MacCready was apparently not kidding when he said he was bound to find a cliff to try and leap from. She just didn't think it'd be so… literal.
"It's just a quarry, Mac," she whispered as she followed him, sneaking along the edge of the cliff overlooking the Dunwich Borers quarry. They'd stumbled upon it while making their way east toward the coast to clear out a new settlement. It was totally overrun by raiders, but for some reason Mac was captivated by the place.
"What happened to tempering ourselves?" she pointed out with some concern as she spotted a raider in a full suit of power armor… and what might have been a missile launcher.
"That was before, you have nothing to live for now, remember?" he said and she glared at him.
Mac's current approach to her moodiness about Shaun was to play devil's advocate, and it made her want to strangle him… and not in the sexy kind of way. It had been a week since she returned from the Institute and he'd been his patient, dedicated self, more or less. This current approach wasn't impatience so much as him trying to shock some kind of decision out of her, for her own sake. Every brainstorm she had on the matter, either out loud or internal, resulted in a spiraling, pointless downdraft of 'what ifs' and guilt-trips. Unfortunately, the decision didn't seem to be getting any easier with time.
They stopped to survey the area, and she saw a heavy cable running across the span of the quarry just as Mac did. He turned and looked at her with wide eyes.
"Oh, hell no," she said remonstratively.
"Like you didn't have the same thought," he accused.
"Yep, thought was had, thought was dismissed. That quickly."
"Pull out that new semi-automatic and cover me while I slide across," he said.
"If you want to kill yourself, there are simpler ways," she replied.
"I don't know, this seems like a pretty badass way to go," he argued.
"I cannot even tell if you're kidding right now," she said with equal parts annoyance and disbelief.
"Of course I'm kidding," he said, but then added, "We'll kill the raiders, then I'll slide across."
She couldn't respond before he'd ducked away to continue around to the other side of the crater where they'd gain some better cover to snipe from. After what felt like the longest afternoon of her life, they finally had every raider down except the one in power armor, who had run out of missiles and found his way up to their perch so he could pummel them face-to-face.
She dropped to the ground and let the raider bowl over her as he swung a giant, metal fist at her face. He fell clumsily to the ground behind her and Mac pulled the pin on a grenade, shoving it in the gap between the torso and leg pieces. She stood gaping at the raider as he tried to get back up, Mac knocking her to the ground and into cover behind a nearby rock just before the grenade went off, causing a blizzard of white, dusty smoke to explode out from the blast.
He stood, helping her up as well, then started to brush the white quarry dust off himself even as more of it continued to settle onto him.
"Are you crazy? Why didn't you take cover?" he asked.
"Sorry - that's just… such a good idea. Why didn't we think of that before?" she asked, still impressed by the ingenuity of lodging the explosive into the armor itself.
"Well, getting up close and personal with a suit of power armor isn't super high on our daily bucket lists," he explained, starting to brush the dirt off her as well.
"You're right… we need bucket lists," she said distantly.
"If we make them now, and I add 'slide across a three hundred foot crater on a cable', will you let me do it?" he asked. She didn't even bother to respond, just turning to head down the metal scaffolds and staircases that led to the interior portion of the quarry.
"Aren't bucket lists for old people?" he asked.
"We're kind of old people. We're at least, apparently, in charge," she said.
"That doesn't make us old, just unlucky," he said.
"Imagine if people with any sense of self-preservation actually decided to lead?" she said.
"I think that's precisely why they don't," he pointed out. She sighed resignedly.
"That may be true. To be fair we could just head straight to Salem and not stop to wipe out a quarry full of raiders for no good reason."
"I feel like you're judging me," he said with feigned indignation.
"I am. I'm judging this decision. Harshly," she replied.
"You said it was my turn to lead," he argued, "You needed a break, didn't want to deal with it anymore, blah, blah. This is me leading, deal with it."
"Fine, fine. It's not like I haven't led you into stupid places in the past."
"You'll be eating those words when we find some epic loot inside this quarry," he said smugly. In retrospect, she really did wish he had been right about that. But unfortunately, it wasn't exactly what happened.