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“Damn ferals,” Deacon stretched his sore neck. “Always such a fuss.”
Assess and regroup: they still had every limb, no festering wound needed tending to… and even some bullets to spare! If a handful of fusion cells could be called a “spare”. A quick look around revealed they had emerged in a lightly forested area of sorts. Quiet. Not a single cloud darkened the night. So much pale moonlight casting black shadows of the withered trees. Darker would be the better, easier to hide. Deacon wondered if his bald head shone as bright as the moon itself in its light.
“Your Pip-Boy pin-point our whereabouts?” he called over his shoulder as he squinted at the ruined area far away from them, underneath the clear starry sky. A silhouette stood lit up in the middle of it all. The Green Jewel… they were somewhere north? North-west?
The sound of boots crunching on dry leaves grew distant and faded, and Deacon looked behind him.
Marcus’ black hair, mussed over his shaved sides, shifted as he turned his head to admire the lights twinkling in the dark. His tired eyes had a calm smile to them. The 10mm in his hand was pointed at the ground.
“I don’t think I’ll ever tire of this.”
Eyes to the sky, head in the clouds, and completely out in the open. And Deacon’s told him, told him dozens of times to keep his guard up, and he in turn says there’s no one around, that it’s okay, but there was always someone around. Marcus was a good student, but when these moods of his hit there was no stopping him. Insistent on catching his muse instead of catching the glint of a sniper scope. Deacon’s wasn’t Tinker Tom level hysteric paranoia, but there were always someone’s eyes watching, and Deacon aimed to watch right back. Marcus was fixated on something more than the starry sky, something beyond Deacon’s imagination, guard left wide open like barn doors.
Deacon imagined a .308 bullet driving through the man’s head, there as his tall features stood illuminated by the moonlight. Like a target ready for pickings, the captivated look fading from his inquisitive blue eyes, his brain splattered over the dry grass.
Marcus found a cradle of rocks to rest against, and Deacon followed suit.
“When I grew up,” Marcus said, “I grew up thinking there were only a couple of stars out there. That the black space was all empty. You saw pictures the scientists had envisioned of the galaxy, or pictures taken of the sky in faraway places like deserts, and you knew it could be lit up like at day, but it never concerned you. Your stars at night were the street lamps and skyscraper windows. Because of the light pollution, you know? Lights, bright as the sun, littered all over the earth, put out the stars.”
Deacon tried to imagine the black pit that was Commonwealth spreading before them lit up at every corner. “Diamond City comes kind of close, right?”
Marcus chuckled, the sound a low vibration in his throat. “No, I don’t think so.”
Deacon smiled a lopsided grin and crossed his arms. “Too bad it took an apocalypse to get the stars back.”
“Yeah.” Marcus’ voice softened. “I could never have imagined Boston would ever look like this. Ever.”
Was it the stars or the ruins? Probably both. Deacon wondered if anyone else in the Wasteland other than this prewar dreamer bothered to look far enough from their jaded day-to-day survival to see the art in it. Not much art to see in being chased by a hungry mutated bear, though. Or the time to see it.
Marcus took in a breath, and sighed heavily.
“She was my North, my South, my East and West”,
began his recital, murmuring and gentle against the night, and Deacon listened.
“My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
Deacon noticed many things, things most would not. He would notice a man fumbling desperately about his ruined home, grasping for his bygone life. He would notice a man singing for his supper when none other would, would slip a cap in his tip jar on the sly and notice the smile tugging at a wrinkled lip. He would notice an errant gaze at strangers embracing, a somber look, a hunched back and a sluggish step, a hope lost, a man lost. And he would notice the chuckles Marcus gave to his lies and jokes.
He would notice Marcus, because he was one big beautiful distraction. Thankfully not a blue distraction anymore, Deacon had made sure of that first thing their partnership had begun. ‘Hello, it is I, the Vault dweller, I am here again, surely you remember me’. Seriously .
It was a warm night, yet Marcus crossed his arms tight across his chest. His gaze cast to the ground, like the sky was not worth seeing anymore.
“She’ll never get to see a night like this.”
Deacon wanted to raise his hand and wipe away the smudge of feral blood left on a spot below the sad poet’s ear.
“R… no, H.W. Ai… Aiden… Auden, right?”
Marcus looked at him. His brows furrowed and he smiled. Deacon knew what he was thinking in his head: ‘ You know H.W. Auden?’
Open; So open for any to see through. They would have to work on that.