All the cities in the world
And so very little time and
So many different girls...
All you have to do is find them.
They gave her the code name "Charmer," but, really, Deacon is the charming one. He's the one who makes everyone laugh - and then roll their eyes because they all know he's probably lying.
Probably.
And when they lay side by side like this, peeking out at the stars in the cracks between the ceiling tiles, she can almost believe he meant half of what he said.
"Why do you do it, Deacon?" Jolene asks, voice ringing loud in her ears in the quiet of the night. They are both supposed to be sleeping, the building is supposed to be secure, but...Neither of them follow the rules very well.
"Do what, babe?" His question comes back in a rough voice, hungry for sleep or...she doesn't know. Jolene can't guess with Deacon what he thinks or wants.
"You know. Why do you fight like this? Why join the Railroad?" She turns to look at him, but in the dim, she can only make out the faint light spot where his shirt is. He's been wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, an old leather jacket: looking for all the world like some old movie star.
"I told you the story before, Jolene. The gang, the wife, yadda yadda. Sob story stuff. You don't wanna hear that again."
No, she doesn't. What she wants to hear is the truth, and she isn't sure if he's ever given it to her.
"Sure," Jolene agrees, too quickly and immediately regrets it. Wishes she had the guts to fight back against the lies that flowed so readily from Deacon's mouth. Wishes she had the courage to discover what was real and what wasn't.
"Why'd you join up?" He counters smoothly.
"I didn't plan on being a...being a freedom fighter," Jolene snorts. "Hell, I didn't plan on any of this." Not the War, not the bombs, not what they did to her husband and her son and her own body in that damned vault.
"With everything so different, I just...I just wanted somewhere to fit in, ya know? And helping people, no matter what they're made of, seemed like the right thing to do." Her cheeks burn with the shame of honesty, even though she knows Deacon can't make out her face in the dark. She feels exposed.
"Told Desdemona I knew how to pick 'em. Saying shit like that, you were born for bringing the fight to the man," humor tinges Deacon's words, and she regrets again being so forthright. Should've counted on him to answer her honesty with a damned joke.
Jolene rolls on her side, back facing him. "Goodnight, Deacon," she says, and she doesn't wait to hear his reply.
There's a wealth of opportunity, you plan your trips accordingly.
A pity, but the pretty ones are usually more touristy.
Say, how'd you like to run away from these machines?
Everywhere the spies are printing out your dreams.
She cries when H2-22 doesn't remember her, and she feels like a damned fool. The rest of the Railroad is poker faces all around, and Jolene knows they've done this before a hundred times, that they're probably numb to it all because they have to be...
But still. H2-22 was so kind and open and honest and scared. The synth had needed their help - her help - to be free from the Institute that would rip him apart and reprogram him like some kind of broken machine. But still.
Now that they've wiped his memories, he's different. Harsher, brusque. Jolene knows it's for his own safety: a synth that doesn't remember he's a machine from the Institute stands a better chance of hiding.
But with his personality just erased like that...it's like they murdered him. Like she murdered him.
Jolene fights back a choked sob, and Dr. Amari gives her a reproachful look. "We did the right thing, in resetting his memories," the doctor reminds her, though it sounds more like scolding. "Never regret saving a life."
"I could say something Shakespearean about tragedy and memory..." Deacon starts to quip, but Jolene cuts him short with what she hopes is a withering glare.
Later, when she's alone in her room at the Railroad HQ, she listens to the holotape of H2-22's last words.
"The doctor said I could say goodbye. I've decided... to have the operation. I know I'll lose all my memories. I don't want you to be sad..." Jolene bites back a sob with her teeth against her knuckles.
"Everyone says I'll be safer if I start a new life. I know I'll be happier. My only regret is I'll forget...Old Man Stockton. High Rise. And you. Looking back, there's only fear. Worse than fear. But I will miss my new... friends."
"I'll miss you too, H2," Jolene whispers through her tears.
Right now we're here in Boston,
In love with downtown crossing.
New York will be there in the morning.
Come back to bed, my darling
The next rescue mission hits her with a little less fury. Maybe because she's prepared this time, doesn't let herself get attached to the synth they're rescuing.
This time, as she collapses onto her thin mattress in the tiny nook of her room, there's a knock at the door, and she's not so alone.
It's Deacon, and he's brought some decent whiskey he smuggled in from who knows where. "Pretty girl like you shouldn't have to cry by herself. I brought booze!" He wiggles a shot glass triumphantly in his hand. "And I brought my dashing shoulder for you to lean on."
Jolene bursts into a full laugh despite her melancholy. "Thanks, Deacon."
They sit together on her tiny bed, since there aren't any chairs. Both of their backs against the worn brick wall, shoulders pressed together in a way that makes her blush warm down her face to her chest.
Deacon pours them both a finger of whiskey and starts talking in that familiar, casual way of his. Like they've known each other forever, even though she barely knows the first thing about him, not for real.
"I ever tell you about the time Tinker Tom set Desdemona's scarf on fire?"
"He did not."
"He did. You should've seen her face..."
- she awakens with a jolt and a rush of fear. In her dreams, she was back in Vault 111, watching helpless as Kellogg murdered her husband.
Jolene runs a hand through sweaty hair and sits up with bleary eyes. Her limbs are splayed awkwardly across the bed, and underground without a clock, there's no way to tell what time it is. Her PipBoy beeps once from its position on the room's only table.
"Wha -?"
"Didn't mean to startle you, babe. I was just leaving," Deacon is standing by the door, clothes rumpled. "Looks like we fell asleep and didn't even finish all the booze." He tsks.
"Oh," Jolene's face runs hot. "Uh...sorry about that. I -"
"Don't worry about it," Deacon dismisses her concerns with an easy wave of his hand. "Probably the most sleep either of us has gotten in a while."
"Come on, I'll make you breakfast," he continues breezily. "I found this 'Kiss the Cook' apron, and you gotta see this thing."
And tomorrow you can totally erase me from your mind,
but trust me everything is fine
It had become their habit: him in her room at night, her letting him comfort her.
Tonight they're eating grilled cheese - or the post-apocalyptic approximation of one: the cheese goo from Blamco Mac N Cheese boxes and a hard bread made out of razorgrain. She doesn't even mind the crumbs he gets on the sheets because she's convinced herself that, as long as he helps her forget about what she's lost, it doesn't matter how much he lies.
"So you're Desdemona's best agent, huh?" She grins at him, an inelegant bite of sandwich in his mouth, a glob of cheese on his chin. Today he wore an old bowling league shirt and khakis and looked completely ridiculous, especially with his shaved head and sunglasses.
"Oh, absolutely," Jolene keeps on chewing. "I'm a master of disguise. Charming as hell."
"So I can see. I bet the cheese on your face adds a certain something to your whole 'debonair spy' gig."
Deacon snorts a laugh. "You should've seen the time I had to hide out in a dumpster in Goodneighbor. A damned dumpster."
She raises a brow and holds back a laugh. "You did not."
"No, I did. Had this hat made out of tin cans and rotten tatos. It was disgusting." Jolene makes a face, and Deacon grins back. "Lemme tell you: I stank to high heaven for a week after that. That was one hell of a job."
"Did you get your man? Or synth?" Jolene finishes her sandwich, scoots closer to lean comfortably against his shoulder. She doesn't blush at this contact anymore: it's normal for them.
"I always do," Deacon answers with just the right amount of swagger and that cocky smile that still makes her heart skip a beat.
"But, ya know, you're not all that bad yourself, babe. Because you," Deacon wraps his arm around her shoulders, addresses his words in soft breaths at her ear. "You are one big, beautiful distraction."
Her blush blooms bright and hot across her face, and Jolene hates that Deacon gets to hide behind his sunglasses, even here. She reaches for them, stops halfway and settles her trembling hand against his cheek.
A hint of stubble rasps against her palm, and her breath catches in her throat. "You know what you are, Deacon?" Jolene strokes his skin with her thumb. "A big fucking liar." She drops her arm, tucks it against her side protectively. She drops eye contact too, afraid of what he might see in her eyes.
"Only sometimes, babe," Deacon says, smooth as silk. Jolene wants to think he swallowed thickly, Adam's apple bobbing, just before he spoke, but she can't be sure.
She's never sure with Deacon, so she changes the topic swiftly.
"PAM any good at predicting your bullshit?" She asks about the robot, keeping her voice light once more.
Deacon laughs. "Nobody can pin me down, boss."
Later that night, she curls up alone and hates how cold her bed feels without him there.
And maybe you'll go mad.
And maybe I'll go gray
Before we really understand.
Or maybe it won't matter anyway.
They found the Institute. They found her son - or the bitter, hateful man he's become. They found all those synths, kept in slavery behind those concrete walls. And they found Phoenix, who will help to free them all.
But today she's just a pawn in Father's game.
There is a rogue synth - not just in the Institute's definition of "rogue," but in the Railroad's too. He is...violent, aggressive. Had set up a raider gang on an island made of floating burned-out dinghies.
The Institute Courser, designation X6-88, is waiting for them. Jolene gives Deacon's disguise a once-over, but, of course, it is perfect. He's a scruffy merc this time, complete with grizzled stubble and a wig of unruly black hair.
Jolene wonders which of his disguises is the real Deacon, but the thought gives her a headache, so she leads them to where the Courser is waiting.
"This mercenary used to run with this gang. He'll be useful," she says by way of introduction to X6. The synth doesn't look impressed, but his expression is just as enigmatic as Deacon's behind those sunglasses.
"Very well," he replies flatly, and the three make their way to where Gabriel has bunkered down.
Screams, heat, bullets. Sweat and a hammering heart - it's over barely as it's begun, and Jolene ducks for cover and returns fire at raiders automatically. It's become so routine she barely thinks about it anymore. Combat is just part of her daily life now, even if the nightmares won't let her sleep.
Gabriel resists X6's orders to surrender, and a sinking in her stomach tells Jolene that this is just one more moment she'll revisit in her restless dreams.
One moment Gabriel's a tough raider, fighting back for his life with everything he's got. The next, she's blandly reciting the string of letters and numbers that act as his recall code and he's complacent and vacant as a mannequin.
It's bloodless, but it feels like murder. And X6 teleports away with Gabriel's limp body, leaving them behind at the scene of the crime.
"What'd ya have to do that for?" Deacon's ire catches her off guard.
"What, reset his code?" Jolene's anger bites back just as quick. "I didn't want to, Deacon, but I had to. Just to keep those smug bastards happy. If they find out that I'm not what I say -"
"Fuck them, then."
"Dez told me to play along with everything they say. I can't risk blowing my cover, Deacon, and you know that."
"Fuck Dez too." The disapproving tilt of Jolene's eyebrows has him hurriedly continuing. "Sometimes she doesn't think about the people involved in all this, just the synths."
"Aren't they people too?"
"You know what I mean, boss."
Jolene sighs. She knows all too well. "When do you think we'll ever figure out what the hell we're doing, Deacon?"
Deacon just snorts. "Maybe when we're dead. Or, ya know, living in the woods as crazy old hermits with a moonshine still out back or something."
Right now I can be happy if I choose to.
I know that in the morning I will lose you...
Tomorrow they will put their mad plan into action: plant a bomb inside the Institute, free the synths, then blow the whole place into another irradiated crater.
They're fighting for freedom, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like the end, all over again. It kinda feels like murder.
Deacon welcomes himself into her room without knocking. She doesn't glance up at him but can see the faded plaid of today's costume from the corner of her eye. What would the real Deacon wear if he weren't always putting on a show?
"What the hell are we doing, Deacon?"
"We're saving the world, princess." She gives him a skeptical look, and he shrugs. "Or at least more synths than we've ever rescued before?"
Deacon sits on the bed next to her, pulls her close to him with an arm around her shoulders. "That's gotta count for something, right?"
"I guess," she doesn't sound convincing, even to herself. Jolene's just so tired of acting, of playing a role.
He presses a quick kiss at her brow. "What's got you so down, hm?"
"I hate the Institute, I do. It's just..." Jolene sighs. "Deacon, you haven't seen it. It's...there's so many people. Parents and kids too: people who've grown up like that and have no idea what it's like outside."
"And we're planting a bomb, Deacon. After what happened before!" Jolene raises her voice, anger she didn't know she possessed spilling to the surface. "A fucking bomb, as if the craters and radiation and destruction left aren't enough."
"Hey, hey," Deacon tugs her closer to him, their chests brushing close, breathing together. He smooths her hair with a hand. "You met Father, you met the other Institute head honchos. You know what they're like."
"I know but..."
A tear threatens at the corner of her eye, and Deacon wipes it away with the pad of his thumb. "No 'buts.' You know what they'll do to those synths, to everyone in the Commonwealth if we don't stop them. People deserve freedom, not that slavery under the Institute."
"But I lived through...the first time, the fear and panic was so...I don't even have the right words. But to see people scared like that was like being stabbed in the gut, and then to wake up and find all this...."
"Think about it this way," Deacon interrupts, his trademark smirk reappearing on his lips. "If you hadn't been all frozen, Sleeping Beauty, you wouldn't have woken up to meet me, your devilishly handsome Prince Charming."
A spike of want stabs through her fear, and before she can decide it's a bad idea, Jolene is straddling Deacon's lap, legs tucked awkwardly at her side on this tiny bed. Embarrassment and desire paint her cheeks red, but his hands appear warm at her waist, so she ignores her anxieties and smashes her lips into his.
The kiss is...awkward, too hard, too angry. Deacon takes a second to respond, before his surprised mouth is kissing her back, and damn, he's a good kisser because of course he is.
Memories flood her brain - her husband, Nate, and their last kiss before...
Oh god.
Jolene pulls away from Deacon like she's been slapped. She might love him, she thinks, and he'd be a good lover, she knows. He'd probably even just sleep with her for the night, distract her, if she wanted and they can just both forget about it tomorrow, no hard feelings.
But Nate's been dead just a year, and it...feels wrong. She feels guilty and hates herself for not letting go. But still.
"Are you o-?" He begins, and she speaks over him: "Oh god, I'm sorry. That was really stu-"
There's a knock at the door, and Drummer Boy peeks his head in.
"Sorry, it's Desdemona. She wants to see you both right away."
Jolene inelegantly tumbles off Deacon's lap, muttering further apologies, but he waves them away. "Nah, don't worry about it."
So she tries to keep her mind on the upcoming mission, and the next day, she's far too busy to remember what a fool she made of herself.
There is nothing in the world that we can count on,
Even that we will wake up is an assumption.
But I know for a fact that I loved someone,
And for a about a year he lived in Boston...
Behind her the Relay hums with energy, and the countdown she'd set on her PipBoy beeps with the seconds ticking away. They have two minutes to get everyone out before the reactor blows, burning everything living alive and destroying whatever's not.
Two minutes isn't enough time...is it? How much time did she and Nate have?
Just as before, she desperately looks around for Shaun - only this time, he's a synth boy created in her image instead of her flesh-and-blood baby. Her real son died a coward in a hospital bed, unwilling to right any of the wrongs he'd caused.
Jolene grabs the boy's hand and pulls him toward the Relay. Plaster and steel have begun to shake loose from the walls and the ceiling as the entire complex starts to collapse around itself. She hugs him close, promises he'll be safe, and then shoves him through the teleporter to safety.
"Everybody out!" Desdemona's voice rings out over the din of crashing ceiling tiles and scared shouts. "Thirty seconds!"
Oh god, not enough time.
"Deacon?!" Jolene spins in place, peering through the dust for the other Railroad agent.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," he appears at her side, voice shaky, covered in the gray dust of falling debris.
"Let's get ou-"
"STOP." An Institute scientist brandishes a laser pistol, his hands trembling violently, a trickle of blood flowing from a wound at his temple, staining his pristine white lab coat.
"It's over," Jolene snaps back. "Either come with us or stay here and die."
"I can't- I can't let you..." The scientist's eyes are shocked wide, disbelieving. "You've destroyed so much."
"It's over," Jolene repeats. She's trying to convince herself, even as the loudspeakers announce the bomb's countdown, reminding her of very real impending finality.
"Let's just go," Deacon tugs at her hand, real fear creeping into his voice. A fear she hasn't heard before.
The two turn their backs on the Institute scientist, but a scream of rage whips their heads back. There is a flash of light as the angered scientist fires his pistol, but his misses the two agents. Sparks ignite as the shot strikes the instrument control panel of the Relay.
Bitter smoke burns at Jolene's nostrils, but their time is up. They can't worry about one Institute scientist or a fire. All they can do is run.
SEVEN. SIX. FIVE...
Deacon grunts out as he pulls Jolene through the Relay. The scenery shifts, sickening gray, and her stomach flips over and over in the mere seconds it takes for the teleporter to deliver them somewhere new.
But something is wrong.
This is..this is not where they should be. There are no other Railroad agents, no Desdemona, no Shaun. No noise either, save for the crash of ocean waves on a dirty beach.
They're somewhere by the sea, north of Boston, whose ruined skyscrapers are dull smudges on the horizon.
Jolene bends over and dry-heaves over the filthy sand. Her head still swims from the Relay, but she forces herself upright.
"Deacon?" Her stomach threatens as she turns in place, searching for her friend.
There's no response, and Jolene's heart gives a sickening lurch.
"Deacon?" She repeats, combing the beach. Her hair whips into her eyes from the wind, and her ears strain for any sounds from Deacon.
Where is he?
There, tucked against a rock, is a flash of white: Deacon in his favorite t-shirt.
"Oh thank God," Jolene gasps and rushes to his side, but she pauses in her steps, petrified. Deacon isn't moving, and angry red smears his clothes.
"Deacon!"
Jolene throws herself to her knees beside him, his limbs and sunglasses both askew at horrible angles. No no no.
"Deacon?" She whispers, pressing her fingers to the pulse point at his neck. He's still breathing, heart's still beating - if only weakly. His stomach flutters red and black, singed from a laser shot.
"Heh, looks like..." Deacon coughs, eyes still closed. "Looks like I let that bastard get me."
"You'll be fine, Deacon," Jolene forces a weak smile. "We'll get you a stimpack, get you patched up..."
Deacon gives another wracking cough, blood trickling down his chin and staining his teeth. "Come on, babe, I thought you were better at lying than all that."
Jolene laughs, pinpricks of tears stinging her eyes. "That was always your role, Deacon."
"Hey, hey," he pulls her face to his, a bloody palm at her jawline. "Listen. Lemme tell you something important, okay?"
"Can't we - can't we do that later?" Jolene presses her hand against Deacon's open wound, hot wet blood coating her fingers. "We just need - "
"Listen, okay?" Deacon interrupts her. She nods weakly and straightens his sunglasses, trying not to get them bloody. He just looks wrong without them.
"I'm an asshole. You know that." Another half-hearted laugh from Jolene, and she squeezes his other hand to encourage him.
"But I just...I want you to know, Jo, I'm not always bullshitting you. And no matter what...I - I've always loved you."
Her heart stops. Her pulse is loud in her ears. Her sense of time stalls.
"...what?" Jolene whispers, leaning closer to Deacon, their noses almost brushing. "Do you - did you mean it?" She can barely breathe; her head is light.
But there is no answer from Deacon. His pulse has slowed, his grasp on her fingers weakened, his jaw slack.
He is dead.
No no no. God no.
Jolene pulls away, the tears hot and angry now. "Deacon! You lying bastard!"
She scrambles away from his body, his blood cooling on her hands. Blood pooling on the sand.
"You fucking lying bastard."
A flash of light behind her interrupts her cries, and Jolene angrily grips a clump of wet sand in her fist. The Railroad did it. They won.
But she's left alone on a beach, pitiful under the steel gray sky.
"I hate you," she whispers to Deacon. But she knows it's a lie.
Author's Note: Italicized lyrics are from the song "Boston" by the Dresden Dolls