Nate stared at the ceiling above him and out the holes into the night sky. More stars were visible than had ever been in the past.

Other than that it was almost normal. He was laying on a mattress scavenged from the vault and installed in the sanctity of his home, his wife curled up next to him, their suits tangled on the ground, their bodies tangled in the bed. He'd missed her, missed this. He smiled softly as he ran a comforting hand along her shoulder.

It had been a rather eventful few days.

Of all the ways he could have expected to start his week, he'd never anticipated seeing his wife ride into the neighborhood atop a two-headed stag, a small militia in tow. Granted, she'd been seated behind the man in charge, but still. She had cut a memorable figure with a militia hat on her head at a crooked angle, pipboy on her arm, and a German Shepard padding by her side.

George and Cindy had welcome her back and even the professor had seemed happy to see her.

Preston, Danse and the new man, Barney, had spent a good chunk of time comparing notes and debating logistics while they postured about who had the better plan. That was fine by Nate. They were the ones that knew the lay of the land, knew the players and the best approach.

Just give him orders, a gun, and point him in the right direction. His squad was long gone, dust in the annals of history, remembered by no one save himself. He had no desire to lead anyone else into battle. They just had to rescue Shaun and that—that worried him. What kind of future could he give his son now? Everything from bike-riding to college funds was a dream of the past.

How to raise a child in a world he himself was learning the ropes to? He needed structure. For something to make sense.

That and to have the opportunity to turn his son's kidnappers into bloody stains.

"I can hear you thinking," Nora murmured, propping herself up on one elbow and arching an eyebrow. Even in the dim moonlight peeking through the damaged roof, her beauty was plain to see. Those smoky eyes were what had captured his heart first, but he loved every part of her.

"Oh, you're a psyker now, is that it?" he joked wryly, inhaling deeply. Somehow, even in the midst of the post-apocalypse, she managed to smell like strawberries.

Nora harrumphed and lightly stroked his chin.

"You know what I mean. You're so tense. I can feel it," she said, squeezing his bicep. "And after all the work I put in to relieve that earlier…" She chuckled, low and raspy in her throat, and Nate smiled knowingly. She straddled him and grinned coyly, the blanket falling away. He held her waist as her hands glided over his chest, her touch electrifying.

Nora bent forward, her lips kissing his cheek and brushing his lips before moving on to his neck. His hands slipped up to gently hold the small of her back and her side.

And yet—

While he hated to ruin the mood, he couldn't focus on the beautiful woman in front of him, and she could tell. Always could.

Nora stopped and drew back, pressing the palms of her hands into his chest and gyrating her hips in a way that was just cruel.

"Alright, Mister Jones. Out with it. What're you thinking about instead of focusing on me?"

Nate was quiet for a moment, debating the best way to say it. Once she was on the trail of his thought process it was nigh impossible to shake her. It was also difficult to concentrate when she was moving like that on top of him.

"Nate," she said warningly, her hands sliding down to his stomach, moving lower and—

"Nora, I'm thinking about enlisting." He said abruptly.

Nora stopped, crossing her arms in front of her breasts.

"Enlisting where? There isn't a military anymore. Or a country." She frowned. " What, the minutemen? Trust me, Preston's a nice guy but he's got a one track mind. Always going to be another settlement that needs help."

Nate shook his head.

"I've been learning about this Brotherhood of Steel." From what they'd shared about the larger organization, they seemed to be society's best chance at making a comeback. The minutemen were decent folk, but they were more concerned with protecting what little they had; the brotherhood seemed more proactive about removing threats, even ones that weren't immediate dangers like the Rev-heads.

Nora sighed and rolled off of him.

"Great. Paladin stick up his ass and his band of merry men. Nate—"

He sat up in the bed, resting his back against the wall.

"I've just been thinking ahead. We're going to have to figure out a new life after we find Shaun. Find jobs."

"Why them though?"

Nate shrugged.

"Can you really see me farming tatos and corn?" Nate shook his head. "They teach children how to survive out here. Teach them about the old world. Pay a fair wage and do good work. And the region they come from is supposedly one of the safest around."

"So they've said." Nora mumbled. Nate suppressed a sigh, he was having flashbacks to the conversation they'd had when he'd decided to go back for a second tour. Ancient history now, depending on the point of view.

It had been an easy decision back then. Being at home had been mind-numbing. Had left him restless. Things stateside were too simple, too quiet. Concepts that had become almost alien. While he would never admit it to his wife, a small part of him was grateful to have an enemy again, a mission.

The suburban lifestyle he'd fought to protect felt so hollow when he'd finally had the time to try to live it.

"I've also been thinking about that old woman," he ventured. "The one that died."

"What? Mama Murphy?" Nora said, a hint of incredulity in her voice.

"Don't you think it was weird she knew we were frozen?"

"No, not really," Nora scoffed. "There's more than one vault. She probably met some other popsicles in vault suits before and was trying to look all-knowing. Like a horoscope or something."

Nate shook his head.

"I'm not so sure; Paladin Danse told me that no two vaults in the Capital wasteland ran the same experiment. If she had met other vault dwellers before, they probably wouldn't be like us."

"Nate, why are you so hung up on this? She just spouted a bunch of nonsense about helping people from every walk of life. I've seen fortune cookies with less vague predictions."

"And about death coming as well." He replied quietly.

"Yeah, yeah. Death has horns, more than one." Nora said rolling her eyes. "Well you know what, we've survived three horned deathclaws already, so what does that tell you about the stuff she was going on about? Just a charlatan trying to convince us to stay and help her group."

Nate sighed. Perhaps she had a point. It had nearly given him a heart attack when she'd told him what had happened in Lynn Woods. If anything had happened to her that he could have prevented—

Maybe he was obsessing over it too much. But still…

"We've only been out of the vault for a few weeks and so much has happened," he continued. "Don't you think it's a little eerie that we've been in the right place at the right time more than once?"

He couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched.

Call it intuition, a soldier's gut feeling, whatever.

Nora disagreed.

"Not really, seems like everyone in the commonwealth is always on the move. They stop moving they have a tendency to get dead." She leaned over, cupping his face in her hands. "Now listen, you're thinking too hard, babe."

"Nora…" he said, his ears prickling.

"I don't want to hear it," Nora tutted, going to kiss his neck again. "I was so worried you wouldn't wake up. Let me—

"Shh." He said, holding a hand up.

"Did you just shh me?" she said indignantly.

"Shh." He repeated. "Listen, do you hear that?"

Gunfire.

Nate practically hopped out of the bed and got up hurriedly, grabbing his vault suit and tugging it on. The firefight was close. South of them, maybe?

"Nate, what is it?" Nora asked worriedly as she started to pull on her suit as well. "Is it the guys on watch? Something trying to get into the neighborhood?"

Nate shook his head and headed out of the house. It sounded like small arms fire. No energy weapons. Maybe an assault rifle? Multiple.

A few of the minutemen were milling about, though no alarm had been raised, they were headed in the direction of the noise. When he got to the footbridge that led into the neighborhood he saw it.

Smelled it on the air.

There was smoke coming from the direction of the gas station. Or beyond it.

The Abernathy's farmstead was on fire.

Nora wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to feel. They'd put the fire out, but by the time the minutemen and members of Danse's squad had secured the area, the raiders were long gone.

It had been a hit and run operation, a surprise attack. That the raiders had gotten away so fast had shocked everyone, but the shock quickly turned to horror once Nate had called everyone over to see some odd depressions in the soil below the rocky outcropping south of the farm.

Two lines with a familiar pattern.

"Huh, kind of looks like tire tracks." Nora murmured aloud.

It took a moment for the realization to catch up with her brain, but when it did, it was a doozy.

"Holy shit," she said to no one in particular. "They have a working vehicle?"

"These Rev-heads are more dangerous than I initially thought." Paladin Danse stated. "They cannot be allowed to retain this technology. We'll have to move up the timetable."

"Thank you, Captain obvious!" Nora snapped, before excusing herself and her awkwardly timed outburst.

After that revelation, she'd busied herself with helping to tend to the wounded and the dead. A couple people had been rooming at the farmstead, tilling the land for Blake in exchange for food and a pittance of caps. As well as encouraging trade between him and Sanctuary Hills.

It was impressive, actually, that Sturges had set up a supply line between the two so fast; and with plans to incorporate Tenpines as well.

But the constant parade of death was sobering. A month ago, she would have never thought herself capable of coping with that sort of thing. Was she numb to it? Or had it just become a quickly accepted part of her new life? It was something she wrestled with as she closed the eyes of George Able.

As the neighborhood mechanic was dead, another piece of the past died with him.

They hadn't talked much as he'd withdrawn after his wife had been killed by a mirelurk their first week in the new world, and she'd run off to Salem but she felt like it should have struck a chord deep in her soul that the number of vault survivors had dwindled so badly so fast. Most of the deaths had been needless, a result of being unprepared to face the new, dangerous world they had found themselves in.

It should have, but it wasn't.

Her emotions were directed more at the situation than any of them individually and she wondered if that was abnormal, or the most normal thing it could be, given how difficult it was to adjust to being frozen for two centuries.

"They took the vault girl," Blake mumbled as Nora and his wife bandaged up his leg. "They took Lucy too goddammit. Both our daughters now…"

"Cindy?" Nora said in shock. She hadn't known that the teen had been up at the farm. Then again, with both her parents dead there was no one to really look after her. The poor girl. Nora hadn't forgotten that Cindy had stuck up for her husband that first day out of cryo.

Jared's gang of sickos was really intent on kidnapping every child and teen within their reach.

Because they hadn't taken any of the adults. Only killed two of them, George and someone from Preston's group; a woman named Angie. Besides that, a young man named Josh had lost a couple fingers to a machete and then there were Blake's injuries.

According to Blake, he'd woken up to screaming and hustled outside with his shotgun. Angie had been on watch, but they'd gotten to her first, then moved onto the one-person shacks Blake had on the edge of his property and nabbing the girls before setting the shacks on fire. They would have had to have been watching for some time exactly where to grab who they were looking for as well. He'd then mentioned a loud unrecognizable sound, which Nora assumed was probably the truck driving away; though Nora had to wonder just how big it was to have fit eight or so raiders in it plus their captives.

Well, five or so raiders, because Blake had blown two of them away and Angie had gotten one before taking a blade to the neck.

The night felt a little colder after learning that. Eyes could be anywhere.

She also felt like she was the only one focused on how amazing it was that the raiders even had a car.

A working car!

Preston and his people had made it sound like no one knew how to repair any of the rusted hulks littering every driveway and street in the neighborhood, but the raiders did? That immediately put them above the settlements she'd been to. Did they have some kind of genius working for them? Or had they just been incredibly lucky?

It was a car factory they were holed up in after all.

Nora drifted to the fence bordering the Abernathy property and tried to collect the rest of her thoughts. Or would have if Professor Widmer hadn't materialized out of the dark with a friendly smile.

"How are you doing Mrs. Jones? I haven't seen much of you since you came back from Salem.

Nora raised an eyebrow.

"Why are you being so nice?" she asked him. "Not that I'm complaining, I just kind of got the impression you disliked me and my husband."

Widmer waved a hand.

"Water under the bridge."

He said it in such a casual and upbeat way that it unnerved her. Sure, she hadn't spent much time around him, but the little time she had spent around him painted a much different picture of his demeanor.

"Yeah…I'm fine. You could check on Blake if you have the time though." Widmer nodded genially and walked away, whistling the nuka-cola jingle, and Nora narrowed her eyes. Maybe the stress of everything had cracked him up, but he was being downright weird.

Nora shook her head and went back to ruminating. She had been in a strange headspace the last few days. Was it right to feel numb about her missing child? With every day that passed she felt as though she should have felt more frantic. But she wasn't. It wasn't that she was relieved or anything, it was just that she felt like she was having trouble maintaining focus.

Too much, too fast? She hadn't been hungry of late, and she was never able to sleep both contributing to being irritated by the smallest things. And when she wasn't using all her energy to ignore the feeling, she felt like a terrible mother.

It sounded suspiciously like postpartum depression, but she didn't want to go down that rabbit hole of self-diagnosis. Even if she had had some of those symptoms before the vault.

Instead of entertaining that thought however, she messed with the pipboy a bit. There were a few radio stations that it could pick up; though hell if she had the faintest idea where they were broadcasting from. The main two stations consisted of some chucklefuck in a place called Diamond City and classical music playing on an endless loop.

Lastly there was one station where someone calling themselves the mechanist was waging a war on crime and injustice.

Nora frowned. The name sounded kind of familiar.

A movie maybe? Nora snapped her fingers. One of Nate's comic books. That was it.

By the time she was done flipping through the lots and lots of static that made up every other station she tuned to, a few more people had come over from Sanctuary Hills to see the spectacle, and that included her robot butler.

"Good heavens." Codsworth muttered as he floated around. Nora suppressed a snicker. Someone had given him a bowler hat and he'd taken to it. The sight of a metallic three-eyed octopus puttering around Abernathy farmstead and inspecting the burnt shacks while narrowly avoiding knocking into the minutemen and brotherhood knights that were doing the same struck her as more hilarious than it had any right to be.

Maybe the old bucket of bolts had the right idea? She should have been taking a more proactive stance about the whole operation they trying to put together. She wasn't stupid. She knew Garvey had his own reasons for wanting to take the gang out.

It was fine because there were others that wanted the same thing but he was living on another planet if he thought she could be so easily manipulated. He'd floated her some nonsense about putting Nate in charge of his people, citing the bravery at the museum.

Because apparently the commonwealth operated on might makes right rules, and that alone qualified Nate to lead an entire organization he knew barely anything about. Thankfully, Nate hadn't seemed particularly interested in that. But she was concerned about Danse too. She'd caught him staring at her and the other vault dwellers like he was studying them or something.

Nora rubbed at the gold wedding band on her hand absent-mindedly. There was something on her mind she wanted to tell her husband. Something she thought she could handle after what had happened in Lynn Woods. She had an idea about the assault that she hadn't voiced to anyone. But she'd wait until morning, once he'd had some rest.

Because she just knew Nate wasn't going to like it.

"I'm coming too."

"Nora…"

Nate sighed, he'd been expecting this, but even so, it didn't mean he had to like it. They'd just finished a breakfast of fruit and radstag jerky but she'd been staring at him all morning with something on the tip of her tongue.

"You and I both know we'll need all the guns we can get. Don't worry, I'll hang back away from the thick of the fighting."

Nate kept his face impassive.

"I know its not a game, Nate. But what part of the last month gave you the impression that I wouldn't risk it all for our son?"

He frowned. Shooting mutant abominations was one thing. Killing people was another. It was not something he wanted his wife to experience. It changed a person, and usually not for the better. And he couldn't afford any distractions. It was dangerous, letting your focus slip because you were focused on keeping someone safe instead of the mission.

Dangerous for him, for the people that would be relying on him.

"Fine." he said a little tersely. He couldn't very well demand she stay at home when it was barely even that anymore. Or when she'd taken potshots at a pair of juvenile deathclaws from atop a tower. He excused himself from the table and went to see the people in charge.

Garvey, Rook and Danse were still ironing out details, but they'd wanted him at the final meeting simply because he was the de facto leader of the vault dwellers, even if there were hardly any of them left.

"I think we've got the manpower for this," Garvey was saying as he approached their meeting area, a picnic bench on the edge of the neighborhood by the river. "The rev-heads are notorious chem dealers that sample their own product. Most of them shouldn't be able to hit the broadside of a Brahmin."

"And yet, they have a vehicle and know how to operate it. Something about this is wrong," Danse countered. "Which is why we'll go over the plan one more time."

"Plan? The plan is to put them in the ground." Barney grunted, spitting some tobacco out directly on the floor.

"Thank you for the input, Mr. Rook." The Paladin said with a sigh of long-suffering as he indicated towards the diorama of the battlefield to come.

"The first step is to get through Lexington. The last firefight we had there told us that they keep several people on watch there; I would hazard a guess that the purpose is mainly to keep the feral packs from wandering too close. So that may be another thing we have to contend with. Once the area is secure we will split up into three teams." He started moving the various tokens and placeholders around.

"We'll put the sharpshooters led by Garvey on the broken highway here," he said, pointing to the curved branch that represented it in the little diorama they'd built. "Their job will be to provide cover fire and hopefully pick off any raiders on the catwalks or the roof." He motioned to the piles of stones gathered by the box that was the factory.

"Rook and his riders will head through here and assault the main entrance, clearing the ground floor and circling around to the back entrance. While the raiders are occupied, the final team will enter from this pipe during the chaos. Once inside, we will contact via shortwave radio for the main assault team to bust in the front door and the two teams will try to meet. Unfortunately, we don't have any intel on what this Jared actually looks like, but from what we do know, he's likely to be holed up in the most defensible position in the factory. This is also likely where any kidnapping victims will be held, provided they have not yet been disposed of."

Danse took a deep breath and placed a small box in the diorama.

"The variable here is the fact that they have a working transport vehicle of some sort. Based on the tire tracks, I'm inclined to think its a truck. This could tip the odds in their favor should it be present during our assault. We also have to account for wildlife and ferals that might be drawn by the noise." The Paladin turned to address Nate directly.

"I had wanted to wait until Knight Brach was fully recovered, but the level of tech they have is abominable. Would you be willing to join my squad for the infiltration in his place?

"Yes, certainly." he replied, almost saluting on reflex. He wondered what rank Paladin was closest to in the military. Danse certainly gave off officer vibes.

"Outstanding." Paladin Danse was then distracted by Haylen; apparently she'd found another location of interest nearby. Nate decided to go find his wife when his attention was caught by Sturges.

"Hey," the mechanic said. "You got a minute? Meet me by the station's garage."

It hadn't taken long for Garvey's group to incorporate the nearby red rocket gas station into their defenses, using it as a sort of watchtower to keep an eye on the main road.

Nate wondered why Sturges was grinning as he opened the garage up, but he didn't have to wait long. There was a suit of t-45 armor mounted on a workstation.

"Remember that suit of power armor we peeled you out of? I may have been doing some fixing."

So that was where the suit had gotten to.

"Needed some peace and quiet?" Nate said.

"Yeah, I got a bit tired of that Danse fellow's people coming to watch me work on it like I was gonna make it blow up or something. They keep to themselves otherise. Anyway, " Sturges rapped the helmet with a knuckle. "The chest piece is still weaker than the rest of it though. Might not be as fancy as those steel fellas suits, but I figured you might like it once we head to Lexington to stop the kidnappings."

"Are you sure?" Nate said, putting a hand on the suit's chestpiece. It looked like Sturges had welded several sheets of metal to it to reinforce where it had gotten damaged. "Technically, your people found it. I was just the best equipped to use it at the time."

"Naw, you earned it, saving our hides. Never seen anyone use a car wreck to kill a deathclaw before." Sturges paused a moment."Come to think of it, never seen anyone kill a deathclaw period. Heard stories of folk doing so, seen a few mounted heads but..." The mechanic trailed off and shook his head. "Worst thing in Quincy was the occasional mirelurk wandering in from the swamp."

Nate nodded, one of his many questions pushing to the forefront of his mind while Sturges was on the topic.

"You knew Mama Murphy right?" he asked. "Before escaping the city?"

"Mhm," Sturges replied. "Damn shame she passed the way she did. Don't hold it against you and your wife, mind you. She had a pretty bad chem problem we never helped get under control." Nate nodded gratefully. The Longs and a few of the others had put a bit more blame on them than Sturges.

"Did she make predictions often?"

Sturges rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Well, folk loved to pester her all the time about who they should date or when to go hunting like she was a fortune teller or something. Most times she just gave them common sense advice. The important things though, the times she got visions that laid her out..."

"How often were they right?" Nate asked cautiously.

Sturges eyed him seriously.

"Well, least the ones I know of? All of them. You might have heard this before, but she predicted the attack on Quincy, took me a hot minute to convince the mayor or even we few might not have made it out. Too bad she didn't see that one of the minutemen squads would betray the others but I guess she couldn't see everything."

Nate thanked him started to inspect the armor as Sturges left to give the turret he'd built a tune-up.

Knowing that the psyker had been right every time, even if she hadn't gotten specifics?

It was unsettling.