#my procreating assistant would probably get to name the second since i’d have the first 😐

[concussed-to-pieces]

The Mettle Of A Man; Part Eleven

Fandom: Fallout (4)

Pairing: Eventual Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Enjoy!

Part One: ArcJet

Part Two: The Prydwen

Part Three: Orders

Part Four: Finding Brandis

Part Five: Weston Water And Oberland

Part Six: Meeting Preston And Matthew

Part Seven: Radstag And Radstorm

Part Eight: The Return To Sanctuary Hills

Part Nine: Domestic Ruminations

Part Ten: Institutionalized

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains brief mentions of pregnancy (relating to bodily changes and a C-section) and a graphic depiction of an emotional/nervous breakdown. Stay safe!]

Two weeks and three days. 

  Danse wasn't exactly certain of what to do. It had taken his squadron nearly three weeks to track down Cutler, so three weeks had become his hard limit almost unconsciously. The paladin had never been overly good at resting on his laurels, but it wasn't like he could single-handedly lay siege to the damn Institute for a retrieval mission.

  Returning to the Prydwen without his charge might prove divisive , regardless of how many technical documents Codsworth had procured from the cul-de-sac's abodes. 

  Speaking of Codsworth…

  "Aw, cheer up man." Sturges comforted the robot, who (unless Danse was imagining it) was hovering a bit lower today. "I bet she'll be back any second now!"

  "Mister Sturges, as much as I appreciate your optimistic outlook," the robot sniffed dramatically. "I'm afraid that you cannot begin to understand the sadness I feel. I believed for two hundred years that I had lost Miss Vega, and to have lost her once again is...well, it is unbearable , Mister Sturges."

  Danse grimaced. Did he actually feel bad for a robot? He was, at the very least, sympathizing with it. What the hell was his world coming to?

  Knight Vega certainly kept some interesting company. Aside from the seemingly permanent presence of the elderly Mama Murphy, Sturges, Codsworth, and the married couple of Jun and Marcy Long, numerous colorful individuals had drifted through the settlement over the course of the weeks.

  First there was Cait, a woman with hair red enough to put Proctor Ingram's to shame. She blew into town, provisioner in tow, speaking with a thick, caustic brogue and toting a sawed-off shotgun. "I owe Backhand my life." She said shortly when Danse enquired as to what her business was with Vega. "She got me off the chems, so now I keep her goddamn caravans free from pests."

  She only stayed for a night, but she insisted that Danse join her for a sparring match. He wasn't afraid to admit that she put him through the ringer , his whole body sore the following morning.

  "Tell Handy Cait sends her love!" The woman had called before she departed, giving him a small smile. Danse had ruefully promised to do so, trying not to visibly wince as he waved farewell.

  One Robert MacCready followed shortly thereafter, who had acted like Danse being there would raze the town to the ground on nothing but principle. "I dealt with you ass--er, you jerks in the Capital Wasteland." The lithe man scowled up at Danse, pushing the bill of his hat back. He had a sniper rifle slung around his body with a barrel that was almost as long as he was tall, bearing an ornate, quick-slide scope.

  "I assume you are used to the charity of former Elder Lyons. The eastern chapter is no longer so benevolent, civilian." Danse growled, pricked by MacCready's blatant disdain for the Brotherhood.

  He could tell MacCready wasn't a bad sort, just overly suspicious and prickly. After serving with Knight Rhys for so long, Danse was almost tempted to tell the younger man that he would need to try harder to keep people away from him.

  "Backhand saved my kid." Robert admitted one night after he had been drinking by the fire with Sturges. "She...She helped me get the medicine I needed. Helped cure my little boy." 

  Danse knew he shouldn't be surprised that someone who seemed as young as MacCready had managed to procreate. But as he watched the other man toy idly with a tiny, battered tin soldier that he had pulled from his pocket, Danse felt that perhaps...perhaps Robert had the right to be a bit suspicious and prickly.

  The next visitor was a petite, dark-haired woman named Curie who had an incredibly strange accent. She was of the medical persuasion and curious about everything . Danse was a little taken aback by how blunt some of her inquiries were, but he did his best to humor her. 

  She seemed harmless enough, even if she was hellbent on learning the inner machinations of his entire existence. She asked everything in such a clinical manner, Danse didn't even have the presence of mind to be uncomfortable or embarrassed. 

  That is, until she asked whether he was sexually active and " when was zee last time you stimulated yourself, Monsieur Danse? " Then he clammed right up, loathing that he could feel his face going hot as he remembered exactly when the last time he had stimulated himself was.

  "I will not be answering any more of your questions about my personal matters, civilian." The paladin informed her curtly, caught off-guard by her plaintive cry of dismay at his refusal. 

  "But Monsieur Danse, I must learn zee secret of your overgrown size! You are so very tall and muscular compared to your contemporaries, my research could result in a breakthrough for your whole species! If you are a genetic throwback, zis could mean-" Sturges finally came to his rescue, ushering the wailing doctor away and shooting Danse a wink that made the paladin huff out an irritated grunt.

  Genetic throwback . Dogmeat was a genetic throwback. Danse just...maybe he had good genes. Both of his parents must have possessed more robust constitutions. That was the clear answer. 

  An elaborately-dressed ghoul had marched down the main road like he owned the joint a few days after Curie had come and gone, only stopping when he realized there was a fully-armored paladin aiming a laser rifle at him. "Whoa! Easy crewcut, you'll harsh my mellow." He exclaimed, taking off his tricorn hat and fanning himself with it. "The name's John Hancock," he continued with a showy little bow. "I'm lookin' for General Vega. She around?"

  "Knight Vega is indisposed at the moment, but you're welcome to leave a message, ghoul." Danse gritted out, oddly keen on attempting civility.

  Hancock whistled and Dogmeat came running over, immediately flopping onto his back for a belly rub. "Ah, there he is. My favorite of the general's mutts. Sorry, you say somethin'?" The ghoul asked lazily, the pitch-black void of his eyes boring pointedly into Danse's. 

  The paladin threw his hands up in the air after a moment and stormed off. God damn it, Vega, you could have warned me that you kept such diverse company! he ranted inwardly.

  The visitor that had nearly sent him into a conniption was an old synth, its skin ragged and tattered enough to show its inner workings. Sturges chatted away with the damn thing (and its traveling companion, a self-styled reporter apparently named Piper Wright) and Danse just floundered . Backhand made friends with synths?

  Ticking mentally over everyone else he had met during his stay at Sanctuary, Danse reluctantly admitted that yes, Backhand would absolutely make friends with synths. Perhaps he should have come to terms with that before everything that had occurred, but now here he was, fully kitted and watching this synth narrowly. 

  "Come on over and introduce yourself, big fella'. No need to glare from afar." The synth commented wryly. "From what I understand we're all on the same team."

  "If it's all the same to you, synth , I'll keep my distance." Danse could tolerate a lot of things. Ghouls, specifically. He had met numerous in his travels and while it was unsettling to converse with them, he knew they weren't all diseased, mindless shamblers despite what the Brotherhood had beaten into him. But synths …

  They were the embodiment of mankind's arrogance. Monstrous, uncanny, a mockery of bodily functions. They made Danse's skin crawl.

  Piper huffed indignantly, rolling her eyes and pointing a finger at Danse as she remarked loudly to Sturges, "I wasn't aware that Blue had rechristened this place Bigotry Hills."

  The synth inclined its head in the meantime, somehow giving off an air of mechanical resignation. "Alright, I'll go first I suppose, since you've forgotten your manners. Name's Nick Valentine. I'm a detective operating out of Diamond City."

  Nick Valentine . Danse's mouth became a desert. This , this was the detective Vega sang the praises of when it came to tracking down the man who had stolen her son? "Knight Vega failed to mention that you were a synth." He muttered.

  "She probably figured it wasn't relevant. After all, the Institute left me at the curb with another man's memories in my head. Miss Vega did me a good turn after I helped her out with that Kellogg fella'." The synth shrugged. "Let an old bot put a few more ghosts to rest." He dusted off the raggedy fedora he wore, those unnerving golden eyes focused on Danse. "I caught wind that something might have gone a little sour with her infiltration, so Piper and I thought we'd drop by and see if we could offer any sort of assistance."

  "And can you?" Danse asked, concern and suspicion making his tone even sharper as he glanced at the woman. Piper stuck her tongue out at him, to his chagrin.

  The synth looked regretful for a second and Danse pondered that its face could even convey such a complex emotion. "Probably not, but at least now I know I'm not the only one worrying about our doll Vega." It remarked shrewdly. 

  Danse blushed guiltily, dropping his gaze from that calculating stare. It felt like the synth could see every damn thing he had ever done wrong in his life and Danse loathed the idea of this machine being able to help where he couldn't. "I'll be watching you, synth ," he blustered. "If you step out of line-"

  The synth actually interrupted him, waving a spindly, metallic hand. "You'll what, melt me into slag? I'd be careful, I might do something nefarious like trap you in an intelligent conversation."

  …

  Danse's sleep schedule had never been anything even bordering on concrete, but now the worry kept him up more than the nightmares. A thousand scenarios ran through his mind, each one worse than the last. His fatalistic tendencies would be the death of him one of these days, and wouldn't that be a poetic end. Death by apoplexy, his heart just exploding under the stress of his own imagination.

  No one commented when he ended up abandoning that soft mattress in the front room of Vega's house in favor of planting his bedroll on the floor at the foot of her bed. He spent long hours there every night, disassembling his gun, cleaning it thoroughly and checking over his mods. 

  When he inevitably gave up on sleep, he would patrol the perimeter. Jun joined him fairly often, the soft spoken man having taken it upon himself to manage the security around the settlement.

  "At first, I think Backhand just wanted me to have something to do." Jun mentioned out of the blue one evening, his haggard expression illuminated in the faint light of the moon. "So she told me to uh, walk the property line. Marcy didn't know what to do with me. Hell, she didn't even know what to do with herself . Losing Kyle was…" the man swallowed hard. "Well, the general understood, on account of her own little one. She knew I needed to be kept busy, especially after that close call in Concord. I'm just glad Marcy didn't give up on me." He admitted.

  "Why would she have given up on you?" Danse asked, a bit confused that this conversation was even occurring. He didn't do this sort of thing. "Whatever transpired with your child wasn't your fault." He had never asked for the specifics and Jun hadn't volunteered them.

  Jun shrugged. "Being married is...full of ups and downs. And sometimes the downs are really, really hard. Too hard. It's terrible, seeing the person you love turn into some kind of...angry husk because of grief and you're grieving too, and you know you can't fix it because-" the man's eyes welled up, his voice hitching. "-b-because you're not strong enough."

  Danse's breath caught in his lungs because oh God , that had been him after Cutler. Frustrated, hollow, newly promoted and warming Arthur's bed out of duty as he tried to privately grieve the man he had lost.

  It had been Haylen and Rhys who pried him from his depressive, wrathful tendencies. Brandis had suggested that Danse consider sponsoring his own initiates, and recommended him two candidates. The young woman, barely into adulthood, so full of life and eager to learn, and Rhys had been angry like him. 

  More followed after those two, but they had been his first. He sponsored Dawes, Brach, Keane, Worwick...squire or initiate to aspirant, aspirant to scribe or knight. All the while keeping them at arm's length, reluctant to open himself up again to the suffering that had wreaked its havoc upon him after the loss of Cutler.

  Learning about Paladin Krieg's passing during the assault on Adams Air Force Base was a blade twisting in his back. Danse had felt like his entire body was on fire, raw with agony once more as everything he had tried so hard to keep under control collapsed beneath him. He emerged from that particular rubble stoic and grim, and it was shortly after that incident that Recon Squadron Artemis went dark in the Commonwealth. 

  Brandis was sent to die and you know it! That evening in the barracks had been one of the hardest in his entire military career. Danse had known he was lying, lying to every single man, woman and child in that room that he would pass along any information he learned about Paladin Brandis.

  But what else could he do?

  "You can't fix everything and every one, Mr. Long." The paladin murmured finally. "You'll only burn yourself out with the effort. All you can do is let time do its work."

  "Oh, I know." The other man said calmly, having clearly mastered himself while Danse mulled over his response. "Marcy and I had a long talk about...our son, and even though it still hurts to talk about him, I know someday it won't." He smiled at Danse. "Thanks for listening, Mr. Paladin. I can see why the general likes you."

  Danse may or may not have tucked that precious information away, deep down in his heart.

  ...

  Backhand had no idea how many days had passed since she had departed. The Commonwealth was relatively quiet all around the settlement as she took a few steadying breaths after relaying back, bent nearly double with her hands on her knees. Overhead in the night sky, the moon beamed weakly between the thick clouds.

  Staggering down the steps that were still attached to the bare foundation, a wave of exhaustion threatened to cripple her. Away from the artificial lighting and brilliant whiteness of the Institute, she abruptly felt like she hadn't slept in weeks. How long had she been awake for?

  Bed , Vega decided with a nod. Bed before anything else . With slow, trudging footsteps, the young woman made her way to the house where she had lived before the bombs fell. Whatever time it was, it was obviously late. There wasn't a light on across the whole settlement, and she was incredibly grateful that she would be afforded a few moments of reprieve before she was plied with questions.

  Backhand closed the front door behind her, doing her best to be quiet. Danse must be asleep. Either that or he had returned to the Prydwen. Vega was a little startled at how distraught that made her feel, like she had lost somehow. 

  She stifled a yawn as she jiggled the sticky doorknob to her room and, too impatient to ease the door open, she put her shoulder to it.

  The door flew open and she immediately found herself on the business end of a very familiar laser rifle. Vega couldn't help her shriek of surprise and in her haste to retreat, she toppled into the hall and landed hard on her back. "Wait, wait! " She pleaded, throwing up her hands in surrender. "Don't shoot, Danse!"

  The paladin just stared down at her for a moment, his brow slowly unfurrowing in recognition as he lowered his gun. "Elizabeth?" He asked, his voice rasping hoarsely.

  "Y-Yeah. Hi." Backhand replied, her voice shaky. "It's me." Danse extended his hand, easily pulling her upright off the ground. She half-fell against his body, the large man accepting the weight without a word. "Why are you sleeping in here?" Backhand blurted out the first question she could think of, noticing the disturbed bedroll on the floor at the foot of her bed. 

  "I assumed that should you return, you would most likely head to your room first." The paladin answered quickly, too quickly for it to be the truth.

  Backhand raised an eyebrow. "And the armed greeting?"

  "A reflex."

  Vega's hands curled into fists on his chest, taking handfuls of his shirt between her fingers. I missed you , she wanted to say, I missed you so much . "How long was I gone for?" She asked instead.

  "Seventeen days." Danse replied in a no-nonsense manner. "It appears your infiltration of the Institute was a success." He was watching her closely. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Knight."

  Vega wanted to kiss him, not missing the warmth of relief in his eyes despite his neutral tone. She hurriedly peeled herself off of his chest, awkwardly clearing her throat and casting her brain around for an excuse to leave. "I'm...I need to shower." She lied, grimacing. "I was going to go right to bed, but…"

  "Take your time. I'll remove my personal effects and return to my quarters." The paladin intoned stiffly.

  Backhand grabbed a random assortment of clothing from atop her rickety dresser and fled to the bathroom without another word. 

  She slid down the door once she had shut it firmly, closing her eyes and hanging her head. What the hell were you expecting, Vega? she chastised herself, starting to unlace her boots. Some kind of fairytale reunion where he sweeps you up into his arms and professes his undying love? And we ride into the sunset? Backhand scoffed, bringing her fist down on the side of the salvaged water heater to get it to function.

  Vega stared down at her body as she showered, feeling oddly like a spectator. The faint scar at the bottom of her stomach mocked her, taunting her with the memory of the hospital room, the swaddled Shaun being pressed into her arms…

  This was all so wrong. 

  She pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes hard enough to blind her for a moment, fending off the tears that threatened to close her throat. The scar was placed low enough on her body that the waistband of her underwear concealed it. She didn't have to think about it too often. Usually she avoided looking at it while she bathed, the surgical leftover making complex feelings of grief and resentment war inside her.

  Her fingers drew over the faded scar, then rose to brush the stretch marks that striped over her belly from where her body had changed to accommodate Shaun's growing form. And still her eyes were dry.

  Backhand emerged from the lukewarm shower and simply sat on the side of the tub, watching the water slowly swirl down the drain. She thought of the Institute, where clean water was just a faucet turn away. Free of parasites and radiation, bearing a faint reek of chlorine that had clung to her hair and skin after bathing.

  Her brow furrowed and she toweled herself off briskly, donning the clothing she had grabbed at random. The shirt was too big, unfamiliar, and she realized with a sharp pang of a strange emotion that it must be one of Danse's. Had he done her laundry while she was gone?

  The young woman hung her towel up to dry, scooped all her dirty clothes off the floor and padded back across the hall to her room. 

  Danse, true to his word, had removed his bedroll and pack from the room, leaving no trace of his previous occupancy. Vega dropped her ball of clothes in the corner and sank down on the edge of her mattress, putting her head into her hands. 

  I believe you will do great things for the Institute.

  Her fingers dug into her hair, raking through it in a nervous gesture. She didn't want to do great things. She had never wanted to do great things. All she had wanted was a family.

  A child, a husband, a modest house in a quiet neighborhood…

  The bombs had taken so much from everyone else, did she even have the right to mourn the life she wished she had? It seemed so selfish, so...petty.

  Shaun's crib sat empty by the door like always, but now its vacancy mocked her. Had she ever truly believed she would find her son? Or had she been lying to herself the whole time, trying to convince herself that she could have been a good mother and that it wasn't all her fault Shaun had been taken. Rage bathed her in a comforting blanket of numbness and Backhand clenched her fists, rising from the bed. 

  With a stilted, furious cry of, " fuck you! " she heaved the empty crib against the wall.

  It was a simple enough task to snap the rungs in it, blowing through them one after the other. Next the flimsy headboard, torn from the sides with a shriek of abused screws. Backhand broke it over her knee, pitching the pieces off to land somewhere as the crib teetered on two legs. She grabbed those last two legs, picked the remains of the crib up, and smashed it against the floor with all her might. 

  It exploded in a cloud of chipped blue pieces, effectively destroyed. Backhand screamed in frustrated anguish, sinking to her knees and wrapping her arms around herself. She hadn't even noticed she was crying, but the tears were hot enough to burn on her cheeks.

  She felt running footsteps vibrate through the floor, but she didn't so much as raise her head. 

  Danse, Danse , those brown eyes so warm and concerned, knelt in front of her. " Easy , Knight." He soothed. Backhand sobbed hysterically, her whole body shaking with each inhale. "Elizabeth." Danse said her name calmly, quietly, his arms falling open.

  The woman flung herself into his embrace, gripping his back tightly. Danse held her close, like she was small and fragile and needed to be protected, one hand on the back of her head stroking her still-damp hair. Vega just went limp, weeping pitifully into his shirt.

  "By Jove…" Codsworth breathed from the door. "Oh mum, I'm so sorry." She felt a metal pincer rest gingerly on her shoulder and Backhand knocked her forehead against Danse's clavicle when she turned her face to look at Codsworth. "You should have told us, mum. Whatever it is, it's all too much to carry alone." The robot scolded her kindly. "I helped you raise the little tyke, if you recall. We will always have those fond memories, you and I."

  "It hurts." Backhand said thickly. "It h-hurts so much. I just wanted him back."

  "I'm sorry, Elizabeth." Danse murmured, words laden with sorrow. And he didn't even know what had happened yet!

  "I don't want anyone else to be sorry. I-I want to take every one of that smug f- fuck's toys and break them. If he wasn't already on his way out, I would-" Backhand dissolved into seething, nonsensical muttering. "There's good people in the Institute." She said finally. "People who wanted to help. People who need to get out."

  "And the Brotherhood will do everything we can to save them." Danse promised solemnly, taking her hands in his own and making a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat as he examined the battered skin. "Christ Vega, you're full of splinters."

  "I just...I don't know, I shouldn't have done that." Backhand mumbled, feeling idiotic for letting herself get so out of control.

  "Not to worry, mum!" Codsworth cheerily clicked his pincers. "I'll have you squared away in a jiffy!"

  Danse didn't let her go as Codsworth painstakingly worked over her abused hands to remove every last sliver. The paladin even assisted when the robot asked, holding her skin taut or flattening her palm out on his own to keep her steady so Codsworth could get a better grip.

  Piper appeared in the doorway in the midst of the procedure, wearing a raggedy robe and carrying a steaming mug. "And there's our gal." The reporter said softly. "Heya' Blue."

  "H-Hey Piper." Backhand sniffled. 

  The other woman tipped her head. "Nicky's on his way. You want tea or coffee?" 

  "Coffee, please. Please." Backhand begged, feeling Danse's hold on her tighten slightly. She was sitting in his lap still, his arms around her while Codsworth worked. She hated herself for enjoying the comfort his proximity provided, hated herself for being too weak to deal with this on her own. 

  As if he could sense her thoughts, the paladin settled her back more firmly against his chest.

  …

  She was back. She had come back. Harried and haggard but alive . Danse could feel the tension radiating from her and he wanted to kick himself for greeting her with a weapon at the door. His brain hadn't even registered that it might be her , he had awoken from his uneasy half-doze to someone breaching the door and his body reacted.

  Danse wanted to question her. He wanted to grip her to his chest and never let her out of his sight again. He wanted to berate her for being gone for so long. He wanted to lay her down on her bed and--

  He shoved that thought away. She was obviously exhausted and worn from whatever it was that she had gone through. Now was absolutely not the time to voice the pesky, budding emotions that warred in his chest.

  He could sense the impending explosion hanging heavy in the air like the changing pressure of an approaching storm, but he hadn't expected the rupture to happen so soon. Vega was barely out of the shower when he heard the first crash , her yell of " fuck you! ". 

  Danse wrestled momentarily with himself, his hands clenching in the fabric of his sleeping bag. Expressing anger could be therapeutic in it's own right, and her getting everything out now might be miles healthier than bottling it all up until she imploded.

  But her sobbing cries effectively wiped his plan of inaction. She sounded like she was in agony and Danse didn't even remember tearing the door open. One second he was in his own room and then the next he was on his knees in front of her, " easy , Knight," his voice gone soft and tender in a manner wholly uncharacteristic of the usually stoic man.

  He couldn't help saying her name, her first name, even though he felt wrong for doing so. But she pitched forward into his embrace just like Haylen had, weeping as though her heart was fit to break. And all Danse could do, all anyone could have done, he assured himself, was hold her close.

  She had no care for the safety and wellbeing of her hands, he realized wryly as he checked them over for broken bones. This was the second time patching up her poor fingers, the first time feeling like a distant memory. Her shredding her knuckles to ribbons on the manual release of his suit, her complete disregard for her own comfort…

  Danse didn't move, even when the synth arrived on Piper's heels. Everyone crowded into the room and he knew he ought to feel self-conscious, but now Vega was the one refusing to release him . So there he sat on the floor with her secure in his arms, listening to the entire sordid tale as Codsworth quietly tidied up the mess that had been Shaun's crib. 

  The Institute was real , and it wound for miles underneath the Commonwealth. They had access to safe food and pure drinking water, all made possible by unimaginable technology. Her son wasn't dead or even a child, but instead old and frail. The years had stretched on longer than anyone could have anticipated between his removal from the Vault and Vega's own awakening. 

  The advances that made the generation three synths possible had been brought about by utilizing infant Shaun's pre-war DNA, and he was known as Father to all the synths. But he wasn't a father at all, at least not one that anybody would want to have.

  "Synths are like lower class citizens to these scientists. Expendable. Seen and not heard." Backhand explained, and Nick muttered something uncharitable under his breath. "They're not people, they're tools. Shit, Shaun even listed them off like that, he called the coursers hammers ." Vega spat. "But they think . They dream. Hell, they grieve even though they don't know that's what they're doing."

  She spoke of the courser mourning the loss of his friend, forced to grieve without understanding the feelings he suffered through and Danse was somehow full of sympathy for a damn killing machine. It must just be Vega's compassionate nature transferring to him. There was no way he could actually believe anything like that was even possible.

  Spinal recalibration .

  Danse wasn't sure why , but he felt a blunt stab of pain at the nape of his neck when she explained the procedure. It was probably psychosomatic, he reasoned. The process sounded gruesome.

  Nick flipped back and forth through his notepad, scratching at the side of his head with his pencil. "I'll need some time to look all of this over, sweetheart." He said to Backhand, glancing at Piper. "And you need time to recover," he continued in a gently-chiding tone. "You seem half-dead, doll."

  Danse realized with a barely-hidden start that he had begun to refer to the synth as Nick in his mind. What was happening to him? Had he been away from the Brotherhood for so long that he was going soft? Was his moral integrity being compromised?

  Or was he just coming to terms with something that he couldn't bring himself to label yet? 

  Backhand nodded, tugging the paladin out of his reverie. "I really want to sleep." She mumbled. She must have been truly exhausted, because in spite of downing the mug of coffee Piper had procured for her, she was slumped in Danse's arms. 

  Piper patted Vega's knee, giving Danse a stern glare. The paladin wanted to laugh at her attempt to intimidate him. "You get some rest, Blue. Nicky and I will do our best to compile what you've given us." She assured her.

  After the duo from Diamond City had left, Codsworth made a noise like he was clearing his throat. "I'm just so glad you're back, mum." He said, his words weirdly heartfelt for coming from a machine.

  Vega reached out and caught one of Codsworth's arms before the bot could leave, the young woman smiling wearily up at the Mister Handy. "I'm glad to be back, Codsworth." 

  Danse managed to usher her into her bed just as the sun was rising, but she grabbed his hand when he turned to depart. "Wait." Backhand whispered, her eyelids drooping. "Please...please stay? I don't want to be alone, Danse." A lone tear wound its way down her cheek. "Please don't leave me alone." 

  Danse planted himself in the chair beside the bed, laying his laser rifle across his knees. "I'm not going anywhere, Knight Vega." He promised her solemnly, taking a greedy, selfish moment to push the hair back from her face. "Sleep."

Part Twelve