For once, silence pervaded the streets of Sanctuary Hills. Only the sound of her turrets clunking through the dark air greeted her as she stepped across the bridge. Night hugged the horizon, refusing to recuse its hold on the world for a few more hours. She'd walk through the endless darkness, only noting the occasional danger always lurking in the wasteland, her mind refusing to think beyond the basic instincts of survival. But now that she returned to home...

God, was that what this was?

Home?

A body moved underneath the gutted houses, boots clipping across shattered concrete poured when the world held promise, hope. The only floodlight she'd managed to scrounge up lit upon the shadow illuminating the duster coat that belonged more in old westerns from her childhood than walking the suburban streets. MacCready. When she last saw him he'd been standing guard outside the teleport gadget they'd whipped up, eyeing up the broken hose shooting out steam. He didn't speak a word against the dangerous plan, only re-shouldered the butt of his gun and maintained watch.

"Look at that," he called, pausing before her, his coat skirting around his legs - silhouetted by the construction light, "still alive. I owe Piper a nukacola."

"Yep," she answered, continuing her measured walk down the street. MacCready fell in step behind her, awkwardly shifting further away than usual. Her gait wobbled from the mirelurk blood festering into the wounds across her skin. She should have stopped to clean them out but stopping meant thinking.

"How'd it go? Did you find the Institute?"

"Yep," she answered again. Her battered fingers, coated in dried blood and muck, dug deep into her gun.

"Bet they had some amazing sh- tech in there." MacCready trailed behind her into the blue house, the only one she hadn't ripped apart and rebuilt for settlers filling up Sanctuary Hills. Her house. "The kind of stuff most people'd beat their hands bloody to get a taste of. Assuming they can figure out how to use it, and the jar heads don't swipe it all out from under...uh..."

The gun slipped from her hands and clattered onto the counter. Without ceremony, she stripped off her nest of frag grenades and laid them atop the other armor pieces she'd ripped from enemies all in a fool hearty attempt to stay alive long enough to find her boy. What did it matter now?

MacCready caught her hand, his icy fingers pressing against her skin and drawing her attention. "You okay? Do you...? You probably don't want me here."

She shook her head, unable to voice a word. Her shoulders sagged from an impenetrable weight she didn't even realize she'd been carrying.

"Right, okay. I can stay. Not used to people wanting me around. Not during the big sh- stuff," MacCready almost blushed under his strafing of facial hair, his hand sliding off hers. "Look, I hate to be the one to ask it, and I'm far from the one who should, but...did you find your boy?"

A cruel laugh gurgled in her throat as she gasped out one more, "Yep." MacCready's crystal eyes narrowed in confusion, but she broke away from him and paced down the hallway. She'd thrown herself into stripping Sanctuary Hills for parts after climbing out of the vault. The distraction aided in the healing she deluded herself into thinking she finished. The work kept her too exhausted to churn over every horrifying facet of her new life while clinging to a filthy mattress stitched together from someone's living room rugs. But through all the salvage, the days of machining apart car frames and chopping up old logs, she never once made it down this hall. Now she walked with purpose, the ghosts that haunted her steps across the wasteland that was once her home finally made real.

MacCready followed a dozen steps behind, eyeing up the rickety ceiling, perhaps aware of her self imposed exile. No one else came into this house, not even Strong. She'd never voiced a word against it, but they all seemed to sense something wrong about that little blue house in the middle of the street. Her fingers trailed along the chewed apart walls as if none of this had happened and she'd turn into their second bedroom to find Shaun tucked up in his crib for a nap. Only the light of the moon and a radioactive haze from the creek illuminated what remained of the crib they spent hours picking from an endless choice at the store. It had to be sturdy but safe; Nate devoted hours of his life to reading over every damn safety rating and review they could find.

"I found Shaun," she spoke, her voice ragged. Pain seized across her lip from where the mirelurk split it, but she couldn't stop the tide of words now. "Even after the memories from Kellogg I thought, I hoped, that he was wrong. That he somehow lied, or was manipulated, and Shaun was still a baby..."

She slipped into the room, her arms wrapped tight around her body for fear of disturbing the memorial. If scavengers ever moved through here they left so much untouched; even a few of the blocks Shaun never used sat upon the decrepit rug. Her boot thudded into the dresser leg, rattling the rotted remains. Something on top of it crumbled, skittering across the moonlight streaking through exposed window frames.

While reaching down to pick it up, she spoke, "We read every damn book they wrote on parenting. Nate hated it, said I was being too literal in the advice and it was best to just wing it. 'Kids didn't come with instruction books.' But...oh god," she sucked back a wave of emotion before continuing, "that was what I knew. Procedure. Precedent. I was terrified I'd be the worst mother ever and if I just reviewed previous case studies I'd be okay." Her fingers wrapped around Shaun's baby book, the first one he ever received from her mother. He wasn't even old enough to see it before the whole world exploded. "None of it fucking mattered," she hissed, fingers digging deeper into the tender cardboard. "They took him from me, they took it all from me!"

She didn't realize she'd fallen to her knees until she felt MacCready's hand upon her shoulder. He didn't speak, only gave a reassuring squeeze as she stared at the no longer bright and happy pastel colors. All life had been drained from the cover by the passage of time. "I didn't find my infant son in the Institute. I didn't even find a ten year old boy I could at least, maybe, continue to raise. To love. No..." Tears held back from the moment that man stepped through the door and spoke that code finally broke, "His first step, first word, first skinned knee, first time he cried out for mommy...They stole it all. Sixty years! My own son is sixty years old." A hard laugh curdled around her words, "The books never said anything about that."

"That's, I can't even..." MacCready stumbled through wanting to unleash every curse in his repertoire but his promise lashed them in place.

"It's shit. It's all shit. Every last god damn thing in this fucked up world. My baby was taken while I watched, and all this time scrabbling across the Commonwealth, for what? To stumble across that! I never even got to...God, this isn't helping," she muttered, restraining herself through the wash of tears.

MacCready dropped to his own knee on her left, half of his face illuminated from the moon's glint. She tried to wipe the never ending cascade off her face, but nothing seemed to be working. Softly, he rubbed his own hand across her cheek and cupped her jaw. "Hey, after the crud heaped upon you, you deserve a moment."

"I don't need to be patronized," she said, trying to look away.

His fingers rolled back and forth across her cheek, but his eyes drifted over her head as he spoke. "I've done some stuff in my past, things that shoulda ripped me apart but I held on, burying it all behind another job, another take, another drink. Until my son got sick. Thought I was untouchable, you know. Even after she...I didn't have time to cry. I had my kid to look out for but when those spots broke out, something in me shattered. I ran like a coward, couldn't face what I knew was coming." MacCready's face twisted down, a sneer curdling the folds of his nose. He blinked his eyes, trying to suck back in his own tears, "And now he's got a chance because of you. All these things you've done. You've torn up half the Commonwealth to find your son. All by yourself you built some teleporter thing out of old stoves and stormed the Institute. Synths got to be shaking in their little footcups now."

"Ha," she choked on the implications in his words he wasn't even aware of. But why shouldn't he be? Out of everyone who took up her cause, shared her road, somehow the hired gun came the closest to touching the piece of her that should have died two centuries ago. "You should know that there's more, so much worse than them turning Shaun into, taking away his life with me. He...God, he's in charge of the Institute."

"What?"

"They raised him, needed a...a human with pure DNA uncorrupted by radiation to create all the synths. He's a part of every single synth and I guess, so am I. Now he's called Father. I guess he was probably never called Shaun. They wouldn't have known his real name."

"Are you saying your son is the one behind the Institute kidnapping people, replacing them?" MacCready shook his head vigorously as if her words burned his ears. His hand remained against her cheek, but she felt his body shift away from her - perhaps subconsciously.

Her head fell down to her chest. She'd berated herself for the same judgment lurking in MacCready's watering eyes. How could her son, her baby boy be hurting so many people? It had cut to the quick to stare into the same eyes as her husband and see only sneering indifference to the troubles of the Commonwealth. He'd abandoned the people long ago and cared only for furthering his own kind. She wasn't sure what his kind even were.

"He used me, watched me struggle across the Commonwealth, needed me to kill Kellogg, or wanted me to. I don't know. But, god, if the roles were reversed and I knew my son was searching for me I'd rend the earth to find him. And he, Father, just sat back, wondering if I'd survive." She shook her head at the absurd thought bubbling to the surface, "I'm not sure what it says about nature vs nurture, but I'd never in a couple hundred years thought my own flesh and blood was capable of..." her musing stuttered to a halt. She wasn't able to face one of the people her own son turned his back on; instead, she watched her fingers still sliding along the rough edge of the baby book, wearing it away.

"I, that's such a..." MacCready stumbled around something to say, but there was nothing. All she heard in that sterile and alien world were platitudes as firm as a soap bubble. 'Oh, you are Father's mother. You must be so proud!' Somewhere under it all was an overarching stratagem but she got only the bare minimum. She was now the ignorant child while her son kept all he could from her - as if she was a rat running his maze. But, but even though it all he was still her son. The book dropped from her hands as she reached out, grabbing onto MacCready's coat. A frenzied panic, perhaps from a rise in maternal instincts, flooded her veins. She yanked him towards her, determination sneering her words.

"You cannot tell the others about this. What they would do to my son if they knew! If you tell anyone about him, I would have to- Not yet, not...please, I," her body folded, exhaustion and embarrassment yanking away the powerful threat as soon as it rose in her gullet. She felt like a fool. "I'm so sorry," she gurgled still cling to his coat but not to threaten him, only to try and keep herself upright, "I don't mean to...he's my boy. I just keep hoping that-" Rather than throw her hands off him, MacCready reached over and wrapped his arms across the back of her shoulders. She crumbled into her first hug since she walked out of the freezer and into this new world. His lithe frame enveloped her, the smell of dust and gun oil radiating off his arms.

"Don't go worryin'," he whispered. Despite flirting with everything that moved, he kept his hands tight against her back, his mouth pressed near her forehead. "It's your life, your kid. I'd never put him in danger, not from me, not from anyone."

A dark smile twisted her lips, "I should have known if anyone would understand, it'd be you."

"Well, uh," MacCready beamed back, his lips pressing into her forehead on accident, "I'm not exactly some prince in shining armor. Just don't think people need to be messing around in other's business, is all."

"Not a prince, eh?" She smiled at the man who spat upon chivalry while comforting her during this endless night.

"More like a merc in a duster. If you want one, I bet Danse is probably some long lost prince of StickUpYourAss-ia."

She snickered from the thought, her fingers running over the top of his coat. His pec shifted beneath her as MacCready took more of her weight upon himself. "Shaun wants me to work with him, to live in his Institute helping to bring back in synths."

"I take it he doesn't know about your little deal with the railroad."

She pursed her lips. He'd known about her killing Kellogg, and that she was working so hard to find him. Spies must be watching her, who knew how many were out there. More than likely he knew of the railroad, even of her involvement with the brotherhood. Did he know about her befriending a super mutant and a ghoul, or that she found herself growing closer to one of those unsavory mercenaries? How well would that play in the Institute?

MacCready watched her, pulling back to try and catch her eye, "What will you do?"

And that was what dogged her every step, it was why she had the Institute teleport her miles away from Sanctuary Hills. The mirelurk nest had been an accident, but even as she shot her way through the monsters the war created, the question rattled in her brain. "I just wanted to find my son, to bring him back to me, to find somewhere safe I could settle down and raise him."

"Raising ain't easy, and finding someplace safe in the wasteland is even stupider. I'd have called anyone that tried a fu- fool, until I met you. I bet you could even clean up the commons, have some boat rides on Swan," MacCready quipped.

She reached up, her fingers threading up the rough shirt to softly trill against his jawline. For a moment, his eyes blinked rapidly but he didn't jerk back from the touch. "Picnics by the pond, and then a day at the ball park. Sounds easy as pie, just have to rip apart Diamond City."

MacCready snorted, "I doubt anyone'd much notice or care."

She smiled, but even through his nonchalant shrug she knew the truth. There was no returning to what was before the bombs. Even what she planned and hoped for in this new world was smoke in the air. That life, whatever scraps she'd dared to dream of, burst into ash in that pristine hospital. It played the part of utopia, but that only drilled through her nerves more.

MacCready's hold slipped and he jerked his head towards the window, "Morning's breaking in." Sure enough, a hazy lightning of the horizon broke against the window frame. "The rest of your little gang'll be waking up and curious to see how you got on."

"Piper gets three questions, then I pull out my shotgun," she chuckled.

"Sounds fair to me," MacCready dropped his arms from around her and staggered up to stand. He offered a hand to her, which she accepted. The blood that pooled in her knees rushed to her feet, causing her to stagger from the pins and needles.

A minor quake rattled the remaining screws in the walls, shattering the calm silence. They shared a look before Danse's voice shouted along with the steps breaking the concrete outside, "By all the...what keeps dripping down my back?"

MacCready smiled a cruel turn of the lips, "Heard someone dumped a radroach corpse down the back of his power armor when he was sleeping upright in it."

"That someone wouldn't be an adorable merc, by chance?"

"Adorable, eh?" he skipped over her accusation and bounced his eyebrows. She lightly batted at his shoulders, shoving him to the side. Another round of Danse shouting at the world to make sense drew forth a laugh from MacCready.

She smiled, shaking her head at the absurdity of her crew barely getting along. "Hey, MacCready."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks, for...hearing me out."

His ornery smile faded to a genuine one, "Not a problem, always happy to help lighten the load there."

Her hand grazed across his shoulder, "I will decide what to do about the Institute, about Shaun. I just..."

"Yeah, it's a thing I get. Your son and all," he sighed, a grumble rolling through his words, "turning your back, even if for good reasons, isn't decided lightly." He patted her hand before turning to leave the room. Midway out the door, he shouted to the man now twisting around to try and grab his own back, "Hey, Danse! Problems?"

"Return to your duties, civilian. I have this under control!"

MacCready shrugged again, "Whatever you say, but at least I offered."

"Good," Danse muttered. Through the hole in the wall she watched him reach even further back when the balance of the power suit flipped over. The man and tons of steel crashed to the dirt, Danse's face dragging through what had once been her front lawn. "Civilian!" he shouted at MacCready.

The merc only bonked him on the capped head, "You said you had it under control, Crew Cut. Toodles," and he continued to walk past the downed man, whistling under his breath.

Her eyes gazed afresh around the room. She never voiced her plans to clean it up, prepare it for Shaun. Every time she even thought it, the dark part of her brain threatened that there was an even likelier chance she'd never find him. And now that she had...

Bending over, she scooped up the baby book and held it tightly while eyeing up every scrap of metal and wood she could finally eek out of the room. A whole new turret and parts of a generator could be built from what was supposed to be her life. Holding the last remnant of her child tightly, she left the house that was no longer hers. What awaited her was a lot of unknowns in a world she was still running to understand. Luckily, she had a lot of help getting there.