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The return teleport was blinding, jolting Deacon out of his half-doze even through his sunglasses. Mercer Safehouse lit up like the sun for a handful of moments before the light faded away, leaving behind a lone figure.
“Fixer.” With her name Deacon released the breath he’d been holding for the last 72 hours. Until now he hadn’t wanted to admit the possibility that the machine had just eaten her, that she’d been atomized instead of teleported, but the weight of that possibility hit him in the back of the knees as he stood from his chair and he stumbled on his way up. As a result the others got to her first, Carrington shoving a clipboard in her face and Dez demanding a report and Tinker Tom asking what the hell that was that brought her back.
As he straightened, he could see over their shoulders - Fixer staring through them all, glassy-eyed and not processing any of their shouting.
“Hey,” he said, raising his voice and repeating himself when they didn’t react. “Hey. Everybody back the fuck up, let her breathe - “ He shouldered past them, making himself a wall between them and Fixer. They made a bubble of space around them, and Dogmeat squirmed between the newly-created gaps in their legs to shove his nose into Fixer’s hand.
“Hey, boy.” Her first words were a whisper, and she knelt down to bury her face in the dog’s neck. “Hey. I’m okay. I’m okay.” When Deacon looked down she had both hands fisted in Dogmeat’s fur, gripping tightly as a fine tremor ran across her shoulders. She never had been much of a liar.
“Look,” he told the impatient mob in front of them. “It’s late. Let’s all get some sleep, we can debrief in the morning - “
“No.” The protest came out in a low croak, and Fixer cleared her throat as she stood. “No. I…I don’t want to have to think about it all night.” She cut a sharp glance upwards before adding, “But we can do it inside .”
“Inside,” Deacon echoed. “You heard the lady. Let’s go.” Dez glared at him, but when his face remained impassive she turned on her heel and stormed towards the settlement’s main building.
Fixer’s gaze lowered from the sky to Deacon, and she cocked her head at him. “You have a beard,” she said quizzically.
Deacon scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “It’s a couple days’ stubble, Fix.” He hadn’t thought the light hair would be visible in the twilight. He hadn’t shaved his head, either, but that was at least under a hat.
“Deacon didn’t leave the whole time,” Tinker Tom piped up, and Deacon closed his eyes behind his sunglasses. She didn’t need to know that.
“Not true.” Any relief Deacon might have felt at Carrington’s interjection was killed by his next words. “It rained night before last. He left long enough to construct a lean-to.”
“Weren’t we going inside?” Deacon asked, maybe slightly too loudly. He had left the courtyard to scrounge for spare wood and metal, terrified every second that that would be the moment Fixer returned, and she’d be alone. He caught Carrington’s smirk as he turned away, and resisted the urge, not for the first time, to punch him in the back of the head.
But Fixer had pressed herself as close to him as she could get without actually touching him, and between that and the dog dancing around their feet it was hard enough to walk in a straight line, let alone throw a punch. So they just wobbled their way into the building, Fixer’s warmth radiating across the space between them and somehow straight through to Deacon’s core.
In the darkened room upstairs, Fixer outlined the information she had, about the SRB and synth production and Patriot.
“And,” she added, sounding as weary as Deacon had ever heard her. “The rumors about the birds are true. They’re watching us.”
Deacon stiffened, as did everyone else present. They’d thought the Watchers were boogeymen, urban legends to keep the new kids sharp. Finding out it was true sent anxiety screaming across his nerves like fire.
“How badly are we compromised?” Dez asked sharply.
“We have to stop routing synths through Minuteman settlements,” Fixer said dully. “HQ seems safe, though we might want to start using Stealth Boys for front-door entry.”
“A fallback site might not be a terrible idea,” Deacon muttered, and Dez nodded sharply. The flare of her lighter was bright in the dark, and the cherry of her cigarette glowed against her fingertips.
“We can use some of the other potentials from the Switchboard,” she said. “We’ll have to contact all our dead drops, tell them to watch their backs. More than usual, anyway.”
“Do they know?” Carrington asked. Close as they still were, Deacon felt Fixer tense under his attention.
“What?”
“The Institute. Do they know you’re working with us?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He - they didn’t mention it.”
It took a moment, but Carrington eased down. “I would think it would be a point of contention,” he agreed. “If they knew.”
“Fixer.” Dez’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. “Did you find your son?”
If she’d been tense before, Fixer went utterly frozen at Desdemona’s question. Still and silent, with Dogmeat nudging her hand with his nose.
“Fix?” Deacon prompted gently, and she startled, ever so slightly.
“No.” The word was small and quiet in the dark, and Dogmeat leaned his whole weight against Fixer’s leg.
“I’m so sorry.” Dez sounded genuinely grieved by Fixer’s response, and Deacon wondered - again, not for the first time - about the person Desdemona had been before the Railroad.
“We shouldn’t all sleep here tonight,” Carrington said after silence had settled over the room again.
“I’ve got a place not too far away,” Deacon said. “Fix and I can stay there. Unless you’d rather sleep in a real bed,” he added.
“No, it’s fine.” She took a deep breath that shuddered back out. “It’s better to…act as normal as possible. Probably.”
“For a few reasons,” Dez agreed. “Alright. Tom can stay here, to help finish cleanup on what’s left of the relay. Carrington, think we can make it home tonight?”
“Probably.”
“Alright then. You two come in tomorrow and we’ll…” Dez sighed. “Figure out our next step.”
“Roger that,” Deacon said, and Fixer made a quiet noise of assent. Dez laid a hand on Fixer’s shoulder as she left, and Deacon felt her sag a little under the uncharacteristic comfort.
“Let me get my stuff and we’ll head out,” he told Fixer, who just nodded and followed him out of the room.
“Did you really sit outside for three days?” she asked as they hit the bottom of the stairs.
“...you know you can’t believe everything Tom says.”
“I saw the lean-to.” Her voice was almost teasing, and it was the most like a person she’d sounded since she’d reappeared.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged his bag onto his shoulder. “Shut up.”
The curve of her smile in the dying light was probably the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
They reached the little hidey-hole just as true dark fell, and blocked the windows before lighting the single small lamp in the center of the room. Their routine was automatic, and they moved around each other in the small space like they’d never been apart.
You’re an idiot , he told himself for the millionth time that week. It was three days .
But it was three days in the lion’s den, and she hadn’t come back completely unchanged. The only thing stopping him from suspecting she might even be a synth replacement was the dog. He didn’t think anything could fool the mutt, loyal as he was.
Fixer crawled into bed first, curled up under the thin sheet with her face to the wall. In the time it took Deacon to stash his pistol within reach, Dogmeat had claimed the rest of the bed and Deacon had to wrestle him out of it to lay down.
“Needy mutt,” he muttered affectionately, scratching him between the ears before settling down with his back to Fixer. Dogmeat huffed through his nose, finding a spot on the floor as close to Fixer as he could manage before curling up on the cracked tile.
This was part of why he hadn’t slept. He had tried . But after months upon months of sharing these little bolt-holes with Fixer, squashed together in too-small beds because neither would let the other sleep on the floor, he felt too exposed without her warmth at his back. The quiet was too loud, the space was too empty. It was wrong and off-putting, and so he’d just headed back out to his chair. The comfort of her presence alone threatened to send him straight to sleep, but just as he was dozing off, he heard her voice in the dark.
“Deac?”
“Yeah, Fix?”
“If I tell you something, can you promise it stays between us?”
He blinked in the dark. “Of course.”
“I mean it. Not Dez, not anyone.”
He paused. When he spoke it was gentler, more intent. “Of course.”
She took a deep breath; he felt it shudder against his spine.
“Remember when I told Dez I didn’t find Shaun?”
“Yeah.” He breathed it out, trying to convey his own sympathies with the single word.
“I lied. Sort of.”
He stiffened and felt her tense in return. “Sort of?”
“I - he - “ Another deep, shuddering breath, this one the start of tears. “He’s Father , Deacon. Head of the Institute. They stole him over sixty years ago and I just - “
The sentence ended in a sharp, painful inhale; a repressed sob. “I knew they wouldn’t trust me if I told them. But that’s - it’s not my boy.”
Her accent was coming out sharp around the edges of her words, but that was barely registering behind the static fog of shock in Deacon’s mind.
“How do you mean?” His voice sounded weird and flat. Fixer curled in on herself.
“Please understand I’m not trying to rub salt in wounds when I say this,” she said, practically a whisper. “But…when you hold a baby, your baby, it’s just…a vessel for potential. Pure possibility. They’ll become their own person, because all people do, but you have to guide them and - and protect them, and take what you’ve carried with you and give it to them to carry forward and - “ She cut herself off, shaking silently behind Deacon. When she spoke again her voice was thick and choked. “I look into his face and I see a stranger. There’s nothing of me in there. Or Eli.” It took a second for Deacon to place the name - Fixer rarely spoke of her late husband. “Just…whatever the Institute put in him. The monster they made of him. So yeah. That’s Shaun. But it’s not my son.” Another shaking, repressed sob. “And I don’t know if I could explain that in a way that would stop Dez or Carrington from putting one between my eyes before I finished the sentence.”
Deacon was very still and quiet in the dark. He had prepared himself, privately, to help Fixer through the realization that her son was dead or otherwise long gone from the Commonwealth. He’d never said that out loud to her - first because he still needed her motivated to help the Railroad, and then because he couldn’t bear to douse that fierce hope of hers. This, though…this had never even crossed his mind as a possibility. And she’d just been alone with that, probably from the moment she entered the Institute to literally this exact minute.
“Or you,” Fixer added quietly, almost too quiet to hear.
Something broke in him then, a wall that had already been steadily crumbling obliterated completely. That she was afraid for one second, that the thought ever occurred to her that he might distrust her enough to kill her on the spot flooded him with grief and sympathy and something too deep, too forceful to name.
He rolled to face Fixer - as he moved she shrank in on herself, thinking he was pulling away from her. Gently, he rested one hand on her shoulder, easing her away from the wall.
“Deacon?”
“I’m here.” She gave in to the gentle pressure of his hand and turned towards him, his arm sliding across her shoulders. “I’m with you, Fix.”
“Even - “
“ Especially .”
All his deflections, all his carefully constructed layers of separation, all of it crumbled into dust as Fixer buried her face in his chest and cried . Trying to keep herself quiet, still cognizant of the thin walls and what was outside them, but her shoulders shook against Deacon’s arm and he tucked his chin against the top of her head, holding her steady while she purged three days of repressed grief and rage and fear and doubt.
Eventually the sobs subsided into shuddery breaths and the occasional strong sniffle, and Fixer leaned slightly away from him.
“Your shirt,” she muttered, and he just chuckled.
“This shirt has seen far worse.”
“I mean, I know, but - “
Deacon put gentle pressure on her shoulder, pulling her back in. “We’ll worry about it in the morning,” he said quietly. After a moment’s hesitation she relaxed back into him, finding a dry spot to rest her forehead.
The peace lasted about 30 seconds, as Dogmeat realized there was unoccupied space in the bed and clambered over the foot of the mattress to claim it.
“ Dogmeat ,” Fixer groaned, but the end trailed into a watery laugh as the dog stretched out along the length of the bed and put his head on the pillow.
“I always knew he was too smart for his own good,” Deacon muttered. “Thinks he’s people now.”
“He is people,” Fixer murmured, reshuffling to curl against Deacon without getting flung backwards by Dogmeat’s weight on the mattress.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
Her breath evened out as she finally, actually relaxed. Deacon sat there in the dark, listening to her breathing and the dog’s snuffling snores, both hands trapped, back to the door, shirt soaked, and mind still buzzing with the events and conversations of the last few hours.
And yet, under all of it, was a demented kind of contentment. He could worry about it in the morning. Not a luxury everyone had, but one he intended to take advantage of. At least for this one time.
“Hey, Deac?” Fixer’s voice was a quiet mumble in the dark.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
His mouth curled into a smile despite himself. “Anytime, Fix.”