March 10, 2288

Danse pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes as he trudged down the halls of the Prydwen. It was eerily quiet but not unexpected for the early hour. Most of the soldiers progressed serenely through REM cycles a floor above him but the paladin had been unable to manage the same escape for the pounding in his head.

If sleep wouldn't come, refused to subdue the ache or temporarily relieve him of the pain, then food might. Coffee, at least, would be warm and gratifying and the mess staff would thank him for brewing the first pots.

He'd spent the better part of the last few days assisting Ingram with resurrecting Liberty Prime. When he blinked, he saw every groove in the metal, every dent and scratch, memorized because he'd been staring at them for hours at a time. As it was, they had nothing more to show for their efforts than dismembered robotic limbs and tangled circuitry. He knew Ingram was at her wit's end; they all were and they dealt with the mounting pressure of imminent war differently. Teagan's coping mechanism particularly chaffed his nerves and it was all he could do not to chew the man out.

"Better not come back if she doesn't bring Li," he'd muttered, spewing more vitriol for their allies than the Institute itself. Strange, given that they were poised to turn the latter into a crater. And how completely backwards that if he'd made any challenge at all, Danse would be the one under heavy scrutiny and not the notoriously intractable proctor.

Because Maxson knew.

He saw it in the way his eyes turned grim when they looked him over, inspected him just a breath longer than normal. Frigid inquiry where there had once been camaraderie. It was only a matter of evidence. So they would both wait, hold their breath, for truth that Danse had never before withheld.

The stakes were higher now. Someone important on the line to get caught in the crossfire.

But Nora was away, and as much as he worried, he was glad it was Deacon at the airport. Maxson didn't find him nearly as palatable as Nora and usually left him to his own devices. Anyone attempting to draw something out of Deacon was fed lies and the elder knew as much. It was useless to prod him, to get him to reveal anything and while it was morally reprehensible in the paladin's eyes, he wouldn't protest. It kept them all in the Brotherhood's good graces.

Speak of the devil.

In a chair in the mess, the exact one Nora had sat in drowning in a sea paperwork before she'd left, Deacon reclined with his feet propped up lazily on a table. Fluorescent light reflected from his sunglasses, everpresent and quite possibly attached to his skin, and his fingers interlocked behind his head. He looked relaxed, maybe asleep, but then he spoke.

"If it isn't my favorite tin can."

"Deacon."

"Service is terrible around here. What's a guy gotta do to get an omelet?"

Danse took the chair across from the Railroad agent. He was decent company, at least, different than the soldiers he was used to in more ways than one but not all bad. And somewhere in his mind he was aware that the man was the closest to Nora he could manage to get at the moment.

"Any word?"

"Nothing. It's driving Dez crazy. She's gone through twice as many cigarettes as usual and that's saying something."

Danse hummed and rolled his shoulders. The muscles there were sore and overworked and the simple movement only emphasized the weary ache. He closed his eyes and brought a hand up to knead relief into the side of his neck. When he opened his eyes, a bottle of beer clinked on the table, Deacon sipping from his own.

"Long day."

It wasn't a question and Danse didn't affirm or deny it but he couldn't help the sigh that escaped him. Long day. Long week.

"Thought so. Robot not working out for you? Did you try turning it off and back on again?"

How he knew about Liberty Prime when the project was still unknown to most of the Brotherhood was troubling but Danse wasn't in the frame of mind to question it. Later. "We're hopeful Nora will return with Dr. Li."

Deacon knocked back the rest of his beer and reached for the untouched bottle in front of Danse. "If she returns at all."

He felt his stomach drop. "She will."

"I like believing in miracles as much as the next guy but this is the Institute we're talking about. They don't usually play nice with others."

"She'll come back," he repeated. "She's capable."

Deacon straightened. His fingers drummed an anxious beat onto the table and his other hand scratched at the skin beneath his ear. Unusual, he thought, to see the confident facade peeled back to expose a panicked interior. It lasted only a moment and then he was smirking again. "I'd pay good caps to see her rip into whoever was dumb enough to take Shaun."

"The... Shaun," he corrected. A synth but Nora's synth and that much he would respect. "How much does he know?"

"About the Institute? About as much as everyone else. Rumors."

"Is he aware of... what he is?"

"Shit. She told you?" he groaned, throwing his head back. "Kid didn't. Now? Who knows what those Institute bastards have done."

What would they do to one of their own? Maybe a mind wipe, perhaps scrap him for parts, or, more likely still, a bargaining chip. A handful of possible outcomes and none of them good.

"She must really trust you. Telling you about Shaun."

Danse frowned. "I've kept her secret."

"For now, anyway."

"The fact that you think I would endanger a child shows how poorly you know me."

"Maybe I don't know you. But the Brotherhood-you talk big. Throw around words like 'honor'. The Commonwealth's knights in shining power armor. You seem like a stand up guy but you have to see that this isn't gonna end well. Three Railroad agents and a synth walk into a Brotherhood base..."

"What are you implying?"

"Maybe you wouldn't hurt him but your buddies in orange wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. On Shaun, hell, on any of us. Nora's the only reason we even got our foot in the door."

"Elder Maxson is more considerate than you give him credit for."

"Yeah? Does he share his bed with Nora, too?"

The accusation nearly missed him but when it hit, he furrowed his brow and clenched his jaw. "Whatever you think you saw, I can assure you you're wrong."

"My bad," he threw up his hands in mock defense. "I'm sure you take women back to your room to play chess."

Danse glared at him. "Nothing happened."

"She cares about you, you know. More than you care about her."

"That couldn't be further from the truth."

"Like hell. You'd kill her if your boss asked nicely," he sneered. There was a severity in the way Deacon looked at him, one side of his mouth curling up slightly in disgust. A snarling mutt, protective and menacing.

"I wouldn't."

Deacon scoffed and picked at the label peeling from his second beer.

He shook his head, less angry than at a loss. "What do you suggest I do, Deacon?"

"Leave," the man shrugged.

"What?"

"The Brotherhood. Leave. For Nora."

As if it were that simple. Tearing him in two. Very much like that. And it was audible, the shallow cuts into him, patient and determined to leave him bare to his bones. He'd been straddling the line, putting off the hellish decision for as long as he could before the fissure grew too wide and he was swallowed by it. "I can't do that."

"Didn't think so."

Her words, aged now, thrown like a net to hold him to her years before, echoed in his own mouth. "This can still work."

"Sure. Happily ever after and all that."

He stood, turned his back on Deacon and crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't see how it's your concern."

"You screw this up, I'm the one picking up after you."

He cared. That much was plain, despite the attempts at deflection. An honest affection or something deeper. "Are you in love with her?"

"It's not like that. Are you?"

It would've been a simple answer once. A resounding yes. Absolutely, as wholeheartedly as anyone could love anyone else. A kind of thing not easily strangled, he knew, no matter how long he wrestled against it. There was something to be said for the way they'd endured time: of earthen eyes that made his face flush even when he'd seen them heavy with their betrayal once, of skin still familiar brown and lips that pulled at his own when they turned up into a smile. Connection unspoiled, slow-burning embers that refused to die out. He was attached to her in ways he couldn't have understood when he'd pursued her ten years ago. And if he'd known, would he have done anything different?

He thought of his life in terms of befores and afters, in terms of Nora. Before they'd met and after, a timeline divided along every milestone they'd shared and every one he'd grieved the loss of. She'd seen him through too much for it to be any different. Maybe, if she'd never come back, he'd have been able to rid himself of her altogether, evict the lingering, stubborn thoughts and memories, but now he would never know. It was far too late for that and he wasn't as upset as he should be about it. He was entranced by her, passionately devoted to her wellbeing.

"She's... very important to me."

"She's important to all of us," Deacon said, suddenly soft. "But when the clock strikes midnight and Maxson ships you back home and she stays, 'important' won't be good enough."

For once, the words didn't fall flat when they left Deacon's mouth. It was the truth, bitter and simple and brutal. He could evade the decisions that needed to be made for only so long; eventually, he would need to choose between two integral underpinnings of his identity. To lose one was to be crippled; he would survive but wounded, missing pieces of himself. Not whole. If he didn't belong with his brothers and sisters, he didn't know where he belonged and the unknown might be worse than anything else.

It wasn't like he'd ever had much to begin with. And when he found anything worthwhile, he gripped it white-knuckled until it was pried from him violently. He wasn't capable of letting go without a fight and he could feel the prickle of foreboding at the back of his skull building into a frenzied throb.

Yes, he would have to choose one way or another. His hand would be forced.

There was an unknowable amount of time until then and little to do in the meantime but wait.