Chapter 4 – Sweet Dreams

She lay in the dirt, splashes of light danced before her eyes and high pitched tones rang in her ears. The grenades explosion had knocked her off her feet and flung her back several feet and she was, understandably, a little dazed. She shoulder stung horribly as she struggled to her knees and then to her feet with a wobble in her equilibrium.

She blinked to clear her wavering vision and looked about desperately for her companion. He had been right on top of the explosive when it had gone off and he had been knocked back by it too. She saw his power armour casing laying unmoving on its back in the roadway. She stumbled towards it, fighting off dizziness and came down on her knees next to him.

"Danse!" She called urgently, her voice hoarse, "Danse, wake up."

She clanged on the armour with her knuckles, she couldn't help him while he was encased in there.

"Danse…!" she called louder, tapping again "You have to open up, I can't …" She pried at the helmet with a grunt, knowing it was useless. He needed to open it from the inside.

"I can't do anything…" She whispered to herself, helplessly.

The armour made a strained humming sound and the back struggled to open into the ground. It elevated with painful slowness and Danses inert frame thumped onto the dirt underneath it. He was out cold, coming to only long enough to push the vital button that would release him.

Max dragged him out from under the Power Armour with relief and then quickly went over his body for damage. His nose was bleeding freely, but there was nothing else that she could see right away. She pulled back his eyelid with one hand as she dug into one of her pockets and jabbed him with a stimpak with the other. His warm brown irises weren't in view at all, having rolled up into his head.

She couldn't leave him in the road out in the open like this, they needed shelter. But there was no way she could lift him on her own to move him. He was six foot three and weighed in the vicinity of about two hundred and twenty pounds. She was strong but not quite that strong. She looked about for a solution when her eyes fell on the armour laying on the ground next to her… it wasn't fitted to her, but she should be able to use it. Shouldn't she?

She lay on her back and shimmied under the armour and hoisted herself up into it with difficulty, she couldn't get into the helmet with her own on, so she pulled it off her head roughly and dumped it on the road. She made it into place and had to hold herself rigid so as not to fall out again. Damn you gravity, she thought.

"Please don't be biometrically tagged… Please don't be biometrically tagged…" She prayed quietly to herself as she depressed the button at her left thumb. She held it down and waited… "FUUUUUUUUUUCK!" She shouted in frustration, before she felt the Armour slowly closing and lowering her to the ground behind her. She took a deep breath to calm herself, it wasn't tagged just stuck for a second on the hard ground. Once it was properly closed, she lay on her back in the dust as the systems engaged with a beep.

She sat up and got clumsily to her feet. She had never been in T60 armour before. It was a little more complicated and advanced than the T45 she had trained in so long ago and different again from the X01 she had back at Sanctuary. She familiarised herself with the newer controls and then gathered up her discarded helmet and shotgun, Danses laser rifle and then Danse himself, lifting him with care. She set off towards Westons. She would come back for her rifle after she saw to Danse, it was unlikely that it would be found under the dried bush that she had tossed it under as she had run down to the road.

She approached the plant with caution, but the supermutants had cleared it themselves, sending everyone out to confront them, not even leaving one single guard behind. Stupid, she thought.

She splashed through the flooded compound to the entrance of the administration building, where she set Danse down with gentle hands on the concrete steps. She took Danses laser rifle off her shoulder and opened the door quietly. A quick recon showed the building to be deserted, the Mutants choosing to build their own unstable shacks outside rather than utilise the intact and dry building. So Stupid. She thought again. The FEV might make them big, strong and resilient, but it certainly didn't improve their IQ's.

She went back to claim Danse and sourced one of the tidier old offices to hole up in. She cleared a space on the floor and laid Danse in it before walking to the corner of the room and exiting the power armour. She noted the blood smeared on the inside from her own shoulder and felt the wound with her good hand and winced. Her hand came away bloody as she had expected it would. She dug into her pocket again and administered a Stimpak. It was fine, she'd check it later. Danse was more important.

She knelt by his side and checked him over properly this time. She unbuckled and unzipped him from his Brotherhood jumpsuit and pulled the hood off his head, blinking in surprise at the mass of slightly overlong but tidy ebony hair that it covered. She had never seen him without the hood. She had thought he had a shaved head like Rhys.

"Huh…" She mused, running her fingers through it looking for head injuries. She found none, but marvelled again at the silky strands in a now artfully dishevelled state. She wiped the blood from beneath his nose. He was more good looking than she had first thought.

She eased the jumpsuit off him, followed but his boots, checking him over as she did, concluding that he was only concussed from the explosion, thanks to his armour and the Stimpak would limit and then repair and damage. She folded his jumpsuit and dumped it on the floor next to him, leaving him in his underwear & socks. She put his boots by the door.

She left him to sleep it off, while she jogged back to the hill to retrieve 'The Last Thing'. It lay where she had dropped it. She took it up, gave it a quick once over and then jogged back to her slumbering partner. She tidied up the room a little and set out their supplies to take stock. They had enough food and water between them to last a couple of days, she had two more Stimpaks and Danse had two of his own, they each had a Radaway and a Rad-X. She had 2 mags of 50cal, 3 clips of 10mm and a dozen 12 gauge shells and there were half a dozen fusion cells for Danses rifle. With the ammo that was already in their weapons, they were in pretty good shape, considering one of them had a hole in their body and the other was unconscious.

She looked at Danse as he murmured in his sleep, he turned his head and muttered something, his brow wrinkling for a moment threatening to frown. She gave a brief smile and started to tend her own injury, stripping off her armour and unzipping her leather jacket. She eased it off her shoulder, which was still seeping blood but was better than it had been. She held up her jacket noting the twin holes in the front and back. At least the bullet went right through and she wouldn't need to dig it out.

She threw her jacket onto an obliging hat stand by the door and sat down on the desk. She pulled her dirty white singlet over her head and took off the thread bare bra beneath as well. Both were stained, wet and sticky with her blood. She laid them on the desk and wiped the shoulder wound down with clean water. She could almost see the stimpak doing its work, the wound slowing closing up on its own. She'd need another hit for it to heal enough for her to use her shoulder effectively.

Once clean, she used a little of the precious water to rinse some of the blood from her top and bra and jacket and left them all to dry on the hat rack. She made sure Danse was comfortable and still breathing well. Before pulling on his oversized jumpsuit, so she didn't have to explore the place topless. She drew her 10mm and stepped out into the hall.

The building was in pretty good condition, all things considered. She wandered the halls systematically gathering all that was useful as she went. From a terminal she saw that the pumps had stopped and the lower levels of the plant were flooded. She would have to travel down when Danse was back on his feet and secured once again inside his tin can. She would need someone to watch her back while she worked to get the pumps going. Everyone knew that where there was water, you could be damned sure there would be mirelurks.

She returned to the office and set down her spoils. It was a good haul. She'd even found a fusion core. She shucked up the sleeves of Danses jumpsuit and lowered herself down on the floor across from him, her back leaning against the old desk. She chuckled quietly to herself as her eyes wandered over his sleeping form. He looked peaceful in his tank top, briefs and socks. His face smooth of frown lines and with that shock of dark hair, he was a very handsome man. Tack onto that, his lean and muscular body and he was downright sexy as hell. It would be a shame when he suited up in his armour and his perpetual frown again.

He muttered something in his sleep and turned his head. His fingers started to twitch on his right hand and she grinned… he was dreaming. She had never seen him sleep before, he was always on watch or sequestered elsewhere when everyone bedded down at the Station. She watched for a little while as he began to move about more and more. The grin slipping away as he began to become more desperately vocal and he began to whimper.

"Oh no…" She whispered sadly.

She'd seen this before, too many times next to her in her own bed in the old world, before the bombs. Nate had done the same thing. She herself had been haunted by the things she'd seen and done but Nate's PTSD was more entrenched in him… It seemed to be a soldiers burden, another horrible scar from the harsh reality of war.

Danse began to violently thrash about, his voice straining as he saw his own horrors in his head. Sweat began to bead on his forehead and across his shoulders. Acting on instinct, Max moved to him quickly and sank to her knees, bending over him, beginning to caress his face the same way that she had for Nate all those years ago. Just so he knew that he wasn't alone in his nightmare. She whispered that she was there.

Danses eyes flew open, wide and unfocused. "Cutler …" he breathed, pleadingly, his voice raw and ravaged. "I'm sorry…" His eyes fluttered closed again, but he continued to squirm in his sleep.

She sat down against the wall at his crown and gently lifted his head onto her thigh. She gently placed her left hand onto his chest, running her fingers back and forth against the fabric of his tank top and gently stroked his face with the other hand, running her cool fingers over his brow and sinking them into his hair. She started to softly talk to him, making her voice as calm and as even as she could.

"Danse, you're safe," She intoned, soothingly, "I'm here with you, you're not alone, everything's OK…" her voice droned on and on.

His movements eased and he was soon still and breathing normally. She lay her head back against the wall and closed her own eyes, her fingers still trailing across his wide and firm chest and lazily stroking the hair back from his brow.

She continued her incantation throughout the night, "… you're safe, I'm here, you're not alone…I'll never leave you alone…" A tear ran down her cheek.

Nate…