Though Artemis had told herself for the last half mile that she was fine, that she was calm, she still had the red eyes, raw nose, and broken heart to show that she wasn't. The second she stepped into HQ, she regretted her decision not to head to Diamond City and get berated by Piper, or to Goodneighbor and get blind drunk with Hancock.
She realized too late that HQ would raise too many questions about her being alone. Of course, as she shuffled through the crypt almost undetected by the other agents doing diligent work, Desdemona's voice cut through the air, "Wanderer, where's Deacon?"
Artemis stopped mid-step before she tripped over her own two feet. "I dunno," she spoke, her eyes to the ground.
"You don't know?" Desdemona's voice raised slightly.
"Jesus, is he dead?" She heard Dr. Carrington ask from the other side of the large room, obviously noting her tear-stained face. Artemis only shook her head at the dirt floor and shuffled forward, to the rear of the crypt.
"Hey," Glory's voice tried to stop her as she dropped her pack on her unused mattress and struggled to get the bulky winter jacket off of her body. "Wanderer what happened?" Glory leaned up against the wall with her arms crossed.
Artemis didn't answer her as she kicked off her shoes and grimy pants, scrounging through her bag for a clean pair and a fresh shirt. Traveling as far as she did alone led to a lot of dirt and a lot of fights, and she felt filthy. She had felt filthy since she left Fairline Estates without Deacon at her side. She hadn't tried to warn him, she packed up her things and left through the back door of the house, out of Deacon's line of sight.
"Holy shit," she heard Glory whisper sharply, Artemis' back still to her as she changed her shirt.
"What?" Artemis asked her, turning around as she pulled the old white shirt over her head.
"What are those?" Glory pointed to her hips and Artemis twisted, looking down at her body and found dark purple welts, roughly the size of Deacon's hands.
Realizing she had gotten last night's wish, Artemis quickly pulled the shirt down over her waist, before looking back up to Glory with wide eyes. "Glory," she warned, watching Glory's surprise turn into anger.
"He did that?" She asked, and Artemis wasn't sure exactly what Glory was mad about, that her and Deacon had sex, the bruises, or that Artemis had returned alone.
"Glory, don't," Artemis rose her hands, trying to calm HQ's other heavy.
"He did that?" She asked again, "Oh, I'm gonna kill his skinny ass when he gets back to HQ!" She shouted as she turned around and quickly stormed away.
"Glory, wait!" Artemis struggled to get her jeans on so she could follow.
"I'm gonna shove the barrel of my mini gun down his throat the next time I see him," Glory growled as she walked over to the chalkboard and furiously wiped Deacon's name from the surface.
"Okay, what is going on?" Desdemona asked, her voice full of authority as she walked over to Glory and Artemis.
Running a hand through her black hair, Artemis sighed. Coming to HQ alone was a horrible idea. "Des-" she began with a sigh.
"Make sure Deacon knows that I'm gonna murder him the next time I see him," Glory held a finger up to Desdemona, cutting off Artemis. "Tell all the tourists and leave notes in all the dead drops."
"Wanderer?" Desdemona asked for an explanation, her arms crossed.
"Um..." Artemis exhaled, her fists clenching to try and avoid the pain and embarrassment she was about to feel from admitting to sleeping with Deacon and then leaving him behind. "Deacon and I..."
Des already looked skeptical, predicting what Artemis was going to say. "What really happened?"
"Why don't you show her the bruises?" Glory suggested, still angry.
"Bruises?" Desdemona's eyebrows rose high onto her forehead and she looked from Glory to Artemis, the guilt plain as day on her face.
"Am I in trouble?" She asked Des' shocked expression.
Des stayed silent for a moment before turning to her left. "Drummer Boy," she called, and the agent slinked out from behind a nearby pillar, looking culpable of eavesdropping. "Put out the dead drops and get Deacon's ass back here," she told him.
"Sure, boss," Drummer Boy agreed before looking to Glory and Artemis.
"And you," Des looked back to Artemis. "Talk to Carrington about possible anemia. We'll discuss this later." Artemis nodded in understanding, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Bruises?" Drummer Boy asked and Artemis hid her reddening face in her hands.
"Not cool," Glory warned him.
"You're the one freaking out and wiping Deacon's name of the board," Drummer Boy shot back. "You okay, Wanderer?"
Artemis nodded, dropping her hands from her face, and remained silent. Drummer Boy reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders before looking back to Glory.
"Make sure he knows he's getting his ass handed to him when he gets back," she told Drummer Boy sternly.
"Here you go, buddy," High Rise said, taking a seat next to Deacon after setting down a mug of black coffee on the table before him.
"Thanks," Deacon took the handle but didn't lift the mug. "You've got to be one of the last agents to have any of this stuff left."
"Been meaning to go out raiding some of the old Slocum's but I've been pretty busy lately," High Rise admitted.
"Best bet is the old HQ, but I don't trust the place," Deacon sighed.
"Yeah, I agree. You gotta have a death wish to go back there."
Deacon lifted the mug then and drank to High Rise's words. "Amen."
"So what's been eating at you?" High Rise tried again, for the hundredth time that month.
"You just don't give up, do you?" Deacon asked forcing half of a fake smile onto his face.
"I know it's something to do with Wanderer, so don't try to weave a tale about synths or rad roaches, or the 'radiation flu' bullshit you came up with last week," High Rise shook his head. Deacon had indeed been hiding out in his home for a month. He hadn't left once, and had to deal with a potentially deadly rumor that he had gone rogue because of a certain heavy in HQ. High Rise didn't mind the extra help however, and he owed Deacon a lifetime of favors anyways all the times he saved his ass.
"My minds drawing a blank here, hold on," Deacon told him, the tips of his fingers tapping on the warm ceramic of his cup. In all reality Deacon was at Ticonderoga because Artemis would eventually show up there, the key word being eventually.
"The master liar has nothing to say?" High Rise laughed at him.
"I dunno, she fell in love with me and I broke her heart?" Deacon tried with a shrug.
High Rise had no idea that Deacon wasn't lying to him this time. "As if," he shook his head and drank from his own mug. "You're impossible to love, sorry to say." Deacon knew he was only joking, and he had no idea that he was speaking the truth right back to him. Deacon truly was impossible to love. "You know I can just put out a dead drop asking for a heavy, right? Get you off your lazy ass."
"And what happens when Alpha sends Glory instead of Wanderer?" Deacon asked him.
"You explain yourself and I finally figure out what's bothering you," High Rise suggested, his mug now empty. Deacon quickly caught up to him, both wanting to drink the coffee before it got cold and wake himself up. It was almost four in the morning and Deacon already hadn't slept since the night prior.
"How about I say 'no' and I get to keep my head on my shoulders. I'm quite attached to it," Deacon joked, watching High Rise grab up the mug and take it over to the counter to rinse it off in the barely working sink.
"I dunno, I think you'd look better without it," High Rise chuckled back. Under the low laughter Deacon's ears picked up a sharp "ding!"
Both men were silent for a moment, listening, before High Rise turned off the faucet and pulled his pistol out of his waistband. "What the hell," he mumbled, recognizing the sound as his elevator.
Deacon slipped out of his chair and pulled his own pistol out, flipping the safety off. There was silence for a few more seconds, Deacon trying to convince himself that it wasn't Artemis, like he had all the times before. Except this was different, High Rise shut the power down to the elevator every night, so someone would have needed the password to the terminal below at ground level. They either had to be with HQ or the Institute.
"High Rise!" They both heard Boxer shout and Deacon sprinted out of the room first. Before he was trying to snuff out hope that Artemis had come, and now he was fearful that she actually had, and was in trouble. None of this added up, it couldn't be good.
"Boxer-?" High Rise began to ask as the entered the lobby, thankfully not to a room full of synths. "Shit," he almost ran into Deacon as the man in front of him stopped dead in his tracks.
He possibly would have preferred a shoot out with the Institute, instead he was met with a crippled Artemis, a half conscious Glory, and a whole lot of blood. Artemis was struggling to pull herself and Glory out of the elevator, their weapons and Glory's armor forgotten inside. Artemis met his eyes for a moment, the hazel blue piercing through Deacon's sunglasses. The world froze as Deacon's heart stopped and exploded with an icy cold fear.
The moment passed and while Artemis struggled to get Glory onto her feet, Deacon and High Rise rushed down the steps, meeting up with Boxer. The agent had caught Artemis as she collapsed forward and instead of running to them, Deacon grabbed a hold of Glory before she crumbled onto the floor. In his arms, Glory was covered in a thick coat of blood.
"Get her up stairs now!" High Rise yelled at Deacon, who had once again been frozen by Artemis' gaze. His words were enough to get Deacon moving again. He heard a Stimpak's hiss behind him and tried not to think about the woman he had been waiting for all this time.
"Glory, stay with me," Deacon told her, noticing her eyes rolling back into her head. He got her to where he was heading as High Rise flipped a switch and blinding lights came on in the room. Deacon dropped Glory onto a stretcher under one of the lights and High Rise ran up, wasting little time in tearing Glory's bloody shirt down the middle.
"God, if you weren't gonna kill me before, you are now. Glory look at me," Deacon's hands went to her face to try and wake her up, only to leave bloody hand prints on her cheeks as he lightly slapped her.
"There's blood in a cooler behind you, she's gonna need it," High Rise told Deacon as he tried to clean the blood off of Glory's torso to see what they were dealing with.
She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and flipped her lighter open. She had to shield the small flame with her free hand as she lit the cigarette, holding the carcinogenic smoke in her mouth. Once she had a reliable ember, she flipped the lighter closed and pulled the cigarette out of her lips, blowing the smoke away from herself. Artemis held the cigarette between two of her fingers then, drawing her knees up to her chin as she watched the tobacco slowly burn away.
"When did you start smoking?" She heard from the door way leading out to the balcony she was on. Artemis had known Deacon was watching her, but she had only known about two seconds before he asked his question.
"I don't smoke," she mumbled back in response, keeping her eyes on the cigarette. Deacon was silent, out of her peripheral sight as she stared at the cigarette, the smoke rising up and dispersing in the chilly, early morning air.
"I brought you a blanket," Deacon tried to get a reaction out of her.
"Thank you," she answered in a monotone. After a moment of his silence she drew in a breath and gathered her courage to look over to him. "How's Glory?" She asked, her eyes scanning over him in a fresh change of clothes, a blanket folded up and held in his arms.
"She's stable," Deacon told her, offering the blanket to her.
"Trade you," Artemis held up her cigarette. Deacon stepped towards her, wary of the edge of the balcony they were on, and traded her the blanket for the cigarette. Instead of stepping back, like Artemis had expected, Deacon took a seat on the ground next to her as he took a drag from the cigarette. She missed that smell so much, detergent and cigarettes, that she wanted to cry.
"I need to talk to you," Deacon started.
"I don't want to talk," Artemis responded quickly, unfolding the over-sized blanket and wrapping it around herself.
Deacon watched her as she tried to avoid him while sitting right next to him. "I have some things I need to tell you before I chicken out."
Artemis turned her head to face him, silently waiting. Deacon took a deep breath in, understanding her silence.
"When I was young, a hell of a long time ago, I was... Well, scum. I was a bigot. A very violent bigot."
Artemis rolled her eyes and looked away from him. "You're trying to sell me more lies, Deacon? Really?" Her tone was filled with more spite than she meant.
With a sigh, Deacon continued. "Just hear me out, make your judgments then." She was upset, but her ears forced her to listen and her heart forced her to be patient.
"I ran with a gang in University Point. We called ourselves the UP Deathclaws. For kicks we'd terrorize anyone that we thought was a Synth," Deacon rubbed the back of his head, holding the cigarette in his mouth. Artemis looked back at him then, her head resting on her knees. "We kept egging each other on. Started with some property damage, graduated to some beat downs. Then, inevitably, a lynching." Deacon drew in smoke from his cigarette and Artemis' eyebrows drew together, realizing that he looked genuinely upset. "The Claw's leader was convinced we'd finally found and killed a Synth. Looking back, I'm not so sure."
"You... Murdered someone?" Artemis asked him, her knees falling away from her as she picked up her head and her back straightened. Sure she had killed people before as well, they both had. Only they had killed in self defense, or protecting innocents. In Artemis' mind, that wasn't murder but self preservation and community service.
"That one was enough for me. It was his eyes... Those eyes haunt me," Deacon finished off the last of his cigarette with a huff and rubbed it out on the ground next to him. "Bulging... So I turned my back on my "brothers"- broke all contact. Time passed, I became a farmer if you can believe that." She couldn't see him as a farmer. Someone as lazy and messy as he was wouldn't last a day on a farm in the Commonwealth. She rose an eyebrow behind her glasses to show that she didn't believe him.
Deacon tried to smile back at her but he couldn't. Instead he pushed on, "Then one day I found someone. She saw something in me that I didn't know what there."
Instantly Artemis felt her heart drop out of her chest and fall the thirty stories to the pavement below them. "Oh," she said softly. It was ridiculous to think Deacon had never been with someone before her, but if he was talking about it and this wasn't bullshit, this "someone" had to be a big deal. "What was she like?" She squeaked out.
"Barbara," Deacon continued as he watched Artemis' reaction, "well, she was... she just was. She had a smile like on those old magazine covers. Her eyes..." his whole demeanor changed, just mentioning this other woman's name looked like it helped relieve his nerves. "We were trying for kids. Eking out a living."
His words were a knife stabbing into her heartless chest, and she turned away to keep her pain hidden. "Then one day... Turns out my Barbara... She was a synth. She didn't know that, I certainly didn't. I don't know how the Deathclaws found out. But... There was blood."
Artemis looked back to Deacon then, feeling a whole new pain. It was one thing to know that Deacon had been committed to another woman wholeheartedly, but to know he had seen her die, like she had seen her husband... It almost made her angry that Deacon would have to know what that pain felt like. "They killed her?" She asked him.
Deacon was silent in his response, instead reaching out to her, beckoning her towards him. Artemis couldn't resist but she appeared hesitant, slowly unwrapping the blanket from around herself before crawling into his lap and sitting with her back against his chest. Deacon threw the blanket around himself before wrapping it and his arms around Artemis in a cocoon of warmth.
Deacon held her close to him, both of his arms wrapped around her stomach and waist. He sighed softly into her neck and shoulder as he continued talking in a much quieter tone. "I don't remember much clearly after that. I know I killed most of the Claws. I must have made a big impression. The Railroad contacted me, figuring I'd be sympathetic, seeing that I lost my wife. And, well, what I did afterwards."
"They deserved what you did to them," Artemis reassured him, thinking back to him and Nick helping her take out Kellogg. That felt like such a long time ago now.
"They deserved worse," Deacon tightened his grip around her. The hardest bit to explain to her was still coming and he felt it forming a painful lump in his throat, one he couldn't quite swallow.
"So I figured what the Hell, I'll play spy for them, as long as it kept bigots like the Claws from hurting more people. I stayed with them because no one knew who I was and I kept telling lie after lie. A little over two decades ago, I was the only person to survive an onslaught from the Institute at our HQ, and just barely at that."
Artemis took in a deep breath, leaning back into him and closing her eyes as she listened. "A lot of agents left after that, it was the first real hit the Railroad had taken and I thought about dropping out myself."
"Why didn't you?" Artemis asked him, her voice barely more than a whisper.
"I didn't have anything else. There were twelve, thirteen of us left maybe. Alpha at the time was a man named Wyatt. Was a real reluctant leader but he did a good job. Until he was killed in another attack several years later on Christmas, '73 I think it was. We were better prepared that time.
"The next alpha was complete asshat," Deacon earned a chuckle from Artemis and felt his nervousness subside for a moment. "Went by Pinky. Took me a year and a half to get kicked out of HQ just so I wouldn't have to deal with him directly. Poor Des took most of his shit after, from what I heard."
"You got kicked out of HQ on purpose?" Artemis asked him, turning to try and look at his face. That was a definite Deacon thing to do, so she trusted this part of his story, at least more than him having once been a farmer.
"Best thing to have happened to me at the time. It's when I started getting good with my intel," Deacon explained as he shifted below her, resting his head next to hers on her shoulder. "Learned some interesting rumors, figured out ways to make caps fast, did some exploring... Fell for another girl."
Artemis' squeezed her eyes tightly closed, trying not to wince at his last few words. She had to admit, however, it was fairly strange to be damn well cuddling with Deacon as he continued to recount his love life.
"I shamelessly stalked her," Deacon's voice was shaking slightly, and it didn't slip by Artemis unnoticed, "For... Years. She didn't even know I existed. I leaned everything I could about her, who she was, where she used to live and work and intern... Where she went to school."
A feeling slowly crept up Artemis and she fought it away before it even became a thought. Deacon was lying, he had to be, this was some lesson he was teaching her, he wasn't actually talking about her.
"I read all the same books she studied, at least the ones I could find. I even found some mentions of her in old terminals in Cambridge and at the library-"
"Stop it," Artemis cut him off sharply. She wasn't quite sure what she felt, anger, hurt, an overbearing sense of happiness?
"I-I was too scared to let you out of that pod. You were the only constant I had for so long-"
"How long?" Artemis choked, turning around to face him again. She was crying and she still wasn't sure why, unless it was just an overwhelming combination of everything.
It took Deacon ages to get the courage to answer truthfully, trying to gauge the reaction she would have. "Twelve years," he admitted with a heavy sigh.
Artemis' own breath caught in her chest as her mouth fell open. "Tw-t..." she tried to repeat the number but only ended up fumbling over her tongue. She wasn't sure what to do, was she supposed to pull away, was she supposed to yell at him, was she supposed to cry on his shoulder? Deacon was no help, he only stared back at her with his sunglasses and a cross between a scared and sad expression.
"Are you lying to me?" She asked him, moving out of his lap to fully face Deacon.
"No," he responded simply.
"Prove it," she snapped back and Deacon blinked behind his sunglasses.
"Uh..." Deacon started. How would he prove he wasn't lying? He usually had to do close to the opposite. "You married Nate on March first, twenty seventy-seven, you had Shaun three months later on June twelfth, twenty seventy- seven. Uh, you were studying law part time at Suffolk County and if you hadn't gotten pregnant you planned to graduate by twenty eighty-one. Um... You used to work at a The Super Duper Mart in Lexington and that's how you met-"
Artemis had moved forward and gently kissed him. It was upsetting that she had been asleep twelve years longer than she should have been, and it was undoubtedly weird that Deacon could just pull these random facts out of his brain to toss at her, but nobody else in her life would have cared that much. Nobody else would have found her so fascinating.
Artemis crawled back into his lap, facing him this time, with her arms wrapping around his neck. Deacon's own hands moved from her waist to her shoulders and he gently pushed her away.
"Artemis, I... I don't deserve you being okay with this," he tried to tell her firmly. In response she reached up and took the sunglasses off his head, removing them from his eyes. Deacon lost most of his demeanor then and visibly swallowed.
Gently setting down the sunglasses, Artemis quickly asked, "Are you gonna disappear again?"
"That's what I've been trying to get to," he scared her for a split second before continuing, making sure she was looking at him by placing one of his hands on Artemis' cheek. "I can't. I can't leave. I can't deal with losing you... You're the only thing I have."
"Liar," Artemis mumbled, tilting her head into the hand he had on the side of her face.
"You're the only thing that matters," Deacon tried, his thumb gently running across her cheek.
"Such a liar," Artemis continued, closing her eyes and kissing the palm of his hand.
"I need you," he admitted and her blue eyes snapped open to look at him again. "You're the only friend I've got, the only person I fully trust."
"This is a pretty fucked up friendship if this is what you consider 'friends'," Artemis told him and succeeded in making Deacon smile for a moment.
"Hell, I wouldn't ask for more from you... But, I figured you should know."
Artemis watched him, feeling hugely relieved despite everything. "Can't we be more than friends?" She asked him with a false pout, and felt his hand leave her cheek to push her short black hair behind her ear.
"I don't have anything to give you," Deacon admitted and Artemis just smiled at him.
"You can start by wrapping this blanket back around me and letting me complain to you about the shitty night I'm having," she turned back around, sitting in his lap again and pressing her back into his chest.
"You had a shitty night?" Deacon laughed, returning to holding her like he was before, both of his arms wrapped around her with the blanket around them both. "Oh man, I bet you mine was way worse," he teased. Suddenly Deacon was back to his usual self.
Artemis reached down into her pants pocket and pulled out the odd piece of tech she and Glory had nearly died trying to retrieve. "Try me," she said, holding it up for Deacon to see without actually turning to look at him.
"What... What is that?" Deacon asked, not giving Artemis the reaction she believed she would receive. His tone was sharp, borderline angry. She turned slightly to look at him then, watching his face go pale. "Is that a fucking Courser chip?" He asked her looking from the tech to her face.
"Yes," she answered, trying to ignore his reaction as she put the chip back into her pocket.
"Hey," one of Deacon's hands pulled her face back up to look at him. "Don't you ever do something that stupid without me again. Ever."
"I can kill all the Coursers I want as long as you tag along?" Artemis tested him. His eyes looked dead serious and the way he spoke was something new. She briefly wondered how many times he looked at her like that beneath his sunglasses, if ever.
"You have to use me as your meat shield," he told her, the serious look in his eyes was unwavering.
"Mm," she pretended to think for a moment, "I don't think so."
"At least don't bring Glory with you the next time you decide to take on the Synth killers, okay?" Artemis turned her head back to face the sunrise, something she never thought she and Glory were going to see again just a few hours ago.
"She was the only one who would go with me. We went to the Glowing sea about twelve days ago to find a rogue Institute scientist. Been tracking down a courser for a week now to get that chip for Tom." As Artemis explained she leaned back into Deacon's chest, feeling his arms tighten around her.
"Of course she was the only one. She's the only person who knows what they're doing outside of HQ," Deacon mumbled into her neck, a chill running down his spine with the realization of how close he actually came to losing Artemis for good. This whole thing was so stupid of him, he should have just bit the bullet and went back to HQ the same day Artemis left him at Fairline Hills. "I should have been there, not Glory."
"I don't blame you for what happened," Artemis told him with a sigh, closing her eyes once more. She just wanted to be at peace with the world for that moment.
"I'm sorry," Deacon admitted anyway, mumbling into her neck. Artemis felt the two words send a shock wave down her body and through her legs all the way to her feet. Deacon had definitely noticed the sudden change and kissed her neck, furthering her reaction.
Artemis forced her breathing to be steady as she opened her hazel blue eyes and looked over at him. "This is you being sorry?" She asked him quietly and watched the corners of Deacon's mouth raise into a mischievous smile.
"If you want."