A/N: You might notice this is the first half of the previously 30 page chapter. I am splitting it into two for the sake of not boiling the brain.


Bunker Hill Express


I was still not sure that morning, when I woke up. Had it been a dream? A good one then, yes, but to wake in the company of another is... I have not tried this before that morning, not really. Piper. I don't know what to do about her. My world has stopped making sense. But, I think I do not mind. We will go to Greentop, and then on to Salem. If we find there what might bring me closer to home, I will take her with me.

She deserves a better life than this.


Leaving Bunker Hill behind was a bit of a mixed bag, in terms of feelings.

On the one hand, the place stank. Everywhere you went, but especially at the monument itself, there was a heavy, all-penetrating smell of oil and liquids and chemicals Martin could not even put a name to. Beggars crowded the streets, the buildings were little more than shacks, and he felt like every moment some stranger might walk up and plunge a dagger in him for the caps in his pouch.

But it was also a place he knew he'd forever remember what the monument's lookout point, and for the things it had changed between himself and Piper.

They had woken the way they'd fallen asleep, and at first he'd been unsure if the events of last night had been a mere dream. A cruel twist of fate it'd be, to dream something so lifelike and true to reality, only for it to be but an illusion. It had not, of course, been so, and rather than waking alone and cold, he'd woken up stiff, sore-back and aching, but warm. It had been more years than he could reliably recount since he'd woken up in the embrace of another. None of the village girls had slept with him, afterwards, it had always been fast, passionate and animalistic, and never with a hint of feelings or softness afterwards. Occasionally there had been comments, winks, cheeky smiles or difficulties in physically walking away, but never an embrace.

Like so much else with Piper, it was something he'd not even realized was missing in his life. All they had done was sleep, and yet it fulfilled him more than any and all of the girls back home ever had.

The firearm she had given him, the short-barreled revolver, was nestled safely in the inside of his coat. Whomever had owned it before him, had been of similar mind, and a pocket there was as if made for holstering. Strange then that they had found no other firearms than the shotgun in the tunnels, unless the poor bastard had been one of those that had ventured into the Dead Station in search of old technologies. Then no amount of caps could make Martin seek it out. He did feel a strange new confidence though, and not just from what he had discovered with Piper. The idea that he could defend himself now, and Piper, even without magic. It brought a sense of settlement, of some inert power he could wield without relying on the lodestone.

As if responding to his thoughts, the toroidal rock looked as if it gleamed, despite the lack of sunlight. In the overcast skies there was little getting through, and it seemed like it might rain. Yet the dark-green stone reflected light as if there was a full sun. It made little sense to him, but to ponder it further seemed like looking at gifted horses through their teeth. At least, he was fairly sure that was how the saying went. A sepak, tuka nema konji...

It was just another oddity, something that had survived as a saying, even though it seemed the beasts in question had not. Don't have a cow, was another, despite no one calling Brahmin by such a name. And he'd not yet heard anyone say 'Don't have a Brahmin'.

Broken asphalt and gravel crunched underfoot as the caravan wound its way through the streets, as the skies above took on a dark, overcast hue. For the sake of his mental health, he did attempt to keep track of the street names, but few signs were still readable. Time and neglect had worn the colors thin, and only the older signs had iron letters pressed in. Bartlett Street, Green Street, Bunker Hill Street, on and on, with names that had none or little meaning to him. Only the last one he could see the sense in, but Bartlett? Had that been a person? And Green? Only a dead tree, gnarled and twisted as it grew through the window of a ruined house, and the fading paint of another, gave any credence to such a name.

It still boggled the mind, a little, that a civilisation as advanced as had once been, had still lived in wooden houses no more so than what he had seen in the Imperial City, or in Brumal. At first he would have sworn there had perhaps been attempts, after the bombs, at rebuilding, and these were the decaying husks of that broken dream. But, Piper had assured him, again today already, that they were in fact as old as the world that had been.

"Folks liked wooden houses, I guess," she shrugged, when he could not help the question once again rearing up. There was a kind of smile on her face he wasn't sure if had been there before, and it had been there, as if stuck with glue, all morning; "Didn't you have wooden houses on the farm?"

"Timber-framed." Because technically it was a mixture of wattle and clay on most of the walls, "Most of the house was waddle and daub. We had timber-framed stonework around the part of the house with the kitchen. We slept upstairs."

"All in one big 'ol cozy pile, right?"

"More or less."

"...that does sound cozy, actually," Piper sighed, sounding almost bereft. Then, with a bit of a smirk, she added, "...until someone farts, I mean."

"There usually was." The memories were fond ones for their comedic value, though the experience of being in an enclosed attic with such aromas was less so; "You get used to it. We had pigs too, in the other end of the house."

"Pigs, those are like radhogs, but just one head, right? I can't imagine the smell."

It never ceased to amaze him the way creatures here had mutated. Pigs had become radhogs, cows had become Brahmin - which for some reason was always spelled with capital whenever he saw it - and chickens had become radchickens. Everything was something with rads, yet people seemed to find the idea of the common, original animals, completely alien.

"It was not so bad, actually." In truth the smell had never much bothered him, and pigs gave warmth to the farm almost as well as the stove; "When you grow up on the farm, smells from the farm are just..."

"Homely?" There was a knowing smile on her lips, and in her eyes. He could do naught but agree.

"Homely," he nodded, a small sigh escaping as his mind wandered back, faster still than his feet; "I think, first time something reeked, it was in Bravil, a large town near to Applewatch. There was a tannery, maybe, or it was some sort of cloth-working place. I don't know, but the smell made my nose burn. Smelled a bit like Bunker Hill."

"The sweatshops," Piper mused with an almost sagely tone, a finder curled on her chin as she nodded; "All the industry of a settlement, in a small package. There's a pretty good reason you don't see a lot of kids in Bunker Hill."

"I noticed." What would the town look like in a decade, or two? When all the people there were getting older? Did new people move in all the time, or would it simply die out? Those who had kids moved to Diamond City, if they could; "Diamond City has a list of unwanted people?"

Piper regarded him strangely, for all of one second.

"I kinda hoped you wouldn't find out about that one," she muttered, the previous good cheer draining; "But, yeah, there's a list. At least I think there is. It's one of those things people say exists but no one actually has proof. I'm guessing you talked to Joe?"

"Tony, actually," Martin shrugged, hoping the indifferent gesture would push Piper off what seemed like the start of something less than cheerful. He already regretted having asked; "Apparently his father spoke out against the ghoul purge."

"The Savoldi's used to be Minutemen, back in the day," Piper explained, kicking aside a metal can, so eaten through with rust that it split apart at her touch; "Don't remember his name, but Joe's grandfather, I think, was a pretty diehard Minuteman. Fell somewhere up in Malden, I think. Service didn't run in the family after that, but the outlook did."

"Malden?" The name was familiar, and he soon recalled why. MacCready had said he was going there, hoping to accompany the caravan as far as he could, or as close as he could, to whatever Malden was. Likely a settlement of some sort.

"It's one of the old towns that sort of merged with Boston when the city grew. Now it's one of those places nature hasn't really reclaimed yet so people sometimes go there looking for old tech and scrap..." Piper cast a glance to the rear, where MacCready was the last in line of the caravan guards. His long rifle was slung over his shoulder, a cigarette in his mouth and his eyes wandering from side to side, watchful, "I don't suppose he said why he was going there? Place had a Minutemen outpost back then, there's probably still some stuff left."

Maybe MacCready had Minutemen family as well, hence his reason for going? But then, he had mentioned being a newcomer to the Commonwealth himself. Did the Minutemen exist outside of the Commonwealth, then? Or, it was something entirely else he wanted to find in Malden. The skies darkened more now, a rumbling in the distance. Unsure of which was more likely, he instead turned the subject back to its start.

"Are we on the list?"

"Probably," Piper shrugged, with more indifference than Martin felt at the notion; "McDonough's had a bad eye on me ever since I took a stance on the ghoul purge. Since then every article I've had out that even approached criticism has been... less than well received. Nothing's happened, sure, but I... don't like how things are going, in the Commonwealth."

"You worry for Natalie." It was not hard to guess. Piper seemed to consistently value her sister's safety over her own, and he could not fault her for it. Piper could defend herself, while Natale, much as she did own a gun, could not. Not to the same degree, at least. It would be a lie if he said he did not worry as well, though it extended to the both of them; "We will be back soon. A day extra is little time for consequences to arise, I think."

"Ever the optimist, huh," Piper hummed, the smile reappearing; "Thought that was my job. What am I, if not the eternal optimist?"

"I do not think I am the optimist," Martin snorted. He was much too weary of this world for such. Still, being with Piper, sometimes even he felt tempted to believe in better things. Especially since yesterday; "Realist, yes. I can appreciate good things, even if I did not expect them."

Piper's smile grew a little more now, some color returning to her face. A hand, dangling at her side, found its way to his. Tentatively at first, fingers lightly touching. He saw her fighting down the shiver when he grasped her, locking grips together. Warm skin on skin, this was a kind of pleasure he doubted he'd ever tire from. No less so when it brought forth such a reaction from Piper. The smile that spread on her face seemed indecisive as to whether it should split her face asunder, so wide was it, yet clearly she fought to keep it down.

"Good things, huh?"

"Good things."

His smile dropped somewhat as the darkness above grew nearer, and a small pat sounded on the street by his foot. Soon enough, another pat, and then another, and another. Faster and faster they came, until the skies were unleashed upon the caravan.

"You ever wonder if someone's got a sense of humor up there?" Piper sighed, pressing her cap down tighter; "Just, you know, waiting for folks like us to get a bit of optimism, and bam, rain."

"Could be worse," Martin shrugged, though he did lament on having nothing to shield his head from the rain. His jacket at least was waterproof, felt like, but did not extend much past his neck. Overhead on both sides, the apartment complexes of red stone and timber seemed far less inviting, now that the sun no longer shone through, and instead seemed to invite all manners of depressing thoughts. The ghosts of the past were looking down upon them. "I see no green in the clouds."

"Small mercies I guess." Piper's fingers remained laced through his, and through that he found the weather did not truly bother him overmuch. It was still such a bizarre and novel sensation that he failed to adequately put into words what it did to him. He was no less wet for it, though; "Still, definitely could be worse, true. We could have been swarmed by ghouls, or some giant, mutated birds could have attacked us."

Martin glanced to the skies at that, half-expecting to actually see such vast shapes against the clouds. Instead there were only a few crows, ragged and mischievous birds that seemed to stalk their every step. They always seemed to much smarter than any animal had a right to be, and the intensive of their gazes unsettled him. As if they deliberately watched him.

"There are such things?"

"There's all kinds of things," Piper shrugged, the grin on her lips betraying the jest, "Never heard of them though. Then again there's probably a lot of things I haven't heard of. The south's all swamps and marshlands, I heard. Who knows what kind of stuff lives down there?"

"There are large swamplands in Tamriel. Black Marsh, it is called."

"Part of the Empire?" Piper mused, eying him curiously, though the rain did much to rob her expression of the otherwise carefree interest. He'd never seen her apply makeup, yet already now it was starting to run a little, thin black lines under her eyelids. He wondered how long before she would wipe, and smear it all over.

"Same continent," he explained, though now he caught himself, remembering MacCready's words. Someone might always be listening, and the anonymity of the crowd only went so far, "But independent from the Empire. Argonians live there, they are... swamp folk, not really... people, like us."

"Huh." She seemed to have noticed his change in tone, and perhaps understood as well why. He caught her eyes wandering, landing on where MacCready walked some meters behind, looking far too miserable in the rain to be paying much in the way of attention. Still, others might; "I wonder if they are like the swamp folks living down south of Boston."

"I think they are not."

"Not really people?" Piper asked, and her tone sounded like she was catching on. He'd already told her of the Khajiit, though the lizardmen of Argonia had never come up. Beastfolk were not an unknown to her, at least; "They're as charming as those from elsewhere?"

"Hardly," Martin scoffed. It was hard to find bipedal lizards as charming as creatures that could look as adorable as the Alfiq. The Institute of Restoration did not have such employed, but he'd once walked by a lecture hall at the Institute of Mysticism, and seen a cat giving lectures. Its voice had not at all matched its size; "They keep much to themselves, I think. There are very few I have seen in the Imperial City."

"Sounds like swamp folk alright," she mused, a small laugh in her words that did not entirely let itself be drowned out by the pattering rain. Already he was feeling the cold, fat drops rolling down his neck, soaking into the upper layers of his shirt. The plate wasn't chafing yet, but probably would once the leather got soaked. Mari had told him once that apparently it was a problem a lot of the soldiers dealt with; "Doubt we'll see any though, up north it's mostly hills, and forests. Big forests, some of them too. The oldest ones have trees the size of highrises."

"Two centuries untouched by ax and saw can do wonders, yes?"

"Pretty much," Piper nodded, the movement causing a small curtain of water to wash from her cap, splashing against the ground. Martin already wished he could be back in that small, but dry tavern room. Walking through the rain like this was asking for pneumonia; "Biggest ones are old natural reserves, apparently. Nick told me Greentop used to be one of the biggest logging camps in the Commonwealth, before people started up the farms. Some of the trees there were old even before the bombs."

"Sounds more like Valenwood now than Black Marsh..." Martin huffed. The idea of what such trees might look like now was beyond him. He'd never been to Valenwood, but had heard of the inhabited trees. This sounded similar.

"That's the place with the cannibals, right?"

It took him a moment to realize Piper meant the Bosmer. Another moment, and he realized it was probably because Natalie had thought it was cool with elves that lived in trees and ate everything - and everyone - they killed. Piper, apparently, had noted the same, though had been better at hiding it.

"Y-yes, the cannibals..." maybe he should not have told of his homeland in ways that more resembled tall tales than fact. Natalie had hugely enjoyed it, of course, but now he wondered if perhaps Piper had taken it all for, as she said, gospel truth; "R-regardless, you make the north sound as if it is untamed wilderness. There must be settlements up there?"

"Sure, small ones mostly, like I said there's a lot of smaller ones, and a few with walls.." Piper shrugged, though the gesture lacked for the usual carefree attitude; "A lot of folks are abandoning them too, mind you. With the Minutemen gone, and the usual guards not leaving Boston itself."

"So small villages in the wilderness, with beasts and bandits all around," Martin scoffed. The notion was much too similar to stories of the outer towns and hamlets of the Empire. Not every village was close enough to a larger town for the guards to respond in time, or at all. Applewatch was blessed, in that regard. He could imagine the temptation to leave, if a better, safer life was promised, "...and once enough small villages are emptied, food dries up, yes? Famine comes next."

"Unless it stops, yeah."

Around them the walls of houses and apartment blocks came to a sudden end, gnarly trees and overgrown foliage replacing them as something akin to a small forest sprung forth. Behind the thick greenery he could catch glimpses of red masonry, and old, moss-grown towers of brick and slate rose from within like stunty tree-trunks. A large, white mass of concrete and rust rose ahead, like a cliffside against the green. The road here was only bare in the middle, otherwise thick and long roods and reeds crawled across, as if seeking the embrace of the other side.

"That's the Schrafft's City Center," Piper pointed at the large, white complex, "Used to be some sort of meeting place, like the market."

"It was a forum of sorts?"

"Something like that." Martin looked back up at the building, trying to see if something lurked behind the vines, "Minutemen sometimes used it, back in the day. When they had the numbers for it, they had barracks like these all across the Commonwealth. Close enough to Bunker Hill, close enough to Malden, Lexington and all the other places."

"Sounds like a roadfort," Martin noted, "We have those too."

"Mmm." The caravan passed the ancient fortress by, and came upon a manmade ravine that ran parallel to their own route. It was one of those open tunnels, or a sort of moat, like the turnpike just north of Diamond City, "Remember those folks back in the day, the ones that tried setting up a new government? Places like these seemed like good places to start out from, right? Great view, defensible and lots of farmland and woods. Only one problem."

"Ghouls?"

"Ghouls?" Piper actually sounded surprised, and looked the part too, until something seemed to click mentally, "Ah, no, no. The Institute. Massacred all the representatives and messed up any chance of a united government. Oh, and then ghouls, of course. Always ghouls at some point. They just, I dunno, materialize out of the bloody aether."

Something stirred in the foliage.

Martin had barely the time to react before a shape lunged from the shrubbery, mere meters from one of the Brahmin. Rags hung from a diseased humanoid, yellow eyes dimmed in the daylight, cracked teeth in rotten gums, and arms beset with claws that sought the flesh of the ladened beast.

It was the first time Martin had seen a laser weapon being fired.

The ghoul did not itself seem to notice what had happened. Martin only saw a faint, thin red trail of light in the air, if even that. One of the guards carried a weapon that seemed far more... different was the only word he could truly use to describe it. Like Stockton's guards, he wielded a weapon more akin to an instrument than a firearm. And it had just now cut a thin trail across the charging ghoul.

The immediate reaction was that the legs stopped running, even as the head snarled and one arm still clawed for the panicking packbeast. Then, as if in some stageplay and brought on for laughs, the ghoul's torso suddenly slid apart, a diagonal cut becoming apparent from hip to shoulder.

The mutant was silenced in the span of seconds, though it writhed on the dirt for longer than that by far.

"And thát," MacCready said, having moved up closer. His long rifle was unslung, a finger caressing the trigger. All earlier levity was gone as he watched the still twitching corpse. Water cascaded from his cap, hiding much of his face beneath grime, sweat and travel dust. Martin wondered if he was any better himself, "...is why they hire guards, even on safe routes."

Torques gave no orders, yet the guards seemed to spread out as if on command. Each they made a little more distance to the caravan, weapons loaded and raised. Then they were moving again, trundling on as if nothing had happened.

Piper cast a final glance to the corpse as she passed. Maybe she wondered if her words had caused it to appear, like when one said things could get no worse, and suddenly it started raining. Of course, it already was raining, and Martin had no desire to see what else the cosmos could come up with to cement the rule.

The road ahead felt less safe now. Across a vast plaza, to the west, a series of viaducts and bridges rose up, overshadowing everything else but for the trees, some growing as tall as the bridges themselves. It was as if a wall of green had been capped off by the gray of ancient stoneworks, like some bizarre work of art. And it was made no less foreboding by the downpour, dark skies allowing little in the way of sunlight to chase away the shadows.

Skeletal remains of cars were strewn about the plaza, some yet containing their passengers. The rain obscured much of the insides, but by magic or some other means, bony fingers yet clutched the wheel of one car Martin walked by. No sinews or anything else remained, and yet the skeleton was intact, as if the flesh had been stripped away in an instant and the bones not had time to fall apart.

Martin thought he heard something, distant and yet near. A horn, like the kind he had heard in the radio plays in Diamond City. Maybe some of the cars here still worked, or...

"I heard it's bad mojo, those things," MacCready muttered, deliberately taking steps to make greater distance between himself and the car, "Like, that much death, all at once..."

"It is," Piper nodded, though she did not make the same distance, and instead stuck by Martin as he hesitated before the wreck. A glance about told him there might be hundreds of its kind, in the plaza alone. How many more thousands on their route? And he could still hear the horn, somewhere, "There's always something bad in the air places like this."

In a flash, Piper disappeared.

MacCready, too, was gone.

The caravan was gone in its entirety, leaving not even a trace under skies now sunny, bereft of clouds. The rain had ceased and he no longer felt wet or cold. Around him, the world had changed, as if a picture had been shoved before his eyes, and a radio held to his ears.

Everywhere around him, the cars moved, their horns echoing down the street. None of them hit him though he stood still in the center of the road, nor did they seem at all to notice. People were inside them, alive and breathing, moving.

The plaza no longer seemed a graveyard, but instead was alive with movement. Cars left, arrived and parked, one replacing another as families poured in between, heading for houses no longer overgrown with vines and moss but now clean, proudly presenting facades bristling with freshly colored paint and new brickwork. He could hear the laughter of children, inside his ears more so than around him. In the car in front of him, a man sat, speaking into a small box held to his ear. He was nicely shaven, well-dressed and seemed happy.

Martin was happy.

Then he blinked, and all was back once more. The rain had not stopped, but instead now followed suit with lightning, and thunder. Each flash cast a sudden, sharp light on the overcast parking lot.

Fingers snapped before his eyes.

"Yo, Martin, are you... in there?"

A sideways glance, and Piper was there. She'd never left, of course, standing exactly where he had seen her stop. A second glance, now to the car before him. A skeleton once more occupied its seat. The suit had rotted off the old bones, tatters of dark fabrics that still clung to a few of its ribs. Što vidov? Vizija? Duhovi? Ova e mesto na smrtta...

"I got something in my eyes," he muttered; "Lovely weather, yes..."

Martin rubbed away the remnants of the vision, or whatever it had been. Rain and lightning alone could not explain what he had seen. A place of mass death, horrible and sudden. Malignant forces were not confined to the underground, it seemed. But this felt... different, than the underground. He'd seen nothing there, but for some shadows that moved in ways they should not. Here, he had seen... something. The past, maybe? A pristine sight, far removed from what Boston had become. Ako ima magija ovde, ne možam da ja nasetam...

"Don't get too close to those things, yeah?" MacCready snorted, "Heard stories down south, people that stopped to stare at seats inside a crashed plane and didn't leave again."

"Yeah, let's not do that," Piper said, taking Martin's hand in her. The touch and warmth was enough to shake him from his stupor, and he returned the gesture with a grateful squeeze. When MacCready had removed himself a little, walking on as his task demanded, Piper leaned in, her voice low, "...see any weird shit?"

"Mmm."

"Because of all the...right, yeah, lots of death around," she nodded, casting a glance at the cars. Her eyes softened, her fingers closing tighter around his, "...you okay?"

"I felt warm, before," It was hard to explain, but would be harder still to leave her guessing, worrying, "For a moment I... saw, I think I saw the past. I saw them, those people, alive. And, and the sun was out, there was no rain. I could hear horns, from the cars and..." his feet moved before he willed them, but followed instead as they led him back to the caravan. Torques would not wait for them, and there was no reason to lag behind, "Beše poinaku otkolku vo tunelite..."

"Lost in translation on that last one."

"It was different," he had not meant to speak the last words aloud, but once they came, something about them seemed important. Not that he could tell why, "It was different than in the tunnels. It was not... scary, I think. In the tunnels, the shadows, it felt like something watched. Not here. Nothing I saw saw me."

"Please remind me never to bring you south of downtown," Piper muttered, moving closer as they walked.

She did not need explain for him to understand her reasons. South was nearer to the site of the impact, where the bomb that had wiped out Boston had fallen. Death would only be stronger there, and ever more the closer he likely ventured to the Glowing Sea.

"Mmm." The road ahead seemed more perilous now than before, if such phenomenons would be a reoccuring theme. At least it had not seemed dangerous, or even uncomfortable, and he could draw some relief on that; "The skeletons are not crumbled after two centuries. Is it magic?"

Piper hesitated, saying nothing as they walked past a bench. A pair of skeletons sat on it, bony fingers interlaced in the same manner as their own hands had been moments before, as if frozen in their state of death, but for the lack of skin and flesh on their bodies. They looked as if the meerest breeze could have knocked it all down, yet also as if they could have stood, and walked away any moment now.

"Two months ago, I'd have said no," she started, her voice almost reverently quiet as they passed the scene by. No one seemed to pay them much heed, avoiding the skeletons of the past as was probably the wiser choice. Martin blew hot air in his palms, freezing from the downpour, "Now though..."

"What would your explanation have been, then?"

"I dunno, maybe..." she glanced at another car, frozen in time on the road. A family occupied its seats, the smallest skeleton half the size of Natalie. Whether it was the relative shelter of the car, or the quality of the fabrics, the recognizable remains of a yellow dress still sat on the small bones in the backseat. A moldy bear rested in the yellowed bones, clutched in silent fingers. The scene was depressing, "Maybe I'd have said the heat from the blast fused the bones together, or maybe there's some dried muscle or... something..."

The caravan made it into the relative shelter of the viaducts. Unsettling as the darkness was, it was quickly forgotten when one walked on dry ground. Torques raised a hand, scarcely visible in the darkness, and the Brahmin were brought to a halt. The caravan boss spoke with a voice that echoed in the manmade cavern.

"Take five minutes, people. Get your clothes wrung out, grab a smoke, whatever."

Piper wasted no time, stripping from her gloves. The soft leather might serve well against morning cold or to handle stuff, but soaked water worse than his own shirt. Her fingers were white from the cold, and like so many others in the caravan, she shivered as a gust of wind blew under the bridge. It might be dry here, but the cold persisted. A curtain of water stood from the edge of the bridge, on both sides, and made the outside world seem like an illusion.

Martin took her hands, both of them clasped in his own. Piper said nothing but did regard him with something between relish and confusion. Slowly, her expression turned to one of outright pleasure as he brought warmth into her, heating skin and muscle through the smallest trickle of magicka. It was as much a spell as closing your hand was exercise. A small chuckle escaped Piper as her skin dried off, "Better, yes?"

"How'd I ever travel without you?"

"Less comfortably, I suppose," Martin hummed, allowing himself a grin despite the cold and clammy weather, for the company was nice, and her reaction to his words nicer still. Piper's lips curled in a smile warm enough that it could as well have been a spell. "Hopefully we can get back to Diamond City without hypothermia. Weather is usually like this here in... after summer... autumn, yes?"

"You know, anyone else and that'd be a total mood-killer," Piper huffed, the smile persisting as she gazed back out at the weather, the cascade of water no less violent than before, "Yeah, autumn's usually wet as it gets here. Winter's cold, sure, but it's mostly snow and stuff. Spring and Autumn, that's where it's at for those inside days of staring out the windows, or trying to step on the parts of the street that hasn't turned to mud yet. The small things, you know?"

She fished out a cigarette, wordlessly handing him one as well. Martin did not... enjoy them, as she seemed to, but could understand the desire. Much like pipeweed at home, cigarettes brought about a calm to the body and mind, once you had gotten used to the acrid taste. He waited for her to hold out the lighter, and watched the dancing flame inches from his eyes.

It was such a strange thing, a mundane piece of equipment that at home would have either revolutionized life or been entirely redundant. Certainly, the Nords would like it, averse to mages as they were said to be. It would make life easier for those with no access to magic, or firewood and kindling dry enough to set alight.

"You never stop to think, if cigarettes are bad for you?" Piper asked, watching him as he took a cautious drag. The sour taste was not pleasant, but also not entirely unpleasant. It was something he could not define. Unhealthy, yes certainly, but calming for the mind, and in this land the latter seemed almost of greater import, "You know, as a doctor?"

"Maybe," he shrugged, spreading his free arm as she stepped closer, into an embrace that let them share what warmth they had. The sensation of her body pressed to his by far conquered his apprehension. "You have smoked longer, yes? Do you not think of this?"

"I think..." Piper muttered, squeezing a little closer against him, as if she could hide from the weather in his coat, "...you can count on a hand that amount of people that get old enough for smoking to be what kills them, in the Commonwealth. If it's not raiders, mutants or some freak disease, eventually the rads get you. None of those farmers that live out in the south are gonna get above sixty. Diamond City's got the underbelly, but some tato-farmer down there? Best he can do is dig a hole under his shack and hope for the best..."

"Lovely."

"It is pretty bleak, yeah." Piper took a fresh drag, setting the end of her cigarette aglow with a bright orange. In the dim light under the bridge, it brought some color to her face as well. "I suppose it's easy to forget how good we have it in Diamond City. I'm not about to give McDonough credit for it though. Diamond City's damned lucky because of the wall, and half a century's worth of letting nature creep back in turned the arena's dirt into pretty good soil."

"Diamond City started off as a walled farm?" The thought was amusing, considering how highly its upper class seemed to think of themselves. Then again, most were upper class from wealth borne on the backs of radchickens, cattle and agriculture. It actually did not surprise him that much; "I can see that."

"Yeah, used to be it was the only place you could grow anything and not worry some crap was gonna slink out of the shadows and snatch up your kids..."

"It got better though," Martin noted, savoring a breath through the cigarette in the same manner as he'd savor the pain of high-grade alcohol in a wound, though it was probably decidedly less beneficial. He smiled with humor, catching Piper's eyes, "I hear it has even a good newspaper now, yes?"

"Flattery, eh? Keep it up, might get you somewhere," she mused, though the warmth to her voice was ill-concealed. She audibly cleared her throat then, seeking something in the horizon, past the curtain of water, "So, uhm, that MacCready guy, the guard. You two talked a lot yesterday."

"He seems decent."

"He seems curious," Piper noted, some wariness to her voice, "Wasn't he walking right behind us a lot of the time in the tunnels? You think he heard too much?"

"I think he got... curious," Martin shrugged, picking Piper's own word for lack of better, "He does not strike me as... suspicious, I think. Not at us in particular. I wonder, though... it is bad if others find out? About me, I mean?"

Piper didn't immediately reply. She watched him for a moment, then cast her eyes back to the screen of water from the overhead viaduct. It had lessened a little, he thought, the water was not as constant now as before, and he could see some lighter patches in the skies beyond.

"Commonwealth's not a nice place, Martin," she said then, holding the cigarette between two fingers as if she considered throwing it away, "There's a lot of people who'd kill you for your skills, or worse shit. Still, it's hard to argue you should hide away the skills you'd need to do your job, and I'd probably be pretty selfish if I said I wanted you to only use them around us... It's part of you. It's part of the good you can do for people."

"Like keeping you from ever writing again."

"Everyone can learn to write, Martin, it's not exactly the same as being able to close up gunshot wounds with your bare hands, or fix broken bones in seconds," Piper gave him a look that was surprisingly reprimanding, "I know what you mean, but you're on another level than what I can do. It's... I dunno, it's your choice, ultimately, I think."

"No pressure." Martin took another drag on his smoke, the white twig all but gone now, a slight breeze carrying off the graying ashes, "In Bunker Hill, I healed a beggar's shoulder. He... will likely have told others. Do you think I should not have done so?"

Silence, again. Outside, the downpour continued, lessened now in sound but powerful still. Piper frowned, a look of concentration on her face as she visibly mulled through what he had said. The smile that came then was small, and borne of resignation.

"No, I think it's a good thing."

"I could not... not." It probably would one day garner him the attention of those that wanted to kill him, he knew it well. Still, he had no regrets. A wounded man had been before him, and he'd had the chance to help. It was all that was needed; "He was begging on the streets, and the wound was bad."

"I know," and now the smile was warmer, brighter, the earlier weariness vanishing. Cold, clammy air reigned when not pushed aside by winds that were colder still, and carried rain even into the shelter of the overpass. And still, when she put her hand on his and squeezed, he felt only warmth, "You can't help it. I've it from a pretty reliable source that you'd even rush in against a super mutant to help a stranger."

He didn't immediately recognize what she meant, but when it dawned he couldn't help but chuckle. Piper's ways of being her were no less important than she seemed to think his ways of being him were, and the Commonwealth was brighter for it.

Torques' voice sounded then, casting an echo through the small cavern;

"Okay, people, we are moving out again."

The rain outside had not yet abated. Still, at least the caravaneer was man enough that he was first out, stepping through the diminishing waterfall with a resolute stride, and no hesitation. Then again, Martin would wager the man had clothes better suited for the rain than his own coat and plate, or Piper's much-vaunted cap.

There was some relief at least, in that the rain mostly came from the other side of the viaduct, and so for some hundred meters or so, they walked in the cover of the concrete walls. A gust of wind blew ahead, almost snapping Piper's cap from her head as the wind changed, and struck them from a new direction. Now the rain came on hard, and from an angle. Cold, hard drops that struck like pebbles on the skin.

"Gotta love that Commonwealth fresh air!" Piper grumbled, dragging her jacket tighter around herself, hands gone inside the relative comfort of her long sleeves, "Knew I should have packed warmer."

Martin watched the skies with apprehension.

Dark, gray clouds still hung above them like malevolent gods, yet for all that he loathed the rain and the cold, at least he knew them. Rain, cold and wind, it was the same as home, in the early winter before the storms set in. Applewatch was close enough to Bruma that the winter snow reached them, even in the Empire's lowlands. He knew cold and did not like it, but at least it was natural. What he feared, more than hypothermia or soaked clothes, was the green devilry of radstorms. He'd lived through one, and it was more than enough to imprint in him deeply the fear of what radiation had wrought on this world, and more so cement his hatred of it.

On the left, there was nothing to see but the monotonously drab concrete wall, segments of gray that seemed to mark the end of the world for all he could tell, a line that could not be crossed to escape the rain. Curtains of water washed down its sides, leaving untouched graffiti and markings so old they had likely fused to the stone and would endure past the end of mankind itself, maybe even longer than the concrete.

On the right, parking lots and block-like office buildings provided little cover from the elements, one replacing the other in a seemingly endless sequence of brick and asphalt and death. Like before, here as well the dead still manned their cars, still waiting, watching, threatening or tempting with visions of warmer times, maybe. Maybe. Or, maybe it would be like MacCready had said, where people walked into places of death and stayed there, trapped perhaps in visions of better days. Or in the last moments of the dead, struck with terror and agony of such force that they joined them there.

In some places, above them were old billboards and roadsigns, a green color with names in faded white that meant less than nothing. To him, and likely to the rest of the caravan. One sign could have spelled 'Malden', but only an 'M' and 'n' were still visible, the rest covered in vines and rust. In one place, the bridge on their left seemed to divert, and a branch split from the main road, leading a bridge across theirs. Relief beneath its cover was appreciated, though brief. The caravan then became funneled between two bridges, the one on their right an overpass. Ancient markings and white paint were the only signs of the road, now all but hidden beneath vines and moss, had been made by man. But, at least their new right flank provided some cover against the worst of the rain, though not much.

"It feels more a canal than a road, this..." He didn't like the way they now walked in a valley of rock, and on both sides at any moment raiders might appear, guns in hand. There were caves too, dark places where the leftmost bridge now opened up into tunnels and passageways. It was hollow again in there, and covered over with so much green that he could see nothing of it, "We might get washed away."

"We're almost at the river," Piper said, gesturing ahead as they walked. His boots were soaked through already, his socks too. The leather might be proof against the water, but the stitches were not. He felt every step as the waters sloshed around. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine them wading through swamplands, "Most of the water runs off into the river, or ends up somewhere in the underground. The old drainage channels got clogged long ago, but there's always somewhere the water goes."

"Like the underground river?"

"Kinda, but that's more a case of the tunnel's walls breaking. There's probably more all over the place, apparently sewers had to be maintained every few years back in the day, and it's been two hundred years since the last check-up," The memory was still vivid enough, to him. It seemed peculiar that there might be other rivers, unknown to people, running beneath their very feet right now, carving out tunnels untouched by man. Piper snorted, "Flooded sewers are better than the dry ones though, I say. Ferals can't breathe under water... I think, so that's one less place for them."

"Probably will be full of rats, though," Martin sighed. Rats loved flooded places, for some reason. The Imperial City's sewers were crammed with them, as were the gutters. Of course, sewers at home rarely flooded with just water. The street they walked seemed to change its nature, no longer enveloped by overpasses and viaducts. Instead, now trees and overgrowth resumed their dominance, a curtain of green greeting them as they came out from beneath the shelter of the concrete bridge.

On their left, the wall persisted, a barrier too tall to scale and impossible to peer above. On their right, what seemed like it might have once been homes, but was now so utterly overgrown and destroyed by time and neglect that only the fading, white paint gave it away as not just more woodland. Here and there, the rusted wrecks of cars, wrapped up in the roots of trees under whose shades they had once been parked. In places, the ground was sunken, and water had pooled into swampland, swarms of large, fat flies buzzing above. Martin grimaced at the water, remembering the tunnels, "...or Mirelurks."

"Or Mirelurks," Piper nodded. She peered ahead, walking on her toes to peek over the crowd, "Speaking of which, we're at the river, so keep your eyes on stalks."

"Stalks?"

"Yeah, like, you know, like Mirelurks," she tried, pointing her fingers upwards and out from her forehead, like the eyestalks on a snail.

The sight was entirely too comical for Martin to take her seriously, though it at least helped his mood. He could hear the river ahead, less of a violent rushing and more of a quiet, discreet burbling that seemed almost ashamed of itself. There was calm to it though, a good sound, almost drowned out by the rain. The skies at least were scattering, clouds growing a lighter shade of gray as they wrenched what little water they yet retained onto the heads of the travelers.

"We're entering onto the bridge!" Torques called from up ahead.

Martin could not yet actually see the river, but he could see where the bridge went. A section of it had collapsed into the riverbank, allowing them passage upwards through rubble now so overgrown with greenery that it seemed almost a natural hill. The ground was slick and treacherous from the rain, though at least the final drops were falling now, and the sun seemed to emerge from behind clouds.

Despite the name, it was not so much a bridge as yet another raised road, running along the bank of the river at a place where it seemed particularly wide, almost a lake in width. Up here, he could see for hundreds of meters along the river, as well as the lands across. It was a strange contrast to what was behind them now, the settled land, for across the river he could see only one or two ruins, the rest - if indeed there was more - concealed behind a thick and dense canopy of green. It seemed more a jungle than a city.

"Does the city end at the river?"

"Boston does, yeah," Piper hummed. She wrenched some water from her cap, shaking the last droplets off before pointing across, the gesture aimed at the remnants of two twin blocks of red brickwork, their tops uncovered by vines and visible as a stark contrast to the rest, "That's Wellington, over there. Boston's made up of all these old towns and hamlets that just kinda got swallowed up, remember? See those two apartment complexes over there? Dunno the name, but they used to be an outpost for the Minutemen, way back. Tallest things around, could see for miles. Was a settlement before that, people used the old riverside park to farm crops. Guess what happened?"

"Ghouls?"

"Bingo."

"Starting to feel like a recurring theme, no?" It was weird that ghouls could do so much damage, even if in large numbers. For all the ferals were frightful and likely would haunt his dreams for the next decade, they did not exactly seem capable of operating firearms, or opening doors.

"Well, a few tens of thousands did get ghoulified."

"I thought most were normal, like us," Martin scratched at his stubble, annoyed at the apparent inconsistency now before him, like an equation with too many unknowns and an irate lecturer awaiting a result. Only, here there didn't seem to be one, "How fast is the... mind loss?"

"I don't know," Piper shrugged, watching the riverbank as they marched along. Martin did too, and found soon enough what had caught her eyes. They were scuttling about in the shallow water, barely more than boulders to the eye if not for the erratic movements. The distance was great enough that there seemed no threat, nor did the Mirelurks seem to notice them, or at least pay them any heed, "I don't think anyone does, really. There's folks from before the War, and they're still sane. And there's folks that got turned into ghouls five years ago who'd happily eat your brains out of your skull if you offered. If there's a rule for it, I don't know it."

"So the only constant then, is... eventually people turn, yes? Or maybe some do not at all?"

Piper could offer only the same shrug as before, as much in the dark as he. It was almost refreshing, these times when she knew as little about something as he did. It made him feel less... off, in a way, as if it raised him nearer her level of understanding the Commonwealth. The riverside passed them along, thinning and growing green with algae in places, in others outright becoming swampland and mangrove as trees mutated to the point of the supernatural stretched roots as thick as men into the irradiated waters.

Unannounced, the caravan suddenly slowed to a halt.

"What's happening?" The question was not of his own mouth, though Martin could as well have asked it. It seemed everyone in earshot muttered the same question, unable to find answers, until one at last ran its course down through the caravan, and reached them.

The bridge was gone.