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The waiting is the hardest part, because there's no positive outcome, no end goal. He's just lying on the floor hoping, praying, that Nora doesn't come back for him. There's no finish line where that happens. The most that will happen is that she does come back. Then in all likeliness the Brotherhood will kill them both.
There's a puddle formed underneath him, mostly coolant, so much of it that even if the wires weren't ripped out of his shoulders and his right knee not broken he wouldn't be able to get up. All he can do is lay where they dropped him, one arm twisted under his back, head tilted back against the floor. He can feel a vibration in it--a massive engine running somewhere in the distance. He's pretty sure he's on the Prydwyn, for all the difference it makes now.
There's been scribes in and out. Not Neriah. Lackeys, probably. With knights in full power armor and scoped laser weapons accompanying them. The first one cut the rest of the clothes off him, which would be humiliating if he had the strength for it but is instead just a low-level fear. Later scribes have examined wires, opened up his chest to probe around inside. One cut a strip of flesh from the side of his face and he bit his tongue so hard he tasted coolant.
Now, though, they've left him alone.
Could mean anything. Could be Nora came back, though he doubts it; she would want proof that Maxson would let him go and Maxson would probably have him executed in front of her. Could be they're prepping for a battle. Could be they've just left him to slowly bleed to death, alone. He can oblige that, but if they think he's going to give him a show of the fear he feels they have another thing coming. He closes his eyes and waits for the end to finally take him.
He doesn't know how much time passes, but the sound of a distant explosion draws his eyes open again.
He watches the wall through dimmed eyes as klaxon alarms start to sound. He hears pounding footsteps. Shouting. The roar of plasma weapons. Please. Please don't let it be her.
If he had it in him he'd claw his way out of this room with his bare hands and fight them again as long as he could. As it stands he can't even raise his head for more than a few seconds.
There's nothing he can do and it pushes the coolant through him faster, bleeding him out that much quicker. His breathing gets faster as the sounds of fighting draw closer. The fans in his chest are at their limit. He should just let go. This will kill him, whether it's her or not. Why can't he just let go?
He's trying, struggling to let himself at least lose consciousness, to escape this endless fear, when the door is kicked in.
At the angle they dropped him at he can't see the door and his breath catches in his throat. Brotherhood, he thinks. Nobody else is strong enough to just knock down a door like that. All he can think is that rather than risk losing his edge over Nora Maxson is going to have him executed. Fine. Let them kill him. But let him see what's coming, don't make him lie here and wait...
"Metal man? Is that you?"
He chokes.
"Answer Strong! Metal man!"
Strong. It's Strong, here on the Prydwyn, but how...?
"Is not metal man," Strong calls, his voice slightly muffled as if he's whispering as best as a super mutant can. "Can crush like melon?"
"Let me look."
Oh god. He knows that voice too. "Hancock?"
"Nicky!" Two quick shotgun blasts. "Hey, big guy, take care of those bucketheads for me." Footsteps, coming closer, a hand on his shoulder, he raises his head just enough to see a pair of dark familiar eyes in a familiar face looking back. "Hope you don't mind us crashing the party."
His heart, what passes for his heart, is going so fast he feels sick. "No. God, no."
"Didn't figure. Let's scram before the hosts catch up with us."
He feels Hancock's hand close around his forearm, start to haul him up, but he can't so much as help. "John, no, wait. I can't... I don't think I can walk."
"Well, shit." Hancock glances over his shoulder as a plasma rifle goes off too close. There's a screech of metal, like a console being torn from a wall. Hancock turns back to him and gives him a light, playful pat on the cheek that threatens to bring a sob to his throat. "No worries. We'll get you outta here. Can ya put your arms around my neck?"
"No." He chokes on the word. "There's, uh, there's a lot of stuff broken. I can't move much."
"Guess that answers that. Sit tight a minute."
Hancock disappears from his line of sight and he wants to cry; he wasn't expecting that being alone again would hurt so much.
"You're up," Hancock says. "Just like we practiced."
There's a couple more shotgun blasts. Someone comes up in his periphery. Super mutant. Strong.
The mutant doesn't say a word. He tows Nick upright by the arm, which doesn't hurt, exactly, but it feels bad, and he waits to be unceremoniously dumped over Strong's shoulder. But he isn't. Strong scoops him up like he'd carry a sleeping kid, cradled in his arms.
Nick tries to thank him, but the words don't come.
"Now's our chance, boys." Hancock ducks back into the room and as casually as lighting a cigarette arranges Nick's arms so that they don't hang down, folding them across his belly. "Ah, geez, that's a lot of shit." He touches the coolant staining Nick's skin. "Eh, it's a future-us problem. Come on."
It's a struggle to get it all straight in his mind--coolant loss, probably, or stress, or something. Somehow Hancock and Strong, both people the Brotherhood would kill on sight, got on the Prydwyn. They're here. Nora must be with them somewhere, she must've snuck them in, except they're all looking for her so how would she...
Hancock books it, reloading his shotgun as he runs, and Strong jogs after him. Every step jolts something inside him and it hurts like hell. All he can do is lean his head against Strong's chest, and god does it feel good to lean against something that's not the floor for a change.
They run up some stairs. He recognizes the surroundings vaguely, he's pretty sure they're in the main hub of the Prydwyn, near the medic's, and he knows for sure when they come to a ladder he recognizes as leading up to the command deck. Hancock climbs up first. There's some gunfire. Strong lifts him up the ladder and Hancock drags him up onto the next floor and he'd be embarrassed if he had the energy for it, and they arrange him again so carefully in Strong's arms he wants to cry, and then they're out on the flight deck.
He can make out a vertibird docked not far away and two humans in power armor. He's almost afraid but then the one nearest flips up her helmet and it's Piper, grinning the biggest, crookedest grin he's ever seen on her.
"Hiya, Nick," she said. "Glad you could make it."
How...?
It takes some work to get Strong maneuvered into the vertibird and there's another wave of Brotherhood that comes pouring from the command deck. There's pushing and shoving, like kids in a cafeteria line, and the human piloting the thing turns to look at him and says, "Monsieur Nick, I am so happy to see you are still with us."
"Me too, Curie." This all feels like a fever dream. "Me too."
The vertibird drops from the Prydwyn with a jolt that makes his non-existent stomach writhe and for a moment he's afraid the damn washtub is gonna kill them all, but when Curie engages the rotor their descent stops and she opens up the throttle and they're moving. He can't see what's below them but he can see Piper at the mounted gun and the Prydwyn pulling back from them.
"We clear?" Hancock yells.
"We're clear," Piper yells back.
There's a shot, and a pop, and a sizzle--a flare. In the distance there's a muted explosion.
"Please hang on, everyone," Curie says at the top of her lungs.
He hears the roar but the blur that passes them moves too quickly to identify and the entire vertibird is rocked by the explosion.
He's looking at it when it happens. He sees the mortar strike the Prydwyn, watches it jolt back and someone try to right it, and then there are three more explosions, slightly louder, and the Prydwyn erupts into flames.
Nobody says a word as they watch the airship lurch away, almost as if it is turning to leave, and, more slowly than he would have thought, it sinks down over the airstrip and the beach and slides down into the ocean.
After a long, long moment Hancock is the first to speak.
"Wow," he says. "The Minutemen have a hell of an aim. That was Preston's folks," he adds to Nick. "The Castle was so damn conveniently located we couldn't not take advantage of their firepower."
Nick struggles to hold it together. "N-nora?"
Piper glances back at him then turns quickly away.
"Don't know," Hancock says. "But we'll find her, Nicky. Don't even worry about it."
"She may be in hiding," Curie adds. "Hopefully the Brotherhood will be unable to gather reinforcements so quickly and she will come home.
His whole body goes slack. He can't even hold his head up.
"Even if she doesn't." Hancock elbows his way between Strong and the cockpit and looks straight into Nick's eyes. "We'll find her. Abominables assemble again!" He must look confused. Hancock adds, "Like those comics. The Unstoppables? Except we're the Abominables. I thought it'd be pretty funny for the Brotherhood to get taken down by a ghoul, a synth, and a super mutant."
"Don't forget Miss Wright," Curie adds.
Hancock makes a show of mulling it over. "I don't know. Do you think they'd hate her as much as the rest of us?"
"Definitely," Piper says. "If I have a super power it's making the jerks in charge hate me."
He has to chuckle at that because, well, she's not wrong.
It's getting difficult to keep his eyes open. He's lost a lot of coolant, he remembers. There's been a lot of damage done. It scares the hell out of him.
As if he knows what he's thinking Hancock says, "We got ya, Nicky. You need to sleep or something, you go on ahead and do it."
"Not find milk of human kindness there," Strong says as he's fading out.
"Sorry about that, buddy." Hancock's voice is so near and it's a comfort. "Guess I shoulda known they wouldn't have it there."