Five

Once Charmer had joined the Railroad several months back, Deacon had updated Standard Protocol to include having Drummer Boy keep an ear on Radio Freedom. Never thought much would come of it, honestly – and besides, Garvey was frustrating as hell – but Deacon was once again impressed by his own foresight when the Minutemen put out a call for their General over the station.

Charmer was fast asleep on her designated mattress behind the brick wall, her cheek pressed into her pillow, her body curled up like a cat. Deacon hovered in the entranceway for a moment, let his eyes skim over her form and remembered how delectable it had felt writhing beneath him, her full lips moaning his name.

It woke a part of his body up that wasn't used to interacting with the world much these days, and made him really fucking uncomfortable, because they were in HQ. He was getting a boner in HQ. God, he was so fucked.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, repressing a sigh, he silently stepped closer to his relic and squatted beside her. One gentle hand reached out to nudge her shoulder, the other braced his balance on the ground.

Charmer's reaction to Deacon's touch was instantaneous. She shot upright, like an alarm had gone off, and gripped his hand tightly, almost painfully, in her own. Wide, confused eyes followed his hand up his arm, finally to his face, and she sucked in a deep breath to force her body to relax. Her grip lightened on his hand until she was merely holding it against her chest, a surprising show of affection, particularly from Charmer. He chalked it up to her likely still being groggy from sleep.

"Sorry," she breathed out, wakefulness returning to her sharp green eyes with every passing second. "Habit."

Deacon squeezed her hand reassuringly. "'S'okay, boss."

She seemed to realize how they looked: her holding his hand flush against her chest, like the lovers they now were, and slowly let him go, blinking. "Need me for something?"

He didn't miss the eagerness in her tone. It was always present these days, her penchant for recklessness rising up further to the surface. The look she'd get in her eyes – like she was thirsty for a battle or destruction or something he couldn't quite put his finger on – made Deacon nervous. Too nervous to ask what it was she was looking for that he couldn't give her.

"Yeah. Garvey put a call out for you on Radio Freedom. Said Lexington's settlement needed a helping hand."

Charmer straightened up; although she nodded, there was a darkness in her eyes Deacon couldn't quite decipher. "Oh, good. They're ready for us at the relay, then. That's our code phrase."

Deacon could've sworn his belly dropped to his toes or the floor had fallen out from beneath his feet. They were ready at the relay? So soon? He might've guessed that it would take longer than a month for Tom to get the contraption up and running, but three weeks? Fuck. It was all coming together. It was too soon.

"Deacon," Charmer said softly, forcing his eyes to raise to hers once more. She was giving him a rare gentle look, like she could sense the chaos that was his thoughts. Despite there being other agents in the crypt, despite any possible sideways glances they might get, she raised her hand up to cup his cheek and he let her. Leaned in to it, relished its warmth, its Charmerness in the way that her skin was both soft and callused, in the way that she belonged both to the past and to the present. "I'm not gone yet," she said, but he couldn't tell if she was talking more to herself or to him. "It's gonna be okay."

But it wasn't going to be okay. He knew that.

"Yeah, boss."

He pulled away from her caress and stood. Offered her a hand to help her to her feet. Tried so hard to ignore the lingering look she was giving him.

"I'm gonna tell Des," she announced, slowly slipping away from him. "You should get ready to leave. We can be there by sundown."

He let her go without another word, staring silently at a brick in the crypt's wall. Their time had officially run out, and he wasn't ready.

000

Des walked ahead of the trio like she was marching into some great battle. With her shoulders pulled back, her chin canted high, it was easy to imagine her leading a group of warriors into a fight. Hell, Deacon had heard Des was quite the heavy back in her day, cutting down supermutants and raiders alike, much like Charmer did now. The pair had a lot in common, more than either of them probably knew.

Charmer walked in the middle of him and Glory, her silence weighing heavily on the thick Wasteland air. The day had grown humid with rain and radstorms, making his chest ache the entire walk to the relay site, or at least that was what he was trying to convince himself. He was pretending not to notice the worried looks Glory kept tossing at Charmer here and there, the void stare straight ahead that Charmer wouldn't break.

Unlike Des, Charmer didn't much look like she was happy to be walking into battle. She looked more like a woman being led to the gallows; somber, pensive, broody. He wanted, more than anything, to reach out and grab her hand, reassure her that he was there, still there. But he couldn't. And so he didn't.

When they reached the relay site, Tom greeted each of them with a huge, toothy grin. "'Bout time y'all made it out," he said, patting Glory on the back before turning his attention to Charmer and Des. "We about ready. My baby's gonna be up and running by dawn."

Deacon had to give Charmer some credit. She didn't even blink, didn't bat a single fucking eyelash at this. Just took it like she had to.

"Good," Des said, a smile curling on her lips. "You've done well, Tom."

"Well, I had some help."

Ugh. Cue Preston Garvey. AKA the Minuteman holding the longest record to have a stick shoved up his ass. AKA the man currently looking at Charmer – Deacon's Charmer – with fucking hearts in his eyes, a furrow between his brows, a question on his lips that Deacon was sure he wasn't gonna like.

"General," he greeted, adding a polite nod at Glory and Desdemona. His eyes skimmed over Deacon, acknowledging him without fully acknowledging him. Then his rosy eyes turned back to the General, and he asked, "Mind if I talk to you for a moment?"

Charmer frowned. "Sure." When Garvey tried to put a guiding hand on her shoulder, she subtly dodged his touch, a scowl taking over her frown.

Deacon watched closely as Garvey led her a good distance away from anyone within earshot. He watched, chest tight, as Garvey explained something to her, as Charmer got angry and waved him off. And he would have watched further if Glory hadn't poked him in the side with Karma.

"Hey," Deacon drawled unhappily, staring down at the offending minigun. "Is the safety on that thing on? It'd better be, Glory. I never forgot that time you grazed me with a bullet during High Rise's birthday party. Never."

Glory rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Like it even ruined those pretty cheekbones of yours. You got them redone a month after that, anyway."

"Still hurt."

"Yeah? Hurt as much as seeing Preston Garvey try to go after your girl?"

Deacon grinned at Glory, because if he didn't, his irritation definitely would have shown through. "No idea whatcha mean. Garvey's got a crush on his boss? Kinky."

"More like you have a crush on your partner," Glory pointed out. "The partner you're actually sleeping with."

A quick glance around told Deacon that Des had thankfully walked away with Tom and now stood listening to some spiel on the Great and Mighty Relay set up in the middle of the heavily fortified and guarded campsite. Small mercies.

"Yes, her mattress is next to mine in HQ. Very observant of you, Glory. I think you were a detective, back in the Institute. Betcha wore a fancy fedora and everything."

"Ha-ha." Wow, was she unamused? Imagine that. "You know I know. The more you try to deny it, the sadder it gets for you, Deac. 'Sides, you gotta talk about it sometime. Your girl is going off into the Great Beyond." Glory paused, growing somber. "Might not come back."

A lump formed in Deacon's throat. He swallowed it right back down. "She'll come back."

"But if she doesn't?"

"She will."

She will. He knew that for sure. But she wasn't gonna come back the same. She was going to know all the things Deacon could've told her himself. She was going to know that Deacon was keeping secrets from her this whole time. She was gonna hate him, and he was gonna lose her.

000

"So what did the Boy Scout want with you?" he drawled casually later that evening, long after the sun had set, after High Rise had arrived with a dozen bottles of booze for everyone to get plastered off of, after Deacon had been watching Charmer from afar for way too long because he couldn't strap on the balls to just go and talk to her, to be with her, and let everyone else see them that way.

Finally, he did, after some goading from Glory – who was fucking relentless, Jesus – even though his skin crawled from all the pairs of eyes he felt on himself. He was meant to be a spook. A specter in the night. A shadow. He wasn't meant for all this attention.

Charmer turned a small smile on him, both pitying him for his obvious discomfort and seemingly glad that he'd finally approached her. "Preston was just being Preston."

Deacon cocked an eyebrow at that. "You sure learned how to be vague from the best of 'em."

"I did," she grinned at him. "From you."

"Aww, you flatter me too much. I'm gonna start thinkin' something's up."

"Wouldn't want that, now, would we?"

She turned her profile on him, her eyes drifting out onto the dead fields and jagged rock that surrounded Tom's Relay. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her back pressed against an old crate that had somehow found its way onto the shack's rooftop. Deacon slowly climbed the ladder up and settled himself beside her, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Are you ready?" he managed to ask, but the crack in his voice didn't go unnoticed to either of them. He cleared his throat, tried his best to look away from her, failed. "Y'know, nothing's set in stone yet, boss. You don't have to do this."

The smile that formed on Charmer's lips was sad and flimsy. He couldn't stop looking at her but she couldn't even meet his eyes; smiling that soft, heartbreaking smile up at the waning moon, she gave an absent shrug. "You know me, Deacon. Do you really think I won't go through with it?"

His chest ached. He felt nauseous and angry and helpless. So helpless. When silence settled between the pair, Charmer finally tore her gaze away from the night sky to look at him. Really look at him.

Her hand reached out, grabbed tightly at his. For a brief moment, his relic, his warrior, his goddess of death looked so broken. So unsure of herself. So unlike herself. But then the woman that had risen out of that vault two hundred years too late reappeared; she steeled herself, gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and scooted over so that their shoulders were pressed against each other.

"It's going to be okay, Deacon," she told him, and for a while, just a little while, he could fool himself into believing it. "No matter what, it'll be okay."

000

She stood on the platform like a soldier prepared for her final battle. Shoulders drawn back tight, head high, hands making fists at her sides. Even while Tom began shouting enthusiastically about the readings on the control panel, she didn't look at anyone. Her sharp green eyes stared determinedly, doggedly out across the Wasteland.

Look at me, Deacon thought, wishing desperately that she would. Close to falling to his knees and begging, close to shouting her name just to get that green gaze to land on him one last time before everything went to hell. Just one last time. He knew she'd never look at him the same after this, after charging past this point of no return.

When blue sparks began to spew from the top of the relay, Deacon almost lost his breakfast. But Charmer, his Charmer, she didn't even flinch. Her head turned, those deep green eyes looked at him, her mouth opened like she was going to say something, something, and then she was gone. Just… gone.

The moment she disappeared, the relay collapsed in on itself, a beast of wires and metal groaning and wheezing to the ground. Deacon couldn't move. Could hardly breathe. She was there and then she was gone. Gone.

Several moments of silence hovered over the Railroad agents and Minutemen alike, the sort of confused, even shell-shocked species of silence that Deacon didn't want to read into too much. He couldn't.

She was there, then she was gone.

"Tom?" Des's voice finally broke through his thoughts, her tone shrill. That someone like Des was even worried forced Deacon to turn away from the broken relay, to clench his hands into fists and shove them into the pockets of his old jeans so no one could see. "Tom – did it work? Did it work?"

Muted by the sight of his work of art collapsing in on itself, Tom could only scratch his head and frown. "I don't know, man… I don't know." He looked over at Des, then towards Deacon, who still couldn't face anyone. "I guess… we'll just have to wait and see."

000

Deacon couldn't simply 'wait and see'. He couldn't. Sitting on his hands had never been something he was able to do. And while some of the others had been content to hang around Bedford Station to see if their pre-war relic would return within the week, to see if she was at least alive, Deacon couldn't. He just couldn't. That left him with too much time to think, with too many questions he simply couldn't get the answers to.

So he threw himself back into the cause full-force. Dead-drops, recruiting new tourists, checking in on the old ones, shuffling packages around until their safehouse space was nearing its max. High Rise complained not once, not twice, but three times about Deacon's single-mindedness, about his revamped myopic lens through which he chose to see the world.

He spoke to no one unless absolutely necessary. PAM for receiving missions and reporting intel. Des on the rare occasion that the Alpha stepped out of her office, her increasingly sleep-deprived features growing more and more gaunt by the day. Glory when he needed a place cleared out, a new path scouted. Drummer Boy when it was time for weekly reports. But he dodged High Rise when he dropped off new packages to Ticonderoga, avoided the Castle when he had heard that Preston was hoping to speak with him, dismissed the courier Hancock had sent because the Mayor of Goodneighbor for some reason requested a face-to-face with the master spy.

Pretended he didn't catch the pitying looks of his fellow agents whenever he returned to HQ, or that he didn't hear the whispers:

Two weeks and we still haven't heard anything? Maybe it's time to cross her name off the board.

If Charmer failed, what do we do next?

Why don't we have a backup plan?

What if she's dead, or worse – compromised?

He shut it all out. Slept when his body forced him to, worked until his knees ached as much as his chest did. That's how two weeks passed into three, then three into four, and now five. Five weeks. Five weeks had passed without any word from Charmer, without Deacon knowing if she was even alive to hate him the way she should. Even if the next time he saw her, she looked at him with absolute disgust, that would be okay. Because it would mean she was alive. And that was all that mattered, now.

000

Deacon was rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes when he heard a familiar Minuteman's voice coming from the main chamber of the crypt. Panic darted through his chest as he briefly entertained the thought that either someone had let the Minuteman in – which meant that some situation had grown dire enough to let an outsider into their super-secret new headquarters – or that the man had forced his way in because Deacon had been dodging him for weeks now.

As soon as he stepped into the main chamber, Deacon realized his fears were unnecessary. Instead of coming face-to-face with the crabbiest Minuteman alive, Deacon found Glory sitting in front of a radio, tuned to Radio Freedom no doubt, her eyes closed and a frown cutting deep onto her face.

He hung back behind the crumbling brick wall that separated the mattresses from the chamber and listened, jaw tight.

"It's been nearly six weeks since our General went out on a potentially hazardous mission," Garvey said, barely able to mask his forlorn tone. "We ask that anyone who might know anything about her whereabouts come forward to the Castle."

He couldn't help himself. His feet moved of their own accord as he quickly approached Glory, he watched as if from outside of himself as his hand moved so quickly to turn the radio off that he surprised not only the synth Heavy, but himself.

All the pity that the other agents had been surreptitiously throwing his way manifested on Glory's scarred face. She opened her mouth to speak, but Deacon cut her off.

"Don't," he said, harsher than he intended. Warning bells were going off in his head – he was showing his cards too much, revealing his emotions, and he needed to get a grip. Deacon, the master spy, the Railroad's best agent, didn't fall apart. There was work to be done and he was the one who needed to do it.

Glory studied him silently for a few moments before kindly, almost sympathetically, turning her gaze away. Deacon's skin crawled. He needed to get out of the crypt. He needed to get away from sad eyes and knowing expressions and people who wanted to talk about it, because no, he was not going to talk about it.

"Mass Fusion needs clearing out," he reminded Glory in as normal a tone as he could manage. "Think you can handle it?"

She glanced up at him, her own expression schooled into one of pure professionalism. "Consider it done."

"Good." And he high-tailed it out of there, needing fresh Wasteland air and a good, long walk to Diamond City to clear his head.

000

Another week passed. Six, now, but Deacon only recalled the number absent-mindedly, considering his head was pounding like a war drum and he couldn't quite get his feet out beneath him. The previous evening had been spent at the Third Rail nursing too many stale beers after he'd received intel that Hancock had left the settlement for a period of time.

Just Deacon's luck, too, since he'd begun questioning his position in his own carefully crafted world earlier that day and needed a decent watering hole to shack up in. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the empty mattress beside his. Harder to pretend that Des didn't look like a mother who'd lost her child. That Deacon himself had lost something so integral to himself and that the cause just wasn't enough to plug that void growing bigger and bigger inside of him with each day.

This wasn't the first time Deacon had woken up in the Redford Hotel with a nasty hangover and an aching, sick heart. God, he didn't want to remember the first time – his wife's blood dry and dark on his t-shirt, his feet aching from the mindless hours-long walk he'd made from University Point to the infamous Goodneighbor. That version of himself, pre-Deacon, had just watched his entire life fade away. Die in the hands of the very organization he was supposed to be working for. That version of himself couldn't survive without Barbara – had needed a change, a face-swap, a whole new identity and a proper cause to rally behind and throw himself into in order to keep on keeping on. Deacon had been born in the bloody, dark ashes of a night gone horribly wrong, from a heartache that went so deep that he had to disassociate himself from it in order to feel anything but pain.

What would become of Deacon now, he wondered? Was this the end of another era? The birth of a new man with a new face, a new name?

He groaned against all the thoughts flooding his brain, his stream of consciousness just as loud as the war drum beating steady and angry behind his eyes. Mid-afternoon sunlight wavered over the centuries-worn carpet in the room he'd rented, and even that brought back memories almost too painful to relive.

The first time he and Charmer had stayed in Goodneighbor, her evening out with Hancock and Deacon's pathetic attempt to ignore his growing feelings for her. When she stumbled back into the room late that night, high outta her mind, looking small and young and innocent. The next morning. The brush of her hands against his.

It would be wrong for Deacon to say that he didn't realize one could ache so colossally for another human being, could feel their absence in the way the air simply felt too thin. It would be another lie to tell himself. But he had forgotten how deeply the heart could be wounded. How much the body could want to surrender to this emotional pain.

As he was being pulled into another memory of Charmer – her writhing beneath him that glorious night out in the midst of the Commonwealth, when he could finally be honest and she could finally see the real part of himself he kept tucked away – the door to his hotel room flung open and smacked against the wall, creating such a thunderous, resounding bang that the master spy jolted on his bare mattress.

Deacon bolted upright. His head swam and his vision blackened around the edges from such an abrupt move, but he fought against his nausea and instead tried to focus on the figure looming in his doorway.

"Jesus fuck," he grumbled once he made out the white hair, the caramel skin, and the adored minigun at his intruder's side. "You sure know how to make an entrance, y'know that?"

Glory sauntered into the room, kicking the door shut behind her. Deacon winced at the subsequent bang that echoed inside his head; Glory really wasn't known for gentle, smooth movements or her quiet presence.

Her gray eyes appraised him from head to toe as he lay back flat on the mattress once more, looking for all the world like she was staring at some pathetic mongrel stealing a few moments of rest on the streets. "You look like shit," she stated in her typical blunt, Glory way. "And you're losing your touch. It was too easy for me to find you."

"Easy?" Deacon scoffed, resting his elbow over his face to block out the sunlight cutting into his eyes. "I know for a fact that any lead on me would have taken you to Abernathy Farms. Word on the street says I love their home-brewed vodka."

Glory rolled her eyes and rested Karma on the floor beside Deacon's bed. Flopping onto an old wing-backed chair, she sighed. "Yeah, that's the word on the street. But PAM recognizes Charmer as the unknown variable, not you, Deac."

That was frustrating, if not altogether disconcerting. PAM could track him, now? When had he gotten so predictable?

When Charmer rose from that fucking vault, his mind mocked him.

"So," Glory carried on, ignoring Deacon's sideways glare. "Wanna talk about it?"

"Your hairstyle?" There. That sounded like him. More like the Deacon everyone else was accustomed to. "Yeah, been meaning to talk to you about it, actually. Synth hair grows just like any human's – really think it's time for you to try something new out."

Despite his irreverent tone, his decent attempt at regaining part of himself, Glory wasn't one who ever dealt with his bullshit. "Do you think she's dead?" Glory asked, settling further into her chair, giving Deacon a look that was some hybrid between irritated and genuinely curious. "Is that why you're doing this? You think she died in the relay or when she got into the Institute?"

Deacon's stomach rolled. God, he didn't want to think about it. Hadn't thought about it, truth be told. Charmer was one of the toughest people he had ever met. Hell, she was two hundred years out of time. Two hundred! And the way she fought… Had to be hard to kill a woman like that… right?

"She's not dead," he finally replied, sensing that Glory planned to get an answer from him one way or another.

The synth stared at him, unreadable. "How do you know?"

"I just do."

Glory scoffed. "You're not really one for faith, Deac. Gimme more credit than that. Unless three of your tourists confirm something for you, and then you manage to check it out for yourself, you don't believe much of anything."

"Not true," Deacon lifted a finger in the air. "I'd heard that Preston fucking Garvey had a stick shoved up his ass for so long that his face was fixed in a permanent scowl, and I believed it right away. And it turned out to be true."

The chuckle he received from the Railroad's Heavy lightened some of the weight on his heart, if only a little. "Maybe so. But this is different." She paused. "This is Charmer."

He couldn't look at her when he asked. "Do you think she's dead?"

The pregnant pause that hung between the pair was answer enough. Glory's doubt stabbed at Deacon, needled him in the worst way. So was that how everyone in HQ saw it? That their star agent was probably dead and gone? That this woman who was so fierce, so rebellious in the face of every obstacle that threw itself in her path, could just die? Just like that?

Glory remained silent for several longer moments before rising to her feet. She looked at Deacon, and he dared to meet her gaze, if only to show her how wrong he thought she was. But what he saw in the synth's gray eyes was unexpected, so uncharacteristic of the hardened heavy that Glory had come to be known as. She looked at him with raw, unbridled pain, with loss, with a brokenness he could feel reflected in his own chest, and he understood why she wanted to believe Charmer was dead.

It was easier than holding onto the hope that maybe, maybe, she wasn't.

"We need you back at HQ," Glory said, her voice rough. "By nightfall."

She swept out of the room much like the way she had swept in: banging doors, yanked open and kicked shut, and not a single glance back or farewell.

000

It was another unremarkable day in HQ when Drummer Boy sprinted up to Deacon, despite the crypt being waaay too small for a light jog let alone a full-out sprint, the young man nearly colliding with the master spy.

"Deac – Deacon!" the kid panted, his eyes so wide Deacon was afraid they had popped right outta their sockets. Deacon instinctually reached for the 10mm pistol Charmer had once customized for him, taking Drummer Boy's panic to mean that HQ was under attack. Again.

"Where and who?" Deacon asked seriously, standing from the desk he had been doing paperwork at. The agents around the pair all froze in place, waiting for Drummer Boy to deliver the bad news, waiting to hear gunshots at the crypt's entrance.

"No, no. You don't understand." The kid glanced around at the other agents, his eyes still wide as saucers. Raking a hand over his face, Drummer Boy laughed. "You don't understand – it's Charmer. Charmer – she's alive."

Whatever happened after Drummer Boy's announcement passed by in a haze for Deacon: the whooping and hollering of his fellow agents, Des's relieved face poking out of her office, Glory's askance glances at Deacon, the chatter that built up and up and up until he couldn't stand it anymore, until Deacon needed to flee so he could have a moment to himself. He wasn't sure if he needed to breathe or cry or shout or maybe all three.

Charmer was alive. She was alive. Glory had been right, before – Deacon didn't believe a damn thing unless three of his tourists confirmed it and he saw it with his own two eyes, but for the first time in his life, he could sense in his heart that this was true. She was alive.

The relief that overwhelmed his chest and threatened to force tears to his eyes – God, how embarrassing was that – quickly faded when Deacon realized that Drummer Boy had been the one to tell him. That the kid had to report on her status, that Charmer hadn't come out to HQ to tell the Railroad herself.

He wanted to tell himself that it was because his war relic was trying to keep a low profile, to throw any suspicion off of the Railroad just in case, but he knew, deep down, why she hadn't come.

She knew about Deacon's past.

It had been inevitable, anyway.

000

"Word on the street," Deacon said in his usual irreverent tone, just barely holding his carefully constructed mask together, "is that you've been trying to get ahold of me. Guess I've been busy."

If Hancock had eyebrows, one of them would've been arched at the master spy. Instead, the ghoul settled back into his centuries-old couch, the springs moaning beneath him, his beady black eyes never once straying from Deacon's face. "Is that the word on the street? 'Cause I heard that you've been turning my couriers back before they could even deliver you a message. Or were they lying?" Hancock smiled his trademark wicked smile. "Guess I'll just have to kill one of them to find out." He turned to his second in command. "Fahrenheit, sweetheart? Would you mind getting Ron up here?"

Ugh, Deacon hated it when someone actually called him on his bullshit. He was getting rusty. Rolling his eyes, he held up a hand. "Fine, I might've heard something about a request, but hey, like I said. Been busy."

Hancock's grin widened. He waved off Fahrenheit. "You can go."

The woman looked put out at being ushered away from a meeting, but left without a word. Deacon would never admit it to anyone, but he was glad for it. He had never trusted that chick.

"Honestly, what kind of name is Fahrenheit?" Deacon wondered aloud, checking to see that the woman had, in fact, closed the door all the way. "I can't figure out what she's trying to accomplish. Patriotism? You know, only Americans used that system, way back when."

Hancock just stared Deacon down like the master spy hadn't even spoken. "So our girl's alive, huh?" Though his tone was conversational, Deacon knew the point of this little chit-chat was anything but. "Gotta admit, I was worried for a while there. No one had seen or heard from her in, what? Seven weeks?"

"But who's counting, right?" Deacon said, sinking back into the couch again, keeping his thumbs from fidgeting the way they wanted to. "Unless you're looking for a drug buddy again, but didn't we talk about that?"

The smile that formed on Hancock's dry lips was unnerving, to say the least. "Actually, that's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about."

Ugh. "Oh?" Disinterest. Irreverence. Just be Deacon, like everyone would expect.

"Yeah. I wanna cash in on that favor you owe me."

Fuck. Just what the hell did the ghoul want? As if it wasn't enough to deal with the fact that his relic was alive and kicking and totally fucking avoiding him for extremely good reasons, but now this? Jesus, the universe was really conspiring against him this week.

"Hmm," Deacon tapped his chin. "I dunno, by the sound of your voice, it's probably something that's totally not within reason. And you've gotta know how I feel about things like that. I prefer things that are squarely," and he made a square with his hands, "within reason."

"Good, then you'll like this," Hancock said easily, smirking. Deacon loathed the look of triumph in the ghoul's black eyes. "I just want you to do one simple thing."

"That being?"

"Strap on a pair and go see her, Deacon."

His mouth went dry. Had it already been dry? Was the air inside Hancock's little drug den dry? Hmm. Maybe he needed to go see Carrington. Was he getting sick? 'Cause he was feeling nauseous. "Sorry, what?"

"You heard me, Deacon," the ghoul said, displaying a surprising amount of patience for a man who preferred the shoot first ask questions later approach. "You know where she is. So go see her."

"I think we need to clarify who 'her' is…"

All right, so maybe the mayor didn't have as much patience as Deacon initially thought. "Really? Let me describe her for you, then. About yeigh high, petite, ass and tits like a fucking goddess –"

"Okay, okay," Deacon spoke up quickly, barely containing his sharp tone. "Jesus, I get it. For the record, I don't know where she is, okay? And like I said…I been busy."

"Too busy to check on your girlfriend? The girlfriend that went on some super secret mission she told me she might not come back from? The girlfriend you're half outta your mind for? You been too busy for that, really?"

Deacon sat upright, on edge. "Firstly, I don't know what century you think this is, but girlfriend is a little outdated, don't you think? Secondly, Charmer… Nora…" Because, yes, that name was his now. He could say that name, goddamnit. "Nora is most certainly not my girlfriend. And finally, yes. I've been a bit too busy for that. Got a secret organization to help run and all."

Leaning forward, so that he was only about a foot away from Deacon now with nothing but the coffee table littered with jet between them, Hancock scowled. "You know what, Deacon, I'm gonna call your bullshit. But to make it easy for you, I'll give you her exact location, as told to me by Preston Garvey himself." Reading the look on Deacon's face properly – which was quite a feat, all things considered – Hancock chuckled darkly to himself. "Yeah, that's right. Garvey's been hanging with your girl this whole time she's been back. How's that make you feel?"

Deacon gritted his teeth together, tried to loosen his tense shoulders. Fucking Boy Scout. "Like I said – "

"Nah, you listen here," Hancock interrupted. "She's back at Sanctuary this week. In her old house. You'll find her there. But if you're a fucking coward and wanna wait till she's on Preston's turf, I heard she'll be at the Castle next week. Now if you were to ask me, one of those locations is far better than the other, but hey, what's an old ghoul's preferences, anyway?" Then he settled back into his ancient couch, taking a tin of Jet with him. "That's my favor, and you owe me."

Favor or not, Deacon couldn't avoid the prodding by his subconscious much longer. Sanctuary Hills. Obviously, he had already known she was there. Had intuited it, at least, since he tried hard not to listen to any of Drummer Boy's reports on her movements. And it was only a day's walk away…

Fuck.

000

Deacon hadn't been to Sanctuary Hills since he'd first watched Charmer amble down from the vault, freshly coated in cryo-juice, seeing this new world for the very first time. After seeing her fall to pieces in her old home with only a rusty robot to comfort her, he had known something about the woman who had been a stranger to him at the time: Sanctuary Hills was off limits. It was a place that belonged to her and only to her, a place he could not under any circumstances trespass onto. It was the last place she had seen her family alive, after all. And he knew a thing or two about that.

He was breaking the rule he had set for himself, and he had so few rules that the idea of violating one of them was a little disturbing. But extenuating circumstances and all, right? Didn't this count as a very, very good reason to break any rule at all?

Even from the Red Rocket truck station, about a five-minute walk away from the bridge that led into the little suburbia, Deacon could tell that Sanctuary Hills had been transformed since Charmer had risen from the vault. Three windmills stood, rickety but strong, over the settlement, their blades churning lazily in the mid-afternoon breeze. There was a massive radio beacon set up close to the entrance of the settlement, and beyond that, a slew of houses that had been constructed from the Wasteland's ruins.

It was impressive, to say the least. That his – that Charmer – could build something from nothing. Months ago, this place had been a ghost town, and now… Now there were upwards of six dozen people milling about, working on the little farm that had been established, hauling water in from the purifier down near the irradiated river.

Deacon was glad that he had worn his I'm just a simple Commonwealth farmer getup that day, blending in easily with the trading caravan that was moving in. His stomach was coiled so tightly into knots that he wondered if they would ever get untangled, and having any extra pairs of eyes on him would just throw him over the edge he was carefully balancing himself against.

He wanted to run away. Turn back to the safety of HQ and dead-drops and missions and people he only knew by codenames and the number of synths they had saved. For just a second, he didn't want this – this thing between him and Charmer, these butterflies in his chest, this pain, this need to see her and hold her and tell her everything she ever wanted to know about him. For just a moment. But it passed as quickly as it came, and he knew, without a doubt, that he needed it. Regardless if he wanted it or not. He fucking needed it.

His sunglass-covered eyes scanned every face he passed, looking for the only one that mattered. Would she look different? Older? Younger, since she would've been able to get all that grit and grime off herself? Had she been wounded? Would she sound the same?

When he locked eyes with Piper, of all people, he stopped dead in his tracks. The reporter mimicked his movements, squinting her eyes at him, shading herself from the sun, before she put two and two together and asked, tentatively, "Deacon?"

"Y'know, I'm technically in disguise right now," he pointed out, irritated that someone had seen through him so easily.

Piper cocked her head, a deep frown marring her lips. "Yeah, but she said you'd come looking like that."

She? Charmer?

God, that woman knew him too well.

"Well, any idea where 'she' is?" he asked, wanting to cut right to the chase. If his voice trembled a little bit, Piper mercifully pretended to not notice.

The raven-haired reporter nodded towards the sprawling farm, half of it obscured by a house. "She was talking to Sturges not long ago about expanding the cow range."

"The cow range," Deacon repeated, having a hard time imagining his Charmer talking about something so pedestrian. "Right." Then he just stared off in the general area that Piper had nodded at, his feet planted firmly where he was.

"You can wait there all day," Piper said, just a little bit sympathetic, "but it's gonna be shitty, either way."

The reporter's words only cemented the block of anxiety in Deacon's belly. So Charmer was pissed at him enough for other people to know?

Maybe he should just leave.

"And don't even think about turning tail," Piper advised. "Putting off the inevitable is only gonna make things worse."

True. Deacon nodded at Piper, signaling that the woman should be on her way, now. He couldn't prepare himself for this under her scrutinizing eyes. And he needed to be ready. Because he had known, he had always known, that he was gonna lose Charmer. But now, he had to own up to it.

When he finally managed to force his feet to move, his pace was slow, almost lazy. He wasn't in any rush to meet his fate. But when he saw a dark head of hair, a lithe and petite body crouched on the ground next to Sturges, his heart jumped in his chest and his feet moved a little faster. God, there she was, fucking beautiful as ever. He'd been right – with all the dirt washed off of her, or at least fairly recently washed off of her, she looked younger. More her age. A twenty-something year old who should never have had to deal with all this shit.

Who shouldn't have to deal with a fraud like him, either.

He stopped, about ten feet away from her, completely reverent of her presence. Glory had been right – he needed to see things to believe it, and now that he was seeing Charmer, in the flesh, his heart was doing this whole thing where it skipped a beat every so often because he was so fucking relieved that she was alive. She was okay. The Big Bad Institute hadn't ruined her. Not yet, at least.

After about a minute of his staring, Charmer seemed to sense eyes on her and glanced up. Her green eyes were piercing and terrifying; they betrayed no emotion, showed no surprise, which worried him even more. She didn't even look marginally happy to see him. He couldn't read anything off her.

Was that what it was like to look at him? Did it ever fill her with the same doubt he now felt?

Sturges, hovering over Charmer's shoulder as they looked at what seemed to be blueprints in her hand, looked up too, his face visibly paling when he realized that it was Deacon standing in front of them. How the man knew it was Deacon, he had no idea, unless it had something to do with Piper recognizing him, too. But still. It was a little unnerving to be recognized.

"Why don't I catch up with you later?" Sturges offered to her, taking his eyes off Deacon in order to read Charmer's reaction to his presence. When the mechanic saw nothing but a void stare, he paled further. "Yeah, I'll catch up with you later." And the man high-tailed it outta there like there was no tomorrow.

Deacon couldn't blame him. You could cut the tension in the air with a fucking knife.

Standing from her crouch, Charmer still didn't say anything. She just continued to stare, impassive, unreadable, terrifying.

Deacon held his hands out as if to say surprised? and tried going for a more lighthearted approach to ease the tension. "What, couldn't stop by HQ to let your biggest fans know you were up and kickin'?"

Charmer finally did something. She frowned. So deeply that he worried it would never come off her face. "Follow me," she said tersely, brushing past him with a stiff shoulder, not bothering to glance back to see if he was indeed following.

Of course he would. If she said jump right now, he would ask how fucking high? He would do anything.

He trailed behind her until they reached her house, which was oddly untouched and unmodified, unlike the houses that were surrounding it. Charmer was stiff, standing too-straight, and opened the front door with so much force that the handle nearly flew off. She left it open and marched inside, letting Deacon follow and close it behind them.

The silence that grew was nerve wracking. His mind and his body couldn't synchronize properly – his body just wanted to throw itself at the woman, to gather her up in his arms and never let go, pepper her with kisses and make love to her and tell her that he lov- that he cared about her so much. But his mind kept asking: how's she gonna do it? Swift? Merciful? Or long and drawn out? He felt like a dead man walking.

Her back was still to him, her hands planted on the old worn marble of her kitchen island countertop. She had gotten a haircut again, but this time a good one. The ends of her hair had been clipped perfectly, not jagged and mismatched. The Institute probably had a damn good barber.

He stood stock-still, holding his breath. When she finally turned around to face him, her expression was schooled into a cold mask.

"Was there something you needed from me, Deacon?" Professional. That's how she wanted to come off. Purely professional. Like they hadn't been glued to the hip for nearly nine months. Like she hadn't offered everything to him, made love to him, looked at him with complete adoration. And he had expected it, of course he did, but it didn't make it sting any less.

Deacon opened his mouth, closed it. Now wasn't the time for witticisms. Now was the time for the truth, unsolicited. He sucked in a deep breath, took the sunglasses off. Watched a small furrow appear between her brows. "I knew what you would find when you got there," he admitted, his voice low, ashamed, bearing the weight of years of self-loathing and hatred.

If it was possible, Charmer stiffened even more. "You knew. Of course you knew. You know everything, don't you?" This sharp, acerbic comment seemed to be to herself, and Deacon looked up at her helplessly. "If you knew, why didn't you tell me? If you knew what he had become? The monster he was? Is?"

Monster… So she hadn't sided with the Father? She wasn't compromised? The thought hadn't even crossed his mind until this moment, because he was too fucking in love with her, too fucking wrapped up in her, but what the other Railroad agents had voiced could have been true – she could have seen her brother, not that they would've known she and the Father were family, and turned on the Railroad. Turned on all of them.

"I…" Deacon started, stopped. God, it was so hard, telling only the truth. Being real. "Honestly, I wasn't sure… that you would see him that way. I wasn't sure…"

"What? You weren't sure where my loyalty was?" She laughed, but it was bitter, harsh. "Did I not show you enough? Did I not deserve the truth from you?" She shoved away from the counter, approached him with sharp, purposeful strides until she stood a mere foot away. "What made you think any of that was okay, Deacon? You…" her voice broke, but her hard gaze held steady. His Charmer, she didn't cry. "You betrayed me."

She was right. There was no talking his way out of this one. There was no lie to tell that would make things better. The truth was: he had betrayed her. Had lied to her, in the way that mattered, from the very start. He could have told her who her brother was: that he was the Father, the puppet-master behind the boogeymen of the Institute. He could have told her he had once been part of that fucked up organization, that he had scoped out possible targets for them, people to take and test and replace. He could have told her all of it. Or maybe he couldn't have. Maybe this was just who he was.

"Nora…" he said, and God, it didn't feel as good to say it this time, because maybe this was the last time he would ever get to call her it to her face. "Nora… I'm sorry. You're right. I'm sorry." Tears had formed in his eyes; when, he wasn't sure, but they were there. He wasn't as tough as her, his Charmer, his Nora. They slipped down his cheeks, gathered at his chin. Charmer watched them, her eyes softening but her glare still present, her hard façade breaking.

"Get out," she whispered, looking away from him. Anywhere but at him. "Get out. Now."

And he couldn't stand to see the disgust on her face, the hatred, the loathing. So he did exactly as she said. He ran, as far as his lungs would permit him, before he collapsed to the ground, and for the first time since Barbara had been slaughtered, he cried.

000

Days passed in a haze for Deacon. One day bleeding into the next, day or night being an uncertain and unimportant detail. He was reeling, numb, too much and too little all at once. Hardly able to process his heartbreak, because he had been the one to perfectly construct it. Other agents stayed out of his way entirely. Glory knew better than to speak to him. Des had benched him for desk duty, too worried for his safety and for others to have him out in the field. No one asked questions. He was sure his face gave away how bad of an idea that would be.

Then he heard her voice, four days after she had told him to leave Sanctuary Hills. He thought he had started hallucinating from one too many sleepless nights, but he saw Glory perk up immediately, shove to her feet from where she'd been eating noodles with Tom, and full-out sprint over to Charmer, who had just walked in through the crypt's front entrance.

"Oh my God," Glory said, throwing her arms around the other heavy. "Don't do that. Don't do that. Ever again, do you understand me?" She hugged Charmer tightly, so tightly that anyone with a pair of eyes could see the relic's breath leave her lungs, but Charmer seemed resigned to this punishment.

The smile on her pretty lips was real when Glory finally pulled away. "I'm sorry," Charmer said, a bit sheepish. "I just… needed some time."

Drummer Boy must've run to tell the Alpha that their star agent had returned, in the flesh, because Desdemona was the next person to approach Charmer, relief and glee and hunger in her eyes. "Charmer," she greeted, imbuing her tone with as much warmth as Deacon had ever heard in it. "I think we have some things to discuss."

Charmer nodded and followed Des back into her office. It seemed like everyone in the crypt held a collective breath as she passed by Deacon, obviously expecting some sort of sappy and romantic reunion. But when she didn't even glance at the master spy and marched on past him like he didn't even exist, he felt eyes on him. Curious, questioning.

And he couldn't stand the stares. So he walked off, barking at Drummer to take the dead-drops out early if only to just say something, and slipped out the back entrance to get some air.

000

"I warned you not to fuck this up, Deacon," Glory said, watching as the master spy took a long drag of a cigarette and blew the smoke out his mouth slowly, leaning against the massive thick metal pipe that led back into the crypt. He could feel Glory's eyes burn into him, but still, he wouldn't look at her. "I told you. But it looks like you fucked it up colossally."

"Good talk," Deacon cut her off, his tone deadly low. "But maybe let's do it another time, yeah?"

"No," Glory said, stepping into his face. She just blinked as he blew smoke into her eyes, anything to get her away from him. To be alone. "No, we're doing this now. I told you not to fuck it up Deacon. But you did. You didn't tell her, did you?"

He froze, every bone in his body suddenly feeling like leaden ice. His blood ran cold. He masked his surprise, his fear, of course, but he could do nothing to keep the terror from swimming around in his belly. "Tell her about my tickling fetish? Yeah, you're right. Forgot to mention it and, let's just say, made things a little awkward the first time, y'know?"

Glory glared at him, but now that he knew the full weight of Charmer's glare, he knew it wasn't the same. Glory looked like an angry little kitten in comparison. "No. I'm talking about the Institute. About how you used to work for them, way back in the day, and how you know who her brother is, how you know everything, even though you pretend and you lie and you think none of the rest of us know. You didn't tell her about it. And I fucking warned you. Not. To mess. It up. You should have told her."

He was full-on gaping at Glory, now. Holy mother of fuck. Glory knew? About the Institute? About what he, Deacon, used to do for them?

How in the fuck?

"Glory…?"

"Yeah, that's right," she bit out at him, satisfied at seeing him speechless for the first time. "I know. I've known this whole time. Guess they fucked up when they programmed my memory to get wiped if I ever escaped. I remember reading about you. Seeing your file. Watching the monitors as the Watchers kept track of you, before you looked like…" she gestured at his face, "This. I remember you, Deacon, when you weren't even Deacon. When you were just some farmhand who didn't know about the shitstorm he was getting himself into."

Jesus fuck. This whole time? Ten years – that's how long he had known Glory for. How long she'd been with them, since she escaped. For ten years she had known and hadn't said anything to him?

"Does – "

"No," Glory cut him off. "Des doesn't know. No one else does. As far as I was concerned, you were trying to redeem yourself. I know a little something about that. But we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about Charmer. You fucked it up big time, Deacon, and you need to fix it."

"I – "fuck, he couldn't think straight. "Glory… I don't know how to."

"You need to figure it out."

A/N: Ta-da! Another chapter! The next one is much harder to write, sadly, but I'm working on it. Please let me know what you think!