A/N: Heads up there will be spoilers for the end of the main game and Far Harbor. The previous fics in this series are by no means required reading, but provide some background to Kaelyn and what's happened up to this point if you're interested (they're all one shots so please don't be intimidated by the number of them).

Recommended listening: Unstoppable by Sia.

Pushing open the door to Valentine Detective Agency isn't the hardest thing Kaelyn Prescott has ever had to do, but it feels damn near close. The cozy office is as cluttered as ever—or, more accurately, the far desk and filing cabinets are overflowing with what could be the city's entire reserve of manila folders, while the front desk is impeccably neat courtesy of one Ellie Perkins.

"Why hello, you." Ellie's smile is almost obscenely bright, flashing platinum against the bronze lights. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Hey, Ellie." She has to clear her throat twice to get the words out. Her voice sounds unfamiliar, scratchy from disuse, ringing hollow in her own ears. And then she forces herself to ask: "Is Valentine in?"

The question is obvious, as is the answer.

"No, he's following a lead out near Bunker Hill. In fact, he's due back soon provided he hasn't gotten himself locked in another vault. In which case it's probably good you're on standby." Another pretty smile. By the time it registers that Kaelyn should probably return it or make her own quip about Valentine, Ellie is saying, "If you're happy to wait he may be back in an hour or two."

"No, no, that's okay. I don't want to distract you from your work."

Ellie tuts. "Don't be silly. I'm not going to toss you out into the cold. Besides, without a distraction I might just organize Nick's case files. Then he'll be put out when he can't find anything. Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee?"

While such beverages were once a staple in any office, it's unusual now not only from the lack of reliable supplies in the Wasteland, but also because Valentine has no use for them. "Tea. Black, no sugar, as strong as you can make it."

With steaming cups, the two women lean back against Ellie's desk. Cupping the chipped mug in her hands, Kaelyn stares at the crimson door with its aluminum handle and tries not to think.

"We haven't seen you in a while," Ellie says. "I wish I could say things have been quiet in Diamond City, but between the Institute's destruction and what happened with Mayor McDonough, we're still overdue on peace."

That stirs something. Not quite curiosity, but it pricks the gray veil shrouding Kaelyn's mind. When she'd walked into Diamond City, the security patrols had been doubled and people stood in furtive clusters, gossiping more quietly than usual. "Mayor McDonough?"

"He was a synth this whole time. I can hardly believe it. He managed to shoot Danny Sullivan—poor guy will live, thankfully—before Piper confronted him."

Of course Piper did. Kaelyn nods once, more because it's the expected thing to do.

"You look tired. It's been a long few weeks for all of us, I take it?"

Under Ellie's innocuous gaze, Kaelyn remembers this woman is Valentine's secretary. He wouldn't hire someone simply for a pretty face. "Ever since the Institute was destroyed I've just been… moving around." Not back, not forward.

"It's all anyone's talking about these days. No one could miss that explosion. Nick said it was the Institute going up in flames." Ellie traces the rim of her mug with one slender alabaster finger. "I'm sorry about your son." Oft-used words from her tongue, her mouth intimately familiar with the shape of them, but still tempered with genuine sorrow every time. Today is no different.

Kaelyn's on her feet at once. Her tea is barely touched. "Just tell Valentine I stopped by, okay?"

It isn't until she reaches the marketplace that she can breathe again.

Kaelyn leans against a shack wall, protected in the shade cast by the surrounding alleys. The once-red awnings, now a wan pink, flutter under a tepid mid-afternoon breeze, shaking loose dust that drifts down onto counters and heads and mud. The tin roofs fared no better, their rust-speckled shine dulled to a sulky gray-brown. Fine powder softens the grain of the wood at her back and dulls the warm copper of her skin. Still, the dust has mostly settled now. If only Kaelyn can say the same for herself.

For days afterward, Boston was submerged in dust. Kicked up by the shock wave, the shroud stretched for miles to cloak the streets in faded brown. At first, few were willing to brave the dry mist and poor visibility and acrid radiation. Raiders and settlers alike bunkered down in what cover they could find. Even super mutants were confused by the strange fog, calling out questions to their brothers, confined to their towers with whatever meats dangled in their nets.

Only ferals remained a danger, wandering unseen in the dust, their bloated flesh powdered tan. More than once the hollow drag of feet on asphalt came from bare yards away—always followed by a spray of gunfire.

With that place behind her ribs cold and hard and aching, she walked. Shivering ash collected on her eyelashes like snow. The sun was a flat yellow disk that hardly burned one's eyes. Kaelyn's power armor made it as far as Concord before flashing alerts overwhelmed her HUD and the fusion core died. There was nothing for it but to dump her power armor somewhere inconspicuous and pray no raider could repair the damn thing in the meantime.

When it rained two days later, the water was brown.

It was Fort Hagen that turned her around.

Lying on her stomach, Kaelyn peered down the scope of her sniper rifle to observe the valley below. From her rocky perch, she had an excellent view of the dry woods dotted with clearings and houses. In the distance, the freeway overpass ran north to south, its creaking a mournful song.

For the last hour, Kaelyn watched a yao guai, a herd of raddeer and a pack of scavvers crawl in the valley below while the sun crawled in the sky overhead. Deacon didn't have to teach her patience, only how to use it out here. While Valentine's hand-me-down fedora shaded her face, the back of her neck burned from the heat and sweat dampened the collar of her borrowed plaid shirt. Her patrolman glasses kept the worst of the glare from her bloodshot eyes.

Movement below caught her attention. Probably raiders, from their rough armor and eager prowl, scouring the streets for easy prey. At the top of the hill resided the satellite array, with a trail of decayed town houses leading down to the suburb. The gang sauntered down the main street, and what did they pass but the fort with with its patriotic banners and broken turrets.

She drew a bead on the potential hostiles. Her finger twitched on the trigger.

Hesitated.

Instead, Kaelyn lowered her head until her brow touched the ground. Her hands ached in time with her pulse under their bandages, but she couldn't loosen her grip on the rifle.

The specter of that place drew the memories from her, one by one, like a mud-choked rope pulled inch by inch from a bog. Dogmeat. The fort's defenses. Taunts over the speakers.

Kellogg.

Valentine.

Kaelyn's heart twisted behind her ribs, somehow finding the will to contort itself in one more painful loop. As if it wasn't knotted enough already. Closing her eyes, she rolled onto her back and let her fedora cover her face.

Not for the first time, she wondered how the man whose family was murdered became the man who did the murdering. Her husband hadn't even been the first of his victims. But Kellogg had been a mercenary—a killer—since he fled his parents' home.

She would have liked to think she was different.

She really would.

Kaelyn had to check there was no more blood crusted under her nails. Then she was on her knees, hunching over to avoid becoming a target, shoving her water canteen into her bag and collecting her rifle. With no time to waste, she slid down the hill to the cracked road. Spurred by the phantom over her shoulder, Kaelyn set southeast, away from the outskirts, towards Boston—towards Diamond City.

Fort Hagen loomed behind her, and the dry breeze rattled like mocking laughter.

Vadim's hearty laugh heralds Kaelyn's entrance into the Dugout Inn. He leans behind the bar, scrubbing half-heartedly at a stain on the counter to fulfill his cleaning obligations to his brother Yefim. After parting with what few of her precious caps remain and dumping her gear in her room, she wanders back out to the bar.

Vadim takes one look at her and pours a glass of Bobrov's Best. "This one on the house. Gift from my brother, yes, who would miss me so were I killed."

Given the early hour, Kaelyn easily claims a mustard yellow loveseat near one of the corners, facing the wall. A plant sits in a terracotta pot beside the armrest, brushing her arm, its broad leaves unnatural in their verdant color.

The liquor is awful. It crawls down her throat with kerosene-coated razors while her nostril hairs burn and beg for mercy. She coughs and splutters and hears Vadim laugh behind her.

So she drinks the whole damn thing, one eye-searing sip at a time.

Kaelyn watches the dead clock pinned on the wall like the trophy head of some hunted animal, marking a grand victory. 9:47am. As she knows from experience, nuclear detonations are always a grand thing to behold.

Atop Mass Fusion, with the city sprawled beneath them like a carpet, Kaelyn's fingers hovered above the detonator, twitching. They left it to her—her conscience. Her revenge.

Her family.

She remembered those last words between her and her son. Cutting words. Shaun wanted her to just leave. So she'd walked out the door, slowly, giving him one last chance to change his mind.

He never did.

Out of sight, she pressed her back against the wall next to his door. Watched the stairs and waited for his shallow breathing to fade into silence.

Then she'd killed everything between her and the reactor core.

Shaun is—

Her fist pounded the button.

At first, silence. It cut with every passing moment, inching under her skin with razor-edged doubts: what if they hadn't rigged the detonator properly? What if someone disabled their makeshift bomb? What if it didn't—

The ground rumbled and the fireball mushroomed up. Bathed the sky in fire.

And then the shock wave bellowed through the city.

Kaelyn hunched, half-turned, arms up to protect her face while someone screamed get the elevator down now—

The shock wave hit Mass Fusion, rattling the floor under their boots, staggering them with a solid wall of air. Adrenaline cold on her tongue and radiation hot on her face.

It took a long time for the shaking to stop. When it did, she uncurled from the ball she'd hunched in and rose to her feet. There were faces around her. She thought she heard a voice. Maybe she answered. But she walked and kept walking until she stepped into the dust.

She never looked back.

Such an inconstant thing, memory. Where once she could recall Nate's smile or Shaun's laugh, now all she can see is fire.

The creek gurgled around Kaelyn's thighs, its smooth-turned pebble bed like shards of ice under her knees. Aspens clustered as close as they dared along the bank, shivering in the encroaching evening. Her pip-boy sat abandoned behind her on the bank beside her satchel and sniper rifle. In the dim light, the tannin-stained water had a hide of rippling ink. Stripped down to a bra and trousers, she scrubbed the stains out of her shirt with fistfuls of gravel.

She couldn't get rid of the smell of blood.

Kaelyn stiffened. Water slid and gurgled around her knees. The reedy whispers of the trees couldn't mask the haunting absence of an insect chorus. Then she whirled, spraying water, lunging for Deliverer to aim at—

"Easy, tiger. I'm too pretty to be shot."

Her sigh almost bent her in half, she was so relieved. Lowering her pistol, she switched the safety back on.

Deacon waded into the creek and crouched beside Kaelyn. Turning her hands over between his own, he said, too-light, "Soap isn't good enough for you? I think you've done a great job here—if your goal was to flay your skin off, that is."

Kaelyn looked down, past their hands. In the murky twilight, her reflection was a blue-black shade, eyeless, depthless. Short locks of hair fell in her eyes like icy blades. With some more coaxing from Deacon, she unfurled her fingers to let the gravel pieces fall through, plunking into the creek like bullets.

He smiled at that, and it was too genuine for comfort. "Doesn't that feel better? I don't know about you, but I am freezing. Take pity on little old me and get us out of the water?"

Rising to her feet almost ended in disaster when her sore ankles rolled and her calves were overwhelmed by pins and needles. Deacon caught her by the elbow before she faceplanted into the creek and together they wobbled to shore.

Kaelyn handed the towel to him first. "You said you were cold."

He hesitated a half-second before accepting. "You bet."

After patting down the calves of his soaked jeans, he passed the towel back. Kaelyn scrubbed the thin material over the gooseflesh on her arms, her chest, her legs.

When she lowered the towel from her face, Deacon held out one of his own shirts, this one of soft red plaid that buttoned up the front. "Since yours is wet, I'll swap you."

His shirt was like a hug of kerosene and lies. Deacon wasn't that much larger than her, but his shoulders were broad enough that the sleeves fell almost to her elbows. Between it and her jacket, she could one day feel warm again.

As it turned out, Deacon didn't turn his back and rifle through her belongings just to give her a measure of privacy while she changed. He returned with her pip-boy, the screen casting an eerie green evanescence across his glasses, and checked the Geiger counter at the creek. "Today's your lucky day, pal. All clear. How about Cram? I could really go for some Cram."

But before that, Deacon tended her raw hands, bandaging them with scratchy strips of what may have once been bedsheets. He took care of the cooking while she sat with her hands in her lap and watched the fire. She ate because it was expected, because he'd chide her with too-gentle jokes otherwise. All she could taste was ash in her mouth and copper in her nose.

They didn't talk. They didn't have to. He understood that warped perception where all one knew was blood.

Afterward, they sat back to back, passing a bottle of bourbon between them. Deacon's back was like a sun-soaked brick wall on a stiff fall morning. She leaned back as far as she could, until her head fitted the curve of his nape.

"Is there anything in particular you want me to tell Dez?"

Of course.

Of course Deacon knew.

Remarkably generous of him, if he wasn't simply gauging her answer. "Lie however you want," she said, "but leave me out of it."

The night had dragged into the darkest hours of morning when Kaelyn packed her satchel. Empty wrappers dumped, her remaining supplies arranged, damp shirt squeezed into a ball behind her water canisters. She checked her weapons were all loaded and slung her sniper rifle over her shoulder.

Firelight flared orange on Deacon's sunglasses, but he allowed her to slip away into the night without a word.

"Well I'll be." As Valentine sits beside Kaelyn, the familiar wash of cigarettes and motor oil tingles in her nose. "It's real good to see you again, partner."

"Likewise."

Valentine leans back on the couch, his mouth still curled in that welcoming smile, giving her an extended opportunity to return it. But Kaelyn doesn't miss the fact that when he kicks one foot onto the coffee table and folds his hands across his stomach, his movements are slow, measured, as though not to startle her.

The words roll around her mouth. Kaelyn tests them, tries them on, mixing and matching like experimenting with mods on her pistol.

Valentine waits her out.

Finally: "Are you still in the market for a partner? I think I should just… stick with you for a while. Follow your lead."

"You know you're always welcome to, partner." While his smile is warm, his eyes are sharp, flitting from her face to her shoulders to her belt, seeking any indication of where she's been for the past month. In truth, she can't betray what she doesn't remember.

"Haven't seen ya in a while," he continues, casually, as if their last parting wasn't moments after she'd triggered a nuclear detonation. "Folks got real worried—they were on the verge of hiring me to track you down. Wouldn't have charged 'em for it."

Her fingers tighten on her empty glass. Ice on ice. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Well all right then. You rest up. We'll get to work starting tomorrow." Valentine's smile fades to something harder. "Change of shift for all the killers in the Commonwealth."

Kaelyn can't hide her flinch.

When she'd told Dez no more missions, she'd meant it.

What Kaelyn remembered first about that day was the weather: soft white clouds strafed across the faded sky, casting a patchwork of blue shadows on the ground. Along the horizon they were darker, bruising the sky violet. She'd hoped to find shelter from the looming clouds in case they decided to dump their payload on the Commonwealth. She followed the road to the crest of the hill, seeking high ground away from any nearby creeks or ditches.

In a small clearing, just out of view from the road, was a cabin of pre-war construction with two walls and no roof. Out front were wooden barricades angled around a smoldering fire. Sinking into a crouch, Kaelyn eased her laser musket from her shoulder and looked through the scope.

Too quiet, signs of recent life—and a limp hand that peeked out from behind one of the barricades.

With her musket raised and primed, she slunk into the open. The hand belonged to a woman whose milky eyes stared past Kaelyn to the sky. There were two more bodies splayed over dark puddles and a deck of cards scattered in the churned mud like tiny stepping stones, betraying the royal flush of one player.

What Kaelyn had was broken pieces. Three dead scavvers, but enough sleeping bags inside—if the cabin still counted as inside when its roof was strewn across the yard—for six. No supplies to be seen but many spent rounds. An unlit lantern sat on the steps, and another on one of the window sills. Underneath the leather coat of one man was a vest with a thick padding that she's become very familiar with. Ballistic weave. It had done no good against the red slash in his neck.

Then she spied the railsign painted on the wall in luminescent white.

Whoever the culprits, they felt no need to be subtle. A track lead through the scrub, marked by bent grass and snapped twigs and prints in the dirt—a trail so obvious she didn't even need Dogmeat to follow it. Blood smeared across torn leaves, mingling with sap.

She followed the trail.

In the woods, there was another body—a raider this time, who wore a gas mask with nails spiking outward from the forehead. Kaelyn was glad she didn't have to see the woman's face.

She kept moving, seeking the places where the grass was bent and the ground scarred as if something heavy had been dragged across it. Her reward was a factory with a broken chain-link fence serving as a perimeter. The gang had situated themselves in the yard, claiming overturned trucks and prefabs to build a network of shoddy wooden shacks and walkways. A car-sized fire pit belched oily black smoke that stung Kaelyn's nose even from her distant position.

Easing her sniper rifle off her shoulder, she peered down the scope. The gang were partying and betting over the spoils from their latest raid, with no shortage of home-brewed alcohol to dull their senses. And then there were the cages. A staple of raiders and super mutants alike.

Empty.

So Kaelyn looked to the bodies dangling from the crane's arm. Along with immediate regret was confirmation that two captives had indeed been synths.

Once, she would have gagged into her sleeve at the sight. But now—now she just felt cold. She suspected that discovering their prisoners were synths had been incidental, given there was a third corpse that had been given the same treatment.

Kaelyn swapped her sniper rifle for Deliverer.

When two raiders started a brawl over a jacket, knocking into a quartet of card players, Kaelyn made her move. Avoiding the outer sentries was easy; avoiding the spotlights was trickier. She crept to the stairs at the far end of the factory and eased the doors open.

Down the unguarded corridor and through the double doors, she was deposited in another corridor, this one with broken windows that offered a view of the showroom floor and its grisly raider decor. Another large bonfire claimed a central position on the floor, coughing up plumes of smoke to stain the walls with soot. Makeshift ramps spiraled upward between crumbling walls and rusted catwalks, making a crude tower of sorts that would give the defenders an advantage.

Contrary to what may have been expected, the raiders in here were quieter than their brethren outside. Hunkering down below the windowsill, Kaelyn listened, guessed the positions of the enemies around the room, and carefully looked out to check. As she did, two raiders slunk up one of the wooden ramps to a barrel-chested man with a white-painted gas mask and a headdress of electrical wires. He grabbed the smaller of the two underlings by the neck and bent him back over the three-story drop until his squeaking was audible from Kaelyn's position. Then with a laugh, the leader released his underling to survive. For the moment, at least.

There.

Kaelyn waited for the watching raiders—seven of them arrayed around the bonfire and the catwalks—to lose interest in the scuffle before she moved. She stuck to the walls, hiding under benches or in dark corners when a raider passed by.

An office on the top story that overlooked the showroom floor would have made a decent perch for Kaelyn and her sniper rifle, as would a niche accessible from the one of the catwalks, offering a measure of cover against multiple foes when they inevitably discovered her. Instead, she ghosted through the factory at the leader's heels as he ascended the stairs to the highest balcony, the railings flanked by bloody spikes. The richest of spoils were stored here in boxes and shelves or just dumped in the corners when he ran out of storage space.

Her feet made no noise.

She halted when he did. The leader stood at the balcony, a bulging silhouette of black against the orange glow of the bonfire, fists crushing the railing. His lackeys, his beasts at his beck and call, were arrayed around him in the spaces below.

Kaelyn aimed Deliverer at the back of his head.

She pulled the trigger.

A/N: I've edited this fic one more time and caught an embarrassing number of typos. No major changes, just some extra polish.