After the battle, the group decided to rest while they could, and they'd bug out before dawn the next morning. This was more out of necessity than anything. John and Nora had exhausted themselves fending off the raiders, and John had taken some minor injuries that weren't severe enough to warrant a stimpak, and yet painful enough that he had to rest.
Preston agreed to keep watch for the first half of the night, with Sturges taking over after midnight. Right now he was busy keeping an eye out the window, binoculars in hand.
John and his wife Nora fell asleep in a corner of the room, separate from everyone else. After prying the armor plating from his battered suit of power armor, John had practically flopped down on the floor and fell a sleep within minutes. Nora went to sleep a little later, having spoken to Preston beforehand about why she stumbled her way into Concord in the first place.
A settlement needed the Minutemen's help. It was touching that people of the Commonwealth still sought after the Minutemen in their time of need, but it broke Preston's heart knowing that he really couldn't do anything about it. The Last Minuteman simply told Nora that he'd see if he could do anything about it, and that seemed to have satisfied her for now. She curled up next to her husband shortly after and fell asleep.
"Hey, Preston." Garvey heard someone whisper.
Turning around, he saw that Sturges was up.
"It's my turn on watch." The mechanic said, holding a bolt action rifle that he had looted off a dead raider.
"Is it midnight already?" Preston asked, tiredness finally catching up to him.
"Past midnight by now, actually. 2 AM."
Preston blinked twice, then pulled out an old pocket watch from his coat. The long hand had gone missing ages ago, so he had to eyeball the short hand to tell the time. It was around 2 past 15 by now.
"Huh." The Minuteman said.
"Go on, get some rest buddy." Sturges said. "Mama Murphy said tomorrow should be the last leg until we get to Sanctuary."
Preston nodded.
He got off his little nest at the porch and went back inside. He took a sleeping bag and rolled it just beside the porch. The entire day's exhaustion hit him like a mad brahmin the moment his back touched the soft fabric of the sleeping bag and he felt his energy slowly ebb away.
Before he could sleep, Sturges asked him something.
"So... John and Nora." He said. "Thoughts?"
Preston rubbed his eyes and pushed his back up the wall as he gathered his thoughts.
"Honestly? I don't know." Preston answered.
"Yeah, me too."
"You think Mama Murphy knew about this?" Sturges added. "She did say Concord was going to be a turning point for us."
"Much as Mama Murphy's been right, John and Nora are just two people." Preston said, shaking his head. "I don't see what the two of them could do to turn our fortunes around."
"They helped us fight off an entire raider gang and killed a Deathclaw."
"We've done that before." Preston countered.
"Not at the same time, and not without losing a few guys each time."
Preston didn't really have a response to that.
"It could be fate, Preston." Sturges continued. "Could be this is how the Minutemen come back."
Preston furrowed his brows. He felt a splitting headache coming, and the exhaustion wasn't helping.
"We'll talk again tomorrow, Sturges." Preston said. "Need to catch some shut eye before we head out again."
With that, the conversation ended. Preston slinked back into his sleeping bag. Sturges nodded and turned his attention to watching for trouble.
-000-
Nora woke up to the sound of metal clicking and clattering. Looking left and right, she found John wasn't beside her anymore. She got up with a groan. A blanket over the hard wood floor does not make for good bedding. The side of her body that she slept on felt sore.
"Good morning, hun." She heard John say.
She looked around and saw her husband sitting by the window, tinkering with what was either an M14 or an M1A.
"Mornin'." Nora slurred out, not fully awake yet.
As she got to her feet and stretched, she finally noticed that they were all alone in the room.
"Where'd everyone else go?" She asked.
"Downstairs, packing stuff up, getting ready to leave, the whole works." John answered.
The man then took an open can of food and offered it to Nora. The labels on the side were faded, and she couldn't tell what exactly it was inside there.
"What's that?" She asked as she sat down beside him.
"Breakfast." John simply answered, a little smirk formed in his face.
Nora huffed at that.
"I know that's breakfast..." She sighed out. "I was asking what's in the can."
"Don't quite know." John shrugged. "The old lady said it was Tato and salted radstag stew."
Nora blinked twice as she processed her husband's answer.
"Tato?" She asked. "What's that short for? Potato?"
"Bit more like Tomato to me." John said, shaking his head. "Tastes a bit off though. A bit... how do I describe it... bitter, I guess?"
Nora took the can and ate a spoonful of the contents. As the first bite came into her mouth, her face curled in recoil.
"Mmph, you're right. It's very bitter." She said.
That didn't stop her though. Much as she didn't like the taste, she kept eating the stew. She downed each spoonful with great effort, and eventually finished her breakfast.
The Abernathies cooked better food. It probably helped that they had much fresher ingredients to work with.
"So, what's the plan for today?" Nora asked as she finished.
"Preston and his gang are headed for Sanctuary. They want to set up there." John said.
"Sanctuary..." Nora said wistfully. "It's been so long."
She looked down on the floor. Everything she knew was gone. Her home, her country... all she had left was her husband.
"What do we do, John?"
There wasn't a lot of thinking or hesitation on John's end.
"We do what we can." He answered, with a confidence and certainty that put Nora a little at ease. It was good to know her rock and anchor was still there for her.
"We'll help Preston and his gang for now, and once we're all set up, we'll head out and start looking for Shaun." John continued.
"You say it like that, and it starts sounding easy." She laughed a little. Not at her husband and the way that he said what he said, but at the ridiculousness of the situation.
Never in a million years did Nora ever think she'd have to deal with... well, all of this. She went to law school. She wanted to be a prosecutor and uphold law and order in America. Now she's getting into firefights with giant bugs and raiders.
She let out a deep sigh.
"If you start overthinking everything, you'll only exhaust yourself." John said. "That's how it was when I was in the Army."
He the turned around and picked up the guns he was fiddling with.
"Here, this is for you."
John handed over a Grease Gun to her.
"Wh- what?" Nora stammered. "But I don't even know how to use it!"
"That's fine, I'll teach you." John insisted.
Nora hesitated at first, but then took the sub machinegun from her husband. She wrapped her fingers around the grip, careful to maintain proper trigger discipline.
She inspected the weapon from left to right, looking at all the scuffing, weathering, and other details on it. Grease Gun was an apt name, this gun looked like it was cobbled together from spare pipes and utilities found in a scrapped kitchen.
"You see that cover on the front right side?" John pointed out. "That's the safety."
"Huh?"
John gestured at her to open up the Grease Gun's cover, which she did. Once open, she could see the bolt assembly inside.
"That little tab is the safety." John pointed at a metal bit jutting out of the now open cover. "When the cover is closed, that tab slots in to the bolt assembly and stops it from moving."
Now that John had pointed it out, Nora could see how the cover worked. It was incredible that something so simple could work so well for the past 400 years.
"You see that finger sized cutout on the bolt assembly? That's how you charge the bolt." John continued. "Stick your finger in there and pull the bolt back."
Nora remained a little skeptical, but did as her husband instructed. When she pulled back the bolt, it locked in the rearward position with a .45 ACP round now in the chamber.
"The Grease Gun is an open bolt machinegun. Not as accurate as a closed bolt weapon since the bolt has to cycle forward to fire, but the Grease Gun's low rate of fire makes it very easy to handle."
Nora nodded along. A lot of the gun terminologies flew over her head. She might have been a member of the shooting club in highschool and university, but that didn't mean she was some kind of gun expert like John was.
Funnily enough, she used to think John's obsession with learning weapons was an annoyance. Before the war, Nora would often find John's lengthy gun related rants inconvenient at best and exasperating at worst. Now she had to try and pay attention, since the things John spouted out could mean the difference between life and death.
-000-
Nora accepted the Grease Gun without much fuss. That was good. John was worried he would have to do a lot more convincing to get her to use it as her backup. Thankfully that wasn't the case.
The two of them had joined the rest of Preston's party downstairs. The sun had already risen and a light fog had descended upon the area. The pip-boy said it was 7AM, which was rather late considering Preston had wanted the group to leave by sunrise.
Sturges and Jun were inspecting a small wagon to carry not only the party's belongings, but also supplies and the loot they'd gathered after the battle. It used to be Brahmin driven, though with the mutant cattle being the first casualty to the fight, it had to be pulled by a person.
John volunteered to pull the small supply wagon. This would've been a difficult task, but the suit of Power Armor that John wore into battle last night was still functioning. Though much of its outer shell was battered heavily, the inner frame and its most important mechanisms worked without error.
The Trek to Sanctuary was thankfully uneventful. Preston lead the way ahead while Nora watched from the back of the little convoy. Barely anyone talked the whole way, with the silence only being broken when the band reached a Red Rocket station on the way.
A dog suddenly ran from the station, making a beeline towards the party. Preston readied his laser musket instinctively, but John urged him to stand down. Horner knew this dog. This was no wasteland mongrel.
"Hey buddy, how are you?" John said.
He had let go of the wagon and bent over to greet the dog. The dog came over to the armored man, barking and trying to hug him.
"Missed me didn't you?" John said, smiling.
"Who's this?" Nora asked, walking over to the dog and letting it sniff her hand.
"Don't quite know. He was already hanging around here when I first passed by." John explained. "He seems trained, but there's no sign of his owner anywhere."
Nora knelt down and petted the dog. A German Shepard. His fur was a bit shaggy and he was a bit smelly but this was a relatively healthy dog otherwise.
"I think he wants to come with us." Nora said. "We should take him with us."
John had already gone back and picked up the wagon again.
"You sure?" He asked. "Taking care of him could turn out to be a hassle."
"I think having him around would help out more in the long run." Nora reassured her husband. "Besides, you did say he was trained."
John nodded and didn't disagree further, though Nora could tell there was some skepticism in him.
"Alright then, but you're taking care of him." He said, pulling the wagon forward again. "What're you gonna call him?"
Nora gave it some thought, then came up with a name.
"River sounds nice."
-000-
The group reached Sanctuary an hour or so later. There was some problems with bringing the wagon across the damaged bridge since John had concerns with its structural integrity. They had to offload some of the heavier items from the wagon as the power armored man slowly pulled the cargo forward, careful to mind where he stepped. Once that was done, the group kept the hike until they reached the top of the hill that the neighborhood was built on.
Offloading the cargo and loot took another hour. It would've gone faster had John's power armor not run out of battery halfway through. Sturged and Jun had to help pry the vault dweller out of the metal suit, since its secondary hatch opener had been broken during the fight with the Deathclaw.
After group had finally settled in, John headed over to the remains of his old home. Codsworth greeted him jubilantly as ever, and John briefed him on the situation as they spoke on the front lawn.
"They're our new neighbors, Codsworth." He told the robot. "With all that's going on. Try and help them around, alright?"
"Of course sir." The robot answered. "With our combined efforts, Sanctuary will be the envy of the region once more!"
Codsworth was about to head over to the other settlers before John stopped and added.
"Oh, Codsworth... one more thing." John said. "Don't... don't tell them about how I'm... what? 250 years old by this point?"
"Closer to 230, actually sir." Codsworth corrected. "Nevertheless, I'll make sure to keep your age confidential."
Inside his broken home, John found Nora slouched on the old, busted couch still in the living room. She was holding an old storybook, one she used to read to Shaun before... well, before all this. He took a seat beside her, then took one of her hands in his.
"You alright?" He asked, though he already knew the answer.
"No." She replied, exactly as he thought she would.
John took a while to respond as he chose his words careful, but Nora cut him off before he could speak.
"I thought I was ready... thought I braced myself enough... but..."
Nora choked as she spoke, losing her composure.
"Why, John? Why us?"
He pulled her into a hug, like he always used to during troubling times.
"I... don't know, Nora." John said, trying to comfort his wife. "I really don't know, but there's a reason out there... we'll just have to find it."