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She didn’t expect things to feel so much the same once it was over.
The Institute was rubble. It hadn’t made her feel good, quite the opposite in fact, but she knew it was the right thing to do. That man, that old man with the wrinkled skin and silver hair and her eyes wasn’t really her son. She knew that. He belonged to the Institute and he had been theirs far longer than he belonged to her. But that didn’t make it hurt any less when she heard the pain and betrayal in his voice. He was dying. She’d not really stolen anything from him except a slow agonizing death and that brought her some measure of comfort, but he was still gone, dead and buried under miles of radioactive debris.
He helped her in the end. It was the closest she ever felt to him, those few stolen moments before she was party to his destruction.
He wasn’t the only one she lost in that battle. Friends, allies she loved and thought she knew forced her to choose between them. She agonized over her choice, but what else could she do? She saw their faces, all of them, behind her eyelids when she tried to sleep. Even chems didn’t help.
It was easier to just keep doing what she could than wallowing in her own misery.
Preston got word of a settlement in trouble, because of course he did, and they set off together to chase off the raiders. Putting bullets in the head of people who deserved it always made her feel better.
They were only gone a few days, but she missed Hancock. Maybe this entire world was full of shit, but she found him here and it made it all seem worth it in the end. The little synth programmed to think he was her son was in good hands with him. Funny to think, really, of Hancock as a father figure, but underneath the profanity and the chems, he had a good heart. The best heart. There weren’t a lot of people like that left in this mess of a world.
They rolled back into Sanctuary near sunset, Preston telling her a tale about the better days of the Minutemen, which didn’t sound particularly grand at all, but he was proud even so. She understood. In the Commonwealth, you had to hang on to the little things. Those small moments were all you had some days.
“You’re not listening, are you?” Preston said, noticing her sudden silence.
She was paying attention but forgot to continue to nod and hum approvingly once she spotted Hancock. He was sitting on the edge of the slab of concrete that had once been the center of Sanctuary, before it had started to grow and sprawl back out across the old neighborhood. It wasn’t where she’d lived before the war, and that made it easier at first. Now, there were settlers living the ruins of the home she’d once called hers and it rarely bothered her. The woman who had lived there didn’t really exist anymore anyway.
“Sorry Preston,” she managed, shooting him a tired smile.
His face was understanding as always. “I know. Forget about it.”
All she wanted once she saw Hancock was to amble over to him, see that surprisingly handsome smile spread across his face and curl up in his arms where things made sense. He looked up and saw her too, but instead of a smile, it looked like someone slapped him. The corners of his mouth dropped and he got to his feet.
“Preston,” Piper’s voice caught her attention before she could figure out what was going on, a flurry of dark hair flying past her. She heard Nick’s distinctive laugh too and before she realized it, half the damn settlement was there, welcoming them back. Piper was apparently trying to chew Preston’s face off. They were a strange pair, but no stranger than anything else that happened here. Between the chorus of voices and the pats on the back and her ersatz synth son digging through her bag for the bits of wire and old machinery she’d promised him, she completely lost track of Hancock.
By the time they were done with her, he was gone.
She looked everywhere for him, but it was like he evaporated. It wasn’t until she headed down to the river, hoping to open the relief valve on the water purifier and pretend it was a shower, that she found him. Hancock was sitting just downstream from it, where the machinery dumped the radiation it filtered out of the river water. He had his boots off, his bare feet in the water. He only had nine toes, but she liked them.
He didn’t hear her and didn’t look up, her approach covered by the white noise of the water. She watched him for a while, hesitating. It wasn’t like her to hesitate, but there was something about his running off, his entire posture as he sat there that said clearly stay away.
Still, she felt grimy as hell and so she turned her back to him, flung her clothes off and turned the relief valve. She hadn’t been particularly squeamish about nudity before and living like this killed what little modesty she had left. She glanced over her shoulder at Hancock, hoping that the sound of the water pouring out of the purifier might have gotten his attention, but if it had, he wasn’t looking.
God, that just wasn’t like him.
As good as the water should have felt, she wasn’t enjoying it. She quickly turned off the valve and threw on the threadbare green dress she’d scavenged. It stuck to her wet skin uncomfortably but it didn’t seem important. To hell with his body language. She’d stumbled out of a freezer and picked up a gun so she wasn’t going to just let this shit happen, whatever it was.
Hancock didn’t even look up when she sat down next to him, carefully not letting her feet touch the water. All that radiation just gave him a tingle, but it would take her skin right off. He didn’t say anything or acknowledge her at all and just sighed hard when she nudged him with her shoulder.
“I missed you,” she said quietly. The truth seemed a good place to start. She hated going anywhere without having him to watch her back.
“Sorry.” It was a complete sentence, grumbled low in the back of his throat.
She took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose. “What happened? Is something wrong?”
He was silent for long enough that she wasn’t even sure he heard her. It felt awkward in a way being with him hadn’t ever felt before. Finally, he spoke, his voice just barely loud enough to hear over the soft susurrus of the water.
“I should go back to Goodneighbor,” he said. She felt a sudden pang in her chest. They went back all the time, to check on things, make sure everything was running smoothly but this sounded different. “Or somewhere. I mean….” He half sighed again. Cleared his throat. “Just...get out of your hair. Now that things are done, I’m sure you’ve got plans.”
“What?” It didn’t make any sense. “What are you saying?”
“It’s done,” he said, looking intently at his feet, or the water between them. His eye didn’t seemed to be able to focus. “Your big life-altering quest.” He shrugged. “And now that it’s done, it’s time to figure out what to do with the rest of your life.” This time he shook his head and finally looked up. His dark eyes were unreadable, but the ridges where his eyebrows once were drooped down on the outer corners. “You had a family once. I’m sure you want one again.”
She frowned and put her hand on Hancock’s forearm. “I do; I thought I was doing that already.”
Hancock titled his head and turned his face away. “Ain’t no family here. Not one I can give you.”
She pulled her hand back. It felt like ground had been torn out from under her. Her mouth went dry. “I thought,” she started but couldn’t finish. What could she say that wasn’t going to sound like some shit melodrama that used to play on the TV before the war?
I thought you loved me? Ugh. Put on your big girl panties woman. This is the Commonwealth and you put a bullet through Danse’s face. You can handle this.
She gritted her teeth. Hancock stared at her and she wished her cheeks would stop burning. It was hard to look stoic when her own skin was betraying her. He looked so damn sad. Fuck, he was always looking sad around her and maybe that was the problem. She forced him to face stuff. He was used to running away. If that’s what he needed, who the hell did she think she was to change him?
“I’m sorry if I forced you into something you didn’t want,” she said, trying her damnedest not to look away. Wasn’t easy. “I mean, if you’d just wanted to get laid, I would’ve understood that.”
Now he looked angry instead and at the same time, relieved somehow. “Is that really what you think?”
“No.” She wondered if she sounded as exasperated as she felt. “I just mean, if this isn’t what you want, being here with me, being family I’m not gonna try to stop you if you’ve gotta go.” She shrugged with only one shoulder and swallowed her heart back into her chest. “I just want you to be happy. If that means you have to leave….” She punctuated the sentence with a hard fought breath. She couldn’t finish. She was going to lose her cool if she did. That wasn’t fair to either of them. If Hancock was going to leave her, she wasn’t going to fucking blubber at him. Might as well get through it with some of her dignity intact.
He looked back out over the river, sort of blankly into the bare trees on the other side. “It’s not what I want,” he said, mumbling. “But I can’t give you a family, you know that.”
“I don’t need you to give me anything, Hancock,” she said, too quickly.
“You say that now, but what if you want more kids?” He looked up at her pointedly.
“Hancock.” She used his name as a scolding. “You act like I don’t know you can’t knock me up.”
“I know you know , but did you think about it?”
“If I wanted kids, I could bring back half a dozen little kids living out there like MacCready did, every time I leave the settlement,” she said. She shook her head and looked away herself. She saw Shaun’s unfamiliar face with his hauntingly familiar eyes in her head. “If all of this taught me anything, it’s that having a kid isn’t about making one or giving birth to one. It’s not about blood or DNA; it’s about love and time. Shaun wasn’t my son, not really.” She looked back at Hancock and stared at him. He blinked a few times uncomfortably. “Besides, I thought you were done running.”
“Dammit woman,” he snapped. His voice was hard, irritated. “I’m trying not to be fucking selfish for the first time in my life.”
“Then stop feeling sorry for yourself!” She raised her voice. He’d never given her reason before and it felt ugly in her mouth. “You’ve been trying to tell me that I shouldn’t want you since the first moment I showed interest. What the hell are you afraid of?”
Hancock grunted. “I know what I am. I did this to myself.” This time he did look away, his eyes dropping down to the ground between them. “I used to be handsome and look at me?” He still didn’t meet her eyes even as he turned his face back towards her and vaguely gestured at himself.
She grabbed his wrist before he could drop his hand. Tucking her legs under herself, she got up on her knees, fingers tight around the ridge of bones in his arm under his leathery, ridged skin. She grabbed his chin with her free hand and forced him to look at her.
“I have never known you with any face but this one,” she said, her voice low and soft. “I love this face. I love you and not despite of your face. I love you, all of you. Just like this.” She shuffled closer until her knees were pressed up against the side of his thigh. “We were both different before, before the world and life and all the fucked up shit around us changed things. But we can’t live back then. We can’t fight against things we can’t change. There’s plenty enough things to fight for that we can.”
He couldn’t help but look at her, her fingers unrelenting under his chin. “I thought I’d wake up different as a ghoul, but looks like I brought all my crap baggage with me.”
She smiled on the corner of her mouth. “I’ll help you carry all of it if you’ll just let me,” she said. “But don’t leave unless you want to go. Not because you think I want you to go.” She shook her head just slightly, enough that her hair swished against her forehead. “I don’t want you to go. I’ve lost enough already.”
“I’m not good at this.” He was quiet, sounded strangled.
“I negotiate with a sniper rifle, darlin’. I’m not expecting a romance novel.”
Hancock chuckled but he relaxed a little, leaning into her hand. “I always liked to have fun; it was easier to just be gone in the morning. I don’t want to go. I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Nobody does,” she said, leaning in and pressing her forehead against his. “Nobody did 200 years ago either.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I woke up. We can figure out the rest of it.”
Hancock started to say something and she cut him off. “If you ask me if I’m sure I’m going to fuck you right here in the mud until you forget how to talk.”
He laughed outright. “That a promise?”
“It’s a threat.” She leaned back a little to get a look at him just as a shitty, wicked grin spread across his face.
Slyly he spoke, all that damn sparkling charisma that made sure she never stood a chance at not loving him, reappeared like the sun from behind a cloud. “ Are you sure? ”
She laughed and pushed him back until he was flat on the ground, swinging her leg over him.
She was really, really sure.