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She inhales deeply, taking in the salty air that she knows is the same but feels different from the air that surrounds the Castle. It’s the freedom and lack of responsibility that makes it so. The waves, even, which are usually an annoyance whose volume seems to roar, now seems so calm and serene, drowning out any worries she typically carried on her shoulders. Just as well, the sun is pleasant and warms her back, a pleasing contrast to the usual sweltering heat that typically beats down relentlessly during chores. She knows she should be worried about the rickety wood of the dock beneath her, swaying just slightly with the waves, but falling into the irradiated water is the least of her worries, which he desperately tries to leave behind while she sits on her perch.
Another deep breath and as she stares at the open ocean she can almost imagine that the world hasn’t changed at all. The blue of the sky reflects in the water and if you aren’t close enough you can’t tell it’s actually sickeningly brown. Not that it hadn’t been that way before the bombs, the waters surrounding Boston had always seemed gross to her, why she had always refused to go to the beach or visit lakes, deeming them all the same. Eventually, in her adult life, she had been convinced to visit the ocean with friends and found out how wrong she was. Now that the world was in its current state, she wishes she had appreciated it back then, wishes she had appreciated all the world’s beauty back then.
A fondly familiar bark pulls her out of her wonderings, it feels like having been in the clouds and sharply pulled down to the hard ground. Looking back over her shoulder to watch the dog tiptoeing his way across the boards to get to her and the man accompanying him following closely behind, reminds her that her daydreams are just daydreams and distant memories. She still loves both of them greatly, it was just that sometimes they were a reminder of what she had lost. It was why she couldn’t remain in Sanctuary beyond helping the small group of Minutemen get settled in her old neighborhood. Preston had told her it was survivor’s guilt. The more she thought about it the more she was certain he was right.
“Could have left a note,” Danse says, gingerly setting his broad frame down next to her, seemingly not as convinced as her that the aged wood wouldn’t give out under the weight of the three of them. Dogmeat seems to be the most confident, flopping down to lay on her other side and rest his head on her thigh. Her hand absently finds the soft fur of his head and scratches his favorite spot behind his ears.
“I didn’t plan to be gone all day, I was going to be back before anyone noticed,” Stella tells him, thinking of how she should have known better. The rest of the Castle’s residents may not have noticed her absence but Danse would notice right away, she couldn’t have been gone more than an hour before he had shown up.
Neither of them speaks for a moment, sitting in the stiff company of one another, watching and listening to the waves and the distant groaning of the old buildings in the city to their backs. It’s apocalyptic in nature and it’s been long enough that it feels normal to her now, making her memories of the past the surreal ones. Though, sometimes she can’t imagine what it must be like for people who haven’t known anything different than the desolate wastelands. Worse yet, she couldn’t imagine being the only one with knowledge of the world before, if it hadn’t been for a few ghouls then she might be convinced that she’s the only one with that knowledge.
For the second time within the hour, she’s brought out of her thoughts, though this time she’s glad for it, she doesn’t like thinking back too much. “Catch anything?” Danse muses and without looking at him Stella knows he’s spotted the fishing pole she’s attached to one of the dock’s posts. She shakes her head, “I just found it here, decided to set it up and pretend I guess. I’m not much of a fisherman.”
Before the Castle, she had lived at Taffington Boathouse, unable to bear staying in Sanctuary for long. It was the first place she had called home in the new world and devoted time to near fruitlessly trying to restore it to its former glory if it ever had it in the first place. Even back then, she had set fishing poles into makeshift stands off the dock from the back door and let herself pretend the place wasn’t her’s alone, that she sometimes spent weekend afternoons sitting out back with someone. Sometimes in her daydreams it was a new friend she hadn’t met yet, sometimes her husband, and sometimes the son she had set out to rescue.
Eventually, she had met Danse. When in the area, she often insisted to stay at the homestead instead of making camp in a potentially hostile area. He wasn’t against it.
When they had become closer and she started feeling more than friendly things towards him, she let herself believe that the poles and the home belonged to them together. Though, she had completely forgotten about it between the move to the Castle after the fall of the Institute and now. The both of them had come so far since then.
“I won’t stay if you want to be alone,” He sounds just short of dejected, like he’s realized she made the trek along the shoreline from the Castle to be in solitary. Out the corner of her eye, she can tell he’s poised to stand, ready for her to tell him to leave. She places her hand on top of his and he tenses up more before relaxing. “You can stay,” she reassures him, rather he stay than go. If she was honest, she preferred his company so casually and so far from base.
Stella leans into Danse’s side just as he moves to put his arm around her. With the contact, she realizes that he had been the missing piece. Without him she often got lost and consumed in the grief she held for the past. With him, all of it went away and none of it mattered. No longer could she call Sanctuary home and it had been a time since she moved from the boathouse and the Castle she shared with many others, most being strangers. But Danse? He was her’s. He was home.