*So just a warning that this fic in particular in going to be heavy on feels. Definitely gonna work some fun stuff/action/smut in along the way, but Rose has a lot of emotional turmoil that she needs to work through.
For those of you that are still reading this series, THANK YOU! Your love/favs/comments give me life. You guys are the reason why I love spending hours and hours doing what I do. 3*
After barely surviving her first encounter with a deathclaw in Concord, Rose had privately promised herself that she would avoid another encounter at all costs. That reptilian behemoth- an apocalyptic monster straight out of a nightmare- had come close to gutting her even with the power armor suit she had been wearing.
Then she'd had to fight off a second one with nothing but her shotgun and a knife when it attacked Sanctuary in the middle of the night; she'd chalked that up to horrendously bad luck.
But now that she was engaged in a bodily wrestling match with another one, one hand shoved into its jaws and the other attempting to hold it in a headlock, she had to recognize that deathclaw battles had become a disturbingly frequent trend.
At least this one wasn't interested in killing her. Yet.
"Ichabod, no!" Rose growled as she tried to lock her arm in between the beast's neck spikes. "That is not a toy! Drop it! Drop that right now! CARA!"
"I thought I've fuckin' seen a lot in my day, but this about takes the cake." A redheaded woman with an Irish brogue watched the struggle from a few feet away, but seemed little inclined to help.
"I must say that this doesn't appear to be terribly safe, mum," Codsworth fretted, hovering next to her. "Is that animal even fully vaccinated?"
"That's a little beside the point, Codsworth," Rose snapped through clenched teeth. "Don't suppose you'd lend me a hand here, Cait?"
Ichabod shook his head, which rattled her entire frame. The young deathclaw had decided to make a power pylon his new chew toy; Rose was attempting to retrieve it. Currently she had her hand clenched onto the slim wooden pole that was still lodged in Ichabod's mouth. She would've let go and given up when the lizard began acting stubborn, but there was the risk that he'd slice open the copper wiring and electrocute himself… or potentially tear down the rest of the power lines rigged up around Sanctuary.
Cait laughed. "You might've bought my contract from Tommy, but you ain't payin' me that much."
"Then go find… my sister… or John… or anyone fucking useful!" Rose barked in between huffs of breath as she played tug-of-war with the pylon. Ichabod growled at her as she tried to force his jaws open, and swatted at her with his already impressive claws. She jerked to the side and smacked the tip of his nose with her open palm. "NO! Bad!"
Somewhere not far off, Rose could hear the familiar sound of her sister's laugh. A few moments later and her footsteps followed, tripping lightly on the rough road just behind Rose's back.
"Ah, Miss Cara!" Codsworth exclaimed in some relief. "I don't suppose you would help your sister in recovering that pylon?"
"Ichabod, what did you do?" Cara asked, amused. The cheery blonde stepped up beside Rose and snapped her fingers. "You drop that this instant!"
The deathclaw immediately spat out the pylon… or what was left of it. The reptile now outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds, if not more, but obeyed her with the solemnity of a devoted child listening to his mother. He stepped back and rested on his haunches, yellow slitted eyes watching her closely.
"Thanks," Rose said with a grimace as she got back to her feet. She shook her arm sharply a few times in an attempt to rid herself of the saliva that now drenched her left side. "You couldn't have come any sooner than that?"
"Oh, he was just playing," Cara said. She rubbed the scales underneath Ichabod's chin and the deathclaw made a happy rumble that wasn't quite a growl but wasn't a purr, either. "He didn't mean anything by it. Did you, baby?"
"If that's his play, I'd hate to see what happens when he gets pissed," Cait remarked. "He nearly took your sis's arm off just now."
"Ugh, now I smell like deathclaw breath," Rose said, wrinkling her nose as she picked at her shirt. "I'm going to go change. Do me a favor and make sure he doesn't destroy my entire settlement while I'm gone, okay? It took them weeks to set up those power lines."
"You got it," Cara replied, with a casual smile that came just a second too late. Rose pretended not to notice and turned away towards the bridge that connected Sanctuary with the Red Rocket Truck Stop.
"Who pissed in her cereal this mornin'?" she could hear Cait ask as she walked away. She didn't bother listening to Cara's admonishment.
It had been just over two weeks since Rose had confronted Shaun at the Institute. There were a number of things that had gone wrong- disastrously wrong- with that first encounter, the least of which being that Shaun was roughly five decades older than she'd been expecting. To add insult to injury, he had also tested an experimental anti-radiation drug on her without her permission, one that would rewrite her genetics to make her more capable of dealing with the rads aboveground. Since there were no visible side effects, he kept her in the dark until she found out on her own.
That had been the root of their most recent fight. Rose hadn't taken kindly to being used as a guinea pig by her own son, particularly without her knowledge or consent. She had left that confrontation with a warning not to contact her, and hadn't returned to the Institute or spoken with her son since.
For the past several days, she and her little family of misfits had been staying in Sanctuary. Rose had decided it was time to move Cara over now that Ichabod had outgrown the tighter confines of Goodneighbor's walls. Cara pushed back at first, but when the 250-lb reptile and Dogmeat got into a game of interspecies tag that had nearly left the front gates in splinters, she reluctantly agreed.
And if nothing else, playing General and looking after the needs of the settlements were a welcome distraction. Goodneighbor had come to feel a lot like home, but it was a little too close to everything Rose was trying not to think about. Sanctuary, on the other hand, was clear across the Commonwealth and had more than enough menial problems to keep her occupied. For now.
Originally the plan had been for just the five of them- Rose, Hancock, Cara, Dogmeat, and Ichabod- to make the trek. Before they left, Rose had received a request for help from several traders who were being harassed by raiders from the Combat Zone. That problem had been swiftly taken care of, but left them with another new member to the party: Cait, a foulmouthed cage fighter with some serious addiction problems. Rose had been reluctant to accept the unstable newcomer, but had caved when her old boss practically begged them to help out.
Her patience had officially started to run thin when they arrived in Sanctuary and found Preston Garvey already at the settlement. Her second-in-command normally stayed at the Castle, where he could help oversee the goings-on of the Minutemen in Rose's absence. According to him, he had just so happened to have been escorting a new family safely across the Commonwealth, which was how he ended up across the map at exactly the same time she had.
It was partially true- Rose had seen a few shy faces that she hadn't gotten around to meeting yet- but that was a job that anyone could have accomplished. She hadn't checked in with Preston or the Castle since getting back, apart from radioing them to let them know she was okay. She had a sneaking suspicion that someone- and she had a few ideas of who- had sent word out to the minutemen stronghold so that Preston could meet them and keep an eye on her.
And if she had any doubts about that, the fact that they were all walking on eggshells around her was obvious enough. It was driving her mad.
Rose sighed with relief when she spotted the truck stop over the hill and didn't immediately see anyone else hanging around. She knew it was all out of love, but the worry and special handling was suffocating. It was a constant reminder of the flaming train wreck her life had become. Not for the first time since coming back, she wished she could go back to the way things were… before she had zapped herself into the Institute.
Not long ago she would have given anything to find her son. Now, she'd give anything just to go back to being the vigilante of the Commonwealth.
She stripped out of her shirt and used the water pump she had built out back to rinse off what was left of the deathclaw drool. It was a cool day outside, and the water was chilled enough to make her jump when she splashed it against her skin. Winter was coming on fast. The nukes had altered the climate enough that winters in the Commonwealth were no longer covered in snow and ice, but late in the season it still got cold enough to be a problem for travelers. Rain and radstorms became more common, too. She had her work cut out for her if she wanted to check in on all her settlements before the weather got too unmanageable.
Feeling a little less gross, Rose stepped through the open garage into the interior of the truck stop. The darkness and the quiet were like a balm after spending the whole day helping others with their problems. She dug through her pack to find a new shirt, and paused when her fingers brushed against a dose of Jet.
She wrapped her fingers around the small inhaler and leaned back against the metal frame of the bed. Drug paraphernalia had become commonplace once she had started traveling with Hancock, but this wasn't his. It was hers.
She'd only used drugs occasionally before… usually to give her an extra boost in a fight. But she'd discovered that there were several chems that did an excellent job of clearing her mind of any thoughts about Shaun or the Institute, at least for a little while. She was beginning to understand why Hancock was high as often as he was. It was like all the bad things that had happened were radio stations put on loop in her head, with the volume blasting as loud as it could go. The chems helped turn that volume down; sometimes they even changed the station completely.
She wished she could forget all about Shaun. Sometimes she woke up at night thinking that it had all been a dream, that she hadn't really discovered that the baby boy she'd been searching for had become a man twice her age. Or that he had grown into a sociopathic mad scientist with a serious god complex. Or that he had watched her struggle for months in the wasteland because he was bored and wanted to see how far she'd get. Or that he'd been perfectly okay with altering her DNA and risking her dying, going completely ghoul, or going feral, just so he could test a drug that might help humans better withstand radiation.
Rose lightly banged her head against the bedframe and sighed. Almost without thinking about it, her hand went to rest against her abdomen. She'd gone to see Amari shortly after her impromptu visit to the Glowing Sea… a trip which still left Hancock threatening to handcuff her to the bed whenever it came up in conversation. She'd had the doctor run every test she could think of so that they'd have a better idea of what exactly Shaun had done to her while she was unconscious in the Institute. The tests had all mostly confirmed what Shaun had already told her: radiation rejuvenated her cells, rather than damaging them. Rose luckily didn't suffer the physical effects of the ghoulifying drug, the way Hancock had when he'd taken it in its earlier form. Or at least, she hadn't yet. The deterioration involved in becoming a ghoul took time, but it had been three weeks since Shaun had given her the drug, and she looked as human as ever.
Amari thought it was likely Rose would have the longer life span, and possibly even the chem resistance, as well. All good things, supposedly… no matter how objectionable Shaun's methods had been.
But Amari had also told Rose that it was more than likely that the drug had made her infertile, like other ghouls. That was something she hadn't shared with Hancock, at least not yet. More children wasn't something that she wanted… and she had known from the start that it wouldn't have been possible with him, even if he were willing to try. But there was a difference between choosing not to want something, and being told that it was no longer a possibility.
Maybe it was some sense of pre-war values or vanity, but being told she was essentially barren made her feel incomplete, in a way that nothing else had. She'd grown up eavesdropping on her mother's whispered conversations with friends about other women who couldn't- or wouldn't- give their husbands children. All of them had been subjects of pity or scorn, sometimes both. And now she was one of them… and a failed mother to boot. She felt the sting all the more acutely now that she no longer had a little boy to raise.
She was failing, at everything. Every single one of the goals she'd had before disappearing into that vault had gone nuclear along with the rest of the world.
Grimacing, Rose gave the Jet a sharp shake, then held the inhaler to her lips. The acrid taste of bleach misted over her tongue, and was followed by a warm wave as everything seemed to slow down and fade into the background.