Rachel dreamed.

She dreamed of home, of family, of going out dancing at the weekend, of quiet evenings and of lazy Sundays where she didn't get out of bed until past noon, the things she'd dreamed about almost every night since she had stumbled out of the hollow tomb of Vault 111 into a world she didn't recognise anymore.

She used to dream of those first few hours of sitting in the ruins of her old house with a loaded pistol in one hand and an empty bottle of whiskey in the other, only a couple of moments away from putting the weapon to her temple and pulling the trigger because the pain and guilt of simply being alive when Nate was not had been almost too much to bear. The only thing that had stopped her ending her own life with one quick twitch of her forefinger had been the faint hope of finding her son somewhere in the insanity of the world she had been trapped in.

She used to dream of being reunited with Shaun and raising him to be like his father – a strong, confident, loving, hilarious man who seemingly knew her every thought and tried every day to be a better person, the person he thought she deserved. She used to dream of being the mother she had always expected to be one day – the caring, compassionate woman who would take care of her child in every way possible, from teaching him to walk, to mending skinned knees, to comforting him when he came home from school after a hard day, to offering a shoulder to cry on after a difficult break-up. She used to dream of seeing her boy graduate from college, get a job, marry a pretty girl and start a family of his own. She used to dream of holding her newborn grandchildren in her arms and knowing she would leave a legacy behind.

She used to dream of feeling like she belonged somewhere.

She still dreamed, of course, but the big difference between her first freezing night alone in the ruins of Sanctuary and today was that, at some point she couldn't quite remember, those dreams had stopped looking back at her past with Nate and Shaun, and had begun looking forward to her future with Piper and Nat. Now she dreamed of settling down and growing old with the woman she had fallen so deeply in love with that she couldn't imagine a life without her. Now she dreamed of seeing Nat grow up and start complaining about how boys wouldn't leave her alone. Now she dreamed of how she was happy again. Now she dreamed that she had found the place where she belonged, the place she never wanted to leave.

At this particular moment, however, she dreamed because she seemingly had nowhere else to go. Her world was inky darkness punctuated by bright, gaudy flashes of memory…

… which she suddenly found herself torn out of as her eyelids flickered open. She blinked twice in quick succession, the bright, sterile light of her surroundings almost searing her tired eyes shut again. When they had adjusted a little, she turned her head to try to discover where she was, and saw Knight-Captain Cade standing to her left, withdrawing a needle from her arm.

"Where am I?" she said, her lips so slack and unresponsive that the words almost turned into one long indistinguishable sound.

Cade smiled. "You're in the medical bay of the Prydwen. I felt you were well enough to be woken, so I gave you a mild stimulant to bring you round."

"Have to… see Piper," Rachel mumbled, her mouth still not cooperating fully. She sat up, intent on leaving her bed and striding away, but instead her head became filled with a piercing ringing, making her clutch at her temples to try to tear it out. Cade simply put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down gently so that she was lying flat again, the pain in her skull fading to a dull ache behind her eyes. She moaned softly for a moment before she bit her lip and forced herself to ignore it.

"You're going nowhere until I say you can," Cade said sternly. "There are many things you need to recover from – you're lucky you didn't suffer massive head trauma from being hit by a fully-grown deathclaw, for a start. Your brain needs time to recuperate." He paused and gestured to her chest, where she could see three long lines of fresh train-track marks. "And those stitches will need time to help stop you from spilling your guts all over my floor. Do you know how long it takes to clean up that much mess? A long time, believe me. I've had to do it more times than I'd ever have liked. Now," and he gestured towards the doorway, "I believe there's someone here who would like to speak with you."

Rachel shifted her unfocused gaze in the direction Cade was indicating, and then she saw Piper leaning against the doorway, raising a single slender hand and smiling in a muted greeting. "Hey, Blue," she said in a slightly hoarse voice. "What's shakin'?" Then she looked at Cade as if she was asking for his permission to approach her, to which he responded with a brief nod before he turned away and retreated to a respectful distance, busying himself with some blood samples and paperwork. Once he had, Piper walked over to the chair by the side of her bed and sat down after kissing her gently on the forehead. "I missed you, you know," she said in an uncharacteristically soft tone. "For a while there I didn't think you were going to get out of that operating theatre alive."

"I thought you knew me better than that by now," Rachel replied, a hint of a smile ghosting across her face. "I wouldn't leave without bugging you at least once."

"Is that a guarantee I hear?" Piper pondered, with a smile of her own. "I'll keep that in mind." She paused for a moment, squeezing Rachel's hand gently. "How are you feeling?"

"In a word? Sore," Rachel said. "I haven't had this many stitches in me since before the war."

"What happened?" Piper asked, intrigued.

"I was in a car accident before I had Shaun," Rachel explained. "Nate and I were out driving one day and some jerk-off who wasn't looking where he was going hit us at about sixty miles an hour. I broke my hip in three places, fractured my collarbone, and there were so many scrapes on my arms and face that I looked like I'd lost a fight with a lawnmower – my doctor told me I was lucky to be alive. I had to have physiotherapy for months while my leg healed."

"You're lucky to be alive now," Piper said, and squeezed her hand a little tighter. "Don't make a habit of this, you hear me? Promise me you won't be that dumb again."

"I wish I could," Rachel began, "but you know me, I don't make promises I can't keep."

Piper drew back, raising an eyebrow. "Is that so? Is that why you couldn't give me this?" She slid her hand into the outer pocket of her coat and pulled out a small box. Rachel recognised it instantly and draped her hands over her face with a groan.

"Oh God… this is not the way I wanted this to happen," she said, embarrassment lingering thickly in her words.

"Maybe you should have tried a moonlight boat ride instead?" Piper suggested with a brief smile, "or would that have been too much of a cliche?"

"Cade gave you my notes too?"

"He was trying to make me feel better, I guess," Piper said, shrugging. "I don't think he really knew what was on that piece of paper. Your secret's safe with me." She tapped the side of her nose conspiratorially. "I'll never tell."

"Good," Rachel replied, pursing her lips. "I do have a certain image to maintain, after all."

"You do, don't you?" Piper said, resting her chin on the palm of one hand. "Could you explain something to me, though? Why were you making such a big deal out of this? I mean, it's just a question. People ask questions every day – I even do it for a living! Why was this one so different?"

"Because it was, all right?" Rachel snapped, irritated, before she took a second to compose herself and then resumed speaking. "Sorry. It was a big deal because I've never done this before and I wanted it to be perfect. I mean, at first I thought it was difficult being the one getting proposed to, and then I started thinking about what Nate must have been feeling before he asked me to marry him, and it suddenly seemed like a much, much bigger deal than I thought it was. I was thinking about where and how I could do it, how you'd probably react in every single possible scenario. I just –"

Rachel's voice was stilled as Piper put her forefinger in the centre of her lips. "Sweetie, enough," she said in an admonishing tone. "Haven't you worked it out yet? You should never try to out-bullshit a bullshit artist, and I'm the Commonwealth's biggest bullshitter." She drew her fingers back and closed them around Rachel's hand again. "So you want to tell me the truth, or am I going to have to break out the old detective hat so I can find out eventually anyway?"

"Fine," Rachel said. "The real reason why I spent so much time putting off asking you was because I was afraid."

"Afraid?" Piper repeated, incredulous. "Of what? Of little old me? I'm not that intimidating, am I?"

"No, Piper, I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of what you represent."

"Which is?"

"Love." Rachel shrugged. "If I asked you to marry me, that would mean officially admitting I love you, and that scares me, because everything I've ever loved, I've lost. I lost my husband, my home, my son, my whole life… I don't want to lose you too."

"You'll never lose me, Blue," Piper told her. "I promise. I made my decision while you were sleeping, and I'm sticking to it."

"Is that –"

"It is," Piper interrupted, "but I want you to do this properly before I say it out loud." She handed Rachel the ring, a little twinge of amusement at the corner of her lips. "You wanted to do it when it felt right, didn't you? It feels right to me, so I say go for it."

"Okay," Rachel said, suddenly feeling a yawning maw opening in her guts, "but don't blame me if this comes out all weird and awkward because I wasn't prepared."

"After all that improv preaching you did on the island? I don't think you'll have a problem," Piper told her. "How did you manage that, by the way?"

"My dad was a minister," Rachel explained, shrugging matter-of-factly. "Guess I inherited more from him than I thought. Can I carry on now?"

"Be my guest," Piper said, gesturing with her hand as if she was directing Rachel towards a stage. "The floor is yours."

"You're too kind," Rachel replied, before she let out a long exhalation of breath. "Piper Wright… it's only been two years since I met you, but in those two years you showed me how there's still good in this world. Even when you were yelling at the gates outside Diamond City I could see something special in you –"

"Wait, are you going to tell me it was love at first sight?" Piper interrupted again. "Blue, that is such a bad opening line."

"Don't flatter yourself, honey," Rachel said, raising an eyebrow. "I thought you were cute, sure, but it wasn't love at first sight. The first time I knew I loved you was… I think it was after we'd taken down a deathclaw and I'd made us some steaks out of the meat. You were eating and talking about what a great story you'd get out of it, and I remember thinking that was what I wanted to wake up to every morning - so I found the ring and I tried to find the perfect time to give it to you." She smiled ruefully. "Guess that didn't work out quite how I'd planned, huh?"

"Not really," Piper agreed, "but you've got the chance now."

"Not if you keep sidetracking me," Rachel said, taking her turn to put her finger to Piper's lips. "Might as well do this the direct way, then, I guess. Piper Wright… will you marry me?"

Tears began beading at the corners of Piper's eyes despite herself. "Of course I will, Blue. Why wouldn't I?"

Rachel felt a massive weight lifting off her shoulders, the tightness in her chest vanishing in an instant, and she shifted herself into a sitting position as quickly as she could. She ignored the sudden twinges in her muscles and the protestations of the stitches embedded in her chest as she took Piper's cheeks in her hands and kissed her deeply, relief and joy bleeding into her lips' movement against Piper's own. Then she took the ring from its box and gently slipped it onto Piper's finger, feeling a twinge of regret that it wasn't the right size. "Hopefully that wasn't too shitty a proposal for you?" she said as their mouthes parted.

"If I had to judge it," Piper began, running her fingers through Rachel's messy hair, "I'd say… maybe six out of ten? Room for improvement, for sure."

"If that's your attitude, I take it back," Rachel laughed. "Maybe I'll ask Cait instead? I always did have a thing for redheads."

Piper batted at Rachel's arm with the back of her fingers. "Don't you start that with me, you asshole," she said, a crooked smile nevertheless flitting across her face for a moment. "Guess I'd better visit Fallon's and see if I can find a wedding dress, hadn't I?"