Nora waited for nearly an hour, staring off in to the darkness, focusing on her breathing, keeping it deep and even.

Eventually she could tell from the rise and fall of Hancock's chest that he had fallen asleep. She also knew that while it was true did he didn't sleep for long periods of time, he did sleep like dead when it happened. She had outright dropped things on him to test her theory, which always made him laugh when she told him later on once he'd woken up.

Carefully she extracted herself from his arms, leaving the comfort of both him and his bed as she slipped away from the sheets. Her head whirled, just as it had been doing a lot recently. She knew she could fix it. She also knew she was having to fix it more and more often.

Nora wasn't stupid. The choices she were making, those were what was stupid, and she was aware that they were what was stupid, but she stood by them none the less. She knew she was messing with odds that could never be in her favour, but she also knew her life was already one that would not, in all probability, lead to old age. Why not spend time doing anything that would make her feel better? Hell, things had been pretty much been total misery up to this point anyway. It wasn't like she felt her life needed any prolonging.

Ugh. She could feel the spiral starting, coiling at the back of her neck.

In the living room she found her rucksack and brought it into what had once been quite a lovely bathroom. Rummaging through the inner pocket, she found exactly what she needed. Minutes later, she had plunged the syringe deep into her thigh, grimacing until the chem hit her system. God, there it was. The rush, the kick she needed to get her started. Once she started, she was always fine. Always.

It wasn't as if she'd simply woke up one day and just decided she would become a regular psycho user. She'd just been so tired of feeling miserable. Especially now, after learning how horrible the Institute really was... how Father had known all along she was frozen in a vault and only let her out as some kind of game. He'd never even expected that she would make it!

Sleep was impossible, food was inedible. The Railroad's plans had to be followed, but to go back to that... place and keep following Father's (not Shaun, never Shaun, not her Shaun) orders and doing God knows what further damage to the Commonwealth. Bringing down the Institute was important, but Father had to go down with the ship. She was starting to realize it would probably come down to her to provide that blow as well. Her hands were never clean these days.

Her thoughts had haunted her, and there was nobody she could turn to. This pain was as raw it could get, and not one person had been through something even close to her situation. She wouldn't have wanted them too. She'd rather suffer alone than bring anyone down to commiserate with. Besides, there was too much to do! There were settlers who were in need of new beds, water pumps that needed new filters... Surges and Preston did their best, but she was still their General, which meant much of the work was left to her. It almost reminded her of being already overwhelmed by the laundry pile only to have Nate pop his head in with a button that needed to be sewn.

Did she really have to do everything herself?

Cait was new to the settlement, but she had already decided she liked Nora. She'd come to bum a smoke, and the two had got to talking in the new Sanctuary bar. Nora had then been hiding vodka bottles in her drawers for weeks, but all the alcohol did was make her sadder. So she asked Cait for her opinions on the various chems she'd come across in her travels and with shiny, happy eyes, Cait told her all about pyscho.

Sure, she'd warned her it was a hard one to shake, but the pros had very much outweighed the cons. Nora had paid for both their drinks and kissed her cheeks goodbye before she wavered across the street and up into her house.

She made a drunken beeline to the room she used for storage, sure that Hancock had once left a bag of various party favours behind. She'd told him repeatedly to come and get them, but he'd only told her to consider it his new Sanctuary Stash, and appointed her as its keeper.

Surely the keeper got to have a cut of the goods, right?

She'd never forgotten how much lighter and brighter everything was for her that night. Possibilities seems endless. Negativity was forgotten. Her aching muscles and tired body? Re-energized and renewed.

She'd been a willing slave to it ever since.

Coming back down from the height of it, she pulled out a second dose of addictol and inhaled deeply, popping several knots along her spine. She was exhausted, and couldn't wait to get a Nuka into her system as well as her chems. She knew Hancock kept a supply for her somewhere, but her had was all fuzzy and she was sure she'd emptied it yesterday anyway.

Had it been yesterday? Time had lost all meaning to her, beyond what colour the sky was. Nora squinted out one of the dirty windows, guessing it to be almost sundown. How long had they been in the bar, anyway?

The addictol was working toward cleaning out her system, and she knew she'd be ready for travel in mere moments. She tossed the empty syringe on top of the other, threw some random garbage in after it. Not that she thought they wouldn't obviously find it there if they did look. She just liked to feel like she made an effort to hide. She turned on the rusted tap and drank deeply, erasing the taste of the medicine from her mouth.

Standing in front of the mirror, she pulled off her shirt and examined the lines of her bones. She made a face at herself. Maybe she did need to pay more attention to when she needed food. Not that she wanted to admit anything Nick had said was true.

Nick...

She ran her fingers over the wounds he'd inflicted on her. It was so out of character for him to act that way. He could run hot, sure, but he'd never, not once, had ever laid a hand on her, or really anyone who didn't deserve it. She'd had friends before the war, unfortunate friends, who'd had 'those' kinds of husbands. She knew the signs of abusive and this wasn't like that. There'd been nothing leading up to it. He'd never thrown anything, never struck an object beyond the occasional desk... Had he really just been so consumed with jealousy that something had snapped inside him? A blown circuit? Was that even possible?

"Nick, why did you do this?" she whispered as she traced the lines of the bruising, feeling how sore it was.

Shaking it off, she reached into the bottom of her pack and pulled out one of her many vault suits. She always took one with her, just in case. She'd gotten pretty good at improving her armour, and she needed to be light on her feet, no bulking armour to hold her down... plus, people just tended to be nicer to vault dwellers.

She dressed quickly, then pulled her hair back and scrubbed her face clean. She walked back into the living room and pulled her favourite leather jacket off the coat rack. It was Kellogg's old jacket, actually. She'd cut it down, and stitched it to fit her, too in love with the smell of leather to simply toss it aside.

She laced up her combat boots and then picked up her bag. It was time to go.

She paused in the door frame, and turned slightly, looking back towards Hancock's room. He'd wake up soon. He'd wake up to find himself in an empty bed and she knew he would panic. She took a moment to scribble down a short note of explanation, knowing if she wrote too much, she'd never leave. She left it on the coffee table, hoping he would find it sooner rather than later.

Her pack was light, but she knew she'd have to wait to get supplies. She planned to leave Goodneighbour as stealthily as she could, which meant a visit to Daisy's was out of the question, and Diamond City was now more dangerous than the Glowing Sea.

There was only one place for her to go.

It was time to go home.