9. Confession
Beth POV
I open my eyes.
All I see is a ceiling. But not my ceiling in Diamond City. This ceiling looks Pre-War, but torn apart. I'm in a rundown building somewhere in the Commonwealth.
There's a snoring in my ear—light, but it's there. Turning my head in that direction, I see the back of Robert's head. Wondering where we are, I look around the room. I see a cigarette machine, a couple chairs on the other side of the room, and an elevator between the two. Where are we?
I sit up—feeling some bruises on my torso as I move—and look around the room a bit better. Wanting to find out where we are, I put my hand on Robert's shoulder. He snaps his head forward, instantly awake from his sleep having been light. Looking around in front of him, and coming up short with what could have touched him, he whips his whole body toward me. If his eyes get any bigger than they are, they'll explode. He looks at me with this skepticism, as if I'm not real or something. He gets to his knees rather slowly—keeping his eyes on me the whole time—and wraps his arms around me with such care. After a minute, he pulls away, looking me in the eyes, and asks, "Are you okay?"
I nod. Looking immensely relieved, he hugs me again. I can barely understand him due to his face being buried in my shoulder, but I think he says, "I didn't know what was going to happen to you. I swear you died for a minute." His voice starts getting that croaky edge a person gets when they're upset. I remember what happened.
A putrid glowing one came at me so fast I couldn't defend myself. I remember feeling the pain as its claws ripped into the skin on my neck and chest—it beating me on the ribcage with its bare fists once I was on the floor. Like some kind of animal. They claw apart anything they can reach, Robert had said about them. No kidding, I think to myself. So, this must be the room I was heading toward with the small staircase.
He leans away from me again, asking, "Hungry?" He looks to our supply bag with the tatos I packed. I shake my head, amazed that my neck doesn't hurt. I put my hand up to it, feeling for the gashes. They're not there—my neck is whole. I'm not even sure if the "scars" I'm feeling are being imagined or not. Looking up at Robert, I finally speak.
"Did you do it?"
"Do what?" he asks with his brows raised, shocked to hear me speak after so long would be my guess.
"All of it. Kill the ghoul, bring me in here. …Heal me."
He looks down blushingly. "Yeah… Had to do it." Why is he embarrassed about that?
I look at my Pip-Boy, noting my radiation level is lower than I expected. He must've used a RadAway along with the Stimpaks. I also notice it's nearly four in the morning. "We spent all night here?"
"Guess we did," he says.
"Did you get the cure?"
He looks at me as if he'd forgotten all about it. After a second he says, "Be right back," and leaves the room.
I laugh to myself. Was he so worried about staying by me while I was out that he actually forgot the whole reason we came here?
A few minutes later, he comes back holding a red syringe-like thing in his hand. "This is it." The croaking in his voice is still there, showing his happiness at finding it. "We need to get it to Daisy in Goodneighbor. She can get it back to Duncan on a caravan heading to DC. You know, once you feel up to it." He puts it in the bag with the other things we brought.
"I'm happy for you, Robert." I smile up at him as he smiles down at me.
"Thank you," he says genuinely. "I couldn't have done this without you. I'm just really sorry I didn't see that ghoul sooner…" He looks mad at himself.
"Not your fault. Even if you did, it still might have kicked my butt. We don't know. So, don't worry about it." He looks like he's not going to stop worrying about it, but nods anyway. "Anyway," I say, distracting him, "I'm ready to head home."
He looks surprised. "You feel up to it? You took quite a beating."
"I'm just ready to relax in my own bed," I say, thinking about how long it seems I've been out of it.
"If you think you can." He holds his hand out to me, offering to help me up. Feeling the bruises in my abdomen, however little they are, I take it and rise to my feet with his assistance.
"Oh!" he exclaims once he drops my hand and dashes out the room. He comes back with both of our rifles in hand. "I mighta thrown this around a little, but it wasn't important at the time." He hands me mine, which I remember dropping after being hit.
"It'll be fine," I say. "They're durable, right?"
"Yeah, this one especially. I still can't believe you got this for me."
"Now, drop it. You knew we weren't going to talk about it anymore."
"I'm not complaining. I'm complimenting, if anything." He seems to be trying his best to shake off the ghoul incident, however convincingly.
As he's about to head to the elevator, I stop him by putting my hand on his chest. He looks at me expectantly. "I'm okay," I swear to him. "I'm alive because of you." Again. I think about the time in Goodneighbor when I got shot and he helped me, not even knowing me, as I had just hired him.
He looks down, then after a few seconds, back at my face. "I didn't have a choice. It's not as if I was like, 'I'm gonna save her because I can.' I saved you because I had to." He looks down again. "I couldn't not. I had to. I didn't have a choice," his words getting quieter and quieter to the point where I have to try and read his lips.
He grabs the bag on the floor with the supplies. "Let's head home," he says.
The walk home was uneventful, thank God. I didn't know if I could handle any more fights. I was already exhausted from the walk yesterday. And the ghoul mauling. Couldn't forget that if I tried.
We finally crossed paths with the turrets and guards of Diamond City, and I knew we'd made it to our safe haven. Strolling through the market, nobody could even tell what we'd been through. It just looked like we had come back from a regular day in the wasteland: dirty and tired. A normal Tuesday morning.
Walking into Home Plate never felt so good.
MacCready POV
The One That I Want by Lo-Fang
We walk in the door and she sighs with relief. "Nothing like being home," she says.
"I hear you," I agree, setting my rifle and the supplies bag by the door then dumping myself onto the couch. She puts her rifle next to mine and sits on the couch also. "You know what?" I ask her.
"What?"
"It's kinda crazy how quickly this place has become home for me. I mean, it's been all of—what? Four days since I first walked in here?" She thinks for a second then nods. "I've never felt so at home in such a short amount of time in my life. Even Lamplight, where I lived for sixteen years didn't feel as bit of home as your house does."
"It's your home, too, you know." Her face has the expression one might have when something is obvious without having to say it.
"Oh, yeah?" I tease her, "How come you're the only one here with a bed then, huh?"
Her face shifts from her previous expression. Her eyes go round and she looks mortified. "I don't know," she finally says. "I guess I need to get you one."
"I'm just messin' with you, Beth," I chuckle. "The couch isn't that bad." I punch the back of it and a decent sized dust cloud appears. After we both cough a bit from it, she looks even more humiliated. "Don't worry about it," I assure her. "Didn't even know it was there 'til just now."
"No, I'm finding you a bed." Sheepishly, "You can have the third floor, if you want it."
"What if I want the big room?" I ask, feigning a temper tantrum. I look over to the other end of the living room, toward the giant part of the house.
"To make a bachelor pad or something? Parties every Friday?" she asks sarcastically.
We both just laugh a little and the subject fades rather quickly when she says, "Thank you," with a straight face.
"For what? Asking for a bigger room or bringing the dusty couch to your attention?"
She gives me a flat look then continues. "I never got to properly thank you back at Med-Tek," she clarifies. "I wouldn't be here if you didn't take action as quickly as you did. So, thank you."
"No need." I look down and away from her side of the couch slightly. "Like I said back there, I couldn't just let you die. You're too important." To me, I finish the thought in my head. Feeling like I'm being too expressive out loud, I switch it up a bit. "Shaun needs his mom. You need to be alive for him." Good save? Think so.
"Well, still," she says. "I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate it. A lot. So there." She shifts her weight. Nervous?
Suddenly, a thought pops into my head. I really don't want it to but it charges like a mad deathclaw: I saw Lucy's face back there as if it was her death playing over in my head. It was strikingly similar, seeing Beth in that situation.
Then as if Lucy could hear that thought, she chimes in: "Tell her how you feel, Robert. You may not have forever." Shocked to not only hear my late wife's voice, but coming to that conclusion, renders me motionless. Beth notices and looks my way.
"You okay over there?" My staying still for another few seconds makes her nervous, as she scoots closer, "Hey," and pokes my arm.
Looking at her, and not really even registering what she said, I ask, "Can we talk?"
Her face is slightly alarmed but she nods.
Although very difficult, I force myself to look her in the face. "Back when Lucy died, I wondered if it would have been better if Duncan and I had died with her. Especially since he's gotten sick. But now with this cure, he'll be fine and I'm glad I didn't make that decision. Not only for that purpose, though.
"She gave me hope that this world isn't all ugly. She was beautiful and tough and a great mother. She helped me when my life wasn't going smoothly. Like a shoulder to cry on, I guess you could say. Whenever she died, I thought I'd be alone forever. Except for Duncan, I thought I'd never have a friend or anyone I could say I was close to. But I see that I was wrong. Very wrong.
"I can find that in you. You help me to see that there is good in this world still, and that it wasn't a onetime occurrence. And that makes me so happy, you have no idea. You're like…" I think for a second for a term. "A beacon… in a dark place. I can see so much better now than I used to. And I want you to have something." I stand up and go to my personal belongings I've had since I'd left the Capital Wasteland. I retrieve my item and hand it to her. She looks confused, looking at me as I sit back on the couch, closer to her than before.
"It may seem silly to give you what looks like a wooden toy. But it's not just a toy. Lucy made that for me when we left Lamplight. She said she'd always seen me as a soldier: brave and willing to do anything for his people. I thought she was just biased, but that right there," I point to the carved piece of wood, "that has always had meaning for me. Not because of the solider part. But because my wife made it for me because she was proud of me. I never knew what that felt like until then. And that's why it's so special."
She looks at it with purpose, taking in the shapes of it, the colors, matching the story of its background to its surface. "It's a great gift. But I can't take it. Since she made it for you, it'd be wrong." She tries to hand it back.
I push her hand back toward her. "No. You should have it. I…" Say it, Robert. I take a deep breath. "I don't know how this is going to go, but it's better to just spit it out, right?" Even though I'm mainly talking to myself, she looks intrigued. "I feel like I need to tell you this, so please let me say it…
"We've been traveling for a while now, and I feel like I've gotten to know you really well. It may not be a long time to you, but for me it feels like a small forever. And a really, really good one. I didn't realize I could be this happy again. So, that being said…" I swallow the huge lump making its way up my throat, and take a deep breath to steady myself.
"I love you. Now I know what you're probably thinking. 'But he still loves his wife.' Yeah, I do. I admit, I always will. But she's not here now. You are. I understand that you probably still love your husband, and don't feel the same way. And that's fine. I just needed to get this off my chest. I feel like I couldn't walk around much longer without saying it, or I'd just make it obvious one day.
"But, I mean… you're gorgeous. Inside and out. How could I not fall for you even a tiny bit? I love it when you smile or giggle at the smallest things. The knowledge you have from before just… baffles me, and makes me want to stay up all night asking you questions about what it was like. But your eyes… They're my favourite part about you. They're so expressive, so full of life. So beautiful."
I look down, away from her face. "So, yeah. It's fine if you say you don't feel the same. I understand if you don't want me to travel with you anymore. I can just go back to DC and deliver my son's cure myself." As I'm about to stand up—ready to grab my possessions and leave from her lack of response—she comes toward me and hugs me. Shocked, I don't react in any way other than sitting still. After a second she leans back, her face pleasantly surprised.
"About time," is all she says. It takes me a moment to realize what she means.
"Y-You mean you…?" My eyebrows shoot straight up my forehead in shock.
She looks away a bit, blushing the reddest I've ever seen her face. "I've been… feeling the same way. I just didn't know how to bring it up. Or if it even would have been a good idea. I know you love Lucy still. And I'll never stop loving Nate. But… they're not here anymore. And we are. We have to make the best out of what we have, right?" She looks at me, a small sideways grin on her face.
"Right," I say, smiling at her with possibly the biggest smile I've worn in years.
I go in for a hug and she gladly accepts and reciprocates. I can feel it: a charge in the air. The few times I have hugged her felt a bit heavy for some reason, I could feel it even then. But this time, the hug is heavy in a whole new aspect. It's not heavy with tension or guilt. It's heavy with mutual tenderness and adoration, affection of sorts.
When we drop our embrace, we look at each other with those stupid grins I see on old romantic flick movie posters. But it doesn't bother me any.
"Is it too early for me to say that I love you?" I ask, thinking that maybe it was a little premature.
She shakes her head. "I don't think so," she replies with an easy smile. "Cause I love you, too. See? I'm not afraid to say it."
Her smile is so mesmerizing, so intoxicating. I can lose myself in the depths of her blue eyes any day and be okay with it. I find myself leaning in toward her, and she mimics me. I haven't even fully realized what I'm doing until I've met her lips with my own. They're so soft and small, plump, perfect. I'd be fine with staying like this forever, but my body pulls me away all too soon, my mind not even have made any kind of decision on the matter.
After I open my eyes, I see her looking at me with her own, rounded in happiness, a small smile lighting up her face. She looks genuinely happy—like exactly how I'm feeling at the moment.
With us both being more than content—ecstatic, really—we wrap our arms around each other and lean against the back of the couch, savouring the moment. A few minutes later, she asks me, "You wanna know another good part to this?"
"Hm?"
"I don't have to buy you a bed now." She looks up at me from her resting place on my chest and smiles playfully.
A/N: Yay! Finally, one of the two genres makes sense! Romance—yaas.