Author's note: The songs for this chapter are Queen - Who Wants to Live Forever and the version of The Show Must Go On from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.

This chapter has half a lemon in it.

Who Wants to Live Forever

Harkness

I'd been climbing the walls for a solid month since Elle disappeared the morning after our last kiss, leaving only a note that said she'd gone to finish her parents' work, and an assurance that she'd be back. I was secretly trying not to panic, because maybe this kind of absence was normal for her, but it didn't feel normal. I understood why she felt why she had to do this by herself, but I wished with all my heart, human and android, that she'd let me come with her to protect her from the dangers of going after something the Enclave would kill to get its hands on. I had almost considered making a trip to the Citadel to question the Brotherhood of Steel about where she'd gone; if anyone knew where she'd gone it would be them, but I ultimately ended up staying put because I knew that Elle wouldn't appreciate me abandoning my duty to the people of Rivet City to chase after her.

I did everything I could to keep myself busy while she was gone, putting myself on every shitty patrol, every nasty cleanup duty, anything I could do to distract my mind from thinking up horrifying scenarios of what might be happening to Elle out there by herself against the entire Enclave. The mirelurk population in and around Rivet City had never been lower, the super mutants made a wise retreat from their camp across the river, and when Talon Company made a small incursion into Anacostia Crossing, I took a team of guys and slapped them down smartly before they could get any ideas about expanding their territory into my sphere of influence. I'm sure my guys worried about how I could keep going like this, and I know I heard Cindy Cantelli whispering about Psycho addictions, but I just didn't care by that point.

I had finally forced myself to sit down in my office and deal with some of the paperwork that had been piling up while I'd been distracting myself with physical activities, and was just pulling the first report off the top of the pile when Mister Lopez opened my door so fast that it banged against the wall.

"Elle's back!" he exclaimed. "I took Ted up to the observation deck to teach him how to identify all the local landmarks, and I saw her coming over the hill by where the super mutant camp used to be. She'll be crossing the bridge any minute now!"

"I owe you one!" I shouted over my shoulder as I ran out the door to greet Elle at the entrance to Rivet City. I took the steps down the bridge tower so fast that were it not for my android reflexes, I'm sure I would have tripped and gone ass over teakettle down the stairs. I came out the door to the bridge just in time to see Elle trudging wearily across the bridge, my plasma rifle slung across her back. She looked tired, but good, in new formfitting armor with the emblem of Riley's Rangers, a mercenary group that was slowly mapping the wasteland, on the breast, and a pair of sunglasses that made her look like a hardened professional instead of a little girl playing at war.

"Elle!" I cried, running to meet her at the head of the bridge. I hugged her hard, picking her up and swinging her around joyfully, so happy to see her alive and in one piece that I didn't care if my officers saw me making a complete fool of myself.

"Harkness!" She hugged me back when I finally put her down, wrapping her arms around me like I was literally the only thing keeping her alive, and resting her head on my chest for a long moment. When she eventually peeled herself off me, I held her at arm's length for a minute to check out her new gear.

"Nice," I said, indicating her new combat armor. "Fits you much better than the last set."

"It does, doesn't it?" she said. "I got them out of a jam, so Riley gifted me with this, and I'm helping them map the wasteland with my Pip-Boy."

"And these." I lifted her sunglasses with one finger. "Very stylish."

"Crow says they're lucky," she replied. "He says the spirits have blessed them." She shook her head. "I don't know if I believe that, but they have been helping my aim, and they keep the sun out of my eyes very well." She turned her head and indicated a name embossed on the side of the temple. "I don't know who Oakley was, but I really like his glasses."

"On to the big question," I said. "Where have you been for a whole month?"

"I'll tell you all about it over dinner," she sighed. "I'm starving!"

I followed her into the marketplace and watched all the merchants swarm her, with Flak, and surprisingly, Shrapnel, at the forefront of the crowd around her. It seemed that everyone in Rivet City really did like her and was glad she was back safe and sound. She greeted everyone in turn, then laughingly extricated herself from the mass of humanity, gesturing toward Gary's Galley and making eating motions. She ordered a truly prodigious amount of food and managed to juggle it all long enough to dump it on the nearest table and sit down. I plopped into the seat across from her and waited until she no longer looked like she wanted to gnaw someone's arm off before continuing our conversation.

"Well?" I said expectantly. "Something must have happened out there to keep you gone for a month."

"I got kidnapped by the Enclave," she said nonchalantly between bites.

"What?!" I yelled. "What did they do to you?!" I started to get out of my seat, irrationally ready to go and find the nearest Enclave encampment so I could kick someone's ass on Elle's behalf.

"Calm down, I'm fine." She put her hand on my arm to still me. "Let me start from the beginning."

"Alright," I grumbled, sitting back down. "Continue."

"To start with," she said, "the Brotherhood directed me to Vault 87 to find the Garden of Eden Creation Kit needed to finally realize my parents' dream of clean water for the whole Capital Wasteland, but I couldn't go in the front door because a nuke fell on it during the Great War. So I had to go in the back way, through the Little Lamplight caverns, and wasn't that a trip. It's populated by a bunch of kids, all under the age of sixteen, and they don't trust adults, so they kick their members out when they turn sixteen."

"I imagine you had a hard time convincing them to let you in," I said.

"Yeah, that mayor of theirs, MacCready, is a real foul-mouthed little shit," she said, "but I'd freed a few of their company from those assholes in Paradise Falls, so he owed me. He had his people show me a couple of back ways into the vault, and you won't believe what I found when I finally got in there."

"What?" I asked.

"The home of the supermutants," she replied triumphantly. "The Vault-Tec scientists in Vault 87 created the first supermutants shortly after the bombs fell and the vault was sealed. The newly created supermutants took over the vault, then started kidnapping people and turning them into supermutants to perpetuate the species, since they can't reproduce through normal means."

"Really?" I was fascinated.

"And I actually found a friendly supermutant named Fawkes, trapped in a test chamber by the other, not so friendly supermutants. He asked me to let him out, and he helped me get the G.E.C.K., which was in a highly irradiated area of the vault."

"So you did get what you needed?" I asked.

"Oh I got it all right," she grimaced. "Then things took a turn for the worse…or the bizarre."

"Do tell?" I said.

"I was on my way out of the vault with the G.E.C.K. when I got hit with some kind of…cryo grenade. I stayed conscious just long enough to see that bastard, Colonel Autumn show up and order his men to load me and the G.E.C.K. onto his Vertibird, then I passed out. When I woke up, I was in a holding cell in the Enclave's base on this coast, Raven Rock. Colonel Autumn wanted me to tell him the code to get the purifier working."

"I'm assuming that you didn't?" I laughed.

"You're damned right I didn't!" she said indignantly. "I told him to fuck right the hell off, and then when he pressed me, I told him the wrong code." She laughed. "He was dumb enough to get one of his soldiers to try it out, as if I'd have told him the right code after all he's done."

"What happened to his soldier?" I asked, pretty sure I already knew the answer to that question.

"Died," she said. "The purifier's got fail safes built in with nasty countermeasures for those who have no business starting it up."

"I bet that pissed him off royally," I chuckled.

"Oh, it did," she grinned evilly. "He was about to make me pay for that when his master's voice summoned him away."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"President John Henry Eden, the guy you hear on the announcements that those stupid eyebots broadcast, and let me tell you something about him…he isn't even human."

"What is he, then, if not human?" I questioned.

"He's an AI that achieved self-awareness and decided that he was the next president of the Enclave, and by extension, the pre-war United States. Colonel Autumn's the only one who knew that he wasn't a real person."

"Huh," I grunted. "So why did he keep the colonel from hurting you?"

"They'd had a disagreement about how to proceed with Project Purity, and Eden wanted Autumn to leave me alone in my cell so he could have a private chat with me and summon me to his presence. He ordered all the Enclave soldiers to stand down and leave me be, but that lasted for all of about five minutes until Autumn turned them against me again. I had to kill a lot of guys on my way out of the place, and I found that bitch, Anna Holt, along the way. I guess they kidnapped her too, but unlike me, she started working with them voluntarily and told them all she knew about Project Purity."

"What happened to her?" I asked.

"I left her alive, despite my better judgement," Elle snarled, "but she probably didn't stay that way after what I did to that place, but I'll get to that in a minute!"

"Then what?" I prompted.

"I made my way up to Eden, which is when I found out he's a computer. That crazy scrap heap gave me a vial of the modified Forced Evolutionary Virus, which is a variant on what the supermutants are using to create more of their kind. He wanted me to use it to sabotage Project Purity and wipe out anything in the wasteland that's been tainted with radiation, which is pretty much everything."

"I'll assume that you also told him to go to hell?" I grinned.

"I told him he was absolutely bonkers, that his plan would never work, and convinced him to blow up Raven Rock and end this insanity." She smiled evilly. "You may have heard the explosion from here?"

"And what about Colonel Autumn?"

"I'd like to think that he perished in the explosion," she grimaced, "but given that he's come back from the dead once already, I don't think I've seen the last of him, and I think he'll turn up at the most inconvenient place and time."

"So that's that," I said. "End of the Enclave?"

"Well," she said, "not quite. More than one Vertibird escaped from Raven Rock, and we've still got to oust them from Project Purity headquarters. I stopped by the Citadel on my way back to Rivet City to confer with Elder Lyons, Sarah, and Scribe Rothchild…and Doctor Li. They've got a plan to take back Project Purity. We're a go tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow morning? But you just got back," I protested. "They couldn't give you any more down time after what you've just been through?"

"The sooner we take my parents' dream back from those Enclave assholes, the better," she said resolutely.

"Is it at least a good plan?" I pleaded.

Her face fell at my question. "Not…really," she said quietly. "The only option we have is a frontal assault, assisted by that half-built robot of theirs, Liberty Prime, which may or may not function when they start it up." She swallowed heavily and looked down. "There…there's a very real chance I might not make it back from tomorrow's mission." Her face got whiter as she spoke the words I didn't want to hear her say, and she pushed her half-eaten plate away from her as she stood up abruptly. "I…I've got to go," she stammered, and rushed out of the marketplace.

"Elle!" I called after her, but she kept going. This mission obviously had her more worked up than she'd been letting on, and I needed to do something to get her mind off of it so she wouldn't be a quivering wreck at go time. I stopped by the hydroponics lab to get a fresh pear, knowing those were her favorite, then headed to her room at the Weatherly with a plate of sliced pear in hand. As I neared the door to her room, my augmented hearing picked up the sounds of muffled sobbing. Concerned, I hit the hidden door override switch that only I, as chief of security, had knowledge of, and stepped through the open door to find Elle face down on the bed, crying her eyes out into a pillow. I put the plate of fruit down on the nightstand and climbed up on the bed next to her, pulling her into my arms.

"Oh, come on now," I crooned as I stroked her hair. "That's not my big, strong Elle crying over seeing a little action, is it? I've seen you take on supermutants and walk away laughing. You'll be okay, babe."

"It's a really bad plan," she sobbed, "and we're way outnumbered." She sat up suddenly and pounded her fist into the pillow. "Damn him anyway! Why couldn't he stay alive long enough to finish this thing? I'm only nineteen! I'm not ready for this kind of responsibility! Thanks to his selfishness, my life will be cut short before I've even had a chance to live it…and I'll die a virgin!" she wailed.

I put my arm around her and turned her face up to mine with my free hand. "You…don't have to," I said quietly. "Not if you don't want to." I kissed her softly and felt her start to kiss me back. Her hands crept up to tangle in my hair and she opened her mouth, slipping her tongue between my lips to trace it along my teeth.

"Yes, please," she breathed shakily when we both came up for air. Her clever hands began undoing the various straps and buckles keeping my armor in place, and I let her set the pace until she'd gotten me naked from the waist up, then took my turn with her new armor. We undressed each other slowly; the sounds of armor pieces hitting the floor interspersed with breathless kisses and heated words.

"Oh yeah, right there," she hissed as my teeth scraped against the base of her neck."

"Mmm," I groaned when her lips found the sensitive spot between my shoulder blades, which turned to a gasp as her eager fingers trailed up my chest to stroke my nipples. I had never realized they were so responsive, and I arched into her touch as she tweaked them, feeling her smirk against my back at what she was doing to me. "Aaah!" I cried out as her fingers traced circles around the previously ignored nubs of flesh. I had to stop her before she drove me too far too fast and this whole night was over before it had even begun. I could have turned down the sensitivity in that particular area, as I had recently learned I could do, but I didn't want to be reminded on this night of all nights that I was not as human as I seemed.

"You keep that up, sweetheart, and I'll…" I trailed off as I restrained her hands, lifting her arms over my head and turning to face her. I dropped a gentle kiss on the soft skin on the inside of her wrist, and seeing her shiver, kept it up, adding soft nips and running my tongue along the tendons of her wrist until she was a shuddering, moaning mess in my arms. I had been moving in the direction of the bed as I was pleasuring her, and as the backs of my thighs hit the foot of the bed, Elle suddenly decided she wanted to be in charge for a bit.

"It's my turn to make you moan, Harkness." She gently pushed me back on the bed, and I went willingly, wondering what she could possibly have on her devious little mind. "You never let me touch you as much as I'd like," she complained. "You're the first male I've gotten to be up close and personal with like this. Can't I just…explore you and find out where you like to be touched?"

As eager as I was to get some release, this night was supposed to be about her, and I understood where she was coming from. "All right," I said gently, "but you know that if you…overstimulate me, I'll end up dropping my bombs before the mission's over, as it were?"

She stifled a giggle at that and took my hand. "It's okay, silly. Dad was a doctor, remember?"

"Some spots are more sensitive than others," I said, "but you seem to have figured that out already."

She nodded wordlessly and turned her attention to my naked body, eying me like I was a four-course meal spread before her for her pleasure. I lost count of how many times she made me groan, and it turned out to be a journey of self-discovery for me as well. I'd had sex before, but never had a lover taken time to thoroughly map all the areas of my body that could turn me on. She revealed that I did, in fact, quite enjoy having my fingers sucked on, that having her kiss the soft spot below my ear was almost unbearably erotic; same for the small of my back, the nape of my neck, and along my pelvic arch, and that feeling her touch any of those areas was enough to send shocks straight to my manhood. She did spend more time on my nipples, almost sending me over the edge right there until I begged her to stop. She poked, prodded, licked, nibbled, and fondled me into a quivering wreck, and I know she didn't mean to be cruel, but I was so hyper sensitized by the time she was done exploring that every brush of her fingers was almost torture, and I was so hard I was leaking and fighting to keep from just throwing her down on the bed and pounding into her.

She pulled away from me momentarily and returned with the plate of sliced pears from the nightstand, and I gave her a questioning look, wondering what she was planning to do with the fruit. My silent inquiry was answered when she took a slice of the cool fruit and ran it up my heated length, drenching me with the sweet juice, before lowering her wicked mouth to suck it off of me. I almost came off the bed when her tongue touched my erection, and I made an inarticulate noise that had her eyeing me with concern without taking her lips off my manhood.

"Jesus, Elle, I thought you said you'd never done this before?" I exhaled sharply.

She blushed and looked slightly ashamed of herself as she popped her mouth off me with a frankly obscene sound. "I…um…haven't," she stammered, "but I found this stash of holotapes under the bed here, and I kinda…watched them, and wow, some of the things they did to each other in the tapes. I just wanted to try some of them on you."

"Oh," I said weakly. "Far be it from me to squash your ideas, but…you might just kill me with this latest one. Fair warning."

Elle gave me a devilish grin with those delectable pink lips of hers, reminding me that I had, on more than one occasion, fantasized about having them wrapped around me, doing exactly what she'd just been doing, and I certainly wasn't going to stop her from playing out one of my most pervasive fantasies. She proceeded to coat me with pear juice again before taking me in her mouth and teasing me with her tongue. My hands fisted in the bed sheets, and it was a Herculean effort to keep from thrusting up into her greedy mouth. She ran her tongue just under the head, seemingly testing the limits of my endurance, and I swear I saw stars, moaning my pleasure loud enough for the entire ship to hear.

"Oh shit!" I was so fucked.