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“Cait. Always Cait.” Nora said, struggling to keep a straight face.
“Really? Okay, what if the Deathclaw had a Fat Boy? And a very distracting bikini?” Deacon said, his crow’s feet peeking out from behind his sunglasses.
“‘It is not smart to bet against an Irishwoman,’” Nora mimicked, in her best impression of the redhead. “‘You’ll be kicked right in yer arse.’”
The pair burst into giggles, the only laughter in the busy Railroad HQ. It had been four years since the Institute was blown to high heaven, but synths and the remnants of the scientists still left the Railroad with plenty of work to do. Carrington threw them an annoyed glare, but the expression was light enough that, from him, it might as well have been a smile.
When the laughter eventually died off, they were both left with little to say. It was difficult being around the rest of the Railroad agents, especially when the duo spent so much of their time together. Their conversation was pretty limited…as were their activities.
Being partners, then comrades, then friends, then spending a lot of time together usually dealt out a pretty consistent outcome, if the stars aligned. Nora hadn’t thought anything would happen with her and Deacon, with his troubled past and the wife he had yet to get over. It wasn’t an issue until, well, became an issue.
She was sure he had caught her staring at him on multiple occasions. He wasn’t stupid enough to look right at her, but she knew him well enough to know when he noticed something. She had tried everything. Taking time off, doing a detox, talking to Ellie, but nothing seemed to shake him out of her system. Their friendship grew awkward. Deacon tried his best to fill the empty space with absurd stories, but the mountain of what she needed to say was too high. So instead of being mature, instead of putting herself out there, Nora talked to Dez about reassignment and within a day, the two were whisked off to new missions.
It was months until they saw each other again, Deacon donning a new scar and Nora herself missing a noticeable divot of her ear, and their exchange was cold and distant. It wasn’t until a week later, when Deacon came back barely walking, when they really saw each other again. Hopped up on drugs in the infirmary, Deacon wrote himself a reminder.
He woke up laughing. Nora had been sitting there for hours, waiting by his bedside to see if he needed anything. Make sure he was alright. She had gotten him his spare pair of sunglasses he always kept and put them on his face. They hadn’t stayed on very well, but she knew that he wouldn’t be comfortable without them.
But, when he started giggling, and Nora froze. What would he think, finding her here, sitting beside him? She had asked for reassignment, not him. However, after a few moments of listening to that atrocious laugh, she decided that she didn’t really care.
“Ohhh myyy goshh. Whhatt a jooke.” Deacon slurred, still giggling. “Yoooouuu funny guy.”
Nora barely stifled a howl, trying not to wake the other agents sleeping only a few rooms over.
“I KNOW I’m funny, but thaaaat’s just plain evillly meeean. Shush yourself,” he said, reaching unsteadily towards her face with pointer fingers. “Shuuuuuuuuuusshhh.”
She gently placed his arms beside him on the bed, not looking at his face. For one, trying not to laugh, because she would with the stupid grin on his face. Another because she didn’t want him to recognize her. Nora soon realized that wouldn’t be an issue.
“Who’re youu?” he asked, turning his head on the pillow to look at her. The glasses had slid off the bridge of his nose, so she could see his half-lidded blue eyes. “You who laugh, AT ME?”
That last part he said in a low and loud voice, and it took all she had not to reply in the same tone. If he was sober, they would’ve annoyed the hell out of Carrington in that voice together.
Stop thinking like that. You ended that friendship, remember? It was you.
It was enough to wake the edgy Railroad agents. She soon heard the quiet tap of footsteps and saw a grumpy heavy came into the room.
“ Shut him up. ” Carrock whispered.
“HEY! HOW ABOUT YOU SHUT UP?” Deacon mimicked in his best attempt at a hushed voice.
“Deacon, buddy, you gotta quiet down-” Nora said, glancing over at the increasingly annoyed Carrock.
“-Not until to tell me who YO-” he continued, but Nora covered his mouth with her hand.
“Shush!” she said, more urgently this time. “People are trying to sleep!”
She released her hand and Deacon’s shoulders sank in a pout.
“Fiiine.”
Carrock rolled his eyes and stomped out of the room. They sat in silence for a while, Deacon occasionally muttering unintelligible things under his breath, until his chest started to rise and fall evenly again. It was then, watching his breathing, when the events of the last day caught up with her and she drifted away.
“... You! You, quiet person!”
Nora lifted her head up quickly from her knee, blinking several times as she got her bearings. It all came back to her quickly, but she didn’t feel half as jovial as she had however many minutes ago.
“I neeeeed some pen and paper!” he said, moving his thumb up and down as if using one.
“Why?” Nora did not take well to being woken abruptly.
“Love. Loss. Fun. Reasons! Please?” he asked.
Nora opened her mouth to say no, then stopped herself. The bad mood that came with sleepiness was wearing off and she decided she might want to read whatever Deacon wrote down. Deacon on a regular day was a whirlwind, but drugged up Deacon? Hold onto your hat.
So Nora replied in a quick affirmative and went off in search of a notepad. She searched around and eventually found the back of a Pork and Beans label and a half-broken pencil. It would have to do.
She gave him the supplies, and he made a quick note and shoved it in his pocket. Then he tossed the pencil on the ground and went back to sleep.
Feeling slightly guilty, but more than a little excited, she reached into his pocket with the dexterity that she had learned from him and plucked out the note.
She uncrumpled it, a slight smile forming on her face as she read the scraggly handwriting. Once she finished, it wasn’t a smile that graced her lips. Think rather guilt and confusion.
Tellll Nora tht I lv her
When she confronted him about it, after a long internal debate in which her ‘Screw it’ side won, all he said was: “It’s true, Nora… Let’s just say I have really good night-vision.” While he still joked that this confession was mainly caused by drug-induced insanity, he often showed her how much of a lie that really was.
Slowly but surely, they dove into one another. First taking hesitant steps, then clinging to each other as the world spun on its axis. But, it hadn’t always been that way.
“What do you think of Mexico? Las Vegas? What about New York? Been there?” Deacon asked out of the blue one day.
“No to the first. No to the third, and if I say no to the second, will it make it true?” she said, shaking her head as she recalled events that had happened over 200 years ago.
“Cross that off the list then.” he said, and did a quick mime as if he were doing just that.
“What list?” she sighed. He had an annoying way of leaving open-ended statements so she would have to ask a question. She had bugged him about it, but he said it was apart of his ‘style’.
“The list of places we can go. Visit.” Then added in a cough. “Live.”
Nora was taken aback. There were many things she had imagined coming out of his mouth, things that she had worried about. Anything from him ‘not being ready’ to her ‘not being the right one’ had flitted through her head at one point or the other. She had never expected him to say either, really, but this one hadn’t been included in her imagination and she didn’t have a response.
“Live?” she asked, not sure what to make of it. “As in sleep, eat and breath?”
“As in sleep, eat, breath, make terrible jokes and most likely kill rad-monsters, but preferably much less of the killing part.” he said, looking down.
“What about the Railroad? What about saving synths?” she replied, not completely against the more peaceful lifestyle, but still feeling a duty towards those she’d helped.
“Nora, I’ve been with the Railroad for seven years. Seven years of my life. I think I’ve paid my dues to them, at least? Besides, it’s too dangerous out here for us.” he said, rubbing his arm.
He stood in front of her, hand gripping one arm and his sunglasses directed to the ground. If she looked just right, she could see the light tips of his eyebrows. It didn’t match his black pompadour or drifter costume and even though she could tell he was nervous, he still stood in the self-assured relaxed pose that he hid in. No, he wasn’t ready.
“What do you mean, for us ?” Nora was a lawyer, she knew what words meant what and she was getting increasingly upset with what was coming out of his mouth.
“The dangers of the Commonwealth -” he started.
“You don’t think I know the dangers of the Commonwealth? You don’t think I know what they are, Deacon? I don’t know if you remember, but I wiped out one of the biggest. I killed my son , and I still have my dues to pay. Even if you don’t.”
The first rule that had been drilled into her head when she became a lawyer was: don’t get emotionally involved. That had worked in the courtroom, but not in the wastes.
She left him on the road to the Mercer safehouse, returning back to Sanctuary. On the way she passed a confused Preston Garvey, and Marcy glared at her, for something that she knew she would hear about sooner or later, but for the moment she chose later.
Deacon found her a few hours later, still fuming.
“Nora?” he called. “Nora, I’m sorry.”
The door creaked close, and Nora peeked out of the hallway, sniffling. Deacon took a few hesitant steps toward her, opening his mouth to speak when she hurried into his arms.
She had cried her share when she had exited the Vault, when she had found out the truth about her son and when she blew up the Institute. She was drowning in guilt and Deacon was her only lifeline. If he hadn’t broached the topic, it would’ve come up later, and bad.
“Hey, hey,” he said, stroking her back. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
She nodded into his shirt, smelling the one familiar scent that no matter what he was wearing made her think of him. It was nicotine and grease, and if she inhaled just right, she swore she smelled soap. He comforted her, holding her and she finished the rest of her crying. When she finished they had a long talk.
Deacon thoroughly apologized, obviously feeling deeply ashamed. Nora got a strict talking to by Deacon about blaming herself. In the end they felt better, stronger somehow. However, they both agreed that they would leave the Railroad eventually, when the time was right.
While Deacon still watched for danger when he was with her, but he accepted that she would be in danger pretty much all of the rest of the time. They both respected one another, their goals and their individual struggles. As long as that stayed the same, she could care less about the details. Especially since she was always the little spoon.
Now here they were, two years deep into a relationship that really should not have ever happened. It was one of the many impossible, but normal relationships she had now.
“Now, come on, actor extraordinaire, we are going on an adventure.” Deacon claimed, shooting up from his seat in the corner of the room, and starting towards the back entrance.
Their bags were already packed, Deacon having given her some forewarning, but she got no further clues as they headed towards the back exit of HQ.
Nora settled into the long walk, expecting Deacon to go into his tall tales as usual, but found him surprisingly quiet. When she asked him what was wrong, he launched into a more spectacular story than usual, a battle between him, a Queen Mirelurk, an angry Carrington in full battle wear and a mountain of mutfruit. Needless to say, she was cracking up, but stopped about halfway through when he started to falter.
“Hey, Deeks, you know you can tell me anything, right?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He chuckled, but it carried none of its familiar warmth. It was instead quick, choppy and wrong.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, BullNor,” he grinned as he shrugged off her grip. “Just a bit antsy is all.”
“About – ”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered, and looked ahead. A beat passed. “We’re almost there.”
Nora swallowed, stifling her nosiness. She’d thought they were close. Really close. Was it something she said? Something she did? She scoured her recent memory, but the only thing she found incriminating of late was the prank she had pulled on him. As soon as she’d seen him, covered in Nuka Cola Quantum from head to toe, she’d burst out in laughter. He’d chased her all around Home Base. They had ended up in a pile on her bed, both covered in sticky soda, laughing until they couldn’t any longer.
Deacon was usually sparing with the amount of emotion he showed, and that meant true emotion, not the fake stuff that he used while in disguise. Now, he’d been fake and then biting, something she had only seen when they had fought for the first time, when she came back from the Institute. He chewed her out for not coming back right away. For not coming back and letting him know that she was all right. She had seen her codename mussed out from the board. She had seen Deacon when she found him in the Third Rail. It had been days before they sorted it all out, and at the time she wasn’t sure that they would.
He had been in the VIP room, where she had first met MacCready, young and full of anger. It was there also where she had found her partner, her friend surrounded by empty vodka bottles and passed out on the couch many, many months later. When she had finally woken him up he didn’t believe his eyes, and when he did, he didn’t have much to say. He didn’t talk to her for hours, beside the first exclamations he had made when he first saw her. It came much later, in a broken and angry tone, when terse questions were traded for detailed replies. He asked why why had gone MIA for a month. Why she had never contacted the Railroad. Why she left him no note. The sad truth was, she had no answer.
Why didn’t she contact the Railroad? Why didn’t she come back right away? She hadn’t wanted to believe the truth. She had wanted to die, and she wished that her son had died, too, rather than be what he was. She wondered what he could’ve been like with her as his mother, hating herself that it might have made no difference. Would he have been the same, a cold, analytical dictator with a price on life? No, he couldn’t have been. That was a hard thought to keep when she had to look him in the eyes and nod her head as he talked of the synths as just machines. No soul, no heart. No matter what happened after, no matter how much she would want to deny it, he was her son. Once Deacon had heard this, he went silent for a long time and reached for a hug.
She had almost fidgeted Deliverer’s silencer off the barrel when they finally reached the place that Deacon had apparently planned for his ‘surprise’. It was an abandoned town, shanty shacks free of life, not so much as a whisper of a mole rat or bloatfly in sight. Nora glanced around the place and saw no tourist or, better yet, slip n’ slide, as promised. She glanced back at Deacon, but he was already walking ahead to the great stone tower that spun up into the sky.
Since Deacon apparently expected her to follow, she stormed up behind him, purposefully trying to make her footsteps louder before she realized he wasn’t paying attention. They climbed god knows how many flights of stairs before they reached the top.
The entire Commonwealth, in all of its broken glory, lay out in front of them. In fact, the sun was just setting and an orange glow graced the horizon, giving the landscape a makeover for the time being. Deacon didn’t look, just fiddled with an old ham radio that he had found on the ledge. It sputtered to life and started playing Butcher Pete at an annoyingly loud volume.
Nora plugged her ears and shot Deacon an annoyed glance. He picked it up and shook it, frantically banging it on the cement, until it came to a quieter level
Still not looking at her, he waited, looking over at the edge and muttering under his breath. A dozen scenarios went through her head at this, none of them good. Was he breaking up with her? Was he going away? Getting a new face? She had made him promise not to until it was absolutely necessary.
“Deacon -”
“Nora -”
Nora started. Deacon never used her real name. It was always her code name, or some nickname that he thought up. This was something serious, something bad. Apparently realizing the effect this had on her, Deacon opened his mouth. Before he could explain anything, Nora interrupted.
“What is this about?” she demanded. A hundred different questions ran through her head, but this was the only one that formed into words.
His jaw hung open slightly, but he quickly shook it off.
“Well, Nora, just wait two more minutes -”
“Two more minutes for what?”
He adjusted his sunglasses, something he only did when he was really uncomfortable.
“You’ll see.”
Nora crossed her arms and looked out to the sunset, which was just dipping below the skyline, about to leave them in total darkness. However, Deacon was prepared for this and had brought a lantern. It shown its yellow light, flickering and giving everything a shadowy cast.
They spent several minutes in tense silence, as Butcher Pete ended and The Wanderer came on, just watching bloatflies flicker in the distance. Well, at least she was enjoying the view. She wasn’t going to look back at him just to see what he was doing.
Nora sighed loudly, trying to get Deacon’s attention. What the hell were they doing up here listening to Deacon’s favorite song, after which she would have to scrub her ears clean to get it out of her head, in the dark?
“Right after this, I swear,” he promised. The god-awful tune continued, completely unaware of how situationally inappropriate it was.
It wasn’t until The Wanderer’s last notes ended and Travis came on to speak, that she finally realized why she was up here.
“This next song is dedicated to a certain antique. She knows who she is, and the lucky man serenading her tonight would like her to know that he loves her with all his heart,” Travis crooned, the sputtery radio not eloquent, but enough.
She spun around from where she had been brooding and saw Deacon, down on one knee, looking up at her with an expression she would never be able to describe.
If I had one more tomorrow…
“Nora Marie Wagner,” he said, taking off his sunglasses. “When I first met you - you were a wreck. You came out of Vault 111 with your hair like a bees nest and your eyes crazy. But I knew you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again. Until I did. Then again. And then again. Until you finally found the Railroad and I could talk to you for the first time. Your voice was the smoothest I’d ever heard, and being able to talk to you, not just hear you talk, made me feel alive for the first time in years.
“I’ll never forget how you charmed Ol’ Stockton right before we headed into the Switchboard, and how you played along with my story with Dez. How you changed people’s lives by just waltzing right into them. Like you did with mine.”
At this point he tried to wink, but his eyes were glistening. He still continued, pulling a small box out of his pocket and fiddling with it while looking up at her.
“No matter who it was: MacCready, Cait, Nick, Piper, hell, even Strong. You changed them. You changed me. You’ve been to hell and back, and still managed to find the angel in others.”
Her throat constricted as the words flew from his lips, and her cheeks hurt from smiling. Most of all she watched him and his beautiful blue eyes glide over her features, and she in turn took in his features that were always hidden, even from her gaze. The rare times she had seen his baby blues, she had asked him to let her see them more often, but was quickly shut down. At first she was hurt, but after digesting it more she realized it wasn’t fair for her to push him into something he clearly wasn’t ready for.
“You broke us up. Annnnd we came back together. You rained fire on the Institute. And you came back, eventually.
It was now that the soft melody that had had been playing switched. Nora absently heard Travis’ smooth narrating over the speakers, before a new song came on.
“People usually ask when did you first realize you love someone? Well, I first thought it was the dark days, when I thought you were dead. When I thought I lost you, another casualty in a war we would never win. I now realize it wasn’t then. It was those little moments. Sharing an inside joke and trying to cover up our laughter in the street. Exchanging glances across the room as Dez drones on about mission reports and package receptions. Spending days holed up on recon, spending hours in silence and others in deep conversation. It was all those little moments coming together that made me realize that you are the one person that I will never be able to live life without. It just took me until now to say it.”
Nora took in a breath, desperately trying to keep her cool, but tears threatened after every word. He opened his small box to reveal a delicate twisted ring that was made of a dark tarnished metal.
“So, Nora Marie Wagner, will you marry me?”
Nora burst out crying, and grabbed Deacon in an embrace. They both just kneeled there, crying and smiling and happier than either of them had ever been before.
Sixty minute man, oh yeah, siiiixty minute mannnn!