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HQ was as silent as the two hundred year old tomb it was, and Audrey shifted like she was ready to jump right out of her skin. Everyone was staring at her, even the random low-rung agents whose names Hancock couldn’t recall. “Is there any way we could—”
“No,” Desdemona said sternly before she could finish. Audrey shrank a little. “Even if by some miracle your son did defect to our side, they would just replace him.”
“We can give him that chance,” Audrey hissed.
“At the cost of how many lives? At the cost of a plant?” Audrey frowned.
“A plant?”
“You.” Audrey stared, and then finally caught up all at once. Hancock was right behind her— Dez wasn’t talking about leafy greens, she was talking about a double agent. Hancock’s sunshine all bunkered down a thousand miles underground around those fucking evil sons of bitches who would kill her if she looked at ‘em crooked. If she tried one too many times to talk to a synth like it was a person and not a slave.
“He wants me to—”
“Do it.”
“Let me finish,” Audrey snapped, and Deacon was beside her like one of those nightkin that the caravans told Hancock about once upon a time. “He wants me to reclaim a synth.”
“One of ours?”
“A raider.”
“Kill him, then. A raider is a raider,” Desdemona said, lighting a cigarette. “That’s the end of it, Fixer. This is the biggest deal in the history of our organization and it’s on you.” She shrank back down again, her shoulders all hunched and her back lowered. Deacon nudged her and she nudged him back, turning on her heel. “Fixer?”
“Going out for a smoke,” she reported, breezing by Hancock like he wasn’t even there. He fell into step behind her, waving Deacon away. The man was too caught up in this Railroad business and had the big deal written across his face. Drey just needed someone who would follow her.
She crouched on the crumbling cement floor outside the back entrance, a lit smoke in her fingers that she was just watching burn out. “Heya Sunshine,” he said all quiet, flopping down next to her. She wasn’t shaking or nothing, but she was so deep inside her own head it was a wonder she didn’t just pop right out of existence.
“Think you oughta head back to your town, Mr. Mayor,” she said without looking over at him.
“Why’s that?”
“Because when they send the robot back in time to prevent the Institute from creating synths, they’re gunna send it to kill me.” He felt like he was missing something.
“You been spending time with Tom again, or you got something real good stashed somewhere I don’t know about?” he asked. She frowned and grunted in frustration, running her hands over her short cropped hair with the smoke still going.
“No, I mean… look, just head back to Goodneighbor, all right? I’ll be around.” She snapped it rather than asking, which made Hancock think that he was just fine and fucking dandy where he was sitting, actually. His sense for Audrey told him something was bugging her that he wasn’t getting the full picture on, and his sense for being a stubborn shit told him that he didn’t like getting bossed.
“Kinda cosy where I am.” He let her know how he felt about that and she sighed.
“It’s because I love you, all right babe?”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“Fuck you. I don’t accept it.” He straightened up and nudged her so she sat back instead of staying in that defensive crouch, and she went with more than a little bit of attitude in the look she gave him. “Now you can tell me what’s eating you, or you can just accept that I ain’t going nowhere unless I got a good reason to.”
She stared at him, then made a noise between a groan and a growl and flopped back on her back. “You fucking heard Dez. This whole fucking… shitshow is on me. Institute wasn’t doing fuck all with synths until they got a hold of the kid I helped bring into this world, and then he grew up to lead them. It’s my fucking fault that all this happened. When the Commonwealth figures out time travel I wouldn’t even blame ‘em for going back to 2076 and blasting a hole in my head before Nate can talk me into a kid.”
“Why wouldn’t they kill him?” He shouldn’t have been entertaining this hypothetical situation.
“Because he was a soldier and I was a hacker. Between the two of us, I’d go down easier,” she explained, as if it were obvious.
“Well when they send someone back, I’ll go through behind them to save you,” he promised. She sighed, covering her face.
“That isn’t the point,” she said into her hands.
“Could you get around to it then?” She stared at him for a while, then sighed out.
“I sired the devil and I don’t deserve you,” she muttered. Well. If that didn’t just beat all. His guts got all tight and he reached out for her, pulling her up and against him until her head was under his chin and she was curled against him— impressive with her height.
“Sunshine, this isn’t your fault,” he mumbled to her. She didn’t say a damn word in return, but the floodgates opened right up and she soaked against his chest like a rainstorm. She was crying too hard to reply and fuck he hated when she cried because it was like she just saved herself all up for so long and got by on swearing and shooting until she was too full and just… released pain enough out in the world to repay it for all the shit it kept throwing at her.
But he wasn’t going nowhere.