"Look at what you have in front of you, Danse."

He'd been looking. All the way back to Sanctuary, he'd been looking, with eyes fastened on the black leather covering Nora's back and that sentence playing on repeat in his mind. Danse was confused as he'd ever been as a result. As evening slipped into night and their boots ate away the klicks, he'd diligently been attempting to sort out the tangle of emotions he felt, but it seemed a nearly impossible task. Anger, disappointment, hurt — they all clung together, shifting and pulsing, each swallowing the next before he could start to get a handle on any one of them.

Now that the familiar, softly lit Red Rocket towered over them, now that their journey had come to an end on the broken asphalt of a pre-war filling station, he was no closer to resolving anything. In fact, he felt like he was drowning even more now than the horrible moment Nora had told him she'd resigned from the Brotherhood. For the second time in as many days, his world was rocked to its core and he was left foundering.

One of the coolant hoses cast a moon shadow directly over Nora's eyes, leaving them as shadowed as her intentions. Danse slid the rucksack strap off of his shoulder and let it slide to the ground.

"Well, here we are. Final stop."

Her voice was so soft and thin sounding, he nearly missed the first couple of words. Danse heard the question behind the words, though. He wasn't ready to give her an answer yet, because he didn't have one. The logic centers of his brain were telling him he should follow through with his original plan of leaving the Commonwealth to strike out on his own. Leave this all behind for a fresh start.

His heart… it was doing whatever it was that synthetic hearts did. Aching, mostly, which seemed to him like a disconcerting factory defect. Too bad a stimpak wouldn't relieve this heartache as it had done for the pain of Nora's injured hand.

"How is it?" he asked gruffly.

Nora's brows drew together and she tilted her head.

"The hand," he clarified. It dangled by her side now, fingers clenching and uncurling absently. "Has it fully healed?"

Raising her arm, she flexed her fingers and made a fist. "Yes. Much better, thank you," she replied in an equally husky voice.

She opened her mouth to say something more, hesitated, and shook her head instead. His mind was capable of inserting one particular line of unspoken dialogue on its own, as it had been doing for hours: "Look at what you have in front of you, Danse."

The echo of the words she'd spoken took the breath right out of him yet again, leaving him staring mutely at Nora. He'd only just started to realize what she might mean to him that very morning. Not when she was in front of him as she'd said, but underneath.

She'd never been able to hide anything from him. Not for long, not when he'd come to know her inside and out. That morning, he saw a new, unfamiliar light enter her eyes as his body hovered mere inches above hers. It was similar to the affection that often glowed there, but this time it was somehow more intense and focused. It shifted into something darker and slumberous right before her hips tilted towards him and her lips parted invitingly to whisper his name.

Right at that moment, in the very bunker where he'd fled to end his unnatural existence one way or the other, he began to dream of a life with Nora. Forty-five percent of his brain had actively been considering that future. Another forty-five was processing various scenarios on what might happen if he lowered himself down onto her fully and captured her lush mouth with his.

It was the remaining ten percent that stopped him cold. The ten percent that was still her commanding officer, not her lover. Not a high percentage by any means, but enough to cause him to scramble away from her. Like the greenest of initiates, he was forced to turn to the wall with clenched fists and gritted teeth and wait for his painfully hard erection to subside.

Had she come after him, though...

Enough. Control yourself, soldier.

Perhaps he was too controlled, however? Too rigid and inflexible. Perhaps if he'd been less of a martinet, Nora would still be a member of the Brotherhood. Had he failed yet again? He had to know.

"Is your decision final? You won't reconsider?" he asked quietly.

Nora rocked back on her heels as if he'd physically struck her. "Yes. No."

And so they stood there in the former parking lot of the Red Rocket station, staring at each other warily from two paces. The situation was just like something from an old Western holotape. The only difference was the time of day — edging toward midnight with the full moon high overhead, instead of the hot sun of high noon.

She stepped back a pace and the shadow slid off her face. The moonlight washed all trace of color out of her, leaving her unnaturally pale. Perhaps she truly was though, because he felt just as lifeless.

"Sinclair… Nora —"

"Danse, don't. Just let me say my piece, okay?"

His hands clenched into fists at his side. For the first time in years of potentially fabricated memories, he was afraid.

'I did some thinking on the way here. I don't blame you if you… if you decide to leave." She tilted her head forward so he couldn't see her face anymore and poked a broken piece of asphalt with her toe.

"Christ. This is so fucking hard, Danse."

Her palms swiped over her cheeks, and he realized then that she was crying. The silvery tear tracks the moon picked out when she tipped her head back up were far more devastating than he could've ever imagined.

"Nora…" he began.

She slashed out her hands as if to ward off his words. "Just shut up. Here. I have something to give you first."

Unzipping her jacket, Nora slipped her hand inside and withdrew a cigarette pack. She tossed it towards his chest, but he uncharacteristically fumbled the catch. The pack dropped to his feet. It could wait. There were more important things to see to.

Nora stared at the pack for a long moment, then cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, but it's all I managed to save. I had to leave the rest behind. All of it."

She squared her shoulders and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Do me a favor. Stay the night here. Just until morning. Then if you decide that you truly can't forgive me, just… just go. I'm not not sure if you've looked in the duffel at all, but I stopped in Bunker Hill and got you some supplies. You're so big, the clothes might not fit…"

She trailed off miserably. Her head swiveled to the north, gaze pointing towards the vault buried in the bluff overlooking the river. When she turned her head back to him, the lines of her face were hard and her voice became a low snarl, lashing out with unexpected viciousness.

"You told me you'd never leave me, but I realize that people sometimes make promises they can't keep. Nate told me the same thing. If… when you leave, it's going to destroy me. Do me a solid and just get the fuck out of here if that's your decision."

The words that she was speaking were too final. Too brutal. She'd effectively flipped the tables on him, hadn't she? Hadn't he spoken so brutally to her earlier that afternoon?

"Don't do this, Nora." It wasn't his brain that spoke, it was his aching heart.

For a second, her shoulders hunched inward and her hair fell into her face. She took a tiny quarter step forward, but jerked to a halt. She turned her face into the darkness and bit back a sob.

"I need to. I'm sorry. After all we've been through together, I'm sure you understand why. Stay safe, whatever you do. Wherever you go."

Her voice broke, in turn breaking what was left of his heart. She turned and walked away from him then, back arrow-straight and footsteps steady and even. Danse watched until she disappeared around the bend leading to the Old North Bridge, cursing himself silently with each step that took her away from him. She didn't look back once.

The involuntary step he took towards her retreating figure crunched something underfoot. Danse looked down and saw the cigarette pack she'd tossed to him under the toe of his boot. All she'd managed to save, she'd said…

He stooped down to pick up the pack and flipped the top open. The faint blue glow within told him what was inside before he even tipped the contents out into his palm. How often had he held these tags in his hands, just like this? And this photo, carefully folded into quarters? He knew every millimeter of those blood smears. Every grain of this photo. They were all he had left of Cutler.

Danse tipped the pack upside down and shook, then swept his forefinger inside. There was nothing else in there. The photo of Nora was missing, likely overlooked when she retrieved his belongings, tucked as it was underneath the liner of the cigar box.

He sighed heavily and tucked the precious belongings inside a zippered pocket on his arm. The other photo had been just as carefully memorized. Just as precious. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the fact, but he had finally accepted he'd developed… feelings for the Nora in the picture. It had been relatively harmless to care for the picture Nora because she simply didn't exist anymore. That world and the girl who'd lived in it were gone. He'd been unable to reconcile the happy, vivacious girl in the photo to the shattered Nora he knew until she'd smiled at him for the first time. She'd smiled just like the Nora in the photo. He'd been utterly unprepared for the beautiful brilliance of it, and utterly unprepared when the two Noras had merged into one like a stereoscopic image.

The revelation left him fighting to regain control of himself. As soon as they'd returned to the Prydwen, he'd tucked the photo away. It was too dangerous.

Danse scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. He was uncomfortably aware that he was now in her shoes. He wasn't the Danse he'd been yesterday. That life had been stripped from him, leaving him… Leaving him what, and where?

A familiar scrap of ancient song lyrics came to mind: "Day is done, gone the sun, from the lake, from the hills, from the sky…"

Mournful bugle notes filled in the gaps around the words. Taps. Used by the United States armed forces in pre-war times, and still used to lay Brotherhood soldiers to their final rest.

In the minds of the Brotherhood, he'd been laid to rest. The Brotherhood had given up on him and cast him out. Only Nora had saved him. She'd saved him, given him the chance to start a new life, and this was how he was repaying her? By sitting alone in a gas station? He'd mourned the loss of Krieg. He'd grieved for Cutler. Why, then, did those losses pale in comparison to the prospect of losing Nora?

The answer was obvious now. Because he loved her with every fiber of his synthetic body. He thought he'd loved the old Nora, but he'd been wrong. This Nora — the broken, ferocious, determined Nora — was his and his alone. He was damned if he'd let her go without a fight.