Debt
"How could you set me up like that?"
Quinn winced at MacCready's tone, feeling a twinge of guilt at his outrage. The news of who he'd had his sights on for the last half an hour had not gone down well.
"The leader of the Brotherhood! What the hel—I mean—what the heck, Quinn?" He shook his head, his face screwed up in anger. "Do you even realise what kind of trouble that would have brought to my door?"
"Why do you think I bottled it?" Quinn said sharply, rubbing her forehead. Too much was going on right now without MacCready getting on her back. "I didn't want to bring a world of shit on your head."
MacCready glared at her, his arms folded tight across his chest, but Quinn wasn't going to back down.
"You knew the plan," she continued, her scowl as deep as his. "You know damn well that killing was only a last resort, if it looked like things were going to get nasty. But I didn't know Maxson himself was going to show up. How could I? I thought he'd send some nameless grunts, maybe an officer at best, and you would just scare them off if they got too close to the bunker."
MacCready considered this for a moment and then nodded, though he still looked pissed. "Alright. Fine. But mind telling me what's going on to cause the leader of the world's biggest group of ass—ugh—I mean, morons to come directly after you?"
She gave him the short version, emphasising Danse's innocence and Maxson's idiocy. MacCready had made his distaste for synths perfectly clear to her before, but she didn't think he was quite on the same level as the Brotherhood in his mistrust.
MacCready's eyes narrowed. "Wait, all of this just for a synth? I thought you were against the Institute, not protecting its weird robot spies."
"No, I did all of this to protect my friend," Quinn retorted, her hands on her hips. "The same way I'd protect Nick, too."
He shrugged. She had noticed the odd animosity between Valentine and MacCready, and wondered once again if it existed purely because Nick was a synth. MacCready fiddled with his rifle and then gave a little smirk. "Funny, though, huh? The Brotherhood have always had a tato up their as—I mean—they've always been relentless about synths. Tickles me that one of their own turned out to be just that." He sniggered, grinning at her.
Quinn did not laugh.
"What?" MacCready said, his brow furrowing as she glared at him.
"It's not 'funny.' Danse didn't know."
"So?"
"So," Quinn snapped, feeling her irritation mount, "his entire world has been turned upside down. He's been nearly executed by the people he thought were his friends, exiled from the one place that gave him meaning, and found out he's something he despises." She shook her head. "When I went after him, I didn't know what I would find. I half expected that he would...that…"
The image of the gun in Danse's hand sprung to mind, and Quinn shivered, nausea washing through her. What would have happened if she had been delayed? She dreaded to think about it. She was only glad she had her rifle and his pistol here with her now.
"Hey, I didn't…" MacCready said, looking uncomfortable as he shifted on the spot. "Sorry, Quinn. Really. I don't get all this synth stuff, and I can't say I trust them, but...sorry."
"It's fine." She sighed. "Look, just...please. If our friendship means anything to you, you can't breathe a word of this to anyone. Maxson agreed to tell everyone Danse is dead, but if the rest of the Brotherhood find out the truth, he'll be hunted down until they finish the job. And so will I."
MacCready paled a little, but he nodded. "I got it. My lips are sealed."
Quinn smiled. "Thanks. And if it means anything, whatever you think you owe me, you've paid me back in full."
"Nah," he replied, grinning again. "This isn't paying back a debt. This is just what friends do, right?"
"In that case," Quinn said sweetly, "you don't owe me anything for helping you with Duncan. Because that's just what friends do, right?"
MacCready blinked.
"Hey, no!" he said, puffing himself up like an angry pigeon. "That's not fair!"
"Your words!"
"Quinn!"
"Too late. No takebacks."
"I—you—but —"
His protests were cut off as Quinn stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. MacCready paused, his rifle digging into her chest, and then leaned into her, patting her on the back with his free hand. When they broke apart, he was scowling.
"Fine," he huffed. The annoyance slipped away as he smiled. "Synth business aside, this Danse guy...you really looked out for him today. Makes me feel a lot better, y'know? Like you always have your friends' backs...including mine."
Quinn nodded. "Damn straight I do." She raised an eyebrow. "Besides, it pays to have a cocky little shit like you around, especially with the way you shoot."
MacCready laughed. "You know it." He shouldered his rifle and glanced over the hills in the direction where the Prydwen was stationed. "I promised that Rachel woman I'd take her along to kill some Gunners, so I should get back before she realises I'm missing."
"She's confined to the Prydwen until Maxson returns, I think. So yeah, you better scoot." Quinn punched him lightly in the arm. "Look after her for me."
"Look after her? Have you seen the size of her? She'd make a deathclaw have second thoughts."
"I know, but…" Quinn shook her head. "She was friends with Danse, but as soon as she realised he was a synth...Rachel's had a really bad shock. Just make sure she doesn't bite off more than she can chew, okay?"
"What am I getting myself into?" MacCready muttered, but then he sighed and nodded. "I will, I promise."
They parted without fuss, MacCready tipping his hat and setting off up the hill, Quinn giving a little wave before walking inside the bunker. She frowned at her power armour, which she had abandoned when she had first arrived, not wanting to startle Danse by wearing it. It could stay there for all she cared, but Danse would probably disapprove if Quinn left it out where a passing raider could steal it.
The usual claustrophobic sensation returned as she clambered inside, and Quinn stomped over to the lift, the elevator buttons causing her some difficulty.
Where's a pencil when you need it? she thought dully.
The days dragged on.
Between the two of them, Quinn and Danse managed to make the bunker less of an inhabitable shithole and more of a safe house. They scavenged nearby buildings, dragging back workbenches and furniture, and clearing away the rubble and broken security robots Quinn had destroyed. The only time she saw him break into a smile was when they found a slightly bent power armour station discarded in a dumpster.
"Nothing a bit of work can't fix," he'd said cheerfully. Quinn decided not to mention he had no power armour to go with it.
She had tried to talk with Danse a little, but it seemed like he didn't have much to say. Whatever thoughts he had on his new identity, he wasn't ready to share them, and Quinn didn't blame him.
A synth.
Now that the worst of the storm had passed, Quinn had time to reflect on what this really meant. Either Danse was a replacement or he was an original. The only thing she truly believed was that he was not a spy, otherwise the Institute would have delivered its retribution a long time ago.
She stretched her legs and stood up, feeling too restless to settle in the eerily silent bunker. Something else bothered her, something that she could not push away no matter how hard she tried. Her final meeting with Deacon kept surfacing in her mind: the disappointment in his face, the irritating air of 'knowing' that he held without bothering to share the details.
"By the time they do something you find bad, it might be too late to leave."
"I doubt it. What could they possibly take from me?"
"More than you could ever imagine."
More than she could ever imagine…. Quinn would certainly have never guessed that Danse was a synth. Had Deacon known? Had he been hinting to her, teasing her with that terrible information?
Quinn suspected there was more than one branch of the Railroad than Deacon's cell. The operation seemed too complex, too big for the small collection of people hiding in the ratways beneath the city. So Deacon could be ignorant of Danse's identity after all.
She rubbed her forehead. There were no answers right now, and the only way to get them would be to seek Deacon out. But that would mean either leaving Danse alone or taking him with her into the Railroad's headquarters, neither of which was a winning option.
Sighing, Quinn stared at Danse, who was fast asleep in the corner. He had been sleeping a lot lately. In any other situation, she would have welcomed the change, but given the circumstances…
He had woken every single night, without fail, shaking and sweating, his skin pale as he wheezed and pushed Quinn away when she tried to help. Then he would roll over and shut his eyes again, still trembling until he eventually drifted back to sleep.
Worry gnawed away within her as she began to pace about the room, taking care to keep her footsteps quiet. Even if Danse was sleeping for the wrong reasons, Quinn didn't want to wake him.
This wasn't like him. Normally he would talk with her, let her know what he was thinking, even if it troubled him greatly. Normally he would stay awake after one of his nightmares. Now he was shutting her out and hiding away, preferring to subject himself to his dreams multiple times a night than hold a conversation with her.
She was here for him. That wouldn't change. But Quinn didn't know what to do.
As she took another tour of the room, a small rectangular object caught her eye, lying on top of a console next to the back wall. Quinn crept over and picked it up, turning it over in her hands. The yellowed label had been recently scrubbed away, leaving only tattered remnants on the plastic casing. This was...unusual. Holotapes were normally marked in some shape or form.
Quinn liked holotapes. She collected them, valuing the pre-war ones over the others. It felt like home reaching out to her, even if all a tape contained was the garbled last words of a panicking civilian. She had a few of those stashed away in Nick's office, alongside her books. But her favourites were the diaries: an odd way to record thoughts, and yet apparently more people had done it than Quinn had ever realised.
What was this tape?
Quinn pocketed it. Playing it now could wake Danse, and there would be plenty of time to listen later. Instead, she made her way over to the power armour frame, moving it so that it rattled on the spot. She noted the serial number '35' engraved into the side and sighed. The base was uneven and would need to be straightened out before…
35.
An idea occurred to her.
She walked back over to Danse and crouched down, shaking his shoulder. This was worth disturbing his rest.
"Intruders?" he mumbled, his hand twitching towards his gun as he jolted from his sleep. When Quinn shook her head, he frowned. "What then?"
Quinn cocked her head to the side and smiled.
"How would you like to go find a new set of power armour?"
"Shit!"
Quinn's arms flailed as the scrap beneath her feet shifted, sending her skidding down the pile. She staggered as she hit solid ground, tripped over her own feet, and landed in a heap on the floor.
Spitting out a mouthful of dirt, Quinn looked up to see Danse neatly pick his way down the dunes of rubble and rusted metal, before strolling over and helping her up. He looked almost unrecognisable, having replaced his Brotherhood jumpsuit with scavenged clothes, a makeshift hood and cowl covering his head and face.
"I'm not convinced that your source of information is reliable, Quinn," Danse said, his voice muffled as he brushed mud and dust off her.
Quinn rolled her eyes. "You just don't like it because—"
"That ghoul has probably never gone an entire day sober in his life." Even though all Quinn could see was a glimpse of his eyes beneath the swathes of fabric, she could tell he was glaring. "So no, I don't like his information."
"Well, see it as an opportunity to get away from the bunker for a bit then."
Danse didn't reply, letting her take the lead as they set off again, but as they drew closer to their destination, she heard him mutter something that sounded like 'junkie.'
Gunfire sounded a staccato beat in the distance. Danse raised his laser pistol—the same one Haylen had given him—and crouched down behind a nearby wall. Quinn copied him, and together they peered towards the entrance of 35 Court, watching as a group of raiders threw themselves against the building's robotic defences.
"Look," Quinn said over the screams of the raiders in the background. "I know you and Hancock don't get along, but his people said that it was a set of X-01 power armour. Isn't that worth at least a try?"
"If it's really there, then you can be certain there will be heavy resistance inside," Danse replied. "Which is why you should have worn your own armour for this mission."
"You know I couldn't," Quinn shot back. The two of them wearing civilian clothes over basic armour and hoods that concealed their faces wouldn't stand out too much. But if Quinn wore her Brotherhood armour to the party, it would attract the wrong kind of attention.
As if on cue, a vertibird flew over the city. Quinn flinched, tensing and staring up at it, her heart hammering against her ribcage. If she was seen with Danse...if he was recognised…
"They're moving on," Danse said gently. Odd that he was comforting her over their presence, rather than the other way around. "We'll be fine."
Still, Quinn insisted they waited long after the whir of the vertibird's blades had faded from hearing.
By the time they'd moved on again, the security defences of 35 Court had been obliterated, scorch marks indicating where the turrets had once been, their last smoking fragments littering the ground. Raiders were bleeding out around the entrance, twitching and groaning, unaware that they had company. Danse walked over, shooting each of them in the head, and turned to Quinn.
"Less for us to deal with inside."
Quinn nodded, feeling a little unsettled. Even though she'd had countless months to get used to the brutality of the wasteland, sometimes she forgot how cruel it could be. She was capable of killing—had proven time and time again that she had earned her place through blood—and yet the barrier between her and the denizens of the Commonwealth still existed.
They could be so cold.
Glass and splintered concrete crunched beneath Quinn's boots as she followed Danse into the building, her rifle raised and ready. The lobby was filled with a surprisingly warm glow, fires burning in makeshift braziers throughout the room. Quinn glanced around, but there was no one inside, save a single deactivated protectron, sealed away in a glass and metal case.
"Guess the turrets finished them all off," she muttered, moving around the welcome desk by the stairs to investigate a door behind it. A shrill beeping noise sounded from around her ankles, and she glanced down just in time to see a red laser line flicker and disappear.
Shit.
"Tripwire!" Quinn yelled, as the protectron case in front of her slid open with a loud clunk. Before she could shoot, the robot opened fire, its laser striking her in the shoulder. Quinn cried out as she staggered back into the desk with a bang, dropping her weapon. She shielded her face just in time; the second shot sent pain shooting up through her arms, her sleeves burning away as her skin seared.
Quinn waited for the third.
Something warm rushed past her and the smell of singed steel and plastic filled her nose. She opened her eyes to see an onslaught of laser fire, barrelling the protectron back into its case. As it tried to raise its arms up to attack again, they fell off, the metal joints melted and cracked. The gunfire stopped, and for a moment, Quinn thought it was over. Then the robot began to shake.
A pair of rough hands grabbed her under her arms and dragged her over the desk. Danse picked her up with ease and pressed her to his chest as he sprinted away. He reached the far wall and ducked behind a protruding section of the room, crouching down so that Quinn was shielded by his body.
The protectron exploded with a deafening bang followed by a series of loud thuds, and Quinn felt Danse jerk and grunt, his grip tightening for a second before he slumped forward against the wall.
"Danse?" Quinn tried to sit up, but he kept a firm hold on her, shaking his head.
"I'm fine," he mumbled. "Piece of debris caught me. That's all."
Relaxing, he carefully put Quinn down, making sure not to touch her arms as he propped her up against the wall. Danse pulled down his hood and cowl, revealing a stony expression as he batted at her smouldering clothes. Then his face filled with concentration as he turned his attention to her forearms and shoulder.
They hurt like hell. Quinn hissed as Danse removed her armour and jacket, the fabric sticking to her weeping, stinging skin. Her arms looked horrendous—a mottled mess of raw, seeping flesh. Even Quinn—with her basic medical knowledge—could tell these burns were bad ones.
Quinn watched as Danse pulled out the first aid kit from his rucksack. They had taken the kit from her power armour when they had left the bunker at Danse's insistence.
"Well, you can carry it then," she had said, teasing him.
Once again, Danse had proven he knew best. Quinn tried to stay quiet as he cleaned her wounds, but the burning sensation was near unbearable. Her body began to shiver and sweat as a strange dizziness oozed into her head, and she felt herself start to slowly slide away from Danse. He caught her, gently pulling her upright again as she shook beneath his hands.
"What's wrong with me?" she murmured, struggling to speak between her shallow, gasping breaths.
"You're going into shock," Danse replied, his voice matter-of-fact. "These injuries are relatively severe. But nothing that can't be fixed with the right knowledge. Thankfully, the Brotherhood…"
His words trailed away, and there was a tense pause.
"You're going to be fine," he said finally. "I'll talk you through the procedure while I patch you up. I need you to focus on my words and watch everything I do. Understood?"
Quinn nodded, observing as Danse opened their bag of medical supplies, pulling out alcohol rub, a med-x syringe, a stimpak, and a bottle that Quinn didn't recognise. "What's that stuff?"
"Hydra," Danse said as he removed a small, sealed plastic tub. He cleaned his hands with the alcohol rub, and then removed the seal and prised the lid off the container. "It's a chem from the west, made by a powerful tribe called the Legion some years ago. It was adopted by the NCR government not long after. Our...y-your brothers and sisters had run-ins with the NCR in the Mojave desert."
He opened the med-x and stimpak, pouring them inside the tub and then putting the now empty med-x syringe between his teeth. The hydra opened with a loud popping noise, and Danse added it to the pot and began stirring it with the syringe.
"But they managed to get some over it over to the east coast, and occasionally it trickles through now and then," Danse went on, still stirring. "Cade distributes it when he can get his hands on it, because with the right ingredients, it makes an excellent salve for laser burns."
The concoction slowly turned into a thick, transparent gel, tinged with the palest hint of lilac.
"Hold up your arms," he said gently, dipping his fingers into the gel. Quinn obeyed, and he spread the mixture all over her burns with a steady hand. A cool numbing sensation spread throughout her arms and shoulder, and within minutes, Quinn was giggling, feeling deliciously hazy.
"It will make you a little bit...high," he said, and even though his tone remained serious, she could see he was smiling. "This is good, though. It means the damage isn't so great that the medicine can't cut through the pain. Keep still while I bandage you."
Once again, Quinn did as she was told, still sniggering away as he deftly dressed the wounds. By the time he had finished, the giggles had left her, though her head was still swimming.
Danse picked up her discarded jacket and spread it out on the floor, before guiding Quinn to lie down on top of it. "You need to rest while the gel does its work." He removed his own recently scavenged coat and threw it over her, tucking the sides under her body and making sure her shoulders were covered.
Standing, he stretched out his back, and then glanced down to a sizeable piece of metal on the floor; Quinn suspected it had been the debris that had hit him earlier. Danse gave it a sharp kick, watching it bounce away, and then sat down next to her. He picked up his pistol and reloaded it, leaning against the wall as he frowned. "Hopefully nothing will be drawn over by the explosion."
Quinn snuggled against the folds of Danse's coat; he hadn't worn it long enough for it to smell like him yet, but she still found comfort in it. It was soft, warm, and reassuringly heavy. Her head was still fuzzy, and without thinking, Quinn let her hand creep out from under her blanket. She touched his knee, and he jumped, recoiling from her.
Her arm fell to the ground with a thud, and she whimpered as the burning pain flared up again, cutting through the fog that clouded her brain.
"Sorry," she mumbled, blinking rapidly. Now was not the right time for this. Danse had been through a lot, endured so much. To try anything, when he was at his most vulnerable—
Danse shifted his position, so that his leg just touched her head, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body through his clothes, far enough away that it could almost be considered an accident. He glanced down at her, chewing his lip with worry, and after a second she felt his palm gingerly graze across her back, before dropping away again.
Quinn smiled and brushed her hand against the fabric of his pants, gently scrunching the material between her fingers as she held on. This time he didn't pull away.
Baby steps.
When Quinn awoke, she was alone. It took her a few minutes to realise this; she yawned and sat up, Danse's coat slipping off her as she stretched her arms. They were stiff and ached awfully, but the fierce burning had gone. Danse clearly knew his stuff. She wondered when Cade had taught him that little trick.
Quinn rubbed her eyes and glanced around as the grogginess of sleep left her. Come to think of it, where was Danse?
Slowly she got to her feet, her joints clicking and creaking, and reached for her combat rifle, only to find it was missing. She glanced around the floor, frowning.
I dropped it when the protectron attacked.
Quinn picked her way across the room, stepping over charred pieces of robot and scorched carpet as she reached the welcome desk. Half of it had been blasted away, chipped wood strewn all over the floor. She crouched down, sifting through the mess.
Finally, she found it, and her heart sank. The metal had been completely melted in parts, fusing its components together into one big useless chunk of scrap. She turned it over in her hands, sighing. The rifle had been with her almost since the beginning, taken from the hands of a dead raider during the assault on Concord. It had been altered and broken and repaired a thousand times over, and yet Quinn had never let it go. Now it seemed she had no choice.
Quinn gave a nervous glance over her shoulder. Without a gun, she was as vulnerable as a child. Sure, she could use her ruined rifle as a club in a pinch, but...
Where the hell is Danse?
A series of suggestions flared up in her mind, each one more damning than the last. What if he was lying in some alleyway, bleeding? Dying? Or having some sort of flashback? What if—?
What if the Brotherhood found him?
Quinn's stomach turned. But then the sensible part of her brain kicked in, and with a great effort, she stopped the thoughts dead. Danse was not stupid. He was not defenceless. He was not careless. If he had left, then he was nearby. If something had happened, she would have heard it.
Wherever Danse was, he would be back shortly. He wouldn't leave her on her own for long, and stumbling around in the open injured and without a weapon would do more harm than good.
Quinn walked back to her bed and sat down, wrapping Danse's coat around her and nuzzling into the fabric. Her nerves frayed as the anxiety bubbled away within her. Danse would be back soon and he would be fine. She just needed a distraction. She just needed to stay calm.
Her hand trembling slightly, Quinn pulled out the holotape she had taken from the bunker that morning. So long as she kept the volume down, it would help pass the time. A sense of calm returned to her as she scanned the plastic casing, looking for any hidden hint of its origins. Maybe it was pre-war after all? That was the only explanation she had for why the label had been so thoroughly peeled away.
She took Nate's holotape out of her Pip-Boy with her usual care and inserted the new one, eager to hear its content.
"As the minutes tick by and I stare at the walls of this godforsaken place, I'm still trying to cope with the reality that I am a living lie."
Quinn frowned. This was the last voice she had expected to hear.
Her confusion turned into horror as the tape played on, a sneaking suspicion growing within her. The echo of Danse laid bare his soul, stating his intentions plainly, and without emotion.
A suicide note.
Quinn leapt to her feet as the tape clicked and finished, her heart hammering away. Fuck the fact she was unarmed—she had to find him now.
Images of his body swaying from a lamppost, or crumpled in some corner, a gun still warm in his cooling hand, flashed before her eyes. The panic was so great Quinn couldn't breathe, her throat tight as she choked in fear. But she had barely taken two steps toward the exit when Quinn heard the most beautiful sound in existence.
"Quinn?"
She whirled on the spot, and there he was—Danse—perplexed and obviously tired, but alive. God, he was alive.
"Danse!"
She sprinted towards him, throwing herself into his arms so hard they both toppled to the ground. Her arms hurt, but she didn't care.
"Don't do that again! Don't ever do that again! Don't ever, ever, ever—"
It took several minutes for Danse to calm her down, the alarm clear in his face. "Is everything alright? What happened?"
"I just thought the Brotherhood may have found you," Quinn replied, still shaking slightly. The lie came far too easily, rolling off her tongue like Bowmore whisky, but the truth was out of the question. Quinn knew Danse far too well—the last thing he would have wanted her to hear was the point he felt driven to make that tape.
"No," Danse said, getting to his knees and dusting himself down. "I just went to scout the area to make sure we didn't need to move." He folded his arms, staring at her. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Quinn said firmly. Danse continued to study her, his brow furrowed with confusion, before eventually shaking his head.
"I think we should abandon this mission." He gestured to the destroyed protectron and her arms. "We're underprepared, you're wounded, and we don't have enough firepower for whatever else might be lurking in this structure."
"I agree."
Danse blinked, but Quinn felt too on edge to laugh. "You...you agree?"
"Yeah, I do." She stood up, shouldering her ruined weapon, trying to ignore the sick feeling festering in her stomach. He was going to kill himself. I could have found him dead. I could have lost him. Quinn considered him for a moment, and the nausea increased. I could still lose him. What if I wake up and find him—?
"Quinn?"
Danse was frowning.
"Like you said," Quinn said quickly, "we're not ready. But I don't think we should give up yet. Let's go to Goodneighbor and rethink our approach."
"No."
"No?"
"No," Danse repeated, dragging himself to his feet. "I can't go there. People know me. People—"
Quinn picked up his cowl off the floor and yanked it down over his head. "Problem solved."
"But—"
"Danse," she said firmly, her hands on her hips. "I know you don't want to run into Nick and Hancock, but we can't avoid them when they live in the main cities of the Commonwealth. We need supplies and we need new guns." She gestured to her arms. "And I want to get these checked over to make sure they're not infected."
But most of all, I don't want to take you back to that bunker. Not if I can help it.
Behind his cowl, Quinn saw Danse's eyes flick to her bandaged arms. He sighed heavily and nodded.
"Fine." He sounded defeated. "I suppose they would have found out sooner or later."
"I won't tell them if you don't want me to."
Danse gave a small shrug and picked his coat up off the floor, pulling it back on. "What does it matter? Their opinions mean nothing to me."
"Danse—"
"Let's go," he interrupted, shouldering his rucksack and striding from the building.
A/N: Thank you to my wonderful beta, waiting4morning! And thank you all for the comments and such.
Unfortunately, I've been massively busy, so I've not been able to respond to anyone. Literally got in from a full night shift just now and started working on getting the chapter released. So as soon as this is posted I'm gonna go pass out in my bed.
i am so tired ._.
But this chapter marks a 200,000 word milestone! So yay for that!
Potentially next chapter may be delayed as I'm having friends over this week and I'm gonna be busy. Keep an eye on my 'bnc' and 'bnc updates' tags on my tumblr for more info over the next week.
Goodnight~