Nick Valentine had been staring off into the distance for some time when he finally felt the nudge from Hancock and the urgent whispering. 'Hey, hey Valentine.'
'Yeah?' He asked casually and turned to look into the unappetizing face of the ghoul mayor of Goodneighbour. Hancock seemed to have something weighing on his mind.
'Far be it for me to point out someone's cranky mood, but have you noticed the doom-n-gloom?' He jabbed a thumb towards their unusually silent travelling companion.
Nick looked across the cart and towards the Sole Survivor herself. She'd folded with the odd shapes under the weather-worn tarpaulin , the crook of her elbow resting on one knee with her hat pulled low against the sun. She hadn't moved - or spoke - for the last hour, which wasn't Althea Shapiro in the slightest.
Ever since she'd wrestled the ride down the Commonwealth from one of the travelling caravans, she'd been unusually curt and quiet.
If he were to guess anything, Nick would guess that their ever optimistic and ever helpful leader was simmering. Maybe not in anger, but something was boiling just below the surface. Gnawing away at her ever cheery smile.
Nick Valentine had been there that day she confronted the man who took her son. It hadn't been too pretty and the outcome was the exact opposite of what she had wanted. Walking away from that fight - This was the same kind of simmering silence she'd had coming away with. Of someone ticking over things again and again. Of course, it had never really left - everyone knew that most nights nowadays, she spent in the one room of her house that nobody was allowed to enter and she was generally rough the next morning. He thought she'd been making improvement - but then this.
Nick Valentine was worried, to say the very least.
He reached out to pet Dogmeat laying at their feet. The Alsatian leaned into the touch and slobbered gratefully at the attention. 'She feels responsible.' He murmured. 'Always does.'
'About those three? Psh.' Hancock laughed and leaned back to enjoy the ride. 'They can take care of themselves.'
Valentine had to agree, but he also knew that telling her that would be entirely futile. Thea was known for her stubbornness and her commitment to a mission - even if that mission was finding and dragging back three of her idiot friends. She'd seen too much violence in the wasteland from the moment she opened her eyes to believe that they would and could be fine out there.
Nick's musings on the leader of their rag-tag little group was interrupted when Dogmeat's head came up suddenly, ears and nose twitching. You smell something, boy?' Nick asked and hurriedly called to Thea 'He's got a scent!' When Dogmeat launched himself off the tarpaulin of the rickety cart, scaring the Brahmin in the process, and darted across the rocks.
His mistress wasn't too far behind, lithe but stiff frame climbing somewhat clumsily over the rocks to catch him. Nick and Hancock were left to struggle in her wake.
When they finally caught up, Hancock bemoaning that he wasn't used to all this climbing, they both took in the half-rusted plane in front of them with peeling sunbleached letters. SKYLANES. Around the old bodies were signs of fresh fighting. Blood splatters, abandoned helmets and spent casings - but no bodies.
'Is that an aeroplane?' Hancock marvelled. 'How in the world did they get that to stay airborne?'
'No blast burns on the plane, plenty of foreign rubble nearby. The nukes didn't take this down, the highway did.' Nick noted with some sympathy. It was a pretty obvious deduction, and one he could have made in his sleep as he scanned the landscape. The plane would have made a wonderful prize for whomever had found it and the outcrop it was lying on wasn't too far from a known caravan route - close enough for Dogmeat to pick up scent, certainly.
'You're officially not helping.' Hancock retorted and turned to Thea. She was completely ignoring the plane - and all the signs of the fighting - but instead was clutching something burned and ragged and now covered in dog drool as Dogmeat yipped and barked and nudged her hand in triumph.
It looked like a strap of some kind, with crude stitching attaching a patch of what looked like a half burnt gun and a lightning bolt. Neither companion felt it redundant enough to point out that it was the logo of the minutemen - and it was last seen on Preston's pack. The implications were frightening at best.
'Doesn't mean they're dead, kiddo.' Hancock reassured.
'No, it doesn't. It just means they were in a fight.' Nick agreed.
'Preston loved this pack. He wouldn't just let something happen to it.' Thea murmured, her face pinched in indecision.
Clearly, something had happened here. As always, Nick got to the centre of the mystery. 'What I don't understand is, where are the bodies?' He looked around, confirming the lack of dead people.
'The Gunners probably took them.' Hancock murmured.
'Why in the world would they want to do that?' Nick asked in outrage as Hancock reached out to idly kick a helmet.
'Would you want to leave evidence that three people single-handedly beat an entire squadron of well equipped fighters?' Hancock asked as he patted himself down for a Jet inhaler he knew was in his pockets somewhere. 'People would get ideas and putting those down would be messy and costly.'
'You have a point.' Nick conceded. 'Reputation is everything to these lowlifes.'
'Yeah.' Hancock agreed and shook the inhaler hard before taking a puff. 'But if those three got on the wrong side of the Gunners, Gunners ain't gonna stop looking til they put them down.'
Thea rose, the strip of cloth still in her hand. 'They should know mine by now.' She stormed off, whistling for Dogmeat to follow and try to pick up which way they went.
Hancock leaned over and muttered to Nick 'She's got that look in her eye again.'
'What look?'
'The fun one.' Hancock chuckled and cocked his sawn-off shotgun. 'Lets see if we can't find something those green idiots left behind, hm?'
It was better than standing around, waiting for an ambush.
A/N: The fun things that the companions say at the Skylanes crash is truly something to treasure. People died Nick. People died.