbed."

Then she walked out the door, leaving the rest of them staring at her back, except for Dogmeat who whimpered and followed at her heels despite her command. There was a few moments of horrible silence until finally Cait exploded.

"This is bullshit," Cait said, her accent making the words sound as sharp as daggers as she threw her hands wide and snarled at the rest of them. "We can't just let her go off on her own."

Danse's voice rumbled from his chest. "She's already done her duty and turned over the most vital intelligence to the Brotherhood leadership. As for the rest, considering what she probably found out down there, I think we should respect her wishes and let her have some space."

"Do you now?" Cait spat the question at him as her eyes flashed like muzzle fire in the dim light of the armory. "We should just let her lock herself in her room so she can blow her brains out? Or maybe just wait until she crawls into a bottle or shoots herself up with the poison that will make her a dried up junkie? Is that what you think, tin man?"

Unintimidated, Danse scowled down at her. "She won't hurt herself. She's not like you."

A flush crept across the bridge of Cait's nose and she jerked back as though his words were a physical slap. He almost felt guilty when he saw the look of shameful self-loathing that twisted her face for a second before her sneer returned.

"I don't know about that," Deacon said, cutting off whatever Cait was about to say. He took off his sunglasses and hooked them on the collar of his dirty t-shirt. The sly look that he usually wore on his face was gone, replaced by a bone weary tiredness that for once seemed genuine. "There's only one thing I can think of that would put that look on her face. People do crazy things when they're grieving."

"No. She's stronger than that. If Shaun is dead because of the Institute, she'll fight until her last breath to make those bastards pay." Danse wanted to believe his own words badly, but a part of him wondered if he was just in denial because he couldn't face the thought of watching her waste away as she killed herself slowly. How the hell this woman had become such an essential part of his life in just the few months they'd travelled together Danse didn't understand. He just knew that the thought of not having her fight by his side was too bleak to accept.

Hancock shook his head, his already shriveled lips pulling back into a pained grimace. "I don't know, man. I didn't see any fight left in her. That's what's got me worried. Maybe she'll snap out of it. Maybe she won't. All I know right now is that we have to do something."

"Like what?" Preston asked with a sigh. "We can't take her grief away, or feel her pain for her."

"But the people who love her can help her bear it," Deacon said as he shoved off of the gun rack behind him and looked at Danse.

Danse frowned for a moment, and then nodded. The words came grudgingly, but there this wasn't the time to let his distaste for the... thing his Knight called her best friend cloud his judgment. "You're right. Someone needs to go find Valentine. Piper and Macready too."

"That's... not what I meant," Deacon drawled as his brows lifted towards the stone ceiling. "But it's not a bad idea either."

Preston's gaze darted towards the door. "Piper and Macready volunteered to go out to Abernathy Farm to help with a kidnapping. Even if they turn around now, there's no way they'll be back for at least a couple more days."

"And Valentine?"

"He's in Diamond City wrapping up a couple of cases," Deacon said. "I'll go get him and bring him back."

"I'm coming with ya,"Cait said.

Deacon's lips twitched. "It's alright. I'm a big enough boy to make it there and back on my own."

"I don't care. I can't just sit around here with me thumb up me arse, like him," she said as she tossed a glare at Danse, her fists clenching as though she wanted to take a swing or two despite his power armor.

"Alright. Let's go get Nick before you do something stupid," Deacon said as he grabbed her elbow and steered her out the door. "We'll be back as soon as we can."

"What about you? You going to stick around, or haul ass back to Prydwen?" Hancock asked when Deacon and Cait were gone, his gaze sweeping up and down Danse's power armor as though the ghoul had the audacity to take his measure.

Danse's shoulders straightened under the scrutiny. "I'm not going anywhere. Although I will contact the Prydwen and have them send a vertibird to pick up Piper and Macready once they've been contacted and located."

"That's got to break every protocol in the Brotherhood's book. They'll do that?" Preston asked as he headed towards the door.

The ghoul and the soldier followed him, pausing only for a moment when Danse said, "Yes." When both Hancock and Garvey shot him surprised looks, he added with a shrug, "One of the pilots owes me a favor or two."

"Favors, huh? That sounds kind of shady for such a stand up member of the Brotherhood," Hancock said, his rasping voice almost sounding like he approved. "Didn't know you had it in you, Danse. I'm impressed."

It was on the tip of Danse's tongue to snap that he didn't give a damn if the ghoul approved or not when Garvey interrupted. "Good. But someone's got to watch her in the meantime. We all know which one of us that should be."

Danse managed not to flinch when the Minuteman and the ghoul stopped in front the entrance to the corridor leading to the base commander's office and looked at him. He might not like either of them, but that didn't make them wrong. Turning his back on her now, if she truly needed him, wasn't an option.

"You're right. She's my subordinate, my soldier, and a sister-in-arms. It's my duty to check in on her."

"Fuck me," Hancock said as his lip curled into a snarl exposing his pink tongue and crooked brown teeth. He jabbed a bony finger at Danse's chest. "She's just lost her son. This duty and honor bullshit isn't what she needs right now and you fucking well know it. Even you can't be that oblivious."

Garvey stepped between them. "Hancock, this isn't the time."

"No this is exactly the time. If he can't go in there and act like a god damn human being for once, then he needs to get the fuck out of the way and let one of us do it."

"I'm a soldier and a squad commander. It's not the first time I've had to handle something like this," Danse ground out, squelching the doubt in the back of his mind pointing out that he hadn't so much handled Scribe Haylen and as he'd reacted as best as he could to what had fallen squarely in his lap. "I know what I need to do. Now back off, ghoul, and let me through."

Hancock's eyes narrowed as the ghoul muttered something through crooked clenched teeth that sounded like, "Asshole."

Danse ignored the insult, stepped around the pair of men and made his way through the dimly lit corridor to the end of the hall. He stopped in front of the closed commander's office door, took a deep breath and knocked.

"Is everything all right in there, soldier?"

There was no sound from inside which didn't surprise him. The way the door was locked, however, did. The only answer he got was whining at his feet. Danse looked down and saw Dogmeat ears perked, head cocked to the side as the dog sniffed the door. Then the dog barked, leapt up, and began to claw frantically at the wood.

Cold fear sluiced over him. For the first time since they'd met, Danse used her first name as he pounded on the door with his fist. "Nora, are you in there? Are you alright?"

The keening wail that came from the other side made the hair on the back of Danse's neck stand on end. It was a terrifying and inhuman noise, a cry of rage and grief that only a mother who'd lost her child could make, and for a moment he couldn't do anything but freeze in the hallway, fist on the door, while Dogmeat barked and whined. But as terrible as that noise was, the single gunshot that followed was so much worse. He was barely aware of the footsteps echoing down the hall towards him because his heart had stopped in his chest.

"No, no, no," he breathed as he threw his shoulder into the doors. The old wood didn't stand a chance against the full bulk of his power armor and the door splintered and cracked under his weight.

Danse forced himself to look as he pushed past the broken wood and stumbled inside, certain that he was going to find her lying in a bloody puddle on the floor with a bullet through her head. He blinked, his knees going weak with both relief and shock when he saw that not only was she was alive, but firing off a series of shots at the Giddyup Buttercup toy that sat in the corner.

"What the hell are you doing?" he bellowed, his anger over being terrified out of his mind making his voice hard and sharp as he glared at her.

Nora ignored him and kept blowing holes in the mechanical horse she had painfully hunted down, reassembled and painted for her son, as tears streaked down her cheeks. She pulled the trigger at least four times even after the clip was empty until she finally tossed the pistol aside. Her full lips curled into a snarl when the weapon hit the wall, and she looked around, her eyes no longer dead, but glinting with a feverish madness at the toys that she had painstakingly gathered during the search for her son.

Nora's gaze landed on the baseball bat propped up in the corner and before he could stop her, she'd snatched the bat up and swung it with all of her strength at a shelf of full of toys, smashing the toy cars and rockets lined up in a neat row with a cry of pure fury. When they were mangled and shattered, she moved on to the magazine rack of comic books on the back wall.

"Dammit, stand down," he snapped, but Nora didn't listen to him, or maybe she just couldn't hear him through the fog of her destructive grief. Behind him he could hear the sounds of panic and curiosity echoing down the hall, punctuated by Dogmeat's frenzied barking. Garvey's voice rose above the commotion, he was probably trying to restore order amongst his troops, but Danse knew if he didn't do something soon, Nora's grief was going to have an unintended audience.

As ragtag and undisciplined as the Minutemen were, the fact that they were effective at all was due to Nora's leadership. He'd watched her build them up from nothing, and while they weren't the Brotherhood, the idea that they'd see their commander like this, that she'd lose face in front of her troops, didn't sit well with him. So Danse did the only thing he could think of in the circumstances, turning his back on her for a moment as he planted his power armor in front of the hole he'd broken in the doors, disengaging the mechanical claps and stepping out of the suit. It wouldn't keep people out if they really wanted to come in, but it would block some of the view. As for the rest, he'd have to trust Hancock and Garvey to get the situation under control.

Heedless of the commotion she was causing, Nora continued her assault on the toys she'd gathered, slamming the magazine rack so hard that the wood of the bat cracked in her hands. Even when it splintered and broke into a jagged edge, she dropped the bat but didn't stop her assault, slamming her fists into the hard wood, and Danse realized that she was going to continue her grief fueled rampage, until she either collapsed from exhaustion or pummeled herself into a bloody pulp. So he waited until he had an opening and grabbed her wrists from behind.

Out of all of the months that they'd fought shoulder to shoulder they'd never touched before. The heat that curled tight and low from the skin to skin contact caught him off guard enough that she almost twisted out of his grip. The contact seemed to shock her too, enough for her to finally acknowledge his presence for the first time since she'd stepped off of the teleportation pad.

"Let me go, you son of a bitch!"

Danse planted his feet and stood his ground, as the word rumbled from his chest. "No."

His denial seemed to only fuel her fury, as she twisted and cursed at him between grief choked sobs that tore from her throat. She thrashed in his grip like a rabid mole rat. Afraid that she was going to dislocate her shoulder or worse, Danse pulled her closer into the circle of his arms until her back was flush against his chest and his arms were around her like a vise.

Nora might have been the best shot with a long distance rifle that he'd ever seen and not too shabby with pistols and shotguns either, but she had absolutely no experience at hand to hand combat. He was bigger and stronger and had trained half of his life to fight, so she had no real chance to break free. Yet still she fought him, for how long he couldn't say, just that by the time they sank down onto the rocket covered carpet, his arms and chest ached like hell.

Bruises had already started to ring her wrists and she was struggling less, but the tears sliding down her pale cheeks showed no sign of slowing down. "You were right," she somehow managed to say through hiccupping sobs that wracked her trembling shoulders. "All that stuff I picked up as we travelled? It was just garbage."

"I was being an ass," he said, not for the first time regretting his frustrated impatientience that had driven him to snap those thoughtless words. At first he thought she was just some kind of undisciplined pack rat, hoarding random objects that caught her eye as they travelled. He'd felt like an idiot later when it finally occurred to him that she was picking up toys for her son. "I shouldn't have said those things. I didn't understand what you were trying to do."

Nora didn't say anything, her shoulders just slumped forward as more tears came. Danse let her go enough to turn her to her side so he could pull her onto his lap and gather her against his chest.

"It's not fair," she said as she buried her face in the crook of his neck, punctuating the words by pounding his chest with her fist. He bore the pain without protest, knowing that it was nothing in comparison to the hurt she was feeling right now.

"No. It's not," he said, murmuring his agreement against her temple as he slid one of his hands into her ebony hair. With a tired whimper, Nora finally gave up the fight and leaned against him, clutching the fabric of the blue brotherhood fatigues like she was in danger of drowning. Danse sat with her until his back ached, his legs went numb, and his shirt was soaked from her tears. Until her breathing became even and she slumped against him as exhaustion finally overtook her.

It was the padding of leather boots against stone that made him look up. Hancock, holding a syringe full of chems, crouched down next to them. "It's not anything bad. I swear. Just a mild cocktail of sedatives from the doc, okay? I figured she's going to need this tonight."

Danse nodded. He might not like the ghoul, but he knew the freak wouldn't give Nora anything that would hurt her – at least not unless she asked for it. So he waited until the shot was over, then shifted so that he could lift her up and carry her to bed.

Once he had her settled with the dog curled up next to her, Danse groaned and rolled his stiff shoulders, surprised again when he found Hancock once again at his side, this time holding out the remnants of a fifth of whiskey. "This is for you, since I figure after that, you could use something too." There was a long pause, and then. "You did alright, soldier boy."

Danse considered the offering for a moment before taking the liquor, twisting off the top and taking a grateful swallow. The liquid burned like energy blasts down his throat, but it did seem to help ease the cold knot in his belly.

"Thanks," he grunted.

Hancock waved his gratitude away with one deformed hand. "What do we do now?"

"I don't know," Danse said. What had happened with Scribe Haylen hadn't prepared him for the depth of Nora's grief. This wasn't something that she was going to work out of her system with a destructive rampage and one night of crying. At a loss, Danse's gaze drifted to the mangled toys that littered the room. There was at least one thing they could do. "We need get these toys out of here. It hurts her too much to see them."

Hancock placed his hands on his bony hips and nodded. "On it. I'll get Preston to help too when he's done convincing the rest of the Minutemen that this was all just a freak out over a radroach infestation. You just sit tight in case she wakes up."

"I'm not going anywhere," Danse said as he pulled up a nearby chair and settled in, and for the rest of the night, the Paladin kept watch, swearing to himself that he was going to do whatever it took to get her through this whether she wanted it or not.