A/N: I apologize for the lack of updates! My laptop crashed irrepairably some time ago and caused me to lose over four years` worth of art, writing, music, and pictures. I felt like I`d suddenly lost a limb. I was so upset over it I gave up for a while. However, after a number of friends and readers encouraged me to get back to doing what I love to do (and my best friend allowed me to hold his poor laptop hostage for the day) I`ve managed to pop out another update. Its not as lengthy as I would like, but its a start. Hopefully, regular updates will resume soon. Major thanks to everyone who sent me reviews and well wishes, they help more than you imagine.

Chapter Ten: Hope

They were barely twenty feet out the door, around a corner when Gage abruptly pinned the Overboss between himself and a nearby wall. His mouth was hot on her skin when he marked her neck with his teeth. A low noise came from her and she roughly tugged the hair at the base of his skull. He pulled back slowly and stared down at her face heatedly. He said;

"There, now we`re even." A smirk slowly grew upon him seeing the Overboss`s reaction. She was glaring up at Gage with fire in her dark gray eyes. Color crept in to her cheeks when he added; "You try something like that again though, and I can`t promise I won`t tear you the fuck apart."

"I don`t think you can handle two hundred and four years of pent up sexual frustration, Gage."

"Any time you want to find out, let me know." He told her, still close enough to convince the few passersby that the two of them might have been making out. Her small hands slid up the length of his chest and she fisted the lapels of his vest in them. His heart hammered erratically when she stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear;

"Not a chance in hell. Thanks for playing along though." Her lips were criminally soft; he could feel her smirking when she slipped away. She ducked under his outstretched arm and snagged him by the belt to turn him towards Fizztop as she did so. The extra sway she put in her hips as she began walking back was for his benefit.

Damn, Boss. His thoughts were spiraling in exactly the direction he did not want them to go. Getting involved with the Overboss, no matter how attractive he thought she was, was a bad idea. Scratch that, it was a terrible idea. The worst. She seemed to get a kick out of teasing him, but he could tell she wasn`t a one night stand kind of woman. Although he had seen the dark glimmer of lust in her expression when he bit her and pinned her to the wall, he knew she wasn`t easy. She`d just admitted to not having slept with anyone since leaving the Vault. If he`d been paying attention, he could deduce she hadn`t slept with anyone for a while before she`d gone in too. Gage`s amorous mood began to fade as he recalled something else. Frost had told him she had family in the Vault. She`d said they were separated, and that most of the other residents had died. He hadn`t given it much thought before, but now he had to wonder. Was the reason for her vendetta against the Institute because they had some member of her family hostage? It was certainly a possibility. Was part of the reason for her holding back from being intimate with anyone because she had someone she was holding out for? The idea effectively snuffed any further fantasies he might have been entertaining about getting her in to his bed tonight. It was all supposed to be an act to fool Mags anyways...Still, she even had me convinced. Shit.

Part of him wanted to be angry, but he knew better. What had he been expecting, anyways? Their working together was just a means to an end, he was sure. He was a tool to her, the same as MacCready. Actually, the Gunner himself didn`t seem to think so. Gage remembered something the other man had said; 'You met a few days ago, and yet you risked your life to protect him already. It might not be as hard to believe as you think.' They had been discussing the odds of the other raiders believing that Frost was interested in Gage. He seemed doomed to never ending frustration. If he only knew what her true motivations were, Gage wouldn`t be so bothered. Porter went out on a limb and decided to broach the subject as he followed the Overboss across the plaza. He led with;

"MacCready is never going to let us live down these marks."

"You got that right, but when did you start caring what he thinks?" Frost asked mildly as she glanced back over her shoulder.

"I don`t, although going through with this charade something else he said has been stuck in my skull." They were nearing the lift platform now, her pace was relaxed enough that they still had a few minutes before they would reach it. She gave Gage the impression she wasn`t in a hurry to get back. He wasn`t either, and he considered just dragging her with him on a longer walk so he could subtly interrogate her through further conversation.

"What`s on your mind, Gage?"

"MacCready said before that if 'he didn`t know better, he would have believed it' when he was talking about me coming with you tonight as your 'date'. He said it wasn`t a stretch for him to think you were interested in me because you`d already risked your life for mine."

"Let me guess, now you`re wondering why?"

"Well, yeah." Gage rubbed at his jaw curiously. He was only half meeting her eyes as he walked towards the Overboss. She`d stopped to wait for him a few feet from the lift. "You`ve said the two of you were partners before, that you guys went through hell together and came out as the only survivors."

"I also said I wasn`t interested in any suitors, so if you`re still under the impression we have a thing for each other, it`s not like that."

"No, I get that. Just, you`re close. Sort of. I mean you`ve known each other longer and better than you and I have known each other."

"Where are you going with this?" Frost asked him, sounding puzzled. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Gage thought maybe she couldn`t see how worried he was.

"The three of us are all going to Kiddie Kingdom tomorrow. I don`t know how far I can trust him or his skills yet. But I do know that between me and you, if we`re in trouble he`s going to pick helping you before me. What I want to know is; if MacCready and I are both endangered, and you can only save one of us, which one are you going to choose?" His chest was tight, he felt as if a great weight was riding on her answer.

"I thought it was pretty obvious I already made that decision." Her tone was one of surprise, but she replied without hesitation.

"You chose me in that explosion. What about the next time?"

"I`d choose you again."

"Why?" He had so many suspicions, but Gage just couldn`t figure out which reason was the right one. Which motivation drove her, exactly?

"MacCready knew what he was signing up for when he agreed to help. He knows the plan as well as you do, and the risks involved. He understands that he can walk away at any point in time, and he`s decided not to. He has a choice. You on the other hand don`t have the same options, and neither do I."

"You mean I can`t just walk away."

"That's part of it, yeah. This is your home, and it`s tearing itself apart. You could leave, but you don`t want to. You want to fight for it, to make it work. That`s why you put in so much effort to keep the gang leaders from killing each other, and why you arranged for me to kill Colter."

"All true, but you could walk away too. You aren`t a raider all the way through. You`d probably get by settling down some place like Goodneighbor and taking jobs as a merc." It sounded cold, but it was true. He knew just from talking to her that Frost wasn`t evil all the way through. MacCready had even made it sound like she was some kind of domestic before the War. If she had family out there, why couldn`t she go back?

"No, I really can`t. I don`t have any reason or place to settle down, and I can`t 'start over' knowing that the Institute could just take away everything that I build. I barely sleep as is, and that`s no kind of life I want." Her face was all in shadow as they rode the lift up, but Porter could hear the quiet strain in her voice.

"So you`d protect me because you need me around to take back Nuka World?" He wondered aloud while they leaned against the rail next to each other. It was what he`d thought she would say. There were only a few inches between his arm and hers on the metal bars, but somehow that space felt like miles.

"No. I could do it without you. I destroyed the Railroad by myself. I`ve killed countless raiders and monsters since I left the Vault. I tracked a professional Institute mercenary across the Commonwealth years after his trail had gone cold and butchered him for kidnapping my son. I infiltrated the Children of Atom Church on Mount Desert Island and annihilated it. All of those things I`ve done alone. I could get in to the Institute alone, by hijacking a Courser Synth, and go on a suicidal killing spree. But I don`t want to. I don`t want to die. I just haven`t had much reason to live besides revenge until now..." the Overboss trailed off, because she`d just realized something.

She didn`t want to be alone anymore. For a long time she hadn`t really had anyone to rely on. Frost kept people at a distance, for their safety and her own. She was trying to do the same thing to Gage. But some part of her was sick of that. Sharing a bunker with a platoon of Gunners had been the start of it. Too many nights she`d struggled in to an exhausted sleep on the hard ground or in decrepit ruins by herself. Too many caps paying for a battered mattress in settlement hotels` common rooms just to hear the sound of other humans breathing in their sleep nearby. Too many hired backup guns she didn`t need for their idle conversation while taking out super mutant or synth strongholds. What she wanted was a companion, if she would just admit it. Cait had come close in some ways, but she preferred to live in the moment whereas Frost had been stuck tethered to her past by grief and hate. For Cait, home was with whatever caravan was paying the most for a bodyguard that week. She had nothing tying her down or holding her back. In Frost`s case, no matter how many miles she travelled, how much distance was between her and Vault 111, she couldn`t outrun the pain.

The truth was, she`d protected Gage because their partnership so far felt like the most solid thing she`d found since waking up in that frigid tomb. It was rough and full of unknowns. But it was honest, in a way that not even her time with the Brotherhood or the Gunners had been. Not only were they essential to each other`s survival among the raiders, but they gave each other hope. That was invaluable to her. Gage of course couldn`t possibly know all that. He was staring at her with an expression of interest. The lift had stopped moving but they were both still standing on it, leaning against the rail near each other.

"Boss?"

"Don`t take this the wrong way. I don`t have your back because I feel obligated to, or because I don`t think you can handle yourself. I do it because I want to."

"You don`t want to protect MacCready too?" Gage asked doubtfully as the woman finally came out of her reverie.

"Of course I don`t want him to get hurt. But-"

"What? What`s different? Just because he has a choice and I don`t?" The easy answer would have been 'yes, exactly'. The veteran raider would have been irritated, but he would have dropped it. They would go back to working together and everything would stay the same. But Frost surprised him, because she almost always did things the hard way, and because she felt that she owed him the truth. Even when being frank made the situation that much more complicated, she wouldn't`t lie to him.

"Because Nuka World is all I have left besides obliterating the Institute. I need something to come back to, or I want it. I`m sick of not having a home, and I`m tired of being an outcast. You told me your dream is to rebuild this place. I came here for an army, for death. I wasn`t expecting to find a future. But when you talk about it I can see this place all lit up again. I can picture the buildings remade, the debris gone, rides working, and the fountain filled with clean water. I can smell popcorn and taste the fizz of cold Nuka Cola. Its something to come back to, to look forward to."

"You`re saying you`d choose to save me over MacCready because of my dream to rebuild this mess? I didn`t realize I`d made such an impression." A genuine smile turned up the corners of his mouth. The distance he`d been imagining evaporated. He`d gestured to the park below them with a hand as he spoke, sounding surprised. Now when Gage returned his arm to the railing he dared to let his skin rest against hers. She didn`t move away immediately. Instead she looked out over the broken buildings with their fading paint and envisioned what they could become.

"You`d be surprised what a powerful effect a little hope can have."