Chapter Text
She tugs at the hem of her skirt.
Piper told her it was the perfect length for her — ‘Geez, with legs like yours is there anything you can’t pull off?’ — but she’s not so sure. Whenever she picks anything up, she has to carefully stoop so that she doesn’t expose anything.
It's a little weird to have anything to expose.
A year ago Curie didn’t have these concerns — didn’t have to worry if she was decent enough to be seen in public, didn’t have to worry about bedhead. The past ten months have passed in the blink of an eye, a heartbeat compared to the centuries she spent locked away in the hidden vault, and yet…
Sometimes it feels like it’s been days since Nora found her a new body; others it seems like a lifetime. She still stumbles on occasion, like a radstag fawn on gangly legs, and yet at those rare moments when she does something unconsciously — scrubs the sleep from her eyes in the morning, yawns like a lazy cat — it comes to her so naturally that it feels as though she’s been doing it all her life.
She pulls at her skirt again, fighting a losing battle. This time Piper grabs her hand and gives it a squeeze.
‘You look awesome. Quit worrying over nothing.’
It isn't nothing, but she keeps that particular thought to herself.
‘Trying to win an argument with Piper is like trying to squeeze blood out of a stone,’ Nora once said. It seemed like a strange comparison, but an apt one.
They walk arm in arm through Diamond City, from Publick Occurrences to the little place Nora renovated to keep as a home away from home. The invite didn't exactly say it was from Nora — it was signed off mysteriously from ‘Dr. J & Mr. H’ — but it listed the address at Home Plate. Before they even get there they can see the assortment of black-and-orange bunting strung up outside; carved pumpkins sit about the entrance, illuminated by candles that glow warmly and merrily within.
Curie doesn't know how long her friend has been planning this, but already she's impressed.
‘Is that who I think it is?’
Piper’s voice draws Curie’s attention back, and she casts a glance about for a familiar face.
‘Who is it?’ she asks.
Piper grimaces. She doesn't answer right away, at least not verbally — she gestures with a jut of her chin, pointing somebody out across the main square.
‘I wonder if he was invited.’
Curie doesn’t immediately follow; she has yet to recognize anyone in the crowd. Then she looks again, this time prompted by Piper's meaningful glance, and finally she sees what the problem is.
‘Oh, my…’
Brotherhood regulations rarely allowed for festivities except in the case of a much-needed boost to morale; he remembers years gone by when Christmas celebrations were deemed mandatory attendance, as though the aging holotapes of Christmas music and colorful strings of lights would make up for the absence of fallen comrades.
Halloween was never on the agenda, at least not in Danse's time.
He almost didn’t come along tonight — a party in Diamond City, where he could run into any number of his former comrades? Halloween is said to be the night when the barrier between the world of the living and the dead is at its weakest, but something tells him the Brotherhood wouldn't appreciate seeing him risen from the dead.
Even without the risk of being spotted, there are other… complications. Nora being number one.
It's still odd to think of her like that — as Nora, as a civilian. For months, she was Knight Williams; then came the Institute, and everything that happened after. And now she's just Nora.
For a little while there, a precious few moments, she was all that was left in the world to him. And then she was gone, her golden hair slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.
He still doesn't know why he's going tonight, when the invitation had been extended before… Well, before everything. A part of him hopes he'll find the answer when he gets there.
The costume had been her suggestion — a private joke that he wasn't quite in on, perhaps. At the very least the mask allows him a little anonymity.
Even in the town square, he hesitates. He knows once he walks through that door there's no turning back: no making excuses, not with Nora there to read his every motive without him so much as opening his mouth.
And there it is: the Home Plate. The front of it drips with her influence, from the decorations to the music streaming through the closed door.
His arms hang at his sides, hands balling into fists periodically before relaxing again. He must have done this a thousand times before be finally ventures another step.
He spots two familiar faces: Piper and Curie. They're looking over, and he recognizes that look on the reporter's face — the one that says she's not so happy to see him. The one that all Nora’s friends used to give, back when they used to be inseparable; back when she used to defend him.
Curie, though… He doesn't see that same look, or any variation thereof. Instead, her head is cocked in that curious way of hers, like a lively songbird. She was always so full of wonderment whenever they spoke, so eager to know anything and everything. He still regrets the things he said about her to Nora, behind closed doors.
Piper’s gone full-on vampire, with her dark hair piled high atop her head and exposing her long neck, complete with a gruesome bite mark. Her plunging collar does just that: plunges and plunges, until it ends at the top of a corset. Maybe his gaze lingers a little too long and he has to drag it away, embarrassed, to study Curie instead.
He can't quite tell what her get-up is supposed to be — a dress that comes to the tops of her thighs, made of some sort of shimmering tassels. Her hair is styled, he notices, set in short, glossy waves that catch the light when she turns this way or that. About her head is a band, adorned with an extravagant plume of feathers.
He realizes a little too late that they’ve noticed him staring; he looks down at his feet, pretending to study the shine of his dress shoes.
‘Monsieur Danse?’
It’s so soft, so timid, that he shouldn’t hear it; and yet Curie has such sweet, tender presence in a room — or, in this case, in a crowded town — that it’s hard to miss her. When he looks up she’s smiling at him cautiously, and that songbird head-tilt is back. Ever the gentle soul.
‘Ms. Curie,’ he replies, with a polite nod of his head.
It’s still hard to wrap his head around who she is sometimes — what she is. There are times he forgets he’s just like her, and yet nothing like her at all.
‘I thought it was you,’ she says brightly, and her smile grows just a little. ‘I wasn’t sure…’
When she gestures to his face, he reflexively touches his hand to the half-mask that covers the right side of him, leaving the left exposed. He had thought it risky, when Nora had brought him the mask — had argued that she should have picked out one which hid his identity a little better. She had laughed in that clear-as-a-bell way of hers, and pressed it into his hands, and nuzzled her nose against his stubble in the way that always used to warm him from head to toe.
‘Nobody’ll expect you there,’ she had said. ‘Besides, you go a hundred percent incognito all the time — you deserve to dial it back to fifty for once.’
Curie is looking at him, expectantly. He catches the way her eyes alight on his hand where it still rests on the smooth white surface of his mask, then flits to meet his glance. She’s always doing that — always watching people, always studying. He feels like she does a better job of blending in every time he sees her.
‘Am I really that recognizable?’ he asks, suppressing a groan.
Another smile from her, and for a moment she’s a kindly nurse reassuring a frightened young patient.
‘Not at all, Monsieur,’ she replies. ‘Only if you know what to look for.’
He lets the two women go ahead of him into the party, a subconscious buffer for what has yet to come. Although he lags a little behind he can hear them talking; once or twice he hears Nora’s name, followed by his own.
It’s a lot to take in at times — the sights, the sounds. There are ways in which her old body was superior, and yet as vulnerable as she feels in flesh and blood at times, it feels like she can finally see all the little details she was missing out on.
When Curie steps into the building, cobwebs brush past her face, tickling her cheeks and her neck; the shudder that winds through her is as visceral as it is unexpected. Beside her, Piper sputters and waves her hands about herself, fruitlessly swatting the strands away.
‘Cheap trick,’ Piper mutters. ‘Typical Blue…’
Music filters from all sides, and the place feels odd somehow — smaller, even in the darkness, punctuated only by glowing spiders that hang from the ceiling. When Curie tries to walk straight ahead, the toe of her pump clips a wall: Nora has set up partitions, serving as a barrier to the party. She can hear the other guests somewhere in the home, but they’ll have to work to get there.
After a beat, something large and very heavy collides with her and her own soft exclamation is dampened by a man’s voice cursing in surprise. She feels the warmth of a body against her back, strong and unyielding, and then the pressure is gone. A tentative hand touches her shoulder and a gentle voice finds her ear.
‘Sorry,’ Danse says, and she stammers something out in response.
Their path takes them through a miniature maze of sorts, replete with dead ends — at which they are greeted by horrible skeletons and ghouls. When it seems they have traveled farther than the confines of the home should allow, they finally emerge into the party.
She stands, dazed, and stares at the scene before her: strangers and friends alike, decked out in all manner of costumes, some sort of fixture hanging from the ceiling that emits multicoloured lights in erratic beams around the room. It’s possible to pick out the details of the song now, the eerie organ sounds and ominous howls in the background.
It’s too much; her senses are overpowered and overtaxed, and she can do nothing more than gape open-mouthed ahead of her. Soon Piper’s hand finds her own and gives it one short, tight squeeze, and the contact is enough to ground her. Curie clears her throat delicately, turning to her friend.
‘It is all right,’ she insists. ‘I was merely caught by surprise.’
Piper’s wry little grin suggests that she thinks otherwise, but she says nothing to contradict her.
‘C’mon,’ the reporter says. She tips her head toward the edge of the room, where the furniture has been pushed aside to make space. ‘Let’s claim ourselves a good spot.’
Curie remembers Danse only as they’re stepping away, and she turns back to look at him meekly; he’s looking elsewhere, hands tucked beneath his cape into the pockets of his slacks. She tries to catch his eye — and fails, as Piper drags her stubbornly to a free spot on a sofa.
‘Do you think he will be okay?’ she asks, raising her voice a little to be heard.
Piper’s brow furrows when she looks at her — confusion, Curie thinks.
‘Who?’ Piper replies. ‘Paladin Anti-Social? I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s a big boy.’
Curie isn’t so sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it as she finds herself wedged between Piper and a stranger in a wolf costume.
She’s barely sitting beside the wolf more than a minute before he removes his mask and looks at her appraisingly, giving a comical howl.
If there’s one certainty at parties, whatever the occasion, it’s alcohol.
Sure as there’ll be people celebrating a little too hard, sure as there’ll be somebody stinking the place up with cigarette smoke, there’ll be booze — and plenty of it.
Danse makes his home for the night by the table overburdened with an abundance of bottles, some labeled and others not. It occurs to him that he probably should have brought something along — that’s the tradition, isn’t it? — but without Nora to help him negotiate the hurdles of etiquette he finds himself floundering lately. It’s not like he has much of a social life, anyway, being dead as he supposedly is.
He helps himself to a glass of something that by color and smell seems to be whiskey; the first mouthful has him doubting the decision, but he knocks the rest of the drink back anyway.
‘You showed up.’
He feels the hairs prickle at the back of his neck; he doesn’t need to turn around to know who that voice belongs to, or to anticipate the look on her face. Still, he’s not prepared for the hit to his gut when he turns and finds her looking at him coolly, not quite unwelcoming but not exactly laying out the red carpet for him, either.
He takes a little while to look her costume over before he responds, giving himself the chance to fabricate somewhat of a calm demeanor. A top hat sits on her head, her blonde hair pinned neatly on one side while the other hangs in wild snarls about her face. The right side of her face is made up to look like a prim and austere older man, elaborate mustache and all; the left side is monstrous, with boils and tufts of hair sprouting from it.
He looks down: her outfit is half lab coat, half torn, ragged suit. Even decked out as she is, it doesn’t hide the soft curve of her cheek, or the way her waist nips in just so beneath her jacket. He can’t quite get the thought of his arm wrapped around that waist from his head by the time she clears her throat, drawing his glance to her face.
‘Yes,’ he says, pathetically. ‘I couldn’t miss it when I knew how much effort you put into it.’
She looks at him oddly and the seconds tick by, palpably awkward. Finally she clears her throat again and waves her hand at the table before him.
‘I guess you’ve found the refreshments already,’ she says. ‘You just keep on helping yourself.’
The urge is there to come out with something — some bitter remark that if he’s so unwelcome, she should just tell him to go — but whatever nerve he worked up to come here in the first place is dwindling and dwindling fast.
He watches her leave, her hips swaying beneath her spliced-together jacket.
It’s not long before Piper’s in an argument with the wolf, and Curie feels it was only a matter of time — between his lecherous stares and the frequent attempts at butting in on their conversation, Curie can see her friend’s cheeks steadily growing redder and redder.
She excuses herself, but neither of the pair seems to notice as she stands up and slips away, heading for the food table across the room.
It’s louder here, and closer to the center of the festivities, but she finds it easier to blend in with so many bodies around her, distracting from her presence. She feels she could fade away into the backdrop, just another in an assortment of costumes. Her hem doesn’t seem quite so short now, her makeup quite so blatant. She’s just a part of the crowd.
She lets her gaze wander the room, taking in couples as they dance together and small groups wrapped up in animated discussions.
Eventually she lands on a cloaked figure standing alone at another table, his back to the rest of the party. She recognizes the costume, and the broad shoulders: Danse. She feels a pang of something as she watches him, alone in a room full of revelers. With a smile to herself, it occurs to her that with all the strangers and acquaintances alike there that night, she too finds herself on her own.
He isn’t far from her: close enough that she can reach out a hand and gently touch his arm.
‘Monsieur Danse! How are you enjoying the party?’
When he turns, Curie notices the glass in his hand, half-empty of its amber liquid.
‘It's good to see everybody,’ he replies. He seems tense — spooled up, ready to snap. His words might hint otherwise if his tone weren't so flat, so rigid.
‘It is rare to get so many of us together, no?’ she says.
It's an understatement and she knows it; she can't think of the last time they all met up like this.
He fidgets again. Under his cape, his hand is back in his pocket.
‘I am sorry,’ she says, shaking her head uncertainly. ‘The mask, the cape — what is this costume?’
He looks a little surprised at that, his eyebrows raising as his eyes go wide. She feels embarrassed — knows it's some reference she should probably understand — and her cheeks burn.
Danse is gentle when he responds, however: no scorn, no ridicule.
‘It was Nora’s suggestion, actually,’ he says, and there's a little hitch to his voice. ‘The Phantom of the Opera. It's about a disfigured man who haunts an opera house, trying to win the love of one of the performers.’
She nods along with interest, and to her the reference seems familiar; with her old body she might access the memory more readily, but the connection is faint now, pushed to the back of her mind.
‘Does he succeed?’ she asks.
He blinks.
‘In a way.’
The answer is elusive; it leaves her more perplexed than before, and she wants to question him further but he seems uncomfortable now — as though she struck a chord. Instead of pressing him, she reaches out and picks up the corner of his cape, lifting it and then letting it go so that the soft, velveteen fabric flutters gracefully.
‘I must apologize that the reference is lost on me,’ she says, with a rueful smile. ‘But it is a very dashing costume nevertheless.’
Danse doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, so he fills the silence with a sip of his drink. After a beat he seems to startle, turning suddenly and glancing at the table laden with bottles behind him.
‘Did you want something?’ he stutters out, his hand already on the closest bottle.
She readies a polite refusal out of habit, but then she sees what his hand has fallen on — a bottle of something green and creamy looking. She recognizes it immediately, although she has never tried it herself — crème de menthe. Doctor Collins often spoke of it, mourning its probable loss to the Great War.
‘I will try some of this,’ Curie says, pointing to the bottle.
He lifts his hand, takes a look at the label. His expression is disbelieving as he looks at her.
‘Really? Crème de menthe is a little… sickly. I don’t think they have anything to make a cocktail.’
She nods her head once, resolute.
‘I’m sure.’
He lifts his cloaked shoulders in a shrug, and she stares at his back while he turns to pour the drink. He doesn’t carry himself like most of the other guests — every movement is measured and efficient, nothing done without need. He pours her drink neatly, without spilling a drop, and carefully hands it to her.
She eyes the glass first, then his hand grasping it; when she takes it from his hold she trails her glance up his arm and eventually to his face, where he watches her uncertainly. Soon his own drink is back in hand and he looks away, taking great interest in the Halloween-themed tablecloth of hand-painted spiders and pumpkins.
She lifts the glass to her lips and takes an experimental sniff — the scent of mint is almost overpowering, and yet at once it’s sweet. When she takes her first sip she almost gags from how cloying it is, but by the time she has swallowed she finds it’s not entirely unpleasant.
‘So what’s your costume?’ Danse asks, chasing his words with a gulp of his drink. He seems a little more comfortable, she finds, now that they each have a barrier of a beverage between them.
She looks down at herself — at the too-short hem, the too-high pumps, the too-sheer stockings. Where Danse has apparently relaxed somewhat, she can’t help but feel nervous again now that the attention is back on her. She’s accustomed to being the observer, not the subject.
‘A… flappy?’ she says: halting, uncertain.
Judging from the look on Danse’s face, he’s as unsure as she is.
‘Like a bird?’ he prompts.
His eyes flit to her head, and she belatedly remembers the headband there with its ostentatious spray of feathers. She doesn’t remember Piper saying anything about a bird; if she did, it certainly isn’t a particularly convincing costume.
‘I must admit I am not sure,’ she says, reluctantly. ‘It was Piper’s idea.’
She looks back across the room to her friend and finds her where she left her, still in a heated discussion with the wolf. By now he has enlisted the help of a ghoul and a priest, and Curie wonders if she should lend her assistance. Piper, however, seems to be in her element.
‘You don’t have to keep me company,’ Danse says.
She brings her attention back to him and for a moment she looks him in his dark eyes, trying to gage whether he’s trying to politely ask her to leave. She knows humans — and, she supposes, synths who have lived as humans — have a tendency to skirt around the subject and avoid directly saying what they mean.
This time, she thinks he’s speaking in earnest.
‘Monsieur Danse,’ she says, mustering the warmest smile she can, ‘I assure you I am not here out of obligation.’
He looks relieved: she thinks she can see it in the slight relaxing of his shoulders, tensed as they seemingly were.
‘If that’s your way of saying you enjoy my company,’ he says, ‘then I enjoy yours too.’
Danse is grateful that Nora seems to be going to the trouble of avoiding him tonight, but he still can’t quite escape her. Like the lingering scent of her perfume, she’s always there, just out of reach; if she isn’t at the corner of his vision, her gold hair glimmering as she nods and laughs at somebody’s joke, her name is on everyone’s lips.
It was a mistake coming tonight — for the life of him, he can’t quite figure out why he thought it was a good idea. Yet as his strategy for the night of drinking quietly and uneventfully by himself slowly begins to collapse, he finds himself thankful for Curie’s company.
Where Nora would once have dragged him into the center of the party, forcing him out of his shell to dance with her, Curie seems content to stand and chat with him at his own pace. They exchange pleasantries at first, then move on to sharing news — admittedly, she seems to have more to share with him than he does with her.
When the topic moves on to literature, she surprises him with how much she has picked up. For the first time in as long as he can remember, someone speaks to him as an equal.
‘I’m having a good time,’ he finds himself telling her, and she beams back at him.
When a slower song comes on, something a little less gaudy and Halloweeny, he opens his mouth to suggest they dance —
And then the lights go out.
It seems to take everyone a while to realize that the music has stopped; the chatter continues for a few beats in the dim light provided by the few candles about the place, then everyone goes silent. It’s short-lived — someone shouts something incoherent in surprise, and the voices pick up again in a hurried, curious hum.
Danse hears Curie give a little cry and feels her elbow collide with his stomach. Another exclamation and she thuds into him again, this time gripping his pectoral to keep her balance.
‘Oh, Monsieur Danse,’ she exclaims, and he hears urgency in her voice, laced with panic. ‘What did I just touch? Did I hurt you? I am so sorry!’
He sets his drink aside and brings his hands up to her shoulders, gripping her gently. As his eyes adapt, he sees the cause for her bumping into him: in the excitement, the crowd has begun to mill around. He carefully steers her, leading her away.
Before long Nora’s clear, commanding voice cuts through the din.
‘Attention, everyone! We’re having… technical difficulties right now. Seems I got a little overzealous with the lights and tripped a switch. We’ll get you back to your regularly-scheduled entertainment ASAP.’
He almost smiles at the last part — how she still says it the military way, two-syllable, like she can’t quite drop the habit.
Curie saves him from potential reverie; he feels her use his arms to brace herself as she steps up on tiptoe, getting close to his ear to be heard over the noise.
‘Will you take me outside?’
He doesn’t need to ask her why, doesn’t need to see her face to know that she’s uncomfortable.
They walk hand-in-hand through the party, squeezing between guests where they have to. By the time they get to the little maze set up at the entrance, the lights and music are back on. Still he moves forward, and Curie seems only too happy to keep up with his pace.
The night outside is colder than he remembers, but he’s thankful for the relief from the heat generated in the party by dozens of bodies. The Home Plate had always seemed cramped whenever he was there with Nora; it’s a wonder she managed to cram in as many people as she did.
He looks to Curie and finds her pale, her eyes wide. They both seem to realize at the same moment that they’re still holding hands, and they let go in unison.
The feathers in her headband are bent and battered, a casualty of their retreat from the party. Danse plucks one free from its new home in her hair and lets it float to the ground.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks her.
She tries a faltering smile and he knows that she doesn’t want him to worry, whatever her own feelings might be. He feels a little annoyed at himself — for coming tonight, mostly, but a little bit of it is knowing that she feels like she can’t be honest with him because he has made her feel that way.
Whatever leaps and bounds they might have made by way of sharing conversation tonight, he’s still the man who only a few months ago was denouncing people like her as abominations.
He tries, and fails, to keep from running over all the things he has said about her, before he knew better.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
Her words seem genuine enough; if there is any doubt still in him, she chases it away as she stretches up onto her toes and touches a kiss to the side of his mouth left exposed by his mask.
When she pulls away, her cheeks are a rosy pink. His lips still tingle from the contact.
‘I think I would like something to eat,’ she says.
Curie walks away and he watches after her, lost for words. She stops not far from him and turns back, and to Danse it seems the blush of her cheeks makes her especially pretty.
‘Well?’ she prompts.
She totters back to him and grabs his hand, giving it a tug.
‘Aren’t you coming?’