The Danse Dilemma

4. Paladin Pals

As Danse, Dogmeat and I slowly track back to the police station, I notice Danse beginning to slow down. He grimaces every now and then, but when he catches me staring, he quickly straightens up and continues to walk.

"Danse..." I sigh as he holds his side, still in his power armor. "Danse... wait." I say, rolling my eyes and grabbing his arm so he stops.

Reluctantly, he lifts his head to meet my eyes, and even though his scowling at me, I can tell he's hurt. "What?" He asks, and again I sigh.

"It's getting late and you're slowing us down! We have to patch you up if we wanna get back to the station before dark."

He grumbles but once he realises I'm right, he slowly makes his way over to a church. I order Dogmeat to go ahead and run back to the police station where I know he'll make it faster being on four legs, he hesitates at first. "Don't worry boy, I'll bring back a treat. I promise." I give him a quick hug and tell him to go... and he obeys like the good boy he is.

Stepping inside the church, Danse was leaning in the main hall. Beside the main hall there were three other doors. One was a bathroom, the second was rather barren office and the third led to the basement. If there's one thing that Danse had learned throughout his training in the Brotherhood it was that dark basements and any other underground structures were to be avoided at all costs unless you had an entire recon team with you. Ghouls tended to use these dark places as their dens. "Soldier." Danse called out as he stood beside the basement door.

"Danse, you can call me Y/N. Drop the titles." I told him as I joined him next to the door. Danse nodded stiffly.

"We have nowhere else to go for the night and it's to dangerous to travel in the dark. I don't know what is in this basement, but from experience I have a good guess what might be down there." He told me.

I stared at him in disbelief. Did he really think that we would be safe staying somewhere that potentially had something or someone living in the basement? I wasn't having it. I shook my head dramatically. "No way. I don't even know what you think could be down there, but the fact that you're warning me about it means that there is no way in hell staying here with whatever it is." I told him.

"Ghouls. They're not necessarily strong but they're faster than hell." He told me. I nodded sarcastically. 'Right. Just ghouls, no big deal right?' "They're nocturnal so they'll be awake soon, if there is any down there, there might not be." He added as he pushed a pew across the floor, blocking the door with it. He struggled at first but the power armor did most of the work. The legs of the pew made an awful loud scraping noise against the wood floor.

"We don't have a choice do we?"

"No." Danse said simply with a quick nod.

"Well if that didn't wake them up I'll be impressed." I commented with a wince. I followed him through the dark chapel to the office. It was a small room that the previous minister had used as an office and then seemingly a sort of storage room. There was a heavy wooden desk against one wall with a matching wooden chair and boxes stacked a few feet high on the other. A single bulb hung on a dark wire in the center of the ceiling but there was no power. The only light was the moonlight drifting through the curtained and dirty window on the wall opposite the door. "We're going to lock ourselves in aren't we?" I asked as I fully entered the dusty room.

"There's not another option." He told me as he closed the door behind him. Like before, he barricaded the door with the desk. He slowly steps out of his power armor behind the desk, securing the desk in place.

"Let's make this quick." He says and I finally get a good look at his burns. His face isn't as bad as the rest of him, his left shoulder, hip and half his chest has been burnt. Some of his suit has been burnt too, showing the red on his skin. I'm sure he's burnt in other places, but right now, I'm only gonna worry about the major ones I can see. I make him sit down and lean against the back of the chair. I rummage around in my satchel and pull out only two stimpacks. My last two left... I hand them to him as I go back to searching my bag for something to wrap the wounds in, until Haylen can properly fix him up. He stares at the stimpacks and out the corner of my eye I can see him looking up at me.