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The main thing that bothers him right now - physically at least - is a sore hip.
It began when that Raider in The Commonwealth shot him in the opposite thigh and he started to favor the leg, putting more pressure on what he now considers to be his "bad" hip. Unlike everything else that happened to him during that time however, eventually the limp straightened itself out and the gunshot wound healed. Though now on days like today (when he's walked closer to twenty miles, rather than the fourteen that were needed to keep on schedule), Danse's hip grinds and burns in the socket.
The pain isn't so bad, he supposes. Even just the night off his feet, bivouacking under the stars, will probably be enough to reset it.
Besides, he's got other concerns.
Days like today have other pitfalls now, too. Now that Danse is close enough to The Commonwealth to see the far off diffuse green of the Glowing Sea at nightfall, now that the Brahmin and Caravaners he's been paid to guard are kicking up a discordant racket next to him, now that new and potentially untrustworthy memories assail him with every step… he finds himself sincerely shocked to be walking back toward The Commonwealth at all. Almost a month of contending with the choice and he can still barely believe it - even now that his old stomping grounds are almost close enough to smell on the breeze.
Danse sits on a stump and removes his boots, loosening the laces carefully, lining them up neatly next to his pack in the trampled grass. The Caravan has chosen to make camp here, and the traders are getting ready for dinner, giving the mercenaries that escorted them a chance to rest. Danse takes the opportunity to rest seriously, lowering himself onto the ground next to the stump and contemplating the fire.
When he first left, he had thought The Capital Wasteland would be better for him. There was a sense of relief back then, walking away from The Commonwealth entirely. He'd set his sights on Rivet City. It hadn't necessarily been his home, but it had been where he'd met Cutler, and -
His shoulders draw up around his ears.
In an attempt to ease the sudden tension, he shakes out his right hand, then ends up clenching it back into a tense fist anyway.
Rivet City hadn't been the way he'd remembered it. Nothing in The Capital had been, and Danse couldn't say exactly why. He had been gone a long time, so he supposed that the normal erosion of natural human change had to be part of it, but there was more.
There was also the hollowness.
A long time ago (only months really, though it felt longer), she had explained what the Railroad mind-wipes did to the Synths that received them. Their memories of the gleaming white underground cavern that belonged to The Institute were replaced with other memories: unreal fairytale stories whipped up by some skinny and exhausted Railroad operative, florid descriptions of places and events that didn't really happen. After that, a skilled doctor would reconstruct the Synths' faces and complete the total excavation of whoever it was they had been. After being turned into such a shell, Synths would be set free outside The Commonwealth to make their own way in the hazardous wastes.
Danse thought it was a high price to pay for freedom.
It had nearly killed him. He thinks it may even still.
Though now that he's a man who stretches both arms above his head and sighs into the calm night air (a man that enjoys the scent of the dry grass and the feel of the cool wind as it lifts the hair strands that don't quite make it into the ponytail at the base of his neck), Danse can definitely understand why M7-97 would have potentially chosen such a thing. At this point, Danse is mostly sure that the mind-wipe is what causes the hollowness in his head, and at the same time he's also dead certain that the mind-wipe is what ruined his life.
Still, Danse feels a lot of sympathy for M7-97. The young, scared abomination had to make an impossible call, if not necessarily live with the results. M7 must have hoped that his life post mind-wipe would be worth living, and Danse was the one who ended up responsible for making sure it was.
Sympathetic or not though, Danse still bears the hollowness begrudgingly. Dealing with the repercussions cuts him down to the very bone, even now.
The sensation of it, the dissonance that keeps him a step removed from reality, is almost too much to bear.
It was worse, even, at the start. The hollowness had crept up on him slowly back then, beginning during his convalescence in Sanctuary. The adrenaline from his time in Listening Post Bravo had finally worn off and he was left with dehydration, blood loss, hunger and his own thoughts.
In Sanctuary, he kept being seized with the sensation that everything he was seeing, every event he experienced, all of it was something he had done before. He wasn't sleeping much, but still had the impression that he'd dreamed everything the night before it actually happened. Conversations were held from a distance, sensations were dulled, decisions were made at random and with little care for the outcomes. Eventually he had managed to regain some of his control, but the hollowness had left a burnt-and-slashed path of damage in its wake.
The hollowness had changed as it finally chased him out of The Commonwealth. It had even receded a little, for a time. A part of him was just so relieved to have taken his control back, to have escaped the day to day drudgery of following Minutemen patrols from place to place and mediating petty settler squabbles. The change had felt good. The Capital Wasteland had appeared on the horizon, full of promise.
By the time he arrived, The Capital was full of terror instead. It had been changed in a million ways, big and small, and the hollowness held Danse firmly in its clutches as he tried to understand what he was seeing. The hollowness settled blackened shadow hands on his shoulders and whispered lies in his ears. The hollowness contradicted his memories, then confirmed them, then contradicted itself and started the whole process over again.
Again and again Danse had fallen into the same cycle: he would remember something about his past in The Capital and would begin traveling toward where it had happened, he would arrive to find both it and the people there different, then he would be violently reminded of all the things he had lost - all the while unsure if he ever really had them to begin with. Throughout the process, the hollowness would confirm and contradict in equal measure. It would allow him to alternate between ill-fated confidence and dark doubt, but it would never allow him a moment of true certainty.
Doubt settled into his bones like a cancer.
Some days, it was the only thing he felt.
The Capital Wasteland started to exhaust him. Unsure of what else he could do, he started to look for friends, enemies, distractions, anything. Eventually he had ended up back in Rivet City after his hopeless memory-tour. It was the place where the hollowness had done its worst work, the place that made him feel the least sure of foot; but it was also a large place, with jobs and people and things to do. It had been better than nothing.
In that sense, too, nothing had been literal, rather than conceptual. It had been a force that called to him, as real as the nose on his face. Oblivion had beckoned to Danse, especially in those first few months. He had become very well-acquainted with the oily taste of his own gun barrel.
Eventually, he'd made some contacts. He touched his gun to his tongue less often as a welcome byproduct of that. He wouldn't call these new people friends, necessarily, but he had at least been inducted into the former-Brotherhood whisper network. It was made up of folks who had left for a variety of reasons - most of them shortly after the deaths of the Lyons family. Somehow, some of them retained contacts within the Brotherhood and the network passed information around carefully over drinks and in dark corners.
More non-friends had presented themselves, and merc work had introduced him to some Caravaners. Their gossip had filled whatever gaps there were in the Brotherhood intel. A combination of both whisper network information and Caravan gossip had finally turned Danse back in the direction of The Commonwealth.
Back toward her.
Danse glances toward the north, frowning at both the thought and the soft emerald horizon.
Tomorrow, the Caravan will begin a wide curve around the Glowing Sea, pushing inland and adding yet more days to the trip. They'll stick as close to the edge of the radiation hotspot as they possibly can, but Danse knows from his prior journeys back and forth that the terrain here is slow going. He also knows that the wild, irradiated animals nearby are plentiful and vicious. This is the part of the trip he had been dreading - maybe not as much as he's dreading actually stepping foot in Goodneighbor, but he's been dreading it nonetheless.
Eventually, he knows they'll make it past the Glowing Sea. The terrain will still be treacherous and rocky, but they will make it. The Caravaners are a good group, and the hired guns - including himself - are all skilled. He's not even really worried about the derelict, Raider-infested theme park to the west of The Commonwealth, confident in his skills as he is. They'll cut around the south end of it and find themselves back in The Commonwealth proper before anyone even knows they were there.
If anything, Danse is much more worried about what he'll find when he makes it safely back.
The part of him that's susceptible to the hollowness is worried about the grander things: it's worried that The Commonwealth will do what The Capital had done, shifting and changing like so much quicksand under his feet. It's worried about the ways his memory will have failed him. It's worried that if the place is too much altered, it will make him fall apart entirely.
The other part of him is laser focused more on Goodneighbor, and worried about what he'll find there.
The closer he gets to The Commonwealth, the more he thinks about her.
Her name, the smell of her hair, her laugh - all of it was lost to Danse when the hollowness first dragged him back to Rivet City, but now that he gets physically closer to her, all of it is easier to remember. He's worried about her. It's why he's even sitting here in the first place.
Sighing, digging in his bag for something to eat, Danse instead tries to focus on the things he knows, rather than what he's worried about.
He knows that that rotting Ghoul has his claws sunk into her alabaster flesh. There's a good chance he'll find her high as a kite and stretched across Hancock's lap like an ornamental cat. In truth, Danse had known that since the first time he saw them in a room together. He'd stood guard near the rickety double-doors in that close, smoky Goodneighbor office; and watched her absolutely melt under the mayor-slash-abomination's cold black stare.
He knows that she'll have track marks and dark undereyes, that she'll be much too thin, and that she'll have spent the last however many months telling herself made up horror stories about Maxson and the Brotherhood, and maybe even about Danse himself.
He knows that he's probably on a fool's errand - a nearly thousand klick round trip fool's errand, in point of fact - yet Danse has to be here, needs to try.
He's eating from a can of Cram on autopilot, roasting the slime off the slices by spearing them with a stick and holding them over a campfire that someone else has built. He's grateful for the large group, pleased that other people are around to take care of the evening logistics so that he can continue to consider what lays in front of him.
One of the other mercs is talking to him. She's an attractive brunette with a button nose and a scar sliced from the corner of her mouth up toward one ear. It gives her a sort of cocky smirk even when her face is at rest, and it's all Danse can do not to stare. This merc's scar reminds him of the scars on her face, the ones that she somehow managed to get way back before the bombs even fell.
He's replying to the other merc, and she's smiling at him (the terminal point of the scar disappears attractively into the wrinkles around her eyes when she does), but he has no idea what he's even saying. The closer he gets to The Commonwealth, the more he's lost in a whirl of faces, all belonging to people that the hollowness had not allowed to him to forget.
What's interesting, is that the people he's thinking about aren't even necessarily attached to The Commonwealth.
Some of them are: he's thinking a little about his former brothers aboard the Prydwen and at the Cambridge Station, about how much good it might do him to see them. He's also thinking about how any of those that might know he's alive have likely been ordered to kill him on sight - so he can't, no matter how badly he might want to.
But some of them aren't really a part of The Commonwealth at all. Danse is also thinking about Cutler. He's thinking about how looking at Cutler was a little like looking in a mirror, about the ways they loved and watched out for each other, about how they were brothers - even before joining the Brotherhood together had officially canonized them as such.
He's thinking about Cutler's patrol, about Cutler's patrol and the super mutants, about Cutler's patrol and the super mutants and Danse's patrol and -
Danse is panting. He can hear himself panting, and the pretty merc with the interesting scar-smile is looking at him as though he's come down with something communicable. She's asking if he's okay and he's assuring her that he is… but she's risen to her feet and has backed away from him anyway.
It doesn't matter. She can go talk to someone else and he can stop panting. He can affect a calm face and a normal voice and it'll be fine, no one will care.
It's a good thing, too, because the hollowness absolutely has him now.
The doubt is creeping in, and he's wondering about Cutler again, and the hollowness is telling him that -
Danse crushes the empty Cram can in one scarred hand. He folds it as tightly as he can, bending the slim metal into a ball, shoving it back into his pack so that the discarded meat container doesn't draw animals to their camp. He's taking a long slug from a skin holding purified water, and he's nonchalantly adjusting his shoulder armor.
Meanwhile, the hollowness is telling him that Cutler is dead, that Cutler is alive, that Cutler is a super mutant, that Cutler never existed at all. It's telling Danse that he was alone his whole life, up until he met her in The Commonwealth. It's telling him that Cutler was his only real family and that Cutler would always love him. The ideas don't align, can't make sense - but of course, Danse is now used to that.
Danse isn't sure what really became of Cutler, can't even be totally certain if Cutler existed. He can't let go of his best friend, but he knows he has to find something that was real. He has to find something that he's sure about.
This is why he's really going back back, and he realizes it with a start.
She… Elle was real.
(saying her name, finally, in his head, feels like cracking a stiff knuckle - there's an initial pop of pain but there's relief, too)
She had to have been real, because she was around both before and after he found out he was a Synth. She wasn't a memory, couldn't have been implanted the way that Cutler was (or wasn't, or could have been). Elle had tried to protect him, she had done everything she could to make sure he wasn't hurt. She had been angry at the end, yes, but so had he.
No one else since Cutler has cared about Danse so much.
He needs to make sure that she's okay.
He knows that she's been building the Minutemen, which is a project she started before he left. According to the Caravaner gossip, it's gone well. Danse knows that the Minutemen are a poor substitute for the Brotherhood, but he can respect that she needs the structure.
He's leaning against his tree stump now, tilting his head back on tense neck tendons and looking to the stars.
As he sits, he's quietly in awe that Elle gave up the security of the Brotherhood, once upon a time, just to keep him safe. He doesn't begrudge her the Minutemen, figures she deserves to have something after letting a true family slip through her fingers. Danse knows he can't give her the Brotherhood back, but he wonders if, hopes that -
He's thinking about the god damned Ghoul again - the wrinkly, mean-spirited obscenity that masquerades as a man - and he's thinking about the thing's creased and dirty hands all over Elle's body. He can feel the skin on his throat getting hot and red as he does. The image is disgusting, but it's not going anywhere. Danse settles in to let it play out, because he doesn't have a choice.
"Mayor" Hancock is unfortunately real as well, a fixture in the Caravaner gossip, especially the gossip that also contains Elle. Danse will have to contend with Hancock once he makes it to Goodneighbor. He knows they'll be together, and he knows that the creature will have his hooks in deep.
He doesn't know why Elle is even attracted to the thing in the first place, and he doesn't know if he can convince her not to be. What he does know, is that he has to see her face. He'll help her if he can, and maybe, if he's very lucky, she'll leave with him.
He has an image of the two of them, running ops once more, just like they did when he was her Paladin and she was his Knight. They could do freelance mercenary work together, they could have laughs and share meals the way they always did. They could dance and screw and kiss and talk. Danse could catch up on what he'd missed, first when he'd held her at arm's length, then as he'd been gripped by the hollowness and had to walk away.
If The Capital's ground started to shift under his feet again, it wouldn't matter. He could look into her face and be totally certain that it's real.